The Mental Load is Real: Why You're Actually Tired (Hint: It's Your Nervous System)

You slept eight hours last night.

You had your coffee. You even remembered to drink water (go you).

And yet here you are, 10am on a Tuesday, feeling like you've already lived seventeen lifetimes.

Sound familiar?

Here's the thing. You're not lazy. You're not weak. You're not "just stressed."

You're carrying a mental load that would make a CEO weep. And your nervous system? It's absolutely cooked.

The Mental Load of Motherhood: It's Not Just "Being Busy"

Let's get one thing straight. The mental load of motherhood isn't about how many things you do. It's about how many things you're holding at any given moment.

Right now, while you're reading this, part of your brain is probably:

• Remembering you need to buy more bananas
• Wondering if your kid's cough is "a thing" or just "a cough"
• Calculating whether you can squeeze in a grocery run before school pickup
• Feeling guilty about something you said yesterday
• Planning dinner while also dreading planning dinner

This isn't multitasking. This is your brain running forty-seven browser tabs simultaneously, with at least twelve of them playing audio.

The mental load of motherhood is invisible labour. It's the remembering, the planning, the anticipating, the emotional temperature-taking of everyone in your household. It never switches off. And nobody sees it.

Including, sometimes, you.

Why You're Actually Tired (Spoiler: It's Your Nervous System)

Here's where it gets interesting. And by interesting, I mean "explains literally everything."

Your nervous system has two main modes:

Parasympathetic – your "rest and digest" mode. This is where healing happens. Where you feel calm, creative, connected.

Sympathetic – your "fight or flight" mode. This is where survival happens. Your body pumps out stress hormones, your heart rate increases, your muscles tense up.

Now, here's the problem.

When you carry a heavy mental load, day after day, week after week, your nervous system gets stuck in sympathetic overdrive. Research shows that prolonged cognitive tasks cause decreased parasympathetic activity and increased sympathetic activity. Your body literally forgets how to rest.

You're tired because your nervous system thinks you're being chased by a tiger. Except the tiger is a never-ending to-do list and the preschool's inexplicable request for you to bring "something beginning with Q" tomorrow.

Your brain is working overtime, all the time. Glutamate, a byproduct of all that mental activity, accumulates in your prefrontal cortex. That's the part of your brain responsible for decision-making, emotional regulation, and working memory. When it's flooded? Everything feels harder.

This is why choosing what's for dinner feels like solving a complex mathematical equation.

This is why you snap at your partner over something tiny.

This isn't a mindset issue. It's a nervous system issue.

Why Sleep Isn't Fixing It

"Just get more sleep!"

Oh, thank you, Carol. Revolutionary advice. Never thought of that one.

Here's the truth about sleep and the mental load of motherhood: when your nervous system is dysregulated, sleep doesn't actually restore you the way it should.

Your thoughts stay in constant motion. Your brain struggles to truly switch off. You might be lying down, but your body is still braced for the next crisis, real or imagined.

Chronic mental load can also trigger HPA axis dysfunction. That's your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system (fancy words for "the thing that controls your stress hormones"). When it's out of whack, you get sleep disturbances, hormonal imbalances, and exhaustion that just... compounds.

You wake up tired because you went to sleep tired because you were tired all day because you woke up tired.

It's a vicious cycle. And no amount of "self-care Sundays" is going to break it.

The Physical and Emotional Fallout

This isn't just about feeling a bit worn out. Nervous system dysregulation shows up everywhere:

In your body:

• Headaches that appear out of nowhere
• Muscle tension (hello, shoulders near your ears)
• Digestive issues
• Racing heart when you're literally just sitting there

In your emotions:

• Anxiety that hums constantly in the background
• Difficulty concentrating on anything
• Reduced patience (you used to have patience, right?)
• Feeling emotionally tapped out by 2pm

In your behaviour:

• Procrastinating on things that should be simple
• Withdrawing from friends and social stuff
• Relying on caffeine (and maybe wine) just to function
• Hiding in the pantry just to eat a chocolate in peace

Here's a stat that might hit home: research shows that individuals with heavy mental loads have a 60% higher risk of developing burnout compared to those with balanced responsibility distribution.

Sixty percent.

You're not dramatic. You're not making this up. The mental load of motherhood is genuinely, measurably, scientifically exhausting.

What Actually Helps (Hint: It's Not Another Meditation App)

So what's the answer? Another bubble bath? A gratitude journal? An app that tells you to breathe?

Look. Those things aren't bad. But they're band-aids on a bullet wound.

Stress management for moms needs to work with your nervous system, not against it.

That means:

➔ Recognising the signs of dysregulation before you hit the wall

➔ Having quick, practical tools that actually work when you're mid-chaos (not just when you have a spare 30 minutes of peace, ha)

➔ Understanding your nervous system so you can support it, not just survive it

➔ Building micro-moments of regulation into your existing day

This is exactly why I created the Calm Your Farm Toolkit.

It's not about adding more to your plate. It's about giving you evidence-based, actually-doable strategies designed around how your nervous system works. Created by an Occupational Therapist who is also a mum of three and a recovering people-pleaser. So yes, I get it.

No weird gadgets. No hour-long routines. Just tools that fit into the reality of your life.

You Deserve to Feel Like Yourself Again

The mental load of motherhood isn't going away. The school emails, the appointments, the emotional labour of keeping everyone else afloat: it's part of the gig.

But how you carry it? That can change.

When your nervous system is regulated, everything shifts. You have more patience. More energy. More capacity for the things that actually matter. You stop running on empty and start actually living.

You've been pouring from an empty cup for too long.

It's time to fill it back up.

You're not broken. You're not failing. Your nervous system is just desperate for support.

And honestly? You've waited long enough.

Ready to feel like yourself again? Check out the Calm Your Farm Toolkit and give your nervous system the love it's been begging for.

You deserve this.

Hayley x