MissPerceived

What if your brain works differently from everyone else’s — and you’re still expected to carry the same invisible load for your family, work, and life? In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner explores how neurodivergent folks (ADHD, OCD, bipolar, and beyond) experience the mental load in uniquely complex and often heavier ways. She breaks down the seven stages of the mental load, shows where things get especially hard when you’re prone to rumination, catastrophizing, or forgetting, and explains why social norms demanding perfection make all of this even more overwhelming.
Leah also shares what she’s learned from interviews and from living with a partner who has ADHD, and offers a gentler way forward: more compassion, more curiosity, shared systems, and dropping what doesn’t actually need your brain’s limited energy.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — neurodiversity and the mental load
01:00 What the mental load really is (beyond a to‑do list)
02:41 When your brain works differently: distraction, rumination, worst‑case thinking
05:03 The seven stages of the mental load: identify, remember, strategize, decide, delegate, execute, monitor
07:24 How ADHD, OCD, and other neurodivergences change each stage
09:41 Social norms that demand perfection — especially from women
11:55 Why this becomes a recipe for disaster (and it’s not your fault)
13:00 Using the Mental Load Audit: what to drop, delegate, and reduce
14:22 Conversations that help: explaining how your brain works to your family
16:00 Compassion, curiosity, and building better systems together
Resources Mentioned:
📘 Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More
🧠 Free Mental Load Assessment — learn your 8 mental load types
Stay Connected with Leah:
Instagram: @prof.leahruppanner
TikTok: @prof.leahruppanner
Email: getcrafty@audiocrafty.com
Website: https://www.leahruppanner.com
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Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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Most people say care is valuable. They believe childcare workers and home care aides are skilled and that governments and employers should help pay for care. But when you ask them what care actually costs — or what high-quality care really looks like — they are wildly off. In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner breaks down a new report from New America's Better Life Lab on what she calls the "care disconnect": the gap between how we feel about care and what we actually know about its price, quality, and impact on families. From US childcare costs and state-to-state differences to aged care, disability, and a Swedish example that will make you want to move tomorrow, Leah shows why we don't understand care until we're in it — and why that has huge consequences for our mental load and our future.

Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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Have you ever heard the term "lifecrafting"? It comes from a new piece of research out of UCL — and it describes something you might already be doing without knowing it: using your mental energy to deliberately think through the why behind your decisions and craft the life you want over time. In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner digs into this fascinating concept, connects it to her own research on the mental load, and then asks the harder question: is lifecrafting actually available to everyone — or is it a privilege reserved for those with the most resources? And why are young people booing at commencement speeches?
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — what is lifecrafting?
01:00 The UCL research: Frampton, Gould & Cox on lifecrafting and the mental load
01:45 How lifecrafting connects to Leah's "Meta Medicare" mental load type
02:18 Do you lifecraft? And has it gotten harder over time?
03:00 Why we encourage lifecrafting in young people — and why it's now backfiring
03:30 The commencement speech backlash: why students are booing
04:44 Structural forces that crush lifecrafting: inflation, AI, broken care systems
05:30 The gendered problem: women lifecraft for others, men lifecraft for themselves
06:00 Is lifecrafting only possible for the rich?
07:06 Individual agency vs. structural headwinds — a sociology superpower moment
08:00 Conclusion: lifecrafting is unequally distributed by income, gender, and age
09:27 Who is responsible for opening up lifecrafting to all?
10:00 What happens when young people stop seeing a future worth crafting?
11:00 Lifecrafting vs. dream building — how the concepts differ

Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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Leah posted one question on Instagram — "What do you hold to a higher standard in your household than anyone else?" — and got 26,000 views and 200 comments. The answer that came through louder than anything else? The clutter. The piles. The stuff that just sits there while everyone walks past it pretending it doesn't exist. In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner unpacks why household clutter is so emotionally activating, why it's a mental load issue hiding in plain sight, and what the research (and your comments) reveal about who's really responsible for making it disappear.
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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A listener emailed Leah with a question straight from the middle of a relationship argument: what's the difference between equality and equity and which one should we actually be striving for? In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner breaks down one of sociology's most important distinctions and brings it all the way home, literally. From time-use research and the mental load to leisure time, burnout, and the economy of gratitude, Leah explains why your relationship probably needs both equality and equity, why getting stuck in only one is a trap, and why giving endlessly to everyone else while putting yourself last isn't equity: it's gaslighting yourself.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — a listener question sparks the episode
01:00 What is equality? Access, time use, and equal divisions of labor
03:00 Time-based equality in relationships — tracking who does what
04:08 Why time as a measure of productivity is becoming less useful in the AI age
06:21 The mental load and equality — what Drained adds to the picture
07:30 What is equity? Giving more to those who need more
08:39 The economy of gratitude — how households naturally use equity
09:30 Why mothers get stuck in the equity mindset and burn out
10:53 Equity without equality is gaslighting — and it needs to stop
11:30 How to undulate between equity and equality in your relationship
12:30 Kate Mangino: relationships balance out over time — but only if you're conscious of it
13:23 Brian Page and Modern Husbands: equal leisure time as a key equality measure
14:30 The beautiful cycle: inequality → equity → equality → repeat
15:29 Share your experience — Leah wants to hear what's working for you
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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