Welcome everyone! This is what I hope will be my triumphant return to regular blogs on topics relating or adjacent to ME/CFS and Long Covid. My goal is to help you make at least a bit more sense of what’s going on, and help you manage it a little better.
As a preface to this first blog post, I have a resource called the Energy Audit – which is available for download HERE – the purpose which is to get you thinking about two things:
- Where your energy is being spent
- That energy isn’t only expended through physical activity – cognitive, emotional, social, and even spiritual activity can be just as (or sometimes more) draining
With this blog I want to try and elaborate on this a little, because beneath all activities we do, there are often hidden cognitive and emotional drains sitting underneath them. Kind of like the apps on your phone when they aren’t in use – sitting open in the background, each using just a little bit of energy, draining the battery faster and faster.
It’s not that each open app uses all that much energy, rather it is the accumulated energy use of all the open apps that drain the battery faster and faster.
And I think it’s fairly safe to say that this applies to us as well. There’s a concept that gained popularity in the late 2010’s called the Mental Load.
A couple of asides first, before we continue:
- I want to acknowledge that this concept has significant social and cultural implications, however I don’t think this is the space to unpack all of that – but if you do ever want to have that conversation, my emails are open.
- What follows was heavily inspired by the work of author Eve Rodsky, namely her book titled Fair Play. These are certainly not my ideas, but I believe they hold great application.
Now, the Mental Load simply describes the invisible emotional and cognitive labour associated with tasks or activities. Understanding this is essential to get a better understanding of how much charge each of our batteries has, and why perhaps, we sometimes lose charge so quickly when we haven’t done all that much.
To make this easier to understand, let’s go with a practical example.
The Laundry.
Now I know this term may strike fear into even the hearts of the bravest adventurers, but the laundry is something that needs to be done – we can’t escape it!
If you generally think of doing the laundry as simply ‘the physical act of putting clothes in the washing machine’, I’m not going to say you’re wrong, but… even physically it includes so much more.
Putting it in the machine, taking it out again, hanging it, folding it, putting it away, using the dryer, ironing or steaming, spraying stains, pre-washing. I’m exhausted just thinking about it – and that’s the point. The above only describes steps in executing the task. On top of all of that, there’s also everything we don’t see – and this we can sort into two categories:
1. Conception
We all understand that the laundry needs to be done and that our clothes need to be cleaned. The stress of this will often manifest as thoughts such as, am I going to have enough clean clothes for the week? or when am I going to fit this in? or what happens if I don’t get to it.
2. Planning
Then there’s all the planning that goes into doing the laundry. I need to sort the colours from the whites, manage the delicates, make sure I’ve got the appropriate stain remover for my clothes, make time to execute all of the above.
That’s a lot of background processing for something we call just doing the laundry – and there’s a thousand other household/life admin tasks happening any given week where the same processes occur. And don’t even get me started on what happens to that workload when you throw kids into the mix.
All of these things crowd out space in your mind, taking up space and energy you’d probably rather reserve for the things you’ve already had to give up because they took too much from you.
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying this is some kind of magic bullet that is going to drastically change your life overnight. But by addressing parts of this invisible load over time, you can free up energy to allow your capacity to grow and expand.
In classic me style, I’ve managed to write a lot more than I ever intended to on the topic, so next time I’ll be giving some practical tips on how to better manage the mental load.
If you’ve got any questions, comments, concerns, please feel free to reach out via email to alex.burjan@ep360.com.au. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
As always, here’s to higher energy days.
Alex
