Why caring for everyone else is costing you your health

One of the most common things I see in women is this:
they’re doing all the things for all the people — and slowly killing themselves in the process. The invisible load is real. And it’s quietly stealing your time, your energy, and your health.

The numbers don’t lie

Even when women work the same paid hours as men, we still carry the lion’s share of household and caring duties.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, women spend around 4 hours 31 minutes per day on unpaid work — cooking, cleaning, shopping, and caring — while men average just 2 hours 12 minutes.
 

A 2025 analysis of the HILDA Survey found that women still do about 18 hours of housework per week, compared to 12 hours for men, and almost double the hours caring for children or relatives.

That’s an extra working day every week, unpaid and largely unacknowledged. So when you tell me you don’t have time to exercise, cook properly, or even breathe for five minutes without interruption, I believe you. You’re not imagining it. The deck is stacked.

The cost of carrying it all

The problem isn’t just time; it’s mental space. When you’re constantly running a silent to-do list, dentist appointments, birthday presents, school lunches, and what’s for dinner, your brain never switches off. Chronic busyness keeps stress hormones like cortisol high, which can lead to fatigue, weight gain, disrupted sleep, and insulin resistance. In short, the mental load has a physical cost. Your health suffers while you save everyone else from the inconvenience of doing tasks they can (and should) do themselves.

What if you let some of it go?

Let’s get practical for a moment. Your high schoolers can make their own lunch and do their own laundry.
Your husband is perfectly capable of buying his own mother a birthday or Christmas present.
And that email? It can wait. Every task you release is a little pocket of energy you reclaim. Energy you can invest in your own wellbeing.

True wellbeing isn’t bubble baths and massages

Don’t get me wrong, if a soak in the tub is your thing, go nuts. But real wellbeing runs deeper than scented candles. It’s sitting down for a slow, nourishing meal, one you want to cook and actually taste, not the family default (spag bol, anyone?). It’s giving yourself permission to show up to that Pilates class. It’s resting before you hit exhaustion.

These are the quiet acts of rebellion that protect your health.

The uncomfortable truth: choose your hard

Being well is simple, but not easy.

Work is busy, so fitting in exercise is hard. Caring for kids or parents makes cooking from scratch hard. Saying no feels hard. But it’s also hard to live with chronic disease, fatigue, and the slow loss of quality of life that comes from never putting yourself first.

You need to choose your hard. The hard that comes from boundaries, or the hard that comes from burnout.

A new story to try on

What if you started believing that other people’s independence is good for them and great for you?
What if you treated your health as a shared family project instead of a solo chore?
What if you stopped apologising for needing time that’s already yours?

Because it is yours.
And reclaiming it is the first step back to health.

Next week: the mindset piece

For some women, even reading this brings up guilt — the thought that it’s selfish to step back, or that things will fall apart if they don’t hold it all together. That’s the mental load behind the mental load, and it deserves its own conversation. Next week, we’ll talk about the unhelpful thoughts that quietly drive stress and how to start rewriting them.