Why the Mental Load Hits Harder in Perimenopause

2 min read

So you forget the noun mid-sentence. Again.

"Can you pass me the, the………. thing."

Decisions that used to take seconds now come with a delay, like the thought is still loading.

You feel fine, then furious, then flat. Sometimes inside an hour.

There is a reason this is happening now.

Look at where you are standing. Career in full swing. Kids older but still needing you. Parents ageing. And a brain that feels different thanks to hormonal shifts.

What hasn't changed is everything you carry.

The mental load and the emotional labour no one sees

You are still tracking it all. Still remembering what everyone needs. Still noticing what nobody else notices. Still monitoring the moods, checking in, comforting and anticipating. All while managing your own emotions.

That second layer has a name. Emotional labour. The constant job of managing how everyone else feels so the house stays even. It sits alongside the mental load, and no one around you clocks either one.

Every interruption before you finish a thought. Every switch from one task to the next. It compounds.

Same mental load, less capacity to carry it

This is what is actually happening.

The load stayed the same.

Your capacity to carry it dropped.

Less energy. Less sleep. Less of the sharpness that used to make it look 'easy'.

That is the gap. Same weight. Less to lift it with. And you have been lifting it for years. Through the newborn nights, the school runs, the appointments nobody else booked. The load never once got put down.

It is why you can feel wrung out on a day you "didn't do much". Your brain was working the whole time.

Why am I still the one doing all of this?

That question follows you round the house.

It pulls both ways. The pressure to keep managing everything the way you always have, on less. And the disbelief that after all this time, no one else has noticed and picked any of it up.

Both can be true. Both are exhausting.

You haven't lost the plot, although it probably feels like you have. You've lost the resources to run it the old way.

You are not doing less. You have less to do it with.

The question worth asking

You've asked yourself:

Why am I not coping the way I used to ?

That's a fair question worth pursuing.

But there is also a question worth asking underneath that one.

Why has the mental load been yours to carry alone for this long ?

Sonia Harrison is a clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience. She provides telehealth therapy for women across Australia focused on the mental load, invisible labour, mental health and caregiver burnout.