How to not get buried by your mental load

Mental load is a term that’s thrown around a lot these days. Most often held by women,

even in progressive households, the term refers to the invisible work that goes into making a household function. Carrying the mental load means being the executive of our families,

keeping track of who goes where when, figuring out what is needed and when it is needed and how it will get there. It is hard work that is never-ending and often underappreciated, even by those who benefit directly from the mental gymnastics that we are performing. Many recognize it to be a problem but solutions are few and far between. This may be because the problem of the mental load speaks to systemic issues that seem impossible to combat, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take steps to make our lives better by crawling out from under its immense weight.

How do we do this? Although our tendency as moms is to protect others, there are key items in our lives that we tend to neglect. It is time to stop this practice. It is time to protect. Protect your friendships. Protect your relationship. Protect your connection with your children. Protect yourself.

Protect your friendships.

It is all too common for friendships to fall to the bottom of the priority list these days. And yet it is exactly the opposite of what we need. People need connection– and this applies to introverts as much as it does to extroverts. Our friendships give us the opportunity to vent about our problems, as well as the much-needed chance to exist in relation to people who are not our partner or our children. This is important. We need people outside of our nuclear family to keep us sane as people inside our nuclear family are often the ones driving us insane. Friends can be sounding boards, they can be shoulders to lean on, and they can remind us of who we are outside of our roles as mother and partner.

Cultivation of these friendships affords us comfort and companionship in the present and also means that we don't have to start from scratch when our kids become more independent in the future.

Here are some ways to cultivate friendships in the midst of your busy life:

• Take walks with friends (bonus: you get some exercise in).

• Call or video with a friend while folding laundry (or washing dishes or walking the dog or…on and on it goes).

• Make a weekly lunch or coffee date. This could be with the same friend or you can meet up with a different friend each week.

• Meet others over shared interests. Join a book club or a softball team. This will enable you to make new friends while simultaneously pursuing an interest.

Protect your relationship (If you are in one. If not, skip to the next item!).

This is a tough one. The reality of mental load is that it often leads to resentment. You are doing so much, which shines the spotlight on what your partner is NOT doing. Worse, your partner does not even realize all that you are doing. In the busy days of childrearing, couples are often focused on building careers, making ends meet, and shepherding children to playdates and activities. Your feelings toward your partner may vacillate between anger, frustration, and indifference, and rarely hit on contentment or starry-eyed adoration. We can all recognize that this is not ideal.

The honeymoon is long over at this point and yet you can likely recall the days when your heart skipped a beat and your partner was the very center of your life. The reality of kids is that their very existence means your partner cannot be as central and certainly cannot be the one and only center. Let's face it; kids distract you from your primary relationship. But if you go with the flow on this, the danger is that when your kids grow up and move away, you are left with nothing to talk about, nothing holding you together but the children you raised together. Your friendship has to be continuously cultivated and romance must be sought out instead of expected in the present so that it can survive into the future.

Here are some ways to cultivate relationships:

• The ever elusive date night. No, don’t roll your eyes just yet. It’s time to redefine date night. Sure, go out and paint the town red if you can afford to, but date night is not just for those with money to burn. Date night can be playing Scrabble after the kids go to bed or lighting candles and breaking out a bottle of wine. The important part is not what you do but that you do. Schedule the time and don’t worry about the content of the “date.” This can be a prioritized sacred time during a stage of life in which it is difficult to prioritize each other.

• The 10-minute check-in. Are you one of those couples that is so wiped by the end of the day that by the time you get your kids down, you are each on your own devices, scrolling mindlessly? If so, you are not alone! And yet…this is a missed opportunity for connection. Put those phones down, turn to each other, and check in. This can be anything from the same questions posed every night (What was the best part of your day? What was the hardest part?), engaging in gratitude exercises (you each list 3 things you are grateful for that day), or deeper questions (try the New York Times’ “The 36 questions that lead to love: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/style/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html).

• If you are going through a dry spell (NORMAL) and this is bothering you, your partner, or both of you, one tactic you can try is to schedule sex…without filling your partner in on this plan. That way, you can prepare yourself mentally and initiate, and your partner gets an unexpected (and hopefully welcomed) surprise.

• Send texts. The days get away from us, but pausing and sending a text that isn’t a request/demand/feedback on what your partner did wrong, reminds them– and you– that they are on your mind and invites response and connection. You can be playful and get creative, or keep it simple.

• On the heels of the point above: Go back to the “archive,” texts or emails from those pre-kid days that remind you of how over-the-top cutesy you were way back when. It may make you want to throw up now, but it will remind you of that particular brand of love and may inspire you to revisit that kind of communication.

Protect your connection with your children.

It is a fundamental tenet of parenting that the day-to-day is exhausting.

“Did you brush your teeth?”

“Get dressed!”

“Don’t tell your brother to put his underwear on his head and refer to him as Captain Underpants!”

“Did you do your homework?”

“I said no TV!”

“Clean up your toys.”

“No, you cannot have candy for dinner.”

“No, you cannot jump off the roof.”

“I know everyone in your class has a phone, but you still cannot have one. I know I’m the meanest mom ever and you still can’t have one.”

“Please go to sleep, please go to sleep, for the love of all things holy, pleaseeeeeee go to sleep.”

It’s like running a marathon every day and collapsing at the finish line in your bed, too tired to do everything else on your list. There’s a reason that parenting is referred to as “All Joy and No Fun” (https://jennifersenior.net/all-joy-and-no-fun). So how do we connect with our children when frankly, we’d often prefer to disconnect?

Here are some ways to connect with your children:

• Zoom out. “The days are long, but the years are short.” I cannot tell you how much I hate this phrase and how little this helps on the long days. But I think the intent is to remind us that we are playing the long game here. You will be projectile-vomited on, you will be told “I hate you,” you will have epic meltdowns over the tiniest of issues, but remind yourself that you had children for a reason, that you look forward to a day when the rewards outweigh the benefits (and that may be far from true today and this is OK).

• Write letters to your future child about how they vomited on you today. Infuse it with the humor that you know you may register in a decade even though it is anything but humorous today.

• Develop traditions. These can be anything from religious traditions to zany, nonsensical traditions. Building your specific family culture and having routines unique to your family connects each of your family members.

• Take breaks from parenting. Sometimes to connect, we have to disconnect. If it is possible (and you may have to get creative here), create spaces for yourself to be away from your children so that you can come back refreshed and so that they can miss you…and you can miss them. This can be anything from your partner giving you 30 minutes to take a walk when they get home from work, to farming out your kids on playdates (yes, I know this adds to the mental load!), to having a family member or babysitter step in for a few hours.

Protect yourself.

This is where the mom guilt really kicks into high gear. Taking care of yourself means forgoing washing the dishes or buying the present for the birthday party or catching up on work or….or…or

And yet this is the biggest one, the most important. You can’t protect your bonds with your significant other, children, or friends if you are not taking care of yourself. We’ve all heard the announcement on planes to put our oxygen mask on first before assisting others, and yet this is hard to implement. It doesn’t help that society, perhaps more than ever, sends the message that we need to be doing more, more, more for our kids. It is time to let go of the narrative glorifying the martyrdom of mothers. This is why the book, “The Giving Tree,” by Shel Silverstein, is banned in my house. What lesson exactly are we propagating by reading to our impressionable children about giving to the point that the tree quite literally has nothing left to give? I much prefer the aptly retitled “The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries” (https://www.topherpayne.com/giving-tree).

Here are some ways to protect yourself:

• Meditate. I know, I know. Meditation is polarizing. People tend to love it or hate it. But in my experience, those who hate it just have not found the style of meditation that works for them. Different people respond to different approaches to meditation, but we would all likely benefit from connecting with ourselves and being more mindful. The philosophically inclined might respond well to Sam Harris’ Waking up app https://www.wakingup.com/ while skeptics of meditation might prefer Dan Harris’s (no relation to Sam as far as I’m aware) Ten Percent app https://www.tenpercent.com/.

• Journal. Another one that people struggle with. If you can reserve judgment and self-consciousness, having the outlet of writing can be enormously freeing, meaningful, and even educational. You can use prompts or write freeform. This is a great way to start or end your day.

• Cultivate hobbies. Hobbies are often associated with children. This is why you are constantly carpooling to art classes and volleyball practices. But why should hobbies end when you have children? Granted, time is at a premium these days. Returning to hobbies of your youth or developing some new ones can spark something inside of you that has been dormant. It also has the benefit of being yours and no one else's.

• Create. It is important to have a departure from the mind-numbing, repetitive tasks we often have to do as parents. There is a joy in creating and it is very personal. Draw, write, dance, sing, knit, start your own podcast. It doesn’t matter if you are good at it or not. This is about the process, not the outcome.

• Exercise and sleep. These are grouped together because most people know how essential they are for both physical and emotional wellbeing, but still don’t prioritize them.

• Connect meaningfully. Join a club, sign up for group therapy or a support group, or get involved in some meaningful way. This can be through a place of worship, an organization you believe in, or a group connecting like-minded people (for example, a hiking or book club).

• Therapy. So many people turn to you with their problems; when do you get to unload? At present, the mental load is so normalized that people feel like a failure when they can’t do it all. Going to therapy regularly allows you to take time and space for yourself. You can work to develop coping skills, learn how to set boundaries, and work on reducing guilt, all while getting support and validation.

Mental load is a systemic problem, and unfortunately for us, systemic problems take time to change. Our feelings about our mental load are valid. Though we may not be able to share the mental load as equitably as we’d like, there are actions we can take to care for ourselves and to build our connections instead of eroding them.