Podcast Episode 29: The Mental Load
Introduction:
Thanks for clicking on Conversations with Crosswinds Counseling. I’m Curtis Smith and I invite you to subscribe to our podcast and to like and share it as well. I hope you enjoy today’s episode.
Curtis: Hello everyone, and welcome to Conversations with Crosswinds counseling. I’m your host Curtis Smith. Today on the podcast we are joined by Jenna Garcia. Jenna is not only one of the therapists here at Crosswinds Counseling, she is also a Clinical Supervisor. Jenna thanks for being with us today.
Jenna: Of course.
Curtis: We are very much in the holiday season.
Jenna: Yes.
Curtis: And um mental and emotional, uh, I don’t know what the right word is, I don’t want to use the word ‘load’ because that’s what we’re going to say – but like the taxing part of the mental and emotional wear and tear of going through the holidays is very much on everyone’s mind. And we’re talking about something today called ‘mental load.’
Jenna: Yes.
Curtis: What is that?
Jenna: Mental load is the organizing and planning and anticipating and managing of all of the physical and emotional needs of your family. So it’s not just the physical task of doing the thing that has to be done, but it’s all the stuff that comes before that too. So, in the holidays for example, maybe you’re buying gifts for Christmas. It’s making the Christmas list, watching for sales, going to store one, two, three, four, and then eventually buying it on Amazon.
Curtis: Right.
Jenna: Wrapping the gift, loading it in the car to take to Grandma’s house. It’s not just giving the gift to Grandma. Right. It’s all that other stuff too.
Curtis: When we were talking right before we started the podcast, you gave me a great example that has nothing to do with the holidays, but is a good example of something that happens a lot in my house. I guess it struck me because it’s exactly how it plays out. You gave me the example of taking out the trash, and that happens to be one of my household chores. So, I take out the trash every Sunday night. It’s picked up Monday morning at our at our house, and I kind of think of myself as I’m the guy who takes out the trash.
Jenna: Yeah.
Curtis: But you said mental load takes into account that there’s a lot more than the physical act of taking out trash, and I don’t do all that. And so I wonder if I’m not really helping my wife’s mental load by simply taking out the trash only. Explain the theory behind that.
Jenna: So, it takes a lot of effort to do the task. Taking out the trash is a very helpful thing, but if your wife always has to prompt you, ‘Hey, it’s Sunday don’t forget the trash,’ if she’s always the person who collects the trash from inside and puts it in the can for you to take to the street, she’s still doing a bunch of work. If she always makes sure that there’s enough trash bags to refill your trash cans in the house, that’s still a lot of work,
Curtis: Right.
Jenna: And so you taking out the trash isn’t the full task. The full task is the planning, and organizing, and anticipating, and managing of the other pieces that go into the physical task itself.
Curtis: So even though I’ve taken out the trash, I really perhaps haven’t relieved any of her mental load.
Jenna: Right.
Curtis: So what can we do, besides just simply being aware of this as a concept – and this is a new concept to me – what can we do to help ourselves and help our spouse and our kids and whoever else we’re living with to kind of manage mental load and to work through it in a healthy way?
Jenna: You got to talk about it. Set aside some time, especially as we’re going into the holidays to really plan who’s going to do what. Not just the actual task itself, but all of the preparation for that task and then you actually have to let your partner do that thing. So a lot of times, mental load, the burden becomes high because we don’t actually trust our partner to complete the task. So, it’s important [coughs], excuse me, that you trust your partner to do all the things too. So, you got to talk through who’s going to do what, and how you’re going to handle the responsibilities.
Curtis: This feels like one of those things in a marriage where it’s just a classic setup for fights and strife because it feels very easy to uh not address the mental load part. So in the trash example, if I’m taking out the trash every time but my wife is doing all the other things and it’s really not helping her all that much it hasn’t relieved any of the mental load. This is not happening in my house, thank goodness, but – I don’t think – but she could become bitter about that. It’s the kind of thing you might not openly address. It feels like the kind of thing that would be easy to harbor and suppress, and so this mental load feels like something that could build and grow over time and not go addressed the way it should. Do you see that a lot?
Jenna: Yeah, definitely, and I I think it’s something that for the person who’s taking out the trash, they feel like, ‘Well, I’m doing the thing to help. I’m checking a box on the list,’ and then for the person who is carrying the mental load, they may think, ‘Well, but he’s helping me, he’s taking the trash out. I don’t have any room to complain here.’ And we forget about all of the extra mental effort that goes into completing these tasks. So when couples are planning and sharing responsibilities, it’s important to talk about the whole thing to avoid that bitterness and resentment that can come if you leave things unsaid.
Curtis: Yeah, and that feels uh like really good advice throughout the whole year, but maybe right now at the holidays it’s something where it’s been even easier to kind of put it on the back shelf of your mind because this is something that he only does once a year, and I kind of forgot that she does this and it annoys me during the holidays and it’s been 10/11 months since it really flared up and so I just kind of let it go. Maybe some bitterness and some anger starts to come up in this holiday season especially. Is that true?
Jenna: Yeah. It’s important to talk about it. You got to say what’s bothering you. You got to come up with the plan. If you leave it unsaid, then the bitterness will come. Even if it’s only once a year, it’s still important to talk about it. Yeah, come up with a plan because your partner wants to help. Your partner wants to do a good job. They want to take out the trash and take on the full responsibility of that and so often we think we try to read our partner’s mind – they don’t really want to help, or they don’t know how bad it is or why is she always on me like this, I’m doing the thing right and so we can’t read each other’s minds. We’ve got to talk about the stuff when it comes up.
Curtis: Yeah, good tips. Anything else that you would say to anyone out there right now who’s thinking, ‘Gosh, this is hitting home. This is really something I need to be more aware of be aware of.” Communicate. What other tips might you give someone right now who’s thinking, ‘This is me.’
Jenna: I would say even for the partner who is not carrying the mental load but is maybe doing the physical load, be willing to bring it up. Be willing to say, ‘Hey, partner am I doing enough? Is there anything else I can take on to help really complete this task in the way that you need it to be done?’ So it’s a two-way conversation that could be initiated by either partner to really come up with a family structure that’s working well.
Curtis: Good advice Jenna. Thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Jenna: Yeah.
Curtis: Thank you for joining us on Conversations with Crosswinds Counseling. We hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving and we will see you next time right here on the podcast.
Outro:
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