The Mental Load No One Talks About (And Why You’re So Tired)

May 12

Episode 46 with Jill Griffin & Molly Bierman

In this episode of No Permission Necessary, Jill and Molly explore the concept of the mental load and the invisible cognitive and emotional labor that often falls on women in both personal and professional roles.

They discuss how constant planning, anticipation, and responsibility can contribute to exhaustion, even when physical demands are manageable. The conversation also highlights the role of communication, expectations, and shared responsibility in reducing this burden.

Jill Griffin (00:21)
So today we're talking about something I feel like all women, some men, but I feel like most women are really going to, it's going to land, the mental load.
the mental load that we are carrying as women, as mothers, as business owners, as therapists. I mean, I can go on and on and I'm not talking about the chores. I'm talking about the mental, the thinking and the things that we have to anticipate, think about, remember.
Molly Bierman (00:55)
think there is this misunderstanding specifically for men.
Jill Griffin (01:01)
Go on.
Molly Bierman (01:02)
that they don't totally wrap their heads around the fact that while we're doing this, okay, podcasting, I also could have a random thought just really me right in the middle of this event, this really nice discussion, this really like friendly topic about whether I did a permission slip for my kids' school.
or whether I mean when I'm gonna get the lead test complete for my child or when is...
somebody outgrew their shoes. I mean, I don't know. There's just so many things that are occurring on any given day that I feel like really I never had until I had kids.
Jill Griffin (01:50)
tell you that I forgot to put money on my child's lunch like balance. Now I have a very responsible 10 year old. She really wants to follow the rules. She doesn't want to be seen as like, you know, not following through. Well, not following through on something she wants to she wants to be on the up and up. She wants to be seen as somebody who's doing what they're supposed to be doing. Well, she came home one day and she was like, Mom,
Molly Bierman (02:05)
and inconvenience.
Jill Griffin (02:16)
I'm negative in my lunch balance. And I'm like, it's OK. I didn't get a reminder about this. It's OK. If you need a snack or lunch, just get it. I'll make sure I take care of it. And I told her, I will take care of it. Days go by, and she's like, mom, I'm still negative. and then at that point, my husband steps in, and he's like, can you just do it? And it's like, can you do it? Do you have a login to this?
Like, you don't have to log in, do you? You've never put a lunch balance on the lunch accounts, have you? And it's like one of those things where, no, I can tell you he has not. So it's just like all of these little things. And I looked at my daughter and I was like, honestly, if you, I need to do it in the moment because once I'm out of your sight, the list of things keeps growing and it's gone. And it's gone.
Molly Bierman (02:45)
No.
I I forgot. Yeah, it's gone.
Jill Griffin (03:05)
So one of the things that came up when I was, yeah, she bought the stuff. Meanwhile, my son, he'll rack up that negative balance till the cows come home. He don't care. It just keeps racking up and he doesn't tell me. Not like it should be their responsibility, but like they don't send a notification. It's not like I'm getting an email like you're delinquent.
Molly Bierman (03:06)
Did she eat again?
So what are you just
expected to just check in randomly on the school balance of the cafeteria? This can't be how this works. This can't be how this works.
Jill Griffin (03:30)
I mean, this is the mental load. This is the mental load I'm talking...
Yes, this is the mental load I'm talking about though, because it's like, I'm supposed to just remember to kind of like check in and see where they're at. Like that is the farthest thing from something that I care about. but when I was doing some research for this episode, one of the things that came up, dads don't come at the messenger because I didn't make this up.
Molly Bierman (03:41)
I know. know.
Jill Griffin (03:52)
I'm just going to throw that out there. I didn't make this up, but I will say that my real life experience does back this up. Fathers consistently overestimate their share of the mental load and are more likely than moms to perceive it as equally shared, even when the data shows that it does not. It is not equally shared.
Molly Bierman (04:10)
Thank you. Thank
you. We will be posting this.
Jill Griffin (04:14)
We feel validated today. We really do.
Molly Bierman (04:16)
It's
so true. mean, other thing that I was thinking about when you were sharing about the mental load is being in recovery, as we both are, there's no reprieve from the mental load. There's no little glass of sauvignon blanc on the other side of our day, okay?
Jill Griffin (04:39)
I mean,
that is so true. spring season is so busy for us in my household because both my kids play sports. It's just like the end of the school year gets like really wild with activities. And I will have the thought the last couple of years, and I'll share about this, is like, I really understand on a different level why moms
Molly Bierman (04:51)
Yeah.
Yes, moms.
Jill Griffin (05:05)
really
look forward to that glass of wine at the end of the day and why moms get in trouble with alcohol because like it's so overwhelming to think about the permission slips, the camp slips, the doctors forms for camps, the schedule for summer camp in general, you start doing that in January. So just making sure that everything is submitted and everyone is where they're supposed to be in the schedule. I have to think about the kid's schedule six months out.
Molly Bierman (05:08)
Yes!
Yeah.
Jill Griffin (05:33)
What
Molly Bierman (05:34)
Just the schedule in general. Just to live. Just to live.
Jill Griffin (05:37)
So
that little tope, it's not just wine anymore too, because we know that the cannabis products are really on the up and up for the parenting community, okay?
Molly Bierman (05:45)
Yeah, the gummies, the microdosing
of the mushrooms, all the things.
Jill Griffin (05:51)
I
see why parents at the softball and baseball games have a little something in their cup. Because they do. That's a thing.
And if you're one of those people, good for you as long as you don't need help because if you do need help, you know where to go, but you can reach out.
Molly Bierman (05:59)
But I will say-
Yeah. Well,
you may not know where to go, but you should call us.
Jill Griffin (06:07)
Yeah, you can call us. But yeah, that's a thing because there is no there is just go to sleep and try again tomorrow. I mean,
Molly Bierman (06:17)
My mom
and I were laughing because we just got back from a family trip. so everyone was like, you seem a little tense, you know? And I'm like, yeah, because I don't have alcohol on the other side of this marathon we're running right now. Okay. It feels like we're running a marathon with packing the kids up and getting them to the beach, making sure they have a million fricking snacks, like all the things. Right. And my mom was like, yeah, that's actually funny that you say that. Cause I remember, you know,
during the school year or during the summertime when we were on vacation or whatever it was, her and her best friend, we all grew up with each other's kids. One of her friend's daughters would call up to our house on the landline and be like, can you tell my mom to come home? I'm kind of getting hungry. And they were having their glass of wine as their decompression from the day. And again, my mom doesn't have an alcohol use disorder. She's able to do that freely.
And it's just, I get it. I agree with you 100 % over the last couple of months, year, whatever it's been, I have really thought about, you know, and there's also a large stat of women who maintain the recovery for an extended period of time. And then when they have children, they kind of fall out of the recovery community. And then I see where the justification happens. I see it in real time.
that they start to justify, well, I can have a glass of wine at the soccer field, right? Or I can have a gummy or whatever it is. And then all of a sudden it's like, yeah, well, you're not, you suffer in a different way. And now all of a sudden you're off the rails.
Jill Griffin (07:51)
I will tell you my theory on that too, though. So in the recovery community, and I think this happens across humanity, but when you're in recovery, resentment is something that we talk about a lot. Like, resentment is like a death sentence to somebody in recovery because it's something that our brain latches onto and it makes us think that we are self-righteous in taking an action, right? We are deserving of either lashing out,
Molly Bierman (08:14)
Deserving, right.
Jill Griffin (08:18)
in a certain way that might not be good for us, drinking, using a substance, whatever, right? So resentment is something we talk about a lot. Let me tell you where this resentment gets up as a woman. Let me highlight some of these stats, because I can tell you this is where resentment starts. 71 % of all household mental load tasks fall on mothers.
Molly Bierman (08:22)
Right. Right.
Yes.
Jill Griffin (08:42)
versus 45%. I listened, this is a good example. I listened to a podcast from a divorce attorney recently and they were talking about this very public kind of falling out that's happening right now with some celebrities. And he was saying that sometimes when people get brought up for custody in these high profile cases, one of the biggest things they'll ask is, what is your child's birthday?
And he goes, you wouldn't imagine the fathers that don't know their own child's birthday. He said, then you ask about when's the last time you went to a doctor's appointment. You can't imagine how many fathers have never taken their child to a doctor's appointment. So those are just things where it's like, I I had a child's birthday this week. The mental load of the preparing, the birthday present, the party. Thank god my husband did the party this year. I will say that. I handed it off.
But this is where the resentment is bred. they think they're doing it all, but then you're actually not doing it all mentally. There's a lot of planning that happens that I think we're not thinking about.
Molly Bierman (09:44)
Is it because of the, you know, and I guess I'll say is because of the actual wiring, like I feel like there's something in me that thinks about these things in real time. It's not something that I learned or that I signed up for. Yeah, I saw it. Sure. Sure.
Jill Griffin (09:59)
You saw it though. Yeah, but you saw it growing up.
This also talks about mothers handle 79 % of the daily repetitive cognitive tasks. So things that that would entail are scheduling, childcare responsibilities, the food, meal planning, lunches, shopping, and then the social planning. Fathers handle 37%. I mean, I will tell you.
That takes up a lot of time in, you know, because people say, ⁓ we'll ask for help. For me to ask for help, that's also then planning what, handing off the very specific things that need to be helped with. So it's like, not that that's not helpful, but like, there's another load to also getting the help.
Molly Bierman (10:41)
then instruct
for the help. Instruct for the help. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is ebbed and flowed in my own life, I feel, as though sometimes it feels very fluid and sometimes it feels a lot harder. And what I will say too is that it really depends on my own...
my own planning and my own designs for my own life, separate and apart from my children and my social life, et cetera. Because if I'm already creating this really thin line that I don't have a lot of wiggle room on any given week, then that mental load feels that much stronger. But if I take a little bit of the pressure off myself, knowing that I have to give of myself, again, I think this goes back to like everything we've talked about that balances bullshit, but you know.
If I know during the week where either my husband's traveling or we have a lot of activities or we have a lot of commitments or social events, then I know that I need to kind of readjust what my expectations are on myself too. And I think that's the nice thing about being a mom in recovery because you do have your checks and balances. You have your accountability factors. You have your people in your life that are able to show up and say, well, it sounds like do you really need to, you
Jill Griffin (11:45)
I'm
Molly Bierman (11:51)
Do X, Y, and Z this week? Do you really need to attend that event? I mean, this is a lot of what we talk to women about, right? What's the ROI on some of the things that you're doing?
Jill Griffin (11:59)
Yeah, and
Molly Bierman (12:00)
especially
in business and in parenting, you know? Are you just doing it because you think it's the right thing to do because everybody else is doing it? Is it because your kid really values you being there? Does your child even want to be doing what you guys are signed up to do, right? Like these are the types of questions that I think need to be asked as well, because there's a lot that kind of falls into the minutia of what the social norm is.
Jill Griffin (12:03)
in
Yeah, I think it goes back to what your values are too. mean...
In terms of all that mental load, I think I've also found different ways to communicate that with my husband because I don't... When we talk about it not being equally shared, part of the problem is defining what it is. I think when I actually walk through my thought process in like a 20-minute period of what I'm holding and trying to figure out... Like, I remember one time he was like, well, I'll just go grocery shopping. Okay, you know what goes into grocery shopping?
Looking at the week ahead, what meals are we cooking? What lunches are we having? Who's cooking what? What activities do we have? Do we actually have time to cook dinner? Because I can tell you in the springtime, we are grab and go. We are meal prepping on Sunday, and we are grabbing and going. We don't have time to cook a meal. And like, what, so what are you buying when you sure you can go grocery shopping, but what are you buying?
Molly Bierman (13:19)
right
Jill Griffin (13:19)
And
he just looked at me and he was like, ⁓ yeah, it's not just a shopping list. There's all these other things that you have to consider. And so I think it's defining it and really asking. When we're asking for help, think a lot of times, especially women, they'll be like, well, you're not helping. But then when they try to help in their own ways, then we get mad at them that they're not helping in the way that we want them to help. Because we weren't very specific with what that help looks like.
For me, help with the mental load is owning the task from beginning to, I don't want to direct the task. I don't want to have anything to do with the task because if I have anything to do with it, it's no longer helpful. I'm still carrying the load and I might as well, it's the same pressure.
Molly Bierman (14:02)
So I think what has also been helpful, and I actually do this with some of my clients and some of the families that we work with, is what is the core mission? Like, what is your mission and vision as a family? Right? Because also determining what are those values that you stand on that are non-negotiable? And so I think it's really important to do that as an individual too, but also as a system so that way you can determine, okay, in terms of mental load,
what is it that we can do to either share that and or like what are your non-negotiables that need to occur on a week to week basis? Like we know for instance that family time is important, but does family time mean it's important if it's taking more to kind of plan something? Like do we do that in the comfort of our own home? Do we do that like just outside now that it's getting nice out so we don't have to?
plan everything that I feel like goes into this life and a lot of the comparing that we do through social media, through the internet, through the news, through just being in community with your friends is that you're looking at how other people are connecting. And then it increases that mental load. It's like you're looking at that and you're like, well, I need to plan the next vacation or I need to do. mean, I even did that myself. I was like, oh my God, the kids had so much fun last week while we're on vacation. Right. And
I was looking at them and I was like, they're getting to an age where like, this is really fun. It's not necessarily that they're like really little and they can't really enjoy it. And so before I was even finishing that trip, I was like, why should we plan in the next trip? You know? So again, it's like this constant feed. So it's also important for me at least to say, well, what's contributing to me feeling like I need to always be on. ⁓
That doesn't decrease the mental load. The mental load is there, it's a real thing, 100%. And there's things in my life that definitely contribute to it being a little bit more painful than fulfilled.
Jill Griffin (15:57)
Yeah, it makes sense to go back. Okay, so then how do we, you know, what's worked to make that less? I would say that the pressure for me, the pressure to have things look good or care what other people think about how it looks, like I really have to check that a lot. For instance, if you want...
I have friends in my life, if I walk into their house at any given moment, their kitchen's spotless, there's not a dish in the sink, all their laundry's put away, like... And I will tell you, I feel the stress of keeping up with that. And I don't live in that house. I think it's... When you have moving parts and multiple children in different directions, and you're also gonna put this high standard on what it looks like...
on a day-to-day basis, because I will tell you what my kitchen and house looks like right now. We have a load of folded laundry in two rooms right now that is not put away. It's been days. We have stuff in the kitchen that's just as like not, I I cleaned up the kitchen this morning because I had time, but like last night, we got home at 8.15. We're eating dinner at 8.15. I need to go, these kids need to go to bed. They have stuff, it's a school night.
My priority, I'm solo parenting, I'm flying solo. My priority isn't to be a mad woman and start freaking out on everybody that the kitchen's a mess, that the clothes aren't put away. Because that's what I feel like becomes a priority when in our minds we're like, that's what's important. No, what's important is me winding the kids down, me being calm in a safe place so that they can eat their food and not be stressed out and anxious about it, get to bed. And by the time all that was done, I was like, I'm not doing this. Because now I need sleep.
Molly Bierman (17:40)
can attest to that because I called at nine o'clock. I mean, it wasn't late by any means. And you were like, why are you calling me? I have my mouth guard in.
Jill Griffin (17:46)
in bed.
But when you talk about mission and vision and being value driven, if I don't get enough sleep, all bets are off.
Molly Bierman (17:55)
Mm-hmm.
We know.
We know. We know.
Jill Griffin (17:59)
But I think
that's for most people. And when we're talking about women carrying this mental load, if you're sacrificing your sleep to check off some boxes that nobody's checking on you, like it's your own internal boxes that you're checking, maybe you should just get some sleep and like it won't matter as much. Like start over tomorrow.
It's not that serious.
Molly Bierman (18:18)
feel like the sacrifices that start to occur are really sacrifices for your own wellbeing, right? So really kind of saying like, where does this matter in the stream of balance? Where does this matter in the stream of life at this moment?
Jill Griffin (18:27)
Mm-hmm.
So what are the things, rapid fire things that you want to adjust that are like in your head that you're worrying about right now, the mental load that you need to just dump?
Molly Bierman (18:40)
I need to go get blood work done. I need to do a ton of administrative stuff that has been on the back burner.
Jill Griffin (18:48)
Same.
Molly Bierman (18:53)
Stuff for the podcast, stuff for the kids. ⁓
paying bills, coordinating, making sure providers, provider appointments are rescheduled because I have like three conflicts upcoming and now I have to move everything around. I had to move around a dentist appointment for the kids because there was a conflict. They told me the next available appointment, this is a mental load thing. They told me the next available appointment for my children was in November.
Jill Griffin (19:19)
Do you know that we've been on the cancellation list to get my kids into the dentist because it's been, so we've had to like, every day we get these texts and an appointment's available. It's the same day, but like we've had to, we had to take like a last minute appointment to get them in for cleanings because of the same thing.
Molly Bierman (19:21)
It is April or May, whatever it is.
didn't have a choice. I can't remember why, so anyway.
Jill Griffin (19:45)
And then you think about,
you're like, am I a bad parent? They're going to be monthly on the cleaning. am I? It's like a whole thing.
Molly Bierman (19:50)
yeah. That's kind
of diffused a little bit with a second. But all that to say that is ⁓ my current mental. I am preparing because I will have ⁓ children solo, husbands traveling, I'm traveling, need to make sure that pickups drop offs, coordination, clients. That's a little dump. I could go on and on.
Jill Griffin (20:10)
on and on. All right, what's our permission slip today?
And also, I want to know what's on your mental list right now that nobody knows about us. Like, DM us on Instagram. We read everyone. Email us. Like, find us and let us know what's going on.
Molly Bierman (20:26)
permission to share the mental load.
Jill Griffin (20:29)
Yes.
Molly Bierman (20:30)
And I think that means just even like to eventing from a venting perspective, know, sometimes it's not that you need anybody to do anything different for you, but it's that you just need to share it. And I did that last week and you know what it really prevented. It prevented some child self-imposed challenges.
Jill Griffin (20:46)
I can see that.
Molly Bierman (20:48)
a friend. Permission to find a friend. Phone a friend, find a friend.
Jill Griffin (20:51)
If
this episode hit, please follow the show on Apple or Spotify. It's the single biggest thing that you can help us as we continue to grow. Also, share it with a friend that helps us out, if you have a friend that really needs to hear this today. And then we will be coming out with an email list. So we're going to throw that link in the show notes. And so we might go deeper on that when the episode drops. But we really appreciate you being here on No Permission Necessary. And we will see you next week.
Molly Bierman (21:20)
See you next time.