Mental Load and Caregiving Through the Lens of the RIF™

I know, I know, another post about mental load and how heavy it is to carry, how it contributes to caregiver burnout.

But hear (errr… read) me out.

The conversation usually goes like this: there is too much to remember, to organize, to think about. That mental to-do list of the grocery list, remembering appointments, and putting aside to complete forms so they get submitted in time.

Yes, that is mental load. But mental load is not just having too much on our minds. I started thinking about his, caregiving, and my Relational Intelligence Framework™ when I saw a video on social media about the difference between having stress and worrying about work, money, or family and carrying the mental work of making things happen. The distinction is useful. Because caregivers carry both. And often, we carry what isn’t actually ours. Did the worker send over those forms? Why haven’t I heard back from this agency? How long has it been since that referral went in and am I just waiting because of a waitlist or because the referral got lost in the mail/fax machine/electronic system? Which of these is that organization using and where do I check, or do I have to call? Things that are often left for us instead of being done by the system — and the technology available.

This all changes the nature of the load. It shifts into a longer sequence:

Anticipating → monitoring → worrying → planning → coordinating → doing → adapting → following up

These aren’t separate buckets. They are a stream of things that need to happen and they all take up or compete for the same finite capacity available.

The impact of that capacity continually being taken up is about more than exhaustion. It can affect your ability to pay attention and concentrate, your patience, decision-making, flexibility when something changes, the ability to communicate clearly, and your tolerance for taking on that one….more….thing……

For working caregivers, the caregiving mental load and work mental load and life mental load all compete for that same finite capacity. So prioritization starts to also be about managing that capacity and mental load which then, you guessed it, becomes more mental load. And once you have lost all of the me-time and caring for yourself with your own health appointments, and sleep, where do you go next? You become “that family member” — advocating, pushing back responsibilities and tasks that never should have been yours to begin with. All while desperately trying to protect your carefully erected house of cards from toppling over and yes, the burnout collapse.

So what are the solutions? I’m sorry but I don’t have a magic wand and simple answer that will change everything.

What I do have is what has been working for me, in many personal and professional situations — the Relational Intelligence Framework™. It changes the way we need to think about mental load — it gives us possibilities for what we can do differently and how. Why, like Alice, “sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast” and been able to make them happen. It helps shift the question from “How much is this person doing?” to “What is happening in the relational field that results in this person carrying it?”

The Relational Intelligence Framework™ (RIF) looks at what is happening within, between, and around us. That means looking beyond any one person to everyone and everything around them: the relationships, the systems, the history and patterns, the distribution of responsibility and the capacity across everyone in the field. This is important for caregiving because care is fundamentally relational. And yet, it functions in a world where most things are treated as transactional. That discrepancy matters more than you think. When it comes down to someone you love or have a personal relationship with, it is very different than someone you have a professional one with — independent of how much you care or feel.

When someone needs information from another provider. When a decision made in one part of the system is needed somewhere else. When a referral depends on someone else’s action. When an appointment depends on transportation and follow-up care. When the lived experience needs to be considered alongside professional observations and assessments. When yesterday’s problem becomes tomorrow’s contingency plan. It is the caregiver who often becomes the person connecting all of the pieces.

Through the RIF we can see that it isn’t just an individual capacity problem. It is a load and capacity problem within the field. The work is moved where it is perceived that more capacity exists — whether it exists or not. This is true across the system, within organizations, across providers, and to the person needing care and their caregivers. But capacity is finite no matter where you look.

This is where the System and Context matter. A caregiver may appear to be “taking over” or “being difficult” when what is actually happening is that the system has repeatedly taught them that if they don’t monitor it, it may not happen. They may be following up because there has been a pattern of things falling through the cracks. They may be pushing back because responsibilities have accumulated around them without anyone formally deciding that they belong there. History becomes part of the current encounter. So does power.

This is where we have to consider who has the most at stake. They are the ones who, because they are the most invested, will step up and absorb as much as they possibly can, at the expense of themselves. Because even though they may not have the authority or control over the conditions shifting the responsibility, they are the ones (aside from the person who needs care) is the most directly impacted.

This is very different than simply having “a lot to do.”

Once we see that, some of the behaviours associated with caregiver burnout start to look different too. Monitoring. Urgency. Repeated follow-up. Frustration. Insistence. Pushing back. Withdrawal.

These behaviours can affect relationships. But the RIF asks us to be curious about what is shaping these behaviours before we decide what they mean. We need to ask questions like:

• What has this person been carrying?

• What has been required of them?

• What patterns have initiated or reinforced behaviours?

• Where does responsibility actually sit?

• Who has the capacity to hold it?

• Who has the power to change the conditions we are functioning within?

• And what is happening to the relationship when one person has become the one who has to catch it all?

Which leads me back to where the whole RIF started:

What happens relationally when the cognitive and other work required to keep a network of relationships functioning is concentrated in one person?