#66 | How Mental Load Hijacks Your Brain and Undermines Your Influence

What if the reason you cannot switch off is also affecting your ability to think strategically, lead confidently, and move toward promotion?

In this episode, Caroline goes deeper into the science behind mental load and explains why constant cognitive overload is more than just exhausting. It can narrow your thinking, reduce your access to strategic ideas, and leave less bandwidth for the kind of contribution that builds influence and supports career progression. If you have ever wondered why your brain feels full even in quiet moments, this episode will help you understand what may be happening beneath the surface.

You’ll:

• Learn how cognitive overload may be affecting your strategic thinking and decision-making at work
• Understand why mental load can limit influence, visibility, and promotion-ready contribution
• Reframe your exhaustion as a real cognitive issue, not a personal weakness

Listen now to understand the science behind this hidden mental load.

New episodes are released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.

Stuck, simmering, or onto something juicy? I want to hear it. Drop me a line at caroline@inspireyourgenius.com - I read them all.

This podcast explores resilience, imposter syndrome, and credibility while unpacking how boundaries, conflict, and feedback shape the way we handle pressure, influence, and guilt at work. It also looks at promotion, work-life balance, people pleasing, decision making, and visibility, offering honest conversations about how to grow professionally without losing your confidence or yourself.

Transcript

Caroline Esterson (00:00)
So welcome back, happy midweek. I left you on Monday to reflect on the mental load that you're carrying and what might happen if you stop doing any of it. So today let's discuss why it's happening with some science to back up what you probably, possibly already actually know in your heart.

Caroline Esterson (00:22)
Welcome to Unshakeable Her, where we believe that building your confidence and influence doesn't require a personality transplant, just a few resourceful little habits and someone in your corner. That someone is me. I'm Caroline Esterson. Let's get into it.

Caroline Esterson (00:39)
So this is what you're getting from today's episode. Firstly, you're going to find out why just switch off is neurologically illiterate advice. Your brain is structurally measurably different to men's and today we'll explain exactly what that means, what it costs and why willpower has absolutely nothing to do with it.

then this is the episode that turns that ⁓ exhaustion you often feel from something you might have seen as a personal failing into a psychological fact.

Nothing dramatic happened, you didn't experience a crisis, it was just another completely normal day and you're running on empty again. We'll explain the mechanism behind this. You know what they say after all, acceptance is the first stage of change, right?

Then you're going to understand why the bold move keeps eluding you. And it's not because you're not ready. It's because you need to switch over the power. The strategic thinking, the big idea, you know, that career change and contribution. It needs headspace. And today we'll show you exactly where yours is going. And that changes everything about what you do next. So

welcome back. On Monday you met Jazz, 6.43 in the morning with 47 tabs already open, cold coffee, permission slip, broken zip and then you followed her into the office, into the meeting where she was holding the room, the politics, the subtext and still contributing. Well done, had his one clear points and went for lunch.

Today I want to explain what's actually happening inside Jazzy's brain, not what's wrong with it, because there isn't anything wrong with it. And it's really important that you understand this.

And it's really important that you also understand that there's nothing wrong with Steve or Dan's brains either. They are just different. And when you understand it, hopefully it can reduce some of the frustration you might be feeling and help you to power up your own resourcefulness in the right way. So let's get into it.

Here's the first thing you need to know. Women's brains are more connected, not metaphorically. And I'm not saying it in a women are better than men way. It's just a fact, literally, structurally, neurologically, women's brains are more connected. A landmark study from the University of Pennsylvania scanned nearly a thousand brains and found that female brains

have significantly greater interconnectivity between hemispheres. There's more crosstalk, more simultaneous processing, more networks firing parallel at any given moment. And this is why Jazz can track the meeting agenda and read the room. Why she can remember the mission slip and notice the tension between two colleagues all at once. Her brain is built for it. It is genuinely measurably better at holding multiple threads simultaneously than the brain on the other

side of the bed. That's not nothing. In fact, you know what, in a lot of contexts, it would be seen as a superpower. But here's where it gets complicated.

A brain that is highly interconnected, that's always cross referencing, always threading, always holding, is also a brain that finds it harder to fully stop, harder to disengage, and harder to sit on the train and daydream about that midfielder having a bad day. Boy, I'd like the time to daydream to work out why the Liverpool midfield don't seem to be clicking together right now, but that is a whole other story.

And in our business world that requires you to also be able to do strategic thinking, creative thinking, bigger picture career thinking, a brain that never fully clears the cash is a brain that is always slightly running behind.

Now there's a structure in the brain called the default mode network. It's what activates when you're not focused on a specific task. You know, when you're daydreaming or in the shower or staring out of the window. And here's why it matters.

The default mode network is where your best thinking actually happens. Those creative leaps and strategic insights. They are, that's what I should do about that moment. They don't come when you're staring at screen, do they? They come when your brain is given the space to wonder. Research shows that women's default mode network is more persistently active than men's,

Even at rest, it's processing, connecting, cross-referencing, which on one hand sounds really impressive and is, but it also means that that wondering, the spaciousness, you know, that creative drift that produces your best ideas is actually harder to access because the network is already busy. It's already running something else.

Jazz isn't the kind of person that gets showered brainwaves. She gets shower admin. She's not less creative than Dan. She just doesn't have the same access to the conditions that creativity needs because her brain doesn't really have a standby mode.

And then there's what happens when this runs for years, chronic cognitive overload. And that's exactly what we're describing. This triggers a sustained cortisol response. Cortisol is your stress hormone and in short bursts, it's fine, actually really useful.

when your brain is permanently managing, permanently tracking and holding, cortisol runs elevated as a baseline. An elevated baseline cortisol does specific measurable things. It narrows thinking. It literally shrinks the cognitive field from wide angle to strategic, narrow and reactive. It impairs your working memory, the short term processing you need for complex tasks.

and it degrades decision making quality over time. It makes it harder to access the prefrontal cortex, which is precisely the part of the brain responsible for the kind of thinking that gets you noticed, promoted and ahead.

So Jazz isn't tired because she can't cope. She's tired because her brain is running a process that is genuinely psychologically expensive. And she's been running it without a break or recognition or without anyone acknowledging that it's happening at all.

exhaustion is a completely logical output

And here's what this means for your career. And I really want to be precise about this because this is part that tends to get lost. The thinking that gets you seen, you know, we've said it before, the strategic contribution, those bold ideas, or that moment where you reframe the whole conversation. That thinking needs headspace. It needs a brain that has some capacity available, some bandwidth that isn't already allocated.

And if your bandwidth is permanently consumed by that invisible spreadsheet at home before eight o'clock in the morning in the meeting while Dan's having his one clear points in the corridor between conversations where you're already tracking the next three things, then the bold move you want to make keeps getting pushed back. Of course it does because by the time you get there, the system is running slow. Now, I know this doesn't sound very motivational. I do understand that, but there is.

a motivational part to all of this. Understanding the mechanism means that you can work with it, you can stop trying to fix your overwhelm with more efforts, you can stop wondering why the big thinking isn't flowing and start asking where your bandwidth is actually going.

because you can't optimize what you can't see. Monday you started seeing it, today you understand why it works the way it does, then Friday, boy, Friday, we are going to do something about it.

So one thing before Friday, just one, because this episode has already given your brain enough to do. This week, I want you to notice, not change, just notice the moment that your default mode network should be resting. And actually it isn't. Maybe it's in the shower.

on your dog walk, on your commute, the walk between meetings, the 10 minutes before you fall asleep. Notice what your brain is doing in those spaces. Is it's wondering or is it working? Is it solving something, tracking something, holding something that honestly could technically wait? Just see it, name it.

because remember awareness is the thing that makes the next move possible and the next move, your next move is coming Friday along with a song that is going to make you feel every single thing we just talked about somewhere in your sternum at full volume. I'll see you then.

Caroline Esterson (10:05)
That's it from me today on Unshakable Her. If something landed, share it with a woman in your world who needs to hear it. She probably won't say so. She'll just be really glad you did. I'm Caroline Esterson and you are completely entirely unshakable.

Caroline Esterson (10:25)
See you Friday.