The Mental Load Before the Magic: Why High-Achieving Women Feel Depleted

Emotional Health of High-Achieving Women

Dec 16

Written By Anne Welsh

By Dr. Anne Welsh

“Mother and daughter smiling and holding a card and flowers, showing warmth and connection in family relationships

That Familiar Feeling

Does this sound familiar?

“I love the holidays. But I don’t love the version of myself I become trying to hold everything together.”

That’s what a client said to me recently. And I hear it every year — from brilliant, strategic, successful women. The kind of women who can handle complex problems at work with grace... and still find themselves unraveling when life adds 20 more “tabs” during any high-stakes season.

This client wasn’t overwhelmed by gift-buying or guest logistics. She was drowning in the mental load — the relentless, invisible weight of cognitive labor we carry beneath every to-do list, tradition, and emotional expectation.

What Mental Load Actually Looks Like

In one week alone, she was holding:

Teacher gifts

Travel planning for two sides of the family
Grocery lists for three events
Childcare for school breaks
Black Friday deal tracking
End-of-year work reviews

She loved the season. But she was also holding it all and quietly burning out in the process.

The Invisible Weight Is Real and Backed by Research

If you’ve ever wondered, “Why does this feel harder than it should?”, you’re not imagining it.

A large-scale 2024 study on household labor found that:

Women carry a disproportionate share of both visible tasks and invisible planning
This imbalance is linked to increased stress, higher depressive symptoms, and lower life satisfaction
And the impact is cumulative — meaning it spikes during high-demand periods

So when a major celebration or season arrives, your bandwidth isn’t just being stretched.
It’s being flooded.

You’re doing the work and the emotional logistics:

remembering everyone’s needs, tracking timelines, filling gaps no one else sees.

That’s the invisible labor.

A Gift That Actually Lightens the Load

Instead of offering a tip this week, I want to give you something practical and powerful:

The Jam x Fair Play Season Planning Guide

Created by the brilliant minds behind the Fair Play Method (I’m a certified Fair Play Facilitator, not an affiliate), and the team at Jam, this is a wonderful tool for making the invisible load of the holidays visible — and more manageable.

Inside, you’ll find:

The Four Pillars of reducing the holiday mental load
Conversation starters for dividing labor fairly
A step-by-step Holiday Family Planning Meeting
Practical, ready-made lists that reduce conception and planning time
Frameworks for making invisible labor visible
Tools to bring more intention — and less chaos — into the season

✨ Download it here: Jam x Fair Play Guide

If you’ve ever thought, “This shouldn’t be this hard,” you’re right.

And you deserve support that doesn’t just say “do less,” but shows you how to shift the weight.

A Note of Gratitude — For You

There’s one more thing I want to say, especially if you’re someone who holds a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you for the emotional labor you carry.

For the steadiness you offer.

For the way you show up at home, at work, and everywhere in between.

It is a privilege to walk alongside you—in the big conversations about ambition and motherhood, and in the quieter ones that live beneath the surface of daily life.

If you take only one message from this, let it be this:

You deserve space, support, and room to enjoy the season too.

You deserve to ask for what you need.

You deserve not to carry everything alone.

And if the pressure you’re holding isn’t fully yours?