MissPerceived

You can't fix what you can't see. In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner walks you through the Mental Load Audit — the step-by-step tool at the heart of her book Drained that helps you figure out exactly where your mental energy is going, who's getting it, and whether it's actually aligned with your goals and dreams. This isn't about changing the world or adding more to your plate. It's about getting ruthlessly clear on your spend, dropping what doesn't deserve your energy, and finally starting to work toward what actually matters to you.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — Drained is out in the world!
02:17 Why telling overwhelmed people to "change the world" is unfair
03:30 What the mental load actually is — a quick refresher
04:33 The three characteristics: invisible, boundaryless, enduring
05:00 Step 1 of the Mental Load Audit — are you in burnout?
05:45 Step 2 — where is your mental load energy going across the 8 types?
06:55 Credits vs. debits — which parts of your mental load fill you up vs. drain you?
07:30 Who is getting your energy — and do they deserve it?
08:30 People pleasing as a mental load drain
09:12 Who goes on the bench — and who gets evicted
09:45 Step 3 — get clear on your dreams, goals and ambitions
10:30 Mental load loves, mental load drops, and mental load mores
11:33 Real example: does a messy house actually matter?
13:57 Understanding your partner's mental load through the lens of their dreams
16:20 You can do this audit alone — you don't need your partner's buy-in
17:30 How to start the conversation from the dream, not the fight
18:19 It's all in the book — worksheets, chapters, and the online appendix
Resources Mentioned:
📘 Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More
🧠 Free Mental Load Assessment — https://www.lightenlab.com
Stay Connected with Leah:
TikTok: @prof.leahruppanner
Email: [email protected]

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Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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Have you heard of #Maycember? It's the viral term capturing what parents — especially moms — experience every May: a relentless pile-on of teacher gifts, summer camp signups, end-of-year events, school correspondence on overdrive, and the pressure to make everyone feel celebrated before the school year ends. In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner breaks down why this isn't just a busy season — it's a mental load spike driven by broken systems, eroded safety nets, and a culture that asks individual parents to solve what should be collective problems. If you're feeling overwhelmed right now, this episode will validate exactly why.
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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In this episode of Missperceived, Leah paints a painfully familiar picture: you finally hand off a task—signing the permission slip, managing a parent’s medication, organizing a meal—and instead of feeling lighter, you feel more anxious. You worry they’ll forget, won’t follow instructions, or won’t do it the way you know would make your child or parent feel truly cared for.
Leah unpacks why delegation is so emotionally loaded, especially for women who’ve been set up as default caregivers for kids, partners, friends, coworkers, and aging parents. She connects this to a growing care crisis, where more and more women are being squeezed between supporting their own households and looking after older relatives, often at the cost of their paid work and wellbeing. Drawing on her book Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More and her “audit” tool, she shares how to decide what to hand off, who to trust with it, and—crucially—how to stop tracking and overthinking once you’ve delegated, so other people actually get the chance to step up and grow.
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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In this episode of MissPerceived, Leah celebrates that Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More is finally out—and dives into a question readers keep asking her: do some people simply have more bandwidth than others, and is it possible to grow your own capacity without destroying yourself in the process?
She explains why she thinks of all the invisible planning, worrying, and coordinating you do as a finite resource, not an endless well, and shares what she’s hearing from new “invisible work” collaboratives she’s convening in London, DC, and beyond. Leah explores why some people seem naturally able to carry more, how age and life stage shape your personal bandwidth, and how you might actually expand your capacity by cutting out pointless drains and getting more efficient at the thinking work that really matters to you and your family. If you’ve ever wondered why you feel tapped out while someone else looks like they’re “handling it all,” this episode offers a new, more compassionate way to understand your limits—and what you can do with the energy you have.
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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In this episode, Leah finally pulls back the curtain on a piece of her research she hasn’t fully shared yet: the mental load at work and how it travels both directions between your job and your home. Drawing on her book Drained: How to Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More and prior research with colleagues at the University of Melbourne, she explains why the mental load is not just “to-do lists” or cognitive labor, but invisible, boundaryless, emotional thinking work you carry everywhere you go.
Leah walks through the eight types of mental load and invites you to look at how they show up differently in your work life versus your home life, using insights from her Lighten Lab assessment tool. She highlights what her studies are finding about dads in particular: men are often thinking intensely about safety and “dream building” for the family, trying to show up as better, more emotionally present fathers than their own dads while also compartmentalizing work so it doesn’t bleed into home. The twist? When men feel justified in investing in their own dreams and rest, many women are still running everything behind the scenes—fueling resentment and burnout. This episode gives you language to see your work mental load clearly and to start rebalancing it in your own life.
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.