Burnout & Mental Load Glossary: 22 Terms Defined

Glossary · Last updated 7 October 2026 · 22 terms

The words women use for what is happening to them: some from research, some from the internet, some from therapy rooms. Each one defined in plain English, with where it came from and whether it is a diagnosis, a research term or just a useful name.

Terms: Brain fog · Burnout · Cognitive labor · Decision fatigue · Default parent · Eldest daughter syndrome · Emotional labor · Functional freeze · High-functioning anxiety · High-functioning burnout · Impostor phenomenon · Kinkeeping · Mental load · Non-promotable tasks · Over-functioning · People-pleasing · Perimenopause · Revenge bedtime procrastination · Rumination · Sandwich generation · The second shift · Weaponized incompetence

What is brain fog?

Brain fog: Not a medical term. It covers lapses in memory, word-finding and concentration. In perimenopause, the SWAN study (Greendale and colleagues, 2009) found a measurable dip in learning that recovered after menopause.

What is burnout?

Burnout: An occupational phenomenon, not a medical diagnosis, defined by the World Health Organization in ICD-11 (2019) by three signs together: exhaustion, mental distance or cynicism about work, and a sense of reduced effectiveness. The measure most research uses comes from Christina Maslach.

What is cognitive labor?

Cognitive labor: Sociologist Allison Daminger’s 2019 term for the thinking part of housework, split into four stages: anticipating needs, identifying options, deciding and monitoring. Couples tend to share the deciding; women tend to do the anticipating and monitoring.

What is decision fatigue?

Decision fatigue: The idea, from Roy Baumeister’s research on self-control, that the quality of decisions drops after many decisions in a row. The original “ego depletion” findings have replicated poorly, so treat it as a useful description rather than a settled mechanism.

What is a default parent?

Default parent: An informal term, not a research term, for the parent who is automatically called, asked and expected to know, regardless of what the other parent could do.

What is eldest daughter syndrome?

Eldest daughter syndrome: A popular term, not a clinical one, for the extra responsibility first-born daughters often carry in a family, which tends to keep growing in midlife as parents age.

What is emotional labor?

Emotional labor: Coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in The Managed Heart (1983) for the work of managing your own feelings as part of a paid job. It is now widely used for emotional work at home too, which Hochschild treated as a related but separate thing.

What is functional freeze?

Functional freeze: An informal therapy term, not a diagnosis, for a state of running on autopilot: still doing everything, but feeling numb, flat and disconnected while doing it.

What is high-functioning anxiety?

High-functioning anxiety: Not a diagnosis in DSM-5. It describes anxiety that drives performance rather than stopping it, so it is visible to others mainly as competence.

What is high-functioning burnout?

High-functioning burnout: Not a clinical term. It describes burnout in someone whose output has not dropped yet: the work still gets done, so nobody, including her, reads the exhaustion as burnout.

What is the impostor phenomenon?

Impostor phenomenon: Described by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978 in high-achieving women: the persistent belief that your success is luck and that you will be found out, despite the evidence. It is not a diagnosis.

If you have recognised three or four of these so far, the Quiet Audit shows which ones are actually running your week, at home and at work, on one page. It takes ten minutes. Start here.

What is kinkeeping?

Kinkeeping: Anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo’s 1987 term for the work of keeping a family connected: cards, calls, birthdays, gatherings. It is usually done by women and rarely counted as work.

What is the mental load?

Mental load: The unpaid work of noticing, planning, remembering and checking that keeps a household running. The phrase spread through the French cartoonist Emma’s 2017 comic “You should’ve asked”.

What are non-promotable tasks?

Non-promotable tasks: Work that helps the organisation but not your career: the committee, the note-taking, the party planning. Economists Linda Babcock, Lise Vesterlund and colleagues showed in 2017 that women are asked to do these tasks more often than men, and say yes more often.

What is over-functioning?

Over-functioning: From Murray Bowen’s family systems theory, popularised by Harriet Lerner in The Dance of Anger (1985): one person takes on more and more of the group’s work, and the others take on less. Each pattern reinforces the other.

What is people-pleasing?

People-pleasing: A pattern, not a diagnosis: putting other people’s comfort ahead of your own needs to avoid conflict or disapproval, usually learned early and rewarded for years.

What is perimenopause?

Perimenopause: The years of changing hormones before the final period, usually starting in the 40s and lasting several years. It is staged by the STRAW+10 criteria (2012) and ends 12 months after the last period, at menopause.

What is revenge bedtime procrastination?

Revenge bedtime procrastination: Staying up late on purpose to get time that feels like your own. “Bedtime procrastination” was named by Floor Kroese and colleagues in the Netherlands in 2014; the “revenge” version spread from Chinese social media around 2020.

What is rumination?

Rumination: Repetitive, passive thinking about distress and its causes, without moving to a solution. Psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema’s response styles theory (1991) linked it to longer and deeper low moods, especially in women.

What is the sandwich generation?

Sandwich generation: Adults caring for or supporting ageing parents and their own children at the same time. Social worker Dorothy Miller named it in 1981. Pew Research Center now counts it as having a parent aged 65 or older plus a minor child or an adult child you support. About 21 million US women aged 40 to 59 are in it.

What is the second shift?

The second shift: Arlie Hochschild’s 1989 name for the housework and childcare employed women do after their paid day ends. National time-use diaries have measured it more precisely since.

What is weaponized incompetence?

Weaponized incompetence: An internet-era phrase, not a research term, for doing a shared task badly enough, deliberately or not, that it ends up handed back to someone else.