MissPerceived

Do men actually feel guilt — or does it just look different? In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner dives into one of her most viral Instagram moments and the research that sparked it: the striking difference between how men and women experience guilt in family life. Drawing on Marianne Cooper's landmark studies, Leah unpacks a concept called "upscaling" — why when life gets uncertain, many mothers respond by raising the bar, seeking control, and comparing themselves to others, all of which leads to more guilt, not less. If you've ever felt like you can't stop optimizing, can't lower your standards, and can't stop looking sideways at what other people are doing — this episode is for you.Chapters:00:00 Introduction — guilt, Instagram fame, and a viral post01:00 Do men feel guilt? What the research and the comments say02:18 How men transition guilt into action — and why breadwinner norms neutralize it04:35 Why women don't get the same guilt negation — and why that's a problem05:30 Is guilt even a useful emotion? What it's actually signaling06:54 Marianne Cooper's research: upscaling vs. downscaling under pressure08:00 The optimization trap — why highly educated mothers burn through mental load energy09:16 Three strategies mothers use when upscaling: raise the bar, seek control, compare11:36 Food, motherhood guilt, and the pressure of home-cooked organic meals13:00 Why "solely responsible" became the default — and how we got here14:30 Social media as the ultimate social comparison machine16:09 What Drained says: good is good enough, and social comparison is the thief of joy18:27 Guilt as a signal vs. guilt as a trap — and how to tell the difference

Why does figuring out what's for dinner feel so exhausting — every single night? In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner breaks down exactly why dinner time is one of the biggest mental load pain points she hears about across her research and interviews. Spoiler: it's not just about the food. Dinner time activates all eight mental load types simultaneously — from life organization and safety to magic making and dream building — and it's happening inside a food system that is increasingly broken and putting the pressure squarely on parents to fix it. If dinner feels heavier than it should, this episode explains exactly why.Chapters:00:00 Introduction — why dinner is a mental load disaster02:23 How the eight mental load types map onto dinner time02:40 Mental load type 1: Life organization — do you have everything you need?04:39 Mental load types 2 & 3: Relationship hygiene and emotional support at the table06:58 Mental load type 4: Magic making — when dinner goes gloriously right08:00 Anticipating what could go wrong — and chasing the magic anyway08:30 Mental load type 5: Dream building — dinner as connection time09:14 Mental load types 6 & 7: Safety and food allergies — when the stakes are life or death11:35 Mental load type 8: The broken food system and parental guilt13:51 Why trad wife nostalgia makes sense — and why it's a trap15:00 Lobbying against nutritious food — and why you're left to solve it alone16:05 What to do: share the load, use AI, let the kids cook, let go of control18:25 Is dinner time a doom drain or a magical moment for you?Resources Mentioned:📘 Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More🧠 Free Mental Load Assessment — https://www.lightenlab.comStay Connected with Leah:TikTok: @prof.leahruppannerEmail: getcrafty@audiocrafty.com

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 unfair03:30 What the mental load actually is — a quick refresher04:33 The three characteristics: invisible, boundaryless, enduring05:00 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 drain09:12 Who goes on the bench — and who gets evicted09:45 Step 3 — get clear on your dreams, goals and ambitions10:30 Mental load loves, mental load drops, and mental load mores11:33 Real example: does a messy house actually matter?13:57 Understanding your partner's mental load through the lens of their dreams16:20 You can do this audit alone — you don't need your partner's buy-in17:30 How to start the conversation from the dream, not the fight18:19 It's all in the book — worksheets, chapters, and the online appendixResources Mentioned:📘 Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More 🧠 Free Mental Load Assessment — https://www.lightenlab.comStay Connected with Leah:TikTok: @prof.leahruppannerEmail: getcrafty@audiocrafty.comDon't miss an episode! Subscribe NOW: /@missperceivedpodcast

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.

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.

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.

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.

Right before launching her book Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More, Leah found a lump in her breast on vacation and was diagnosed with breast cancer. In this deeply personal episode, she shares what it feels like to carry the emotional thinking work of a serious health crisis on top of everyday life: worrying about your child’s future, your career, your dreams, and everyone else’s feelings while trying to process your own.