The Hilary Silver Podcast - Mental Load: Feel More Joy & Drop The Invisible Weight

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Episode 33: Mental Load: Feel More Joy & Drop The Invisible Weight   Ladies, it's time to ditch the Superwoman cape! Who says you have to be the holiday magic-maker while juggling life like a circus act? In this episode, Hilary Silver pulls back the curtain on the mental load—the invisible, never-ending to-do list that's got you running the household 24/7. And let's be real, the holidays just crank up the chaos. Hilary reveals the truth about why we end up stuck in this exhausting role and how to step back without the guilt trip. With her no-nonsense advice and a wink of tough love, she's here to help you share the load, kick perfectionism to the curb, and finally enjoy that spiked eggnog this season.   Episode Highlights: Hilary dishes on how the planning, remembering, and constant "Wait, did I forget something?" is stealing your peace. Enough is enough! It’s time to stop being the default manager of everything. Hilary will guide you on how to resign as household CEO without the drama or side-eye. Hilary’s four-step freedom plan: from rallying the troops at a family meeting to letting others take over (even if it's not done your way), she's making shared responsibilities a reality. Perfect is so last season! Hilary reveals why embracing "good enough" is the secret to a joyful, stress-free holiday season. Prioritize your own joy and accept that done is better than perfect.   Episode Breakdown: [00:00] Holiday Stress [00:52] Meet Hilary Silver [02:03] What is Mental Load? [05:05] Step 1: Decision to Change [06:08] Step 2: Internal Boundary [07:02] Step 3: Communicating Change [08:04] Step 4: Listing and Delegating Tasks [12:29] Embracing Good Enough [14:24] Prioritizing Your Own Joy   Ready to reclaim your holidays and actually enjoy them? It's time to spread the responsibilities—and the cheer. Just because you've been the go-to gal doesn't mean you have to keep carrying it all. Snag Hilary’s free video training, This Changes Everything, at hilarysilver.com/subscribe and make this holiday season truly about YOU.

Everyone says the holidays are the most wonderful time of the year, but for many people, especially women, it's the most stressful time of the year. And it can be more stressful than joyful. It's like you're carrying all the responsibility of making sure the magic happens on your shoulders. All the decor looking just right, every gift for all of your people, every meal, every moment of cheer, all on you. There's a term for this. No, it's not hostess with the mostest like we said back in the 50s. It's actually called the mental load. And if you're the one carrying it, it can really be a party pooper. So today we're talking about what mental load actually is, and more importantly, how to lighten the load this holiday season and

beyond so you can actually enjoy yourself too. Hi, it's Hillary. Welcome to the Hillary Silver Podcast. Thanks for tuning into the conversation today. If you haven't already, it would mean so much to me if you'd take a minute to just click that five-star rating on your podcast app, leave a review, and subscribe so you never miss one of my episodes. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider sharing it with a friend because if you like it, they will probably like it too. Just in the last few years, we're hearing conversations about mental load. And I don't know who came up with that phrase, but thank you, whoever you are, because language is powerful and just having words to label something that has really been

going on for decades is a game changer. It validates our experiences and allows us to have more productive conversations about it. So mental load is the invisible burden of remembering all the things that need to happen in order to keep a family or household flowing and functioning. It goes beyond doing all the work of getting things done, which is a major issue on its own, but it's remembering and keeping a mental catalog and a checklist and a timeline, keeping track of everything that needs to be done. It's the planning, the organizing, the preparing, the remembering, the anticipating, who needs to be where and when. what's for dinner,

did the dog get vaccinated? And holiday time just compounds the list because all of the gift giving and the parties and the dinners and the decor and all the outfits, all the shoulds that are going on when it's supposed to be fun can leave us exhausted and spent, maybe even creating a love-hate relationship with the holiday season. Are you nodding your head right now? While the mental load can be shared, let's face it, most of the time, women carry the majority of it. I definitely needed this language years ago because I too was feeling crushed under the weight of my mental load. And despite my best efforts to explain it to my husband, it didn't really shift enough. I literally used to tell him, I'm doing all the unfun parts of parenting and running this household.

And I would rattle off a list to him, knowing that much of it were things that he never even considered at all. Even just small things like going through the kids' dressers and pulling out the things they outgrew, then giving it all away, and then buying the new things, right? We just don't think about these things, but they do need to get done. These things don't just magically take care of themselves. Someone is doing it. So we laugh about it now, and we have this inner joke saying things like, the trash isn't going to take itself out. The floor isn't going to sweep itself. We laugh about it now, but I carried that load for many years, all while also running my private practice and

managing that business. It really just was a lot and very overwhelming. Like most loving, but perhaps clueless partners who do mean well, he would just say, just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. I'm happy to help. And I just kept saying, I don't want to have to tell you. I just want you to know I don't want to have to ask for help. Asking for help can sometimes feel like just one more thing on the to-do list, something that we have to deal with. I just want you to know what needs to be done and to do it and to do it without cause for celebration. Honey, I remembered the trash day. Yay you! Right? It feels really lonely to be the one carrying the load, let alone overwhelming and exhausting. So the mental load is finally becoming part of the conversation, but we're still not doing enough

to actually change it and preventing it from starting in the first place. And that is what I hope to help with today in four steps. So here's the bitter pill. One of the biggest reasons women carry the mental load is that we let ourselves be the default person in charge. Yes, ladies, that is the truth. Somewhere along the way, we decided to take this on, this role. And there are lots of reasons for it deep in our psychology, but we're not going to get into that today. I'm going to keep things simple. The simple why is because we think things will fall off and not get done. And maybe some of that is true, but we have decided that we're going to be the safety

net and catch everything. We've decided to do that. We stepped in and took it all on because we're good at it. I would tell my husband this exact thing. I feel like I'm the caricature of the elephant in a tutu standing on one toe on the round ball, juggling all the pins. I can do it because I'm talented and I can. But just because we are good at it and we can do it does not mean that we have to do it or that we should. You're good at a lot of things that you decide not to pursue, right? So this wouldn't be so if we didn't allow it to be so. And the good news is since we decided

to do it, we can also decide not to do it anymore. Decide you're going to stop being the default manager of the household. It literally starts with a decision. It's a mental flip of the switch, a line that you won't cross. I call it an internal boundary, and it's an agreement that you make with yourself. And if you don't keep your own promise to yourself, then no one else ever will. So your word to yourself has to be golden. It needs to be impeccable. Take this in for just a minute. Decide, which is one of my favorite words, by the way, decide you are no longer fulfilling this role. You are mentally resigning from this role. It starts with you making this determination and declaration for yourself. Divorce yourself from the role of carrying the responsibility of all things. And very importantly, you need to do this

without anger or resentment because no one did this to you. You did this to you. And that is a big mistake that people often make when they're learning to have boundaries or are changing their own patterns and behaviors, being outwardly angsty towards others who have maybe benefited from your poor boundaries when it was you who really set it all up to be this way in the first place. I really can't wait to do an episode soon on boundaries. I have an entire online program about it, so I have a lot to say about it, and I'm going to share some major nuggets with you about all of the boundary stuff soon. But in the meantime, I just want you to take these things away today. When you are doing this exercise, you are changing your identity.

You have to see yourself differently first. Then what comes next is the actual behavior. Everyone has shopping on their brains, myself included. So my team and I decided to put together a Black Friday holiday gift guide, inspired by my YouTube listeners who are always asking me about my earrings or my glasses. I put all of my current favorite everyday luxuries, as I call them, into this gift guide so you can put them on your list for you, of course.

Well, also for your besties or your loved ones too. It's free, so grab your copy by signing up for my newly launched newsletter called Self-Centered at hillarysilver.com forward slash gift. So the follow through comes in a couple of steps and that's what I'm going to lay out for you now. You want to get ahead of the problem so you don't always feel like you're delegating things in the moment when they come up. That means for the holidays and then for everyday life after that, you have to have a meeting with your people, whether it's your partner, your family unit, whoever you live with, whoever you,

who is in your life, and let them know how things are going to change. You've been doing all the things and the toll it's been taking on you, again, taking full responsibility for it. You have to do this and have this conversation without blame, accusation, or insinuation. And then what that means for everyone is that everyone is going to be sharing the responsibilities of making your world go around in your shared life together. So you're going to list out as many of the line items and tasks and jobs that you can ahead of time. And then again, you're not the boss delegating. You're not a dictator. Everyone has to choose which stuff they are going to take on. We all need buy-in. Some things are

easier and more enjoyable to deal with than others for each of us. And we need to take both of those things on, the stuff that we don't like so much and the stuff that we enjoy more. Doing it this way makes it easier for them to follow through because they signed up for the things rather than being assigned the things. And it makes it easier for you because you won't feel anxious about things not getting done as much. And do make it clear that you're not going to be checking up on them. From now on, this is just something they are doing. It is their responsibility and you are hands off. Communicating about things is fine, but not because you're the boss and are micromanaging

things. For example, one of the first things we decided my husband was going to do was to be fully responsible for my son's baseball stuff a few years ago. It was such a relief for me that he would just tell me where to go and when to be there and when to show up. And I just got to be a spectator and cheer my son on. He would have his uniform, get to practices, all the games and all that stuff. I just got to show up. One thing I never did was take on the gift buying for his family, my husband's family. If my mother-in-law

was getting a gift for the holidays, my husband was in charge of it. Same for my sister-in-law and anyone on his side of the family, because I was already doing all of that for my family. Why would I take on the gift buying for his family? If I had an idea of something they would like, I would get it. And there've been plenty of times over the years where I've gotten gifts, but the pressure was off for me to be the one responsible for delivering. There will be times that when issues come up and you will have to problem solve together, you're not cutting off communication and collaboration. You're just stepping back and not taking responsibility for everything. And the next step is actually almost the hardest, which is to hold the line. To maintain this is where things can get really tricky,

because we all fall back into status quo and what's comfortable, what we're used to. So if or when you're starting to notice that you're falling back to old patterns, and you're getting questions like, what should we do for dinner? Or what do you need me to do? You just have to really stick true to this and adjust your response. The old way was to answer and say, well, how about this? Or how about that? Or you would just do it yourself. But the new way is to say, I'm sure you'll figure it out. Or what do you think you can do? Why don't you look it up? Just stop filling in the blanks. This is not empowering those around you to be successful with their role. You're not doing anyone any favors.

And remember this, no one can read your mind, not your partner, not your kids, not even your mom, who might've been in your exact same shoes at some point in the past. Don't say that you'll do it, that you've got it and make a murder of yourself. You have to hold the line. Again, this is the agreement that you're making with yourself and then to the people that you live with. This is the new way and you are sticking to it. Your word has to mean something, so do not cave. For the holidays and for life in general, you have to be very intentional about all the things that you are doing. Think about life as a large oval serving platter and all of the tasks of life are on that platter. New things get put on all the time. I first felt this way when I became a mom and all

of a sudden there was so much more to do. No one prepared me for that at all. When something new gets added and then they all start to pile up, what happens? Some things start to fall off, right? There's no room for everything. So what I always tell my clients is that we need to intentionally take things off so that the things that are important to us stay on and are attended to and the things that don't matter so much you are removing rather than having things just fall off without intention. Before kids, I was a birthday person and I would always remember birthdays. But once I had my kids, that was something I just decided to let go of, that I wasn't going to feel guilty or bad about not remembering everyone's birthdays all the time.

Only the most important people to me, people who are closest to me, would I actually acknowledge and remember on their birthdays. I just had to let it go because there was no room in my brain for anything more. Next, you have to embrace good enough. I know it's tempting to want everything to be perfect, especially during the holidays, but perfection is seriously overrated. The kids will not remember whether the cookies are Pinterest worthy or store-bought. And actually they'll remember the time that you spent with them, especially if you make the cookies together, or even if they don't turn out perfectly. That's a more memorable experience is when things go wrong. So if something doesn't get done exactly the way you envisioned it,

just let it go because done is better than perfect. You can criticize how they do things or try to control it. That's actually just defeats the whole purpose because you're still paying attention to every detail and micromanaging it. And then they're going to backlash against you. They're going to rebel and be like, well, screw this. If you're going to just criticize how I'm doing it, just you keep doing it. So you're not going to end up making this better for yourself in the long run. It might take longer. And yes, it might not be done your way. But the more you let others take responsibility, the more they actually rise to the occasion.

And honestly, they might even surprise you. So we have to resist the urge to step in and allow it to just be good enough. And lastly, prioritize your own joy. Isn't that a radical thought? The holidays are not just for everyone else. They are for you too. You are not here to serve everyone in life. That is not your job.

So what's the one thing that would make you feel joyful this season? Maybe it's just ordering food this year and make it easy on yourself. Two years ago, we ditched the entire Thanksgiving holiday and went to Mexico for a week. No meals, no traditions, just beach and sun and relaxation. And it was actually really fun. What is the one thing that you can let go of? Maybe you skip a party that you don't really want to go to. Maybe it's just making yourself do nothing, which as I tell my clients who are extremely high achievers, doing nothing is doing something when you are intentionally doing nothing. So skip the big family breakfast and go to a yoga class instead.

Whatever it is, put it on the calendar and treat it like the non-negotiable that it is because your joy matters just as much as everyone else's. Letting go of the mental load isn't easy, especially if you've been carrying it for years and years and years, but you deserve to enjoy the holidays too. And when you lighten your load, drop all the shoulds. You're not just doing yourself a favor. You are actually empowering the people around you to step up and to contribute and to grow. So this holiday season, let's make a pact, shall we? Share the joy and share the load. If this resonated with you, hit that like button and subscribe for more episodes just like this one.

And don't forget to grab my free video training. This changes everything. It's linked below. And until next time, happy holidays and take care of you.