By Ms. Shweta Jhamb, Rehabilitation Psychologist & Career Counsellor
It’s 9 p.m. on your “lazy Sunday.” You binged, you didn’t clean, you didn’t exercise, you didn’t move from the couch. But you climb into bed exhausted as though you just ran a marathon. That’s not laziness — that’s the weight of the invisible mental load of living.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Even before your feet leave the bed, your mind will have considered school pickup, the deadline, and whether you defrosted the chicken.
Mid-way through the conversation, a voice reminds you: don’t forget the electricity bill.
You actually find some time to relax, and you start listing tomorrow’s to-dos in your head.
Someone notices something’s bothering you and you tell them “Nothing, just tired” — because nothing is actually bothering you, you just can’t quite put a finger on why you’re so tired.
That felt pretty specific, right? Well, it probably isn’t just your imagination.
What the Mental Load Actually Is
The mental load isn’t the chore — it’s the thinking about the chore that comes with it. As your body stays still, your mind keeps fifty tabs open at once.
Why Rest Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Recharge
Our brain weighs 2% of our body, yet consumes up to 20% of energy – even if we aren’t active. Worrying in our heads takes energy just like anything else we do.
Resting means having the cognitive ability to shut down unnecessary processes in the background. If you add guilt because you don’t complete the necessary tasks for yourself, you will keep your nervous system in a state of readiness to react.
It’s not your problem alone – it affects many people around the globe. According to the World Health Organization, 12 billion working days are being lost each year due to mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety, which cost about $1 trillion in productivity.¹ Around 15% of people aged 18-64 have been diagnosed with some form of mental disorder,² and burnout was officially defined by the WHO as an occupational phenomenon in 2019.³ Mental load wasn’t calculated in these numbers, because it’s not counted as work, however, it most likely contributes to those figures.
Whose Responsibility It Is
Mental load isn’t shared equally among all people. Whoever is “the responsible one” ends up with the load – the mother who is the only one to have memorized the paediatrician’s phone number, the oldest child who “organizes everything because they’re good at it,” the co-worker whom everyone consults about “how far they are” without ever delegating the responsibility to them. Once proven dependable, everyone else’s mind relaxes automatically — and stays that way.
How To Break This Cycle
Write it down. The minute it comes into your head, write it somewhere — in your calendar, a Post-it, your notes app — so that your mind can unburden itself from it.
Learn to practice radical doing nothing. Give yourself empty spaces. Intentionally don’t micro-plan anything.
Take an inventory of your tabs. There are some things which cannot be avoided. But there are other expectations you may simply drop.
Say it aloud. “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately” will invite cooperation instead of passive frustration.