What 100,000 Journalled Words Reveal About Women’s Mental Load
What can 100,000 journalled words tell us about the mental load women carry? Drawing on anonymised writing from more than 150 women, this article explores five recurring thinking patterns and shows how journalling can help make them easier to notice, question and respond to with greater clarity.
The article is written by Katrina Zalcmane from Véa, a women’s AI journal and platform designed to help women recognise emotional patterns, understand what sits beneath them and turn reflection into practical next steps.
We have become remarkably good at tracking parts of women’s lives that were once largely invisible. A phone can record sleep, movement and menstrual cycles; an app can estimate a fertile window or flag a change in resting heart rate. Yet we still have far less visibility into the running commentary beneath everyday life: the thoughts that follow a difficult meeting, the assumptions made when a message goes unanswered, or the pressure to remain capable when several areas of life are demanding attention at once.
There is a wider research gap behind this. An analysis of 3,193 neuroscience and psychiatry papers published in 2009 and 2019 found that, although the inclusion of both sexes had improved, only 19% of the papers sampled in 2019 used a study design considered optimal for discovering possible sex differences, while only 5% analysed sex as a discovery variable. A more recent editorial on women’s mental health makes the broader point plainly: preclinical and clinical research has devoted limited attention to women’s health.
That matters when we talk about mental load. The phrase usually brings to mind the practical work of remembering, organising and anticipating: the school form, the birthday present, the prescription that needs collecting, the parent who needs checking on, the presentation due on Friday. That work is real, although it is only one part of the picture. There is also the effort involved in interpreting everything that happens, often while trying to stay composed and keep moving. It is this less visible layer that began to emerge when we looked across more than 100,000 anonymised journalled words written by over 150 women during a six-month period.
The women were at different points in their careers and lives. The group included new mothers, neurodivergent women, people changing careers and others managing demanding jobs alongside responsibilities outside work. Across their writing, more than 3,000 examples of recurring thinking patterns were identified. The five that appeared most often were overgeneralisation, fortune-telling, ‘should’ statements, catastrophising and black-and-white thinking. Those labels come from cognitive behavioural therapy, but the experiences themselves are ordinary and instantly recognisable. Below we take a closer look at each of them and offer some helpful journal prompts that could help working through these patterns.
1. Overgeneralisation: when one difficult moment starts to define everything
A meeting goes badly, a job application is rejected or a piece of feedback lands harder than expected. At first the thought is about the event itself; later, almost without noticing, it has become a judgement about the person experiencing it. ‘That meeting did not go well’ turns into ‘I am not good at this.’ One disappointment becomes evidence that the same thing always happens.
This is overgeneralisation: drawing a broad conclusion from a single experience. It is easy to see why it appears when someone is tired or under pressure, because a simple explanation can feel more convincing than a nuanced one. The cost is that a temporary setback begins to shape future choices. Someone may hold back from speaking in the next meeting, decide not to apply for a role or spend days revisiting a moment that everyone else has already forgotten.
Journaling tip: ‘What happened, and what have I added to the story since?’ Writing the two answers separately can make the distinction surprisingly clear.
2. When anticipation turns into certainty
Another common pattern appeared around events that had not happened yet. A woman sent an important email and, before receiving a reply, had already decided it would be ignored. Someone preparing for a presentation assumed she would stumble over her words. A difficult conversation was replayed in advance, with the other person reacting in the least generous way possible.
Psychologists often call this fortune-telling. Some anticipation is useful, particularly when it helps us prepare; the difficulty begins when a possible outcome is treated as a settled fact. The mind then starts responding to an imagined event as though it has already taken place, using time and energy to manage a problem that may never arrive.
Journaling tip: when this happens, try writing down three columns: what I know, what I am assuming, and what else could be true. The aim is not to force an optimistic answer. It is simply to reopen possibilities that anxiety has closed down.
3. The quiet pressure of ‘should’
The word ‘should’ appeared everywhere: I should be coping better; I should be further ahead; I should feel grateful; I should be able to manage this without help. Each sentence sounds reasonable in isolation, but together they reveal how much time can be spent measuring life against an internal standard.
For women balancing work with relationships, health, family responsibilities or a change in identity, those standards have a way of multiplying. It is possible to spend the day completing what needs to be done while simultaneously judging the way it was done, whether enough was achieved and whether everyone else seemed happier with the result. That second layer of evaluation is tiring precisely because it rarely announces itself as work.
Journaling tip: One prompt can interrupt it – ‘Who says I should?’ – Sometimes the expectation is genuinely important. At other times it is inherited, outdated or far harsher than anything we would ask of another person.
4. When uncertainty becomes a worst-case scenario
A last-minute meeting appears in the diary. A child is late home. A manager writes, ‘Can we talk?’ None of these situations tells us very much, which is exactly why they can gather so much meaning. The blank space is quickly filled with the most threatening explanation available.
Catastrophising is often mistaken for preparation. In reality, replaying the worst possible outcome does not necessarily make anyone more ready for it; it can simply bring forward the fear. In working life, that may mean losing concentration for the rest of the afternoon because of a meeting that turns out to be routine. Outside work, it may mean living through an upsetting event several times before knowing whether it will happen once.
A practical question is: ‘What is the most likely explanation, based on what I know?’ It leaves room to take a concern seriously without allowing the most frightening possibility to dominate the whole picture.
5. Making room for the middle ground
The final pattern was the tendency to assess life in extremes: doing well or failing, confident or incapable, productive or lazy, a good parent or a bad one. The middle ground, where most lives are actually lived, was often missing.
Black-and-white thinking can look like high standards, although it frequently works against them. If only the best result counts, progress is easy to overlook and an ordinary mistake can erase everything that went well. It also leaves little room for mixed experiences. A person can be proud of a promotion and worried about the extra pressure; grateful for her family and exhausted by caring responsibilities; ready for change and frightened by it. None of these feelings cancels out the other.
Journaling tip: the question ‘What would good enough look like in this situation?’ can be more revealing than it first appears. It creates room for proportion, compromise and the fact that capacity changes from one day to the next.
What journalling makes visible
The journal entries did not show that women at one career level, age or life stage were uniquely vulnerable to these patterns. They showed how similar the mental processing could be beneath very different circumstances. A new mother worrying about returning to work, a senior leader preparing for a difficult conversation and someone deciding whether to change careers might appear to have little in common. In their private writing, however, each could move from uncertainty to assumption, from one setback to a sweeping conclusion, or from a reasonable expectation to a punishing ‘should’.
This is where journalling can offer something that a one-off check-in cannot. A questionnaire records how someone feels at a particular moment; a body of writing gathered over time can make repetition easier to notice. The value is not in diagnosing a person from her words, and it should not be treated as a substitute for clinical assessment. It lies in recognising the routes the mind tends to take under pressure and becoming able to pause before following them automatically. Ultimately, having the freedom to choose how to respond.
The strongest impression from the data was not that women lacked insight. Many were already thoughtful, observant and highly aware of other people’s needs. What they often lacked was a little distance from the conclusions forming in real time. Journalling can create that distance. Once a pattern is visible on the page, it becomes easier to question, and that small shift can change what happens next.
A short check-in to try
If a situation is taking up more space in your mind than you would like, spend five minutes writing without trying to make the response polished. Start with what happened, then note what you are telling yourself it means. Look for words such as always, never, should or definitely, and ask whether they are facts or conclusions. Finally, write down one alternative interpretation that feels credible, even if it is not the interpretation you would naturally choose.
The purpose is not to replace every difficult thought with a positive one. It is to notice when a thought has quietly become a verdict. Mental load comes from the responsibilities women carry, and from the meaning built around them. Understanding that meaning does not remove every pressure, though it can make the next response more deliberate and a little less automatic.
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About Véa
Véa is a women’s wellbeing platform that uses guided journalling and personalised insights to help women spot recurring emotional patterns and understand themselves more clearly. It is designed to create space between what someone feels and how they respond, turning reflection into greater clarity and more deliberate action.
Sources
Rechlin, R. K., Splinter, T. F. L., Hodges, T. E., Albert, A. Y. and Galea, L. A. M. (2022). ‘An analysis of neuroscience and psychiatry papers published from 2009 and 2019 outlines opportunities for increasing discovery of sex differences’. Nature Communications, 13, 2137. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9018784/
Galea, L. A. M. (2025). ‘Translational perspectives on women’s mental health’. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 226(6), 331-333. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40470750/
Véa internal analysis of 101,000 anonymised journalled words contributed by more than 150 beta users over six months.Figures supplied b the author.