Mental unload instead of mental load: How to avoid latent permanent stress

Sometimes you just are, without being able to say exactly why. Everyday life brings with it so many tasks that all add up and are more stressful than you previously thought. We feel tired, drained and don't even know where our heads are at. This feeling is exacerbated in some relationships when the relationship becomes an additional burden - or you have to carry the other person's burden entirely. That cannot good for oursbe and it is not. That's why it willIt's urgently time to do something about our mental load.

There is such and such stress. If we, we also know why: we simply have too much on the table. But then there is also this type of stress that you can't clearly name - and yet you still suffer from it. This is often a case of mental overload. Mental load is the invisible, often unrecognized mental work that goes along with organizing everyday tasks, especially in the home environment. This includes all the to-dos that are part of our daily life, i.e. making appointments, going shopping, cooking, cleaning, everything else that goes on. This may sound banal at first, but when put together it is a decent package of tasks that have to be completed in addition to social and professional challenges. Because everyone has to go through it somehow, we are often not even aware of the additional mental load we have to deal with. Let's hit ours with this, we are dealing with mental overload.

Making an appointment at the dentist, going shopping, cleaning the apartment and then you also have to get a present for your best friend who is celebrating his birthday that evening - all of these topics are classic everyday tasks that have to be done, but when combined they are quite tiring can be. So strenuous that our mental load reaches its limits. Although stress at work or arguments with friends can be clearly identified, we are often less aware of the burden of mental load. It tends to go unnoticed because it arises from invisible, mental work that takes place in the background and cannot be directly observed. Many of these tasks are cognitive in nature, such as daily time management or the organization of our day, which we check off mentally and, unlike our job, for example, do not physically manage. We often don't recognize how much mental strength we have to provide in order to coordinate our everyday lives. It becomes even more difficult if the mental load is not recognized by other people with whom you live in a relationship, for example.

Coping with your own mental load is not easy. Especially when you have a lot of open construction sites and at the same time stress at work, the invisible burden is quite large. It gets even worse when you have to carry this burden not just for one person, but for two people. This often happens in relationships where one person leaves all the mental load to the other. In heterosexual relationships, this is often the woman. She takes care of everyday life, plans everything and organizes life, while men tend to like to sit back when they get home from work. Of course we don't want to generalize here, at least that sounds like it, which we can't and don't want to do with anymore - but unfortunately in many cases that's still the case. Even in non-heterosexual relationships, the distribution of mental load is often unbalanced. There is almost always one person who carries more spiritual burden than the other. This quickly leads to mental overload, which...can end. Not good at all.

We all have different mental capacities that we use to organize our everyday lives. The scope of these capacities is variable and can be increased or decreased by external influencing factors. Let's take the Christmas holidays as an example, where there is a lot to plan and organize. In these cases, our mental battery is quickly used up because the mental load is heavily strained. That's why we often feel stressed before and during the holidays until we can finally let go and do mental unloading. Some tips on how to do this (beforehand):

1. Acknowledge Mental Overload:First of all, it is important to understand what burden you are actually carrying around with you. Only if we recognize this burden as such can we combat it. Everyday life can be damn stressful, that's just how it is. That's why it's completely okay and legitimate if you reach your limits. Just because we can't grasp the stress doesn't mean it isn't there and stressful.

2. Name sources of stress:Next, you should get to the bottom of the stress. What exactly stresses you out the most, what sources of stress are there? It's best to collect everything that's going through your head on a piece of paper and consider the individual points.

3. Set priorities:Which things necessarily have to be done? Where can you just let fives be? Prioritizing everyday tasks often helps to identify essential to-dos and throw others off the list, because...

4. Adjust expectation management:... you don't always have to do everything. We constantly demand that we master everything perfectly. Especially in everyday life, tasks are often supposedly “simple” and everything should be done if possible. But sometimes you just can't or don't want to. It's better to learn to deal with it than to constantly struggle with mental overload and constant stress.

5. Practice self-care:To better deal with stress and unfinished tasks, you should do something good for yourself and your own mind. Fall under this, mindfulness exercises and other activities where we can relieve stress and recharge our batteries.

1. Open communication: . If you feel like you have to carry all the mental load for the relationship, you should talk to your partner quickly. Because it just doesn't work that way. Many people don't even know what mental load actually is - and how exhausting it can be. Ideally, the other person should apologize and promise to carry more mental load in the future. If she doesn't understand what the problem is, she should take on the whole mental load and then report back how it went for her. In the end, it doesn't matter who does or takes on how much, who finds it easier and who doesn't. Everyone as best they can.

2. Distribution of tasks:In principle, all everyday tasks that affect both parties should be distributed fairly between both parties. One takes care of the household, the other takes care of the children or vice versa. No matter, the main thing is that both get involved.

3. Take responsibility:People who have so far carried little mental load and have passed everything on to their partner should learn, on the one hand, to recognize mental load and, on the other hand, to take responsibility for the shared burden. After all, a relationship is not a one-way pleasure where one person loses and the other wins.

4. Learn to delegate:Let's assume that one person is used to constantly carrying the mental load for both. Then it may not be easy for her to hand things over and not think ahead at the same time. That's why it's important, especially during the transition period, to learn to delegate and be able to hand over tasks. Trust plays an important role here.