There is a sentence people rarely say to you, but think about you all the time:

"She's fine, she's got it covered."

It looks like a compliment, on the surface...

At Flemme Day, we see it more as an insidious condemnation. Because "she's got it covered" also means that people don't always think to check if you, yourself, are doing okay.

When someone always seems to be holding it together, we eventually forget that they, too, might need a helping hand. And by constantly being the one who handles everything, she sometimes ends up no longer knowing how to ask for help, or simply no longer daring to do so.

And the problem is that by becoming the reliable, solid, available, organized person who anticipates everything… you may end up being considered someone who needs nothing at all.

Congratulations! You've just been promoted to general manager of everyone's life. A high-responsibility position. Permanent availability. Highly variable emotional compensation.

A good portion of this job that no one officially offered you, but that you occupy anyway, has a name: the mental load.

The WHO defines mental load as "a cognitive and emotional burden resulting from the demands and constraints of daily life and the social context in which individuals live." What we include under the term mental load therefore notably includes, for "the one who carries it all": the emotional burden, the constant care for others, this almost permanent availability, and this role as the safe harbor people come to whenever something is wrong. (And this list is not exhaustive).

Hey, NO, this mental load you feel is not just an impression. It has been widely studied. You have the right to claim it if that is what you are feeling.

What research says, precisely

The concept of mental load is not new. Sociologist Monique Haicault formalized it as early as 1984 by studying this invisible management of daily life, which consists of having to think simultaneously about work, home, children, and family organization.

Since then, research has refined this mechanism.

In 2019, sociologist Allison Daminger published a study in the American Sociological Review on what she calls domestic cognitive labor.

She breaks it down into four stages:

1. anticipating needs,
2. identifying different options,
3. making a decision,
4. and then verifying that everything goes as planned.

Her study shows that women carry more of this cognitive labor, particularly when it comes to anticipating what needs to be done and then monitoring that everything has been completed, even when certain decisions or concrete tasks are shared.

In other words: the subject is not just who does what.

The real question is also: who has to think about the fact that it needs to be done?