The Invisible Load: Why Women Carry So Much and How to Put Some of It Down
You are probably doing it right now
Running the mental checklist. What needs to happen this week. Who needs what from you. What you forgot to do yesterday. What is happening with everyone in your life that you are monitoring without being asked.
The invisible load is the cognitive and emotional labor of managing a life, a household, a family, and often a relationship, while also doing your own job and being a person.
Most women carry it. Most women are exhausted by it. Most women feel guilty talking about it.
Where it comes from
Socialization. We are trained from early on to be attuned to other people's needs, to anticipate and manage and smooth over and take care. That is not inherently bad. Attunement is a gift. But when it is one-directional and unacknowledged it becomes a burden.
It also comes from the gap between how domestic and emotional labor is valued and how much of it there actually is. The invisible load is invisible partly because it is not counted as real work even when it is constant work.
What it costs
Resentment that builds slowly. The exhaustion that looks like bitchiness or withdrawal but is actually depletion. The slow erosion of yourself that happens when you are always attending to everyone else and nobody is attending to you.
And often anxiety. Because when you are responsible for everything, everything feels like a potential failure.
What therapy offers
A space where you are the one being attended to for a change. Where the invisible load gets named and examined. Where you figure out what is actually yours to carry and what you have been carrying that belongs to someone else or to no one.
And practical tools for redistributing the load in your actual life. Because the goal is not just to feel better about carrying everything. It is to actually carry less.
Immediate openings for couples counseling and individual therapy in Layton, UT and telehealth throughout Utah. To get started, call 801-525-4645 and request Candace Lance. You can also view and my profile on Psychology Today or on Therapy Den.
