News
What 100k+ journalled words reveal about women’s mental load
By Katrina Zalcmane, co-founder of Véa
101,000 journalled words. That’s what it took to make women’s mental load measurable – and what it revealed was not what we expected.
We can track a woman’s cycle to the hour, map her hormones, her fertility window, her sleep habits.
But we have had remarkably little structured visibility into the cognitive and emotional load running underneath all of it – the layer that shapes how she makes decisions, takes risks, recovers from pressure and moves through her day.
That’s where the data gets interesting.
Across those 101,000 anonymously journalled words, Véa identified the cognitive signatures of how pressure gets metabolised – not into symptoms, but into patterns.
Overgeneralisation, fortune-telling, catastrophising: the interpretive architecture through which strain quietly becomes self-doubt, avoidance and reduced capacity.
This is not a wellness story – it’s a data story. And it points to a layer of women’s health that has been consistently underinstrumented.
Véa is an neuroscience-backed AI journal that uses semantic embeddings and a state classifier trained on emotional data to read language the way a clinician might – not for keywords but for interpretive patterns.
Each entry is stored as an emotional vector, building a longitudinal map of how a user’s inner state shifts over time.
That is what made this dataset possible.
What the Data Shows
Mental load is often described in domestic terms – the remembering, the planning, the anticipating. But in practice it is also deeply interpretive.
It lives in the ongoing internal work of pre-empting what might go wrong, reading emotional atmospheres, managing self-presentation and correcting internally before anything external has even happened.
That is not just emotional strain. It is a form of continuous cognitive expenditure.
To make that visible, Véa analysed 101,000 anonymously journalled words across 150+ beta testers over 6 months.
These were not a homogenous group: new mothers, neurodivergent women, career-switchers, high performers navigating demanding roles – different lives, different pressures, same underlying patterns.
That breadth matters – it means what we found is not a niche signal. It is structural.
Across that dataset, Véa identified more than 3,000 separate instances of cognitive distortions – recurring interpretive patterns that emerge under pressure.
The five most frequently detected were overgeneralisation, fortune-telling, “should” statements, catastrophising and black-and-white thinking.
On paper these may sound like standard CBT terminology. But taken together they reveal something more significant than stress.
They show that a large part of women’s mental and emotional load is not only what women are carrying externally – it is how rapidly and repeatedly that load gets cognitively organised into threat, failure and self-correction.
What drains women is not just the event. It is the meaning-making around the event.
The Cost of Cognitive Distortions
Overgeneralisation: when one setback becomes a self-story
The most frequent pattern was overgeneralisation: turning one event into a broader conclusion.
One awkward meeting becomes “I’m not good enough”. One rejection becomes “this always happens to me”.
Under stress, the prefrontal cortex loses flexibility, making it harder to hold context and alternative interpretations.
The brain defaults to faster, simplified conclusions, often collapsing a single event into a broader narrative.
For high-performing women, this matters because it directly affects risk-taking and recovery. If one setback becomes a signal of incompetence, the cost of visibility increases.
This aligns with workplace data showing women are more likely to self-deselect from opportunities after negative feedback or perceived underperformance.
Overgeneralisation is not just negative thinking. It is a reduction in cognitive flexibility that limits forward movement.
Fortune-telling: managing problems before they exist
The second pattern was: predicting negative outcomes without evidence, e.g. “It’s going to go badly” or “They’re not going to respond” when you have no facts to back that up.
The brain operates on predictive models, continuously forecasting outcomes.
Under stress, these predictions become threat-biased and less accurate, prioritising avoidance over exploration.
For women, this overlaps with documented anticipatory mental load – the cognitive work of planning, monitoring and pre-empting problems.
The result is inefficiency: energy is spent solving for outcomes that have not occurred.
For high performers, this reduces focus, presence and execution quality because attention is allocated to imagined scenarios rather than current tasks.
“Should” statements: the language of self-surveillance
“Should” statements reflect top-down self-monitoring where behaviour is continuously evaluated against internalised standards. Under sustained pressure, this shifts from regulation to self-criticism, increasing cognitive load.
For women, these standards are often compounded. Performance, emotional regulation and relational behaviour are all being evaluated simultaneously.
Workplace data shows women face higher expectations to balance competence with likability and are more likely to experience competence-based microaggressions.
This creates a loop of self-surveillance, splitting attention between doing and evaluating.
That split is cognitively expensive.
Catastrophising: when the system defaults to threat
Catastrophising reflects rapid escalation to worst-case scenarios.
Under cognitive load, the brain shifts toward amygdala-driven threat processing, reducing the ability to hold ambiguity and increasing urgency-based interpretation.
For high-performing women managing multiple demands, even small uncertainties can trigger escalation because they are processed on top of existing load.
The outcome is distorted prioritisation. Attention is redirected toward perceived threats rather than actual strategic work.
Black-and-white thinking: the rigidity behind perfection
The final major pattern was black-and-white thinking: interpreting situations in binaries, e.g “I’m either doing well or failing”.
It reflects reduced cognitive flexibility, a key function of the prefrontal cortex that allows for nuance and adaptive thinking.
It makes recovery harder and leaves very little room for partial progress, mixed feelings or ordinary human inconsistency.
For high-performing women, this often intersects with perfection pressure. Partial progress is discounted and anything below optimal performance is interpreted as failure.
This creates rigidity. It limits iteration, slows decision-making and makes sustained performance harder, not better.
What This Actually Means
Clinical surveys can tell you a woman is stressed. Journalling treated as longitudinal data tells you something different – it shows you how that stress is being interpreted, repeated and compounded over time.
A survey captures a moment. Language tracked across weeks and months captures a pattern.
That distinction is what makes this dataset structurally different from existing research: it surfaces the cognitive layer that self-report instruments are not designed to reach.
For corporate health and wellbeing
These patterns do not stay at home.
Overgeneralisation after a difficult meeting, fortune-telling before a high-stakes presentation, black-and-white thinking under performance pressure – these are showing up in the workplace every day, invisibly.
For organisations investing in women’s development and retention, this data reframes the conversation.
It is not enough to offer resilience training or mental health days.
The question is whether your wellbeing infrastructure is designed to address the interpretive load that sits underneath performance and whether the interventions you offer are actually built around how women experience that load.
Because that is where capacity is actually being lost.
For clinical and health frameworks
The most widely used depression screener in the world is nine questions long. It captures a snapshot.
What longitudinal language data offers is something clinical instruments have never been designed to provide – continuity.
A running record of how cognitive patterns shift, accumulate and respond to pressure over time, before they become a diagnosis.
That has real implications for how we screen, how we intervene early and how we build a picture of women’s mental health that goes beyond the biological and into the cognitive.
Light exercise and less sitting may reduce pregnant women’s risk of serious blood pressure complications, according to a new study.
Researchers have proposed a daily activity and sleep guide that they say was linked to a nearly 30 per cent lower risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.
The suggested pattern includes fewer than eight hours of sedentary time, at least seven hours of light physical activity, around 22 minutes of more intense activity and nearly nine hours of sleep.
The University of Iowa-led study examined the daily behaviours of 470 pregnant women across all stages of pregnancy.
Participants wore monitors that measured physical activity over 24-hour periods and recorded how long they spent asleep.
Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy include chronic high blood pressure, gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia.
Gestational hypertension is high blood pressure that develops during pregnancy, while pre-eclampsia is a potentially serious condition involving high blood pressure and signs that organs may be affected.
Sedentary behaviour means being mostly inactive, such as sitting or lying down.
Light physical activity can include casual walking, moving around the home or standing.
Moderate to vigorous activity includes movement such as brisk walking, where breathing and heart rate increase.
Kara Whitaker, associate professor in the department of health, sport, and human physiology at Iowa and corresponding author of the study, said: “We are identifying the optimal composition of movement behaviours across the day associated with the lowest risk of developing HDP and the most improved health outcomes.
“This blueprint holds for each and every trimester of pregnancy.”
Study participants were enrolled at sites in Iowa City, Pittsburgh and Morgantown, West Virginia.
The women wore activity and sleep monitors for at least one week during each trimester of pregnancy.
Four in five participants were non-Hispanic white and nearly a quarter lived in rural areas.
The data showed a steep rise in risk among pregnant women who were sedentary for more than 10 hours a day.
Women who increased light physical activity to at least four hours a day reduced their risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy to 15 per cent from 30 per cent.
Whitaker said: “Just moving around more seems to have significant health benefits.
“And I think it also may be a more feasible target for women who are pregnant who are not exercising regularly.”
The researchers said they were surprised that longer durations of moderate to vigorous physical activity did not appear to provide additional benefit.
Sleep beyond a certain duration also did not appear to bring major further benefits.
Whitaker said: “Through this study, we are providing evidence that reducing sedentary behaviour and engaging in light physical activity are important, and maybe more important, when it comes to pregnancy and health.”
The findings may be relevant beyond pregnancy because clinical research has shown that women who develop hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are more than twice as likely to develop heart disease later in life.
Cardiovascular disease includes conditions affecting the heart and blood vessels, such as heart disease and stroke.
Whitaker said: “We know that cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women, and if we can intervene in pregnancy and prevent women from developing a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy, we are putting them on a better trajectory, away from cardiovascular disease and toward more optimal cardiovascular health.”
The study was published online on June 10.
A second study, published online on May 27, looked more closely at the ratio and type of sedentary behaviour and light physical activity linked to a lower risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.
Whitaker is a lead co-author on that study.
Co-authors in the June 10 study include Alex Crisp, Jaemyung Kim, Karina Smith, Donna Santillan, Mark Santillan and Bridget Zimmerman, from Iowa; Jacob Gallagher, from Iowa State University; Melissa Jones, from Oakland University in Michigan; Bethany Barone Gibbs, Katrina Wilhite, Alexis Thrower and Iqra Sheikh, from West Virginia University; and Sabera Rahman, Janet Catov, Christopher Kline and Maisa Feghali, from the University of Pittsburgh.
The National Institutes of Health, the University of Iowa Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Science Institute and the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute funded the research.
We are excited to reveal the winners of the third annual Femtech World Awards.
The winners were announced at a virtual event this afternoon attended by shortlisted companies, along with sponsors and judges.
The event welcomed guests from the UK, Europe, Asia, Africa and North America.
Thank you to all 174 entries, as well as the sponsors for making the event possible.
See you in 2027!
Femtech World Awards 2026 Winners
Winner:
Shortlisted:
IVI RMA x Juno Genetics
Natural Cycles
Winner:
Highly commended:
U-Ploid
Shortlisted:
Hello Inside
Winner:
WISE HF, led by Prof. Mary Ryder
Highly commended:
Cardiac College for Women
Shortlisted:
Hyvelle Ferguson-Davis
CognitiveCare
Winner:
Highly commended:
Youterus
Shortlisted:
ŌURA
Winner:
Shortlisted:
LeanShield by ParrotPal Group
Perigen
Winner:
Shortlisted:
Body Moody
Looop
Winner:
Shortlisted:
Owning Your Menopause
Womeno
Winner:
Shortlisted:
The Blue Box
Celbrea
Winner:
Shortlisted:
HealCycle
Mor
Winner:
Shortlisted:
HRC Fertility
Mira
Pregnant women’s expectations about postpartum sleep may predict sleep quality after birth, outweighing prior sleep and psychiatric history, a study suggests.
The findings suggest attitudes and beliefs about sleep during pregnancy could be a modifiable risk factor for postpartum sleep concerns.
They also indicate that, among women expecting the poorest sleep, higher postpartum anxiety may further worsen sleep quality.
Sammy Dhaliwal, lead author is clinical health psychologist and research fellow in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dhaliwal said: “Most pregnant women in our sample anticipated poor postpartum sleep before it occurred, and it was striking that those expectations predicted worse sleep outcomes even after accounting for factors such as prior sleep disorders, psychiatric history, and number of previous births.
“This suggests that attitudes and beliefs about sleep during pregnancy may represent a modifiable target for early intervention before postpartum sleep problems emerge.”
Sleep disturbance affects an estimated 60 to 80 per cent of postpartum women and is linked to a higher risk of depression and anxiety.
Researchers said it is often regarded as an expected part of life after childbirth rather than a health issue that may be addressed earlier.
The study enrolled 432 pregnant women at about 24 weeks of gestation, meaning around 24 weeks into pregnancy.
Participants completed measures of their expectations about postpartum sleep, current sleep quality using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and mood using validated depression and anxiety scales.
Assessments were repeated at six, 12 and 24 weeks postpartum.
A subset of 49 women also wore wrist actigraphy devices at six to eight weeks postpartum.
Actigraphy uses a wearable device, similar to a watch, to estimate sleep and wake patterns based on movement.
The results showed that 70 per cent of pregnant women, or 301 of 432 participants, expected poor sleep in the postpartum period.
Researchers found that predicted sleep disruption during pregnancy was a significant predictor of postpartum sleep concerns.
Among first-time pregnant women without prior health concerns, those who expected greater sleep disturbance had significantly more disrupted sleep after birth, measured by both actigraphy and self-report.
Among women who expected the worst sleep quality, higher postpartum anxiety significantly worsened both measured sleep and self-reported sleep, independent of anxiety levels during pregnancy.
Dhaliwal said the findings point to two possible areas for intervention: addressing sleep-related beliefs during pregnancy and treating postpartum anxiety.
Dhaliwal said: “Postpartum sleep disruption is often treated only after problems develop, but our findings suggest there may be an opportunity to intervene earlier during pregnancy.
“Addressing sleep-related beliefs and postpartum anxiety during prenatal and postpartum care may help improve sleep and emotional well-being in new mothers.”
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