137. Reducing Your Mental Load
Your mental load is the cognitive effort required to manage, coordinate, and execute tasks in all areas of your life, whether it’s related to work, relationships, your household, or family. If you are socialized as a woman, you are likely not only thinking about what needs to happen for your life to run smoothly but also being a manager, delegating, getting others to help out, and regulating other people’s emotional reactions.
Even if you’re sitting on the couch watching Netflix, how much time are you spending thinking about what needs to be done, what you can’t forget, or squeezing in tasks? Rest isn’t just about taking a physical break, but a mental and emotional one too. Reducing your mental load matters for a whole host of reasons, but what are you supposed to do when it seems like it all falls on you?
Join me this week as I offer my top tips for beginning to offload your mental, emotional, and domestic labor. You’ll hear how you always have a choice to make, even if it doesn’t feel like it, and what’s required of you to start making negotiations for reducing your mental load.
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What You Will Discover:
The difference between your mental load and emotional labor.
Why unpaid domestic labor and emotional labor are key parts of the conversation around mental load.
How people socialized as women are taught to take on mental, domestic, and emotional labor.
Why so much of my work focuses on the need for mental and emotional rest.
An example from my own life of how I’ve reduced my mental, emotional, and domestic load.
How to start reducing your mental load.
What’s required of you to negotiate the changes you want to see.
Resources:
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Emotional Labor by Rose Hackman
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey you all, I’m Marissa McKool, and you’re listening to the Redefining Rest Podcast for Public Health Professionals. Here we believe rest is your right. You don’t have to earn it, you just have to learn how to take it and I’m going to teach you. Ready? Come along.
Hi everyone, I’m so glad you’re here. Was the weekend too short for anyone else? I don’t feel this way often but I really felt like this past weekend flew by. Sunday, Jared and I were actually saying to each other, it felt like it should have been Saturday. And I’m recording this on a Tuesday and I feel like it should be Wednesday. It’s just been odd, it’s been odd. Over the weekend I was in that spring cleaning energy, even though obviously it’s not even spring.
I organized and cleaned out my office, you all, it felt so good. If you could have seen the mess in here, I’ve been piling up for months. It felt so good. It feels so good to come in here now. I love it. I did about a quarter of my closet, organized our pantry. It’s been great. I still have some other projects I want to do. I’m still in energy, so I’m hoping to ride this wave through this week and next weekend to get some more done.
Yesterday I made a classic mistake of cooking what should have been a weekend dinner on a weeknight. You know those dinners that it’s a more complicated recipe, but it’s fun and you like doing it, and it takes longer. Yeah, I did that on a Monday night. That was a mistake. I had sworn off doing that and I was really good for a while. I don’t know. I don’t know why I did this to myself. So I started cooking at 5:30. We didn’t eat till close to eight. I didn’t get anything I wanted to get done last night. Whoops.
So yeah, that’s how this week is starting off. I hope your week’s starting off on a little better foot than me. But today we are talking about the mental load. And first a very brief footnote because I realized last week I forgot something out. Last week I shared more information about the podcast going on a hiatus. If you missed that, you can go back and listen. I also announced some changes to my one-on-one coaching program. Again, you can go back and listen.
But in brief I shared it’s going from a three month program for $5,000 back to a six month program for 6,000. That’s how it used to be. I shared why I changed the cost this past year, some of it to offset creating my course model so we can have some more accessibility around financially having access to coaching. And I shared why I’m changing it back. But anyways, what I didn’t share, which I realized after, was why I’m changing the timeline from three months to six months.
So I surveyed all my past clients about their experience of the program on a lot of things. And one of the things that came out of it which kind of matched my experience of coaching them, was that six months is really the sweet spot. Three months, you do get going, you see changes, you feel better, you’re proud of yourself, for sure. I mean the people who have gone through this year’s three months have done tremendous things in that three month time.
But the additional three months really helps you to just to take it all the way basically with support. And really be able to walk away and feel like I got everything I possibly wanted out of that period. I’m really a changed person. So I wanted to share the reason for that shift. I totally forgot last week. I also shared that if you’re a podcast listener, you get a special discounted rate in the month of December, well, technically through January 5th. I’ll be talking about that more at the end of the episode. If you’re interested, stick around till the end.
And if you’re a current client or a 2023 client you should have a few emails in your inbox about the alumni bonuses for 2024, so check that out. So anyways, let’s get into the episode. Let’s talk about the mental load and buckle up because might be a long episode. It’s going to be jam packed. But honestly, this was one of, if not my favorite episode, I have prepped for. I’ve done so much research. I find this topic so fascinating. And I will say one podcast episode absolutely cannot cover everything about the mental load nor the potential ways you can address it.
There are whole books, whole podcasts on this, so I really want you to think about this one episode as mental load 101. I think a lot of us have some understanding of the mental load, but it feels hard to explain. It feels really hard to change. So I hope this episode helps you connect some dots and really think about things in a new way and potentially what you want to do as far as reducing your mental load.
One book I want to recommend that you read and I’ll be quoting a lot through this episode is called Emotional Labor by Rose Hackman. And I’m going to be totally transparent with you. I haven’t finished this book yet, and normally I do not recommend a book until I’m completely done. But one, I know for sure based on the first 100 or so pages I have read, how helpful and eye opening it’s been, that I feel super confident recommending it before finishing it. And to be frank, part of the reason I haven’t finished it is I got it at my local library.
Normally I only get fiction books from there because in my non-fiction I like to highlight and write little notes. And I saw it and I was like, you know what, I’ll just go with it because there’s some non-fiction books I buy and then I’m like, “That was a waste. It wasn’t very good.” I was writing the quotes down in my phone and it was just so good as I kept reading. I was like, “I just need to buy this book so I can highlight it, write notes and refer back to it.” So I returned it to the library, asked for it for Christmas. So that’s why I’m not done with it.
But nevertheless, I still think based on what I’ve read so far, I’d highly recommend it. The book explains what emotional labor is compared to the mental load and how they are connected, which I found really helpful. And I’m going to talk a little bit about in a second. But first I want to share some staggering facts from that book. And the next kind of four statistics I’m going to read are direct quotes from the book, so directly quoting from Emotional Labor.
Women’s unpaid caregiving work alone, adding value to the global economy, to the tune of at least $10.8 trillion a year. A figure three times larger than the money generated from the tech industry and equivalent to the revenue of the 50 largest Fortune 500 companies. The Institute of Women’s Policy Research in January 2020 found that on average a day, women spend 37% more time on unpaid household tasks and caregiving than men. In the last stat in 2018, men averaged 49 minutes more leisure time a day than women did.
And I did my own calculation. That is seven and a half 40 hour work weeks a year more than women. Now, I know many of you know this, you feel this, this isn’t impacting your life. But when you pull out those statistics on a population level scale, it is staggering. So let’s talk about what is mental load. How is it different from unpaid domestic labor or emotional labor? So mental load is the mental cognitive effort needed to manage or coordinate or execute tasks whether it’s for work or family or relationships or household.
It is the thought process you have when you are driving and thinking of all the things that have to get done before the family vacation. So we need to make sure Rover has enough food for the dog sitter. Oh, yeah, we can’t forget to fix the automatic sprinklers for the yard. And I need to remind John to call the plumber. Oh, wait, I wonder if Suzie has grown out of her bathing suit. I need to check, and then I’ll have to get a new one if it doesn’t fit. That internal narrative, that’s the mental load.
And then unpaid domestic labor is the work that you would have to pay someone else to do if you weren’t doing it. Think grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, childcare. Now, part of the reason this topic is a part of this conversation is because this often falls on women, or more disproportionately on women. And while that is really thinking of it in a heteronormative sense, these issues still affect same sex couples, more and more research is showing that.
So I think that’s important to note, some of which I’ll be talking today about more in a heteronormative sense but it still applies no matter your relationship. But women are socialized to carry more of the mental load. And we’re not only thinking about what needs to get done domestically, but then we’re carrying it out or being the manager and delegating it, reminding about it, trying to get others to help out. You all know what I’m talking about.
And then emotional labor is regulating or managing the emotional experience of other people. Let’s say you’re designing a retreat for work. What emotional labor might look like is thinking about the emotional reactions of people in the room depending on how you set up the retreat or facilitate or what you focus it on. So it might sound like, okay, so if we want to talk about managing up to leaders, I’m not sure if everyone will be comfortable being in the same room.
Should we split and do two group supervisors? Non supervisors? How would each group feel? How do we address this in a way that’s productive and doesn’t trigger people or cause conflict? And we need to be clear that sometimes emotional labor is simply people pleasing. I’ll get to that more later on in the episode. But I think there’s a distinction. Women are socialized to people, please but there is the real skill that is helpful to think about other people’s experiences. There’s a difference, but also there’s a blurred line there.
So how are all of these related? So first, generally speaking, these are things that women are taught to take on or people socialized as women. We are taught directly or indirectly to make sure that what we do say or decide is based on other people’s feelings and has a positive result on their feelings. We are taught to take on the chores or the tasks, errands, everything that’s necessary to make our lives run, that benefits everyone at work or in our family.
We are taught that if we don’t remember, keep track or plan mentally, no one else will and we’ll be blamed or we’ll blame ourselves. We are taught our value and worth in the world is emotional labor, is domestic labor, is carrying the mental load. But at the same time we aren’t credited or rewarded for this, we aren’t paid, we aren’t appreciated. And yet if we don’t do it, we are shamed or punished or scrutinized or we even do that to ourselves.
Again, one of my favorite quotes from the book Emotional Labor is one of the cleverest tricks of the patriarchy is that it transforms all work deemed feminine into fixed subliminal expressions of femininity. However, much of that work involves active time, effort and skill. The best way to maintain a system in which women work for little to nothing for the benefit of others, especially men, is to convince society they are not working at all.
When we think about the things that make our lives run smoothly, emotional, mental, and domestic labor are intrinsically linked. In order for little Johnny to have a great birthday, we have to plan something he would like. In order for that to happen, we have to think about the details, how they would get done, manage them. We have to think about what he would like his emotions.
In order for that special occasion to happen, we have to make sure he has clean clothes to wear, that the groceries are bought, that there are clean places for people to sit or plates to eat off of. So much of rest or lack thereof is tied back to this. Rest isn’t just about taking a physical break. It is about the emotional and mental break we need because of exactly this. It’s not just at home, it’s with our kids, our partners, at work too, with friends and family.
Women are the ones thinking about the emotional experience, the environment in our workplaces and how to make it better. We know celebrating staff as they retire is good for morale. This requires knowing when someone’s retiring, thinking about when to throw a celebration, considering everyone’s schedules, thinking about a gift that person would like, organizing it, planning, bringing everyone together.
This is why so much of my work and my coaching focuses on the mental and emotional rest. Because even if you are sitting on the couch watching Netflix, how much of the time are you thinking about what you need to be doing, what you can’t forget, whether it’s making dinner or squeezing in time for laundry or remembering you need to sign your kid’s permission slip before the field trip.
You are still burning energy and effort, mentally and emotionally even if you are physically, and I’m putting this in quotes, ‘resting’. So what are you supposed to do about this? I know many of you listening are nodding your head because you get it. This is your life. You’re aware of it, but you’re frustrated. You feel like you don’t have a solution. Maybe you’ve asked your partner to do more and they haven’t. Maybe you’ve pointed out the inequity at work and nothing happens and you come back to, well, if I don’t do it, no one will. I get it.
And I am not going to sit here and lie to you. There is no magical answer that will erase this imbalance overnight. Some of this is structural. When women entered the workforce in higher numbers post World War 2, and I say higher numbers because there definitely were women working out of necessity prior to World War 2. When that happened, there weren’t societal changes to account for domestic labor needing to change. Women were still expected to do it.
And the US in particular, still in modern day, it’s hard to get affordable childcare. Our work schedules do not align with the kids’ pickup times or kids schools and so many other things. For decades, women in the workforce, what they were allowed to do was limited to being a secretary or typing up notes or answering phones. So consciously or not, the expectation in a meeting that the woman would be the one to be a note taker still exists. Some of this is norms, how women are socialized, but also how men are socialized.
Men aren’t taught to carry the mental load. I think more and more, more men are being taught to carry more of the domestic labor, but that’s still ongoing. Men aren’t taught about their own emotions, let alone considering others. So there needs to be shifts there as well. And again, I want to remind everyone, even though I’m talking more in a heteronormative sense. When it comes to relationships, these imbalances can still exist in same sex relationships.
I think for a long time there was some research showing that they don’t as much, but now newer research is showing that they do. So obviously more research should be done, but this impacts everyone. But I’m going to be honest with you because I love you all so much. Some of this, while it is structural, while it is social norms, some of it’s you too. You aren’t choosing to opt out of doing certain things. You aren’t learning how to be okay with some things not getting done. You are caring too much what everyone else thinks. You are holding on to perfectionism.
You are holding on to resentment. You’re believing you don’t have a choice when you do. So I want you all to start with an inventory, not an inventory of what other people are or are not doing, but you, where are you carrying too much of the mental load? Where are you doing too much of the domestic labor? Where are you engaging too much in emotional labor or unnecessarily where you’re people pleasing? And then you have to decide what you want to do about it and what you can do about it.
What you want to do and what you can do might be two different things. They might be the same, but they’re probably different because for many of you, what you want is your partner to just start doing it. You don’t have control over your partner’s decisions. You can ask. You can encourage. You can negotiate. You can have conversations, but they still have free will. You can recognize what you want, but then make a choice from what you can do.
And oftentimes the options that you have are to not do it at all, to have someone else do it. Maybe it’s delegating to a staff member, negotiating with your partner, having your kids help out or hiring someone. You can continue to do it and feel resentful or you can choose to continue to do it and learn how to do it without resentment, which might mean modifying how you do it. But you have to know you have options, you have choice.
I think one of the biggest problems with how we talk about and address mental load is we’re doing it from a place believing we have no choice, that someone else has to change for us to offload some of this, to feel better. And that’s not true, stop believing that. You have options. You have choices. You might not like all your options. That’s okay, I get it. But just because you don’t like your options doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice, because you do.
And sometimes the choice you make today might be different than the choice you make next year. This is ongoing. This is dynamic. This isn’t just static. Sometimes you might choose to stop doing it and a couple months later hire someone to do it. Sometimes you might choose to keep doing it and learn how to drop the resentment, and once you do that you might decide okay, I’m not doing this anymore.
So, I want to share one example from my life. And I’m not sharing this from a place of this is how you do it, follow this checklist because I don’t think that exists. But I want to show you how it is dynamic, it is changing, it is messy, it is frustrating. And it does require you to make some choices and it’s not easy, but it is worth it.
So one of the areas this has shown up in my relationship is with cleaning and I’m talking about deep cleaning. You all know what I mean? You move the appliances, clean behind them, clean the mirrors, all that kind of stuff. So before my partner and I, Jared lived together, I lived with one of my good friends, Michelle, who’s a listener. Shout out to Michelle. We lived together and her and I had created a system. I think we both had similar desire to live in a pretty clean home. So that was helpful.
And we had a system where we switched off deep cleaning, it worked great for us then Jared moved in. And we did not have the same match in that desire. He did not deep clean regularly in his prior place, it wasn’t something he had done, not something he saw immense value in and I did. So there was a mismatch from the start. And there’s no right or wrong here with that mismatch. That’s where this imbalance of the mental load or domestic labor falls in.
And so here’s the story of how this has played out over the past couple of years. In the beginning, I brought it up several times when we moved in together. He didn’t value it. He didn’t get it, and that’s no shame on him. We just came from different places with that. And at that moment, I had a choice just like all of you have choices. I could continue to do it all myself. And if I made that choice, I could do it while feeling resentful or do it without feeling resentment. I could continue to try to negotiate, have conversations to get him to participate, knowing I couldn’t force it.
I could stop doing it altogether, not deep clean or I could find someone else to do it. So, I decided to hire a housekeeper and I paid for it myself. Again, I could have chosen to negotiate, Jared to pay for it with me. I didn’t make that choice, but it was an active, intentional choice. Not a choice out of resentment or frustration. In that moment I was choosing my peace of mind, my time.
And honestly, the mental and emotional labor and work it would have taken to have the ongoing conversations with Jared to understand the importance of cleaning and what that means and create a system that worked for both of us. It was a form of rest for me and I got so much rest out of it. I mean, you all, my favorite days of the week were when my housekeeper came. Oh, my gosh, this is no joke. I paid her more than her rate because I was like, “First of all, you’re undercharging. Second of all, this is the best gift I’ve ever gotten. You deserve way more.” I loved it. It was my favorite day of the week.
Then we moved to Colorado. Our place is smaller. It doesn’t make sense to have a housekeeper. I also didn’t want to keep paying for it. We just went through the expense of moving and I’m growing my business and all this other stuff. So again, I had the same similar set of choices. I could do it all myself with or without resentment. I could continue to pay someone. I could do the labor of having that negotiation with Jared about setting something up or I could just not do it.
So this time I made the choice to put in the mental emotional labor to have discussions with him, to negotiate, to find a space where we could compromise. This involved several conversations, and honestly, several arguments. And throughout that time I continued to have choices available to me to stop those conversations, to not bring it up, to hire someone, to do it myself. You always have choices. And I continue to have the choice of bringing it up.
And one day we got in a big argument about it. And a lot of clients I coach and this used to be me, are so avoidant of conflict. I think a lot of that’s our people pleasing. A lot of the time the coaching leads to a space where we explore how conflict can actually be helpful, healthy conflict, of course. And this is such a good example because we did get in a big argument, but what came out of it was me better being able to express, although I admit it wasn’t in the best way. I didn’t communicate well, my tone wasn’t appropriate. So I fully admit that.
But to finally get to a place where I was able to express that this was something for our relationship, not for me. And he was able to see it wasn’t him doing a favor for me. It was both of us showing up equally to the relationship. And it took many conversations and arguments to get to that place. And I have no idea why it cliqued that night. Was it something I said? Was it something he realized? Was it the breaking point? Who knows, but that was the piece that helped us get to a place where we could understand each other a bit better and find some space for adjustments.
And now we have a system for splitting up deep cleaning. It’s not perfect, I’m still the one who’s carrying more of the mental load who says, “Hey, this weekend, can we deep clean?” It’s not the top of his mind. It’s not the first thing he thinks about, it is for me. I still carry that part of the mental load. It’s not perfect. It’s not overnight. There’s still progress. There’s lots of times I could ask for us to clean, I could ask for us to do it every week but I don’t. I do it about once a month. I choose to let it be a mess for a couple of weeks, even though I’d prefer it clean.
And I do that without resentment, without getting frustrated or being upset. And I recognize I always have a choice. This is not perfect, it is a practice. Why do I share this story? To tell you this is the way to go about it? No, absolutely not. To show you there’s not one clear path or checklist, it is messy. It’s dynamic. It evolves over time. You might make different decisions about what to do at different time points, and that’s okay. What I want you to see is that you always have a choice.
And this is ongoing work in our relationship. He has come to me about inequity he saw in doing the dishes where he was doing more of them. So we figured out a system. I came to him when we were prepping for a UK trip, talking and explaining the mental load I was experiencing with planning for it and asked him to do more of the work. He has come to me and told me when he feels like he’s walking our dog more and we’ve had to rotate the schedule. It’s an ongoing process.
And I know many of you are thinking, well, what if my partner or boss or whoever won’t change or won’t compromise or won’t have those conversations? You still have a choice. Do you keep doing what you’re doing feeling resentful? Do you keep doing what you’re doing but learn how to not feel resentful? Do you stop what you’re doing and accept whatever outcome there is from that? Is there another option to delegate to someone else, to pay someone to make things easier to just eliminate what needs to be done?
This process is not fun or easy, it’s uncomfortable, it’s messy. It’s not perfect, but it is important for your mental health, your emotional health, your time, your rest, your goals, your hobbies and so much more. But to do this work you need to also practice dropping the people pleasing. Because when you are negotiating these changes with, whether it’s your partner, your boss or a colleague, not everyone’s going to be happy. It’s not your job to make everyone happy.
You need to practice letting go of control, being okay if things are done differently than you would do it. I can’t tell you how many women I coach who recognize that they could ask their partner to do it, but their partner does it differently so they just do it themselves. You are still choosing to take up mental emotional energy with that task, which is okay if you’re making it consciously. Here’s another example.
When Jared goes to a grocery store, he buys a lot of the produce in plastic, which I prefer not to do. I’m not perfect at it. I’ve just had to be okay with him doing that because it means I get an hour or two back of my time. You have to learn to be okay with things being done differently so you can get time and rest back. And you need to practice dropping the resentment, whether it’s no one at work will volunteer to type up the notes or your adult children who are living at home are not willing to take up more of the domestic labor. You still have a choice, not to do it.
But if you choose to continue to do whatever that task is, drop the resentment because resenting them or anyone else isn’t going to help you, isn’t going to make it easier, isn’t going to give you more rest. And resenting their choice doesn’t change the choice you are making because you always have a choice.
So there’s a lot more I could say about this, but to end I will say I think this is one of the areas that coaching is really, really a necessity to address. And I do not say that lightly at all, but this is nuance. It’s tied up in the value and worth we attach to these tasks, to people pleasing, to patriarchal conditioning and so much more. So working through those things will not only help you offload the mental load but to navigate the challenges that will come with that.
But anyways, if you struggle with this, I really want to invite you to join my coaching program for 2024, sent you are podcast listener from now until January 5th. If you join my program, you get $500 off, which is a little less than a month away. There’s a link in the show notes to schedule your free consult. My regular consults are closed to the public. These are only open right now to you podcast listeners. And we’ll talk about what you’re struggling with and how my program will help you change that.
And this is the best time to take advantage of it because the coaching program for 2024, as I mentioned at the beginning, is changing to six months for $6,000, which is a 60% reduction in costs. While everyone else is having shrinkflation, raising prices, reducing what you get, we’re doing the opposite. But not only that, you’re going to get 500 additional dollars off if you sign up before January 5th. So the consult itself is free. If you join the consult, there’s no obligation to join the program. It’s really a space for you to determine if it’s the right program for you.
So go to the link in the show notes and sign up now, don’t wait. We only have three episodes left before the podcast goes on a year-long hiatus. I cannot believe that, you all, cannot. Sitting down to record this, I’m so excited to talk to you all and share what I’ve been learning and it does make me sad, I’m not going to be doing that for a year, it really, really does. But I have some exciting episodes coming up as we wrap up, including stress versus stressors.
One of the most important lessons I learned in my own burnout journey that changed everything for me. I’m going to have an episode on what is rest. Even though I talk a lot about it in different episodes, this episode is going to be much more centered on what is rest? What does it mean? It’s going to focus a lot on the information I’ve only shared in the coaching courses I’ve launched. So if you haven’t done one of those, this episode is going to be for you.
And then the last podcast episode, I’m going to go into all the details about why I decided to go on this hiatus from making the podcast. How I considered you in it, what I’m doing next year that’s going to be different, that I want to make sure that you are aware of, you take advantage of and so much more. So I’ll see you all next week and hopefully at your recent consultation go to the link and sign up. Bye everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
Hi everyone, I’m so glad you’re here. Was the weekend too short for anyone else? I don’t feel this way often but I really felt like this past weekend flew by. Sunday, Jared and I were actually saying to each other, it felt like it should have been Saturday. And I’m recording this on a Tuesday and I feel like it should be Wednesday. It’s just been odd, it’s been odd. Over the weekend I was in that spring cleaning energy, even though obviously it’s not even spring.
I organized and cleaned out my office, you all, it felt so good. If you could have seen the mess in here, I’ve been piling up for months. It felt so good. It feels so good to come in here now. I love it. I did about a quarter of my closet, organized our pantry. It’s been great. I still have some other projects I want to do. I’m still in energy, so I’m hoping to ride this wave through this week and next weekend to get some more done.
Yesterday I made a classic mistake of cooking what should have been a weekend dinner on a weeknight. You know those dinners that it’s a more complicated recipe, but it’s fun and you like doing it, and it takes longer. Yeah, I did that on a Monday night. That was a mistake. I had sworn off doing that and I was really good for a while. I don’t know. I don’t know why I did this to myself. So I started cooking at 5:30. We didn’t eat till close to eight. I didn’t get anything I wanted to get done last night. Whoops.
So yeah, that’s how this week is starting off. I hope your week’s starting off on a little better foot than me. But today we are talking about the mental load. And first a very brief footnote because I realized last week I forgot something out. Last week I shared more information about the podcast going on a hiatus. If you missed that, you can go back and listen. I also announced some changes to my one-on-one coaching program. Again, you can go back and listen.
But in brief I shared it’s going from a three month program for $5,000 back to a six month program for 6,000. That’s how it used to be. I shared why I changed the cost this past year, some of it to offset creating my course model so we can have some more accessibility around financially having access to coaching. And I shared why I’m changing it back. But anyways, what I didn’t share, which I realized after, was why I’m changing the timeline from three months to six months.
So I surveyed all my past clients about their experience of the program on a lot of things. And one of the things that came out of it which kind of matched my experience of coaching them, was that six months is really the sweet spot. Three months, you do get going, you see changes, you feel better, you’re proud of yourself, for sure. I mean the people who have gone through this year’s three months have done tremendous things in that three month time.
But the additional three months really helps you to just to take it all the way basically with support. And really be able to walk away and feel like I got everything I possibly wanted out of that period. I’m really a changed person. So I wanted to share the reason for that shift. I totally forgot last week. I also shared that if you’re a podcast listener, you get a special discounted rate in the month of December, well, technically through January 5th. I’ll be talking about that more at the end of the episode. If you’re interested, stick around till the end.
And if you’re a current client or a 2023 client you should have a few emails in your inbox about the alumni bonuses for 2024, so check that out. So anyways, let’s get into the episode. Let’s talk about the mental load and buckle up because might be a long episode. It’s going to be jam packed. But honestly, this was one of, if not my favorite episode, I have prepped for. I’ve done so much research. I find this topic so fascinating. And I will say one podcast episode absolutely cannot cover everything about the mental load nor the potential ways you can address it.
There are whole books, whole podcasts on this, so I really want you to think about this one episode as mental load 101. I think a lot of us have some understanding of the mental load, but it feels hard to explain. It feels really hard to change. So I hope this episode helps you connect some dots and really think about things in a new way and potentially what you want to do as far as reducing your mental load.
One book I want to recommend that you read and I’ll be quoting a lot through this episode is called Emotional Labor by Rose Hackman. And I’m going to be totally transparent with you. I haven’t finished this book yet, and normally I do not recommend a book until I’m completely done. But one, I know for sure based on the first 100 or so pages I have read, how helpful and eye opening it’s been, that I feel super confident recommending it before finishing it. And to be frank, part of the reason I haven’t finished it is I got it at my local library.
Normally I only get fiction books from there because in my non-fiction I like to highlight and write little notes. And I saw it and I was like, you know what, I’ll just go with it because there’s some non-fiction books I buy and then I’m like, “That was a waste. It wasn’t very good.” I was writing the quotes down in my phone and it was just so good as I kept reading. I was like, “I just need to buy this book so I can highlight it, write notes and refer back to it.” So I returned it to the library, asked for it for Christmas. So that’s why I’m not done with it.
But nevertheless, I still think based on what I’ve read so far, I’d highly recommend it. The book explains what emotional labor is compared to the mental load and how they are connected, which I found really helpful. And I’m going to talk a little bit about in a second. But first I want to share some staggering facts from that book. And the next kind of four statistics I’m going to read are direct quotes from the book, so directly quoting from Emotional Labor.
Women’s unpaid caregiving work alone, adding value to the global economy, to the tune of at least $10.8 trillion a year. A figure three times larger than the money generated from the tech industry and equivalent to the revenue of the 50 largest Fortune 500 companies. The Institute of Women’s Policy Research in January 2020 found that on average a day, women spend 37% more time on unpaid household tasks and caregiving than men. In the last stat in 2018, men averaged 49 minutes more leisure time a day than women did.
And I did my own calculation. That is seven and a half 40 hour work weeks a year more than women. Now, I know many of you know this, you feel this, this isn’t impacting your life. But when you pull out those statistics on a population level scale, it is staggering. So let’s talk about what is mental load. How is it different from unpaid domestic labor or emotional labor? So mental load is the mental cognitive effort needed to manage or coordinate or execute tasks whether it’s for work or family or relationships or household.
It is the thought process you have when you are driving and thinking of all the things that have to get done before the family vacation. So we need to make sure Rover has enough food for the dog sitter. Oh, yeah, we can’t forget to fix the automatic sprinklers for the yard. And I need to remind John to call the plumber. Oh, wait, I wonder if Suzie has grown out of her bathing suit. I need to check, and then I’ll have to get a new one if it doesn’t fit. That internal narrative, that’s the mental load.
And then unpaid domestic labor is the work that you would have to pay someone else to do if you weren’t doing it. Think grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, childcare. Now, part of the reason this topic is a part of this conversation is because this often falls on women, or more disproportionately on women. And while that is really thinking of it in a heteronormative sense, these issues still affect same sex couples, more and more research is showing that.
So I think that’s important to note, some of which I’ll be talking today about more in a heteronormative sense but it still applies no matter your relationship. But women are socialized to carry more of the mental load. And we’re not only thinking about what needs to get done domestically, but then we’re carrying it out or being the manager and delegating it, reminding about it, trying to get others to help out. You all know what I’m talking about.
And then emotional labor is regulating or managing the emotional experience of other people. Let’s say you’re designing a retreat for work. What emotional labor might look like is thinking about the emotional reactions of people in the room depending on how you set up the retreat or facilitate or what you focus it on. So it might sound like, okay, so if we want to talk about managing up to leaders, I’m not sure if everyone will be comfortable being in the same room.
Should we split and do two group supervisors? Non supervisors? How would each group feel? How do we address this in a way that’s productive and doesn’t trigger people or cause conflict? And we need to be clear that sometimes emotional labor is simply people pleasing. I’ll get to that more later on in the episode. But I think there’s a distinction. Women are socialized to people, please but there is the real skill that is helpful to think about other people’s experiences. There’s a difference, but also there’s a blurred line there.
So how are all of these related? So first, generally speaking, these are things that women are taught to take on or people socialized as women. We are taught directly or indirectly to make sure that what we do say or decide is based on other people’s feelings and has a positive result on their feelings. We are taught to take on the chores or the tasks, errands, everything that’s necessary to make our lives run, that benefits everyone at work or in our family.
We are taught that if we don’t remember, keep track or plan mentally, no one else will and we’ll be blamed or we’ll blame ourselves. We are taught our value and worth in the world is emotional labor, is domestic labor, is carrying the mental load. But at the same time we aren’t credited or rewarded for this, we aren’t paid, we aren’t appreciated. And yet if we don’t do it, we are shamed or punished or scrutinized or we even do that to ourselves.
Again, one of my favorite quotes from the book Emotional Labor is one of the cleverest tricks of the patriarchy is that it transforms all work deemed feminine into fixed subliminal expressions of femininity. However, much of that work involves active time, effort and skill. The best way to maintain a system in which women work for little to nothing for the benefit of others, especially men, is to convince society they are not working at all.
When we think about the things that make our lives run smoothly, emotional, mental, and domestic labor are intrinsically linked. In order for little Johnny to have a great birthday, we have to plan something he would like. In order for that to happen, we have to think about the details, how they would get done, manage them. We have to think about what he would like his emotions.
In order for that special occasion to happen, we have to make sure he has clean clothes to wear, that the groceries are bought, that there are clean places for people to sit or plates to eat off of. So much of rest or lack thereof is tied back to this. Rest isn’t just about taking a physical break. It is about the emotional and mental break we need because of exactly this. It’s not just at home, it’s with our kids, our partners, at work too, with friends and family.
Women are the ones thinking about the emotional experience, the environment in our workplaces and how to make it better. We know celebrating staff as they retire is good for morale. This requires knowing when someone’s retiring, thinking about when to throw a celebration, considering everyone’s schedules, thinking about a gift that person would like, organizing it, planning, bringing everyone together.
This is why so much of my work and my coaching focuses on the mental and emotional rest. Because even if you are sitting on the couch watching Netflix, how much of the time are you thinking about what you need to be doing, what you can’t forget, whether it’s making dinner or squeezing in time for laundry or remembering you need to sign your kid’s permission slip before the field trip.
You are still burning energy and effort, mentally and emotionally even if you are physically, and I’m putting this in quotes, ‘resting’. So what are you supposed to do about this? I know many of you listening are nodding your head because you get it. This is your life. You’re aware of it, but you’re frustrated. You feel like you don’t have a solution. Maybe you’ve asked your partner to do more and they haven’t. Maybe you’ve pointed out the inequity at work and nothing happens and you come back to, well, if I don’t do it, no one will. I get it.
And I am not going to sit here and lie to you. There is no magical answer that will erase this imbalance overnight. Some of this is structural. When women entered the workforce in higher numbers post World War 2, and I say higher numbers because there definitely were women working out of necessity prior to World War 2. When that happened, there weren’t societal changes to account for domestic labor needing to change. Women were still expected to do it.
And the US in particular, still in modern day, it’s hard to get affordable childcare. Our work schedules do not align with the kids’ pickup times or kids schools and so many other things. For decades, women in the workforce, what they were allowed to do was limited to being a secretary or typing up notes or answering phones. So consciously or not, the expectation in a meeting that the woman would be the one to be a note taker still exists. Some of this is norms, how women are socialized, but also how men are socialized.
Men aren’t taught to carry the mental load. I think more and more, more men are being taught to carry more of the domestic labor, but that’s still ongoing. Men aren’t taught about their own emotions, let alone considering others. So there needs to be shifts there as well. And again, I want to remind everyone, even though I’m talking more in a heteronormative sense. When it comes to relationships, these imbalances can still exist in same sex relationships.
I think for a long time there was some research showing that they don’t as much, but now newer research is showing that they do. So obviously more research should be done, but this impacts everyone. But I’m going to be honest with you because I love you all so much. Some of this, while it is structural, while it is social norms, some of it’s you too. You aren’t choosing to opt out of doing certain things. You aren’t learning how to be okay with some things not getting done. You are caring too much what everyone else thinks. You are holding on to perfectionism.
You are holding on to resentment. You’re believing you don’t have a choice when you do. So I want you all to start with an inventory, not an inventory of what other people are or are not doing, but you, where are you carrying too much of the mental load? Where are you doing too much of the domestic labor? Where are you engaging too much in emotional labor or unnecessarily where you’re people pleasing? And then you have to decide what you want to do about it and what you can do about it.
What you want to do and what you can do might be two different things. They might be the same, but they’re probably different because for many of you, what you want is your partner to just start doing it. You don’t have control over your partner’s decisions. You can ask. You can encourage. You can negotiate. You can have conversations, but they still have free will. You can recognize what you want, but then make a choice from what you can do.
And oftentimes the options that you have are to not do it at all, to have someone else do it. Maybe it’s delegating to a staff member, negotiating with your partner, having your kids help out or hiring someone. You can continue to do it and feel resentful or you can choose to continue to do it and learn how to do it without resentment, which might mean modifying how you do it. But you have to know you have options, you have choice.
I think one of the biggest problems with how we talk about and address mental load is we’re doing it from a place believing we have no choice, that someone else has to change for us to offload some of this, to feel better. And that’s not true, stop believing that. You have options. You have choices. You might not like all your options. That’s okay, I get it. But just because you don’t like your options doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice, because you do.
And sometimes the choice you make today might be different than the choice you make next year. This is ongoing. This is dynamic. This isn’t just static. Sometimes you might choose to stop doing it and a couple months later hire someone to do it. Sometimes you might choose to keep doing it and learn how to drop the resentment, and once you do that you might decide okay, I’m not doing this anymore.
So, I want to share one example from my life. And I’m not sharing this from a place of this is how you do it, follow this checklist because I don’t think that exists. But I want to show you how it is dynamic, it is changing, it is messy, it is frustrating. And it does require you to make some choices and it’s not easy, but it is worth it.
So one of the areas this has shown up in my relationship is with cleaning and I’m talking about deep cleaning. You all know what I mean? You move the appliances, clean behind them, clean the mirrors, all that kind of stuff. So before my partner and I, Jared lived together, I lived with one of my good friends, Michelle, who’s a listener. Shout out to Michelle. We lived together and her and I had created a system. I think we both had similar desire to live in a pretty clean home. So that was helpful.
And we had a system where we switched off deep cleaning, it worked great for us then Jared moved in. And we did not have the same match in that desire. He did not deep clean regularly in his prior place, it wasn’t something he had done, not something he saw immense value in and I did. So there was a mismatch from the start. And there’s no right or wrong here with that mismatch. That’s where this imbalance of the mental load or domestic labor falls in.
And so here’s the story of how this has played out over the past couple of years. In the beginning, I brought it up several times when we moved in together. He didn’t value it. He didn’t get it, and that’s no shame on him. We just came from different places with that. And at that moment, I had a choice just like all of you have choices. I could continue to do it all myself. And if I made that choice, I could do it while feeling resentful or do it without feeling resentment. I could continue to try to negotiate, have conversations to get him to participate, knowing I couldn’t force it.
I could stop doing it altogether, not deep clean or I could find someone else to do it. So, I decided to hire a housekeeper and I paid for it myself. Again, I could have chosen to negotiate, Jared to pay for it with me. I didn’t make that choice, but it was an active, intentional choice. Not a choice out of resentment or frustration. In that moment I was choosing my peace of mind, my time.
And honestly, the mental and emotional labor and work it would have taken to have the ongoing conversations with Jared to understand the importance of cleaning and what that means and create a system that worked for both of us. It was a form of rest for me and I got so much rest out of it. I mean, you all, my favorite days of the week were when my housekeeper came. Oh, my gosh, this is no joke. I paid her more than her rate because I was like, “First of all, you’re undercharging. Second of all, this is the best gift I’ve ever gotten. You deserve way more.” I loved it. It was my favorite day of the week.
Then we moved to Colorado. Our place is smaller. It doesn’t make sense to have a housekeeper. I also didn’t want to keep paying for it. We just went through the expense of moving and I’m growing my business and all this other stuff. So again, I had the same similar set of choices. I could do it all myself with or without resentment. I could continue to pay someone. I could do the labor of having that negotiation with Jared about setting something up or I could just not do it.
So this time I made the choice to put in the mental emotional labor to have discussions with him, to negotiate, to find a space where we could compromise. This involved several conversations, and honestly, several arguments. And throughout that time I continued to have choices available to me to stop those conversations, to not bring it up, to hire someone, to do it myself. You always have choices. And I continue to have the choice of bringing it up.
And one day we got in a big argument about it. And a lot of clients I coach and this used to be me, are so avoidant of conflict. I think a lot of that’s our people pleasing. A lot of the time the coaching leads to a space where we explore how conflict can actually be helpful, healthy conflict, of course. And this is such a good example because we did get in a big argument, but what came out of it was me better being able to express, although I admit it wasn’t in the best way. I didn’t communicate well, my tone wasn’t appropriate. So I fully admit that.
But to finally get to a place where I was able to express that this was something for our relationship, not for me. And he was able to see it wasn’t him doing a favor for me. It was both of us showing up equally to the relationship. And it took many conversations and arguments to get to that place. And I have no idea why it cliqued that night. Was it something I said? Was it something he realized? Was it the breaking point? Who knows, but that was the piece that helped us get to a place where we could understand each other a bit better and find some space for adjustments.
And now we have a system for splitting up deep cleaning. It’s not perfect, I’m still the one who’s carrying more of the mental load who says, “Hey, this weekend, can we deep clean?” It’s not the top of his mind. It’s not the first thing he thinks about, it is for me. I still carry that part of the mental load. It’s not perfect. It’s not overnight. There’s still progress. There’s lots of times I could ask for us to clean, I could ask for us to do it every week but I don’t. I do it about once a month. I choose to let it be a mess for a couple of weeks, even though I’d prefer it clean.
And I do that without resentment, without getting frustrated or being upset. And I recognize I always have a choice. This is not perfect, it is a practice. Why do I share this story? To tell you this is the way to go about it? No, absolutely not. To show you there’s not one clear path or checklist, it is messy. It’s dynamic. It evolves over time. You might make different decisions about what to do at different time points, and that’s okay. What I want you to see is that you always have a choice.
And this is ongoing work in our relationship. He has come to me about inequity he saw in doing the dishes where he was doing more of them. So we figured out a system. I came to him when we were prepping for a UK trip, talking and explaining the mental load I was experiencing with planning for it and asked him to do more of the work. He has come to me and told me when he feels like he’s walking our dog more and we’ve had to rotate the schedule. It’s an ongoing process.
And I know many of you are thinking, well, what if my partner or boss or whoever won’t change or won’t compromise or won’t have those conversations? You still have a choice. Do you keep doing what you’re doing feeling resentful? Do you keep doing what you’re doing but learn how to not feel resentful? Do you stop what you’re doing and accept whatever outcome there is from that? Is there another option to delegate to someone else, to pay someone to make things easier to just eliminate what needs to be done?
This process is not fun or easy, it’s uncomfortable, it’s messy. It’s not perfect, but it is important for your mental health, your emotional health, your time, your rest, your goals, your hobbies and so much more. But to do this work you need to also practice dropping the people pleasing. Because when you are negotiating these changes with, whether it’s your partner, your boss or a colleague, not everyone’s going to be happy. It’s not your job to make everyone happy.
You need to practice letting go of control, being okay if things are done differently than you would do it. I can’t tell you how many women I coach who recognize that they could ask their partner to do it, but their partner does it differently so they just do it themselves. You are still choosing to take up mental emotional energy with that task, which is okay if you’re making it consciously. Here’s another example.
When Jared goes to a grocery store, he buys a lot of the produce in plastic, which I prefer not to do. I’m not perfect at it. I’ve just had to be okay with him doing that because it means I get an hour or two back of my time. You have to learn to be okay with things being done differently so you can get time and rest back. And you need to practice dropping the resentment, whether it’s no one at work will volunteer to type up the notes or your adult children who are living at home are not willing to take up more of the domestic labor. You still have a choice, not to do it.
But if you choose to continue to do whatever that task is, drop the resentment because resenting them or anyone else isn’t going to help you, isn’t going to make it easier, isn’t going to give you more rest. And resenting their choice doesn’t change the choice you are making because you always have a choice.
So there’s a lot more I could say about this, but to end I will say I think this is one of the areas that coaching is really, really a necessity to address. And I do not say that lightly at all, but this is nuance. It’s tied up in the value and worth we attach to these tasks, to people pleasing, to patriarchal conditioning and so much more. So working through those things will not only help you offload the mental load but to navigate the challenges that will come with that.
But anyways, if you struggle with this, I really want to invite you to join my coaching program for 2024, sent you are podcast listener from now until January 5th. If you join my program, you get $500 off, which is a little less than a month away. There’s a link in the show notes to schedule your free consult. My regular consults are closed to the public. These are only open right now to you podcast listeners. And we’ll talk about what you’re struggling with and how my program will help you change that.
And this is the best time to take advantage of it because the coaching program for 2024, as I mentioned at the beginning, is changing to six months for $6,000, which is a 60% reduction in costs. While everyone else is having shrinkflation, raising prices, reducing what you get, we’re doing the opposite. But not only that, you’re going to get 500 additional dollars off if you sign up before January 5th. So the consult itself is free. If you join the consult, there’s no obligation to join the program. It’s really a space for you to determine if it’s the right program for you.
So go to the link in the show notes and sign up now, don’t wait. We only have three episodes left before the podcast goes on a year-long hiatus. I cannot believe that, you all, cannot. Sitting down to record this, I’m so excited to talk to you all and share what I’ve been learning and it does make me sad, I’m not going to be doing that for a year, it really, really does. But I have some exciting episodes coming up as we wrap up, including stress versus stressors.
One of the most important lessons I learned in my own burnout journey that changed everything for me. I’m going to have an episode on what is rest. Even though I talk a lot about it in different episodes, this episode is going to be much more centered on what is rest? What does it mean? It’s going to focus a lot on the information I’ve only shared in the coaching courses I’ve launched. So if you haven’t done one of those, this episode is going to be for you.
And then the last podcast episode, I’m going to go into all the details about why I decided to go on this hiatus from making the podcast. How I considered you in it, what I’m doing next year that’s going to be different, that I want to make sure that you are aware of, you take advantage of and so much more. So I’ll see you all next week and hopefully at your recent consultation go to the link and sign up. Bye everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
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