Glossary
A
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) - A form of cognitive behavioral therapy that focuses on developing flexible ways of thinking and responding to problems by abandoning restrictive and ineffective strategies that try to control thoughts and feelings, and instead, learning to accept troublesome thoughts and feelings as a part of living a healthy life.
Acute - Characterized by a sudden onset of symptoms, usually short in duration but with great intensity.
Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) - A behavioral disorder marked by inattention, impulsivity, or hyperactivity. Inattention can be described as difficulty listening, concentrating, or completing tasks; while impulsivity or hyperactivity is defined as restlessness; fidgeting; organizing work, running about, or staying seated.
Aggression - Aggression is different from anger but is activated significantly from anger. Aggression is a behavior that uses physical or verbal harm to injure someone physically, or mentally.
Anger - An emotion characterized by tension and hostility as a response to frustration, a real or imagined threatening event, or perceived unfair treatment. Anger can manifest into behaviors designed to reduce or remove objects causing the anger.
Anxiety - An emotion characterized by distress caused by the anticipation of a perceived, future-oriented threat. This anticipation is accompanied by physical symptoms of muscle tension, rapid breathing, and a fast-beating heart.
Anxiety Attacks - Prolonged anxiety. Unlike in a panic attack, in anxiety attack there is no fear of dying and no feeling of being disconnected form reality.
Attachment Therapy - A type of therapy that explores how to form meaningful relationships, and how your past and current experiences impact your ability to do so. The goal is to progress toward secure relationships by exploring and developing trust in yourself and compassion in yourself.
Avoidance - Removing yourself, or keeping away from a situation, environment, or individuals because of anticipation of a negative outcome, or because anxiety or other negative feelings are associated with them.
B
Behavior - An individual's actions, whether hidden, observable, or nonconscious, are provoked by an internal or external event.
Binge-Eating disorder - A disorder characterized by periods of uncontrolled consumption of large amounts of food that lead to distress.
Body Image - A person`s judgment of their body based on their physical features and attitudes towards these features.
C
Chronic - Symptoms that are recurrent and progress over a long period of time.
Cognitions - Mental processes involved in gathering knowledge through thinking, perceiving, remembering, reasoning, and problem-solving.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - A treatment combining cognitive and behavioral therapy, aimed at examining and restructuring a person's problematic thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, as a result, developing an individual's confidence and ability to handle and achieve a healthy life.
Conduct Disorder - Seen as destructive behavioral and emotional problems that involve difficulty following social standards and rules. Some behavioral problems include lying, theft, arson, aggression, cruelty to animals, and fighting. Mostly seen arising in childhood and adolescence.
Coping - Using strategies and resources to manage stress, behaviors, thoughts, and emotions when encountering conflict.
D
Depression - A negative mood state affects how you think, feel, and behave in your day-to-day activities. The mood state contains a range of negative and persistent feelings, such as unhappiness, discontent, extreme sadness, and hopelessness, which affect eating, sleeping, attention, and energy.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy - A flexible therapy that explores and teaches individuals to accept and tolerate their reality, emotions, and behaviors, and to develop healthy coping strategies that will aid in managing their dysfunctional emotions and behaviors. Commonly used with borderline personality disorder.
Driving and Passenger Anxiety (also called Amaxophobia, Motorphobia) - Characterized by a persistent and uncontrollable worry about getting into an accident in a vehicle, which leads to avoiding driving or being in a vehicle. Driving and Passenger anxiety can cause severe life limitations, such as preventing you from getting to work or appointments on time.
Disgust - A strong dislike, unacceptance, or distaste for something, someone, or someone’s behavior based on touch, smell, sight, or taste.
Digital Addiction - Overuse of video games, social media, the Internet, and porn, which negatively impacts sleep, mood, work, and relationships. Fear of Missing Out is linked to technology addiction. Read more...
E
Emotion - A complex reaction to stimuli like thoughts, circumstances, or events. Emotions involve actions and physical sensations that occur depending on the significance of the trigger.
Emotional Dysregulation - A poorly managed and inappropriate response when experiencing intense emotion(s) in a situation.
Emotional Eating - A disorder, such as anorexia, nervosa, bulimia, and binge eating disorder, that causes a disturbance in mood, behavior, and attitude in relation to the consumption of food.
Emotional Intelligence - the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions. The four domains of Emotional Intelligence are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
Evidence-Based - Techniques and treatment methods that are tested and validated as effective psychological services within laboratory and field settings with expert clinical practitioners, as to be used to enhance the health of a patient.
Exposure Therapy - Repetitive and structured confrontation, either in vivo (live, in person), imaginal, or through virtual reality of feared stimulus to reduce anxiety and increase confidence when facing the fear situations and activities.
F
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) - A feeling of fear, anxiety, or worry about missing out on experiencing enjoyable life events or being disconnected from friends, family, or other important figures in your life. This apprehension can be seen as comparing your life to those on social media or in person, which can lead to a range of interpersonal problems and an irritable mood.
Family Focused Therapy - A form of therapy that focuses on reducing conflict and distress by exploring interfamilial relationships to improve behavioral and interaction patterns amongst individual members and the grouping within the family.
Fear - Characterized as a reaction or detection of something deemed threatening, which as a result triggers physiological sensations associated with survival, such as rapid heartbeat and muscle tension, and a flight or fight response.
G
Generalized Anxiety - Persistent and excessive anxiety and worry that is difficult to control. The worry is associated with life concerns (finances, family, health, future) and is usually accompanied by physical symptoms, such as restlessness, fatigue, impaired concentration, irritability, muscle tension, and disturbed sleep.
Grateful/ Gratitude - Feeling thankful and happy in regard to receiving a gift, or blessed circumstances, such as the weather being beautiful, or having a roof over your head.
Guilt - Characterized by the assessment of your actions or thoughts on the basic that you felt like you did something wrong, and you are willing to take action to correct or mitigate the wrong.
Gaming Addiction - Excessive and obsessive videogaming despite the occurrence of negative outcomes like anxiety, depression, low-self esteem, sleeping disorders, disordered eating, social isolation and inability to build and maintain relationships.
H
Happiness - Happiness is associated with positive feelings and emotions, such as gratitude, joy, and satisfaction.
Health Anxiety - Excessive and uncontrollable worry about contracting a serious illness or getting sick. Frequent body checks are made for signs of illness, which can lead to inappropriate misinterpretations of one's health based on symptoms (stomach ache, headache) despite a doctor's opinion or test results disconfirming any sign of illness.
I
Irritability - An emotional state where you are easily provoked to become angry, annoyed, or impatient.
Interpersonal Conflict - When a disagreement occurs between people with respect to opposing habits, goals, personalities, or attitudes.
Insecurity - A lack of self-confidence affects your ability to cope and achieve goals or relationships with others.
J
Joy - Feeling of intense gladness and satisfaction as a response to encountering a positive event. Joy is linked to increased energy and positive confidence and self-esteem.
L
Love - Love is a complex emotion that has many different forms. There is self-love, erotic love, parental love, passionate love, and many more. Love is characterized by affection, pleasurable sensations, tenderness, and sensitivity to the object of the felt love.
Loneliness - Physical and mental discomfort from real or perceived lack quantity and/or quality in your actual or desired social relationships.
M
Motivational Interviewing - A therapeutic approach that is effective at helping individuals who have low motivation discover goals, values, and motivation for changing and exploring methods for achieving change.
Multisystemic Therapy - A family-focused treatment that combines and works with multiple relationships and systems from a person's life, such as their friends, family, school, and the local community to reduce harmful behaviors associated with illegal criminal actions, or actions that are harmful to themselves or others.
N
Nervousness - A short-term emotional state, in which an individual feels worried, upset, uneasy, or concerned about something stressful within the immediate moment or future.
O
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - Characterized by excessive and unreasonable intrusive thoughts (obsessions) that cause distress and are usually followed by rituals (compulsions) that alleviate distress. Typically, obsessions and compulsions involve a theme, such as fear of germs and cleaning.
Oppositional Defiant Disorder - A behavior disorder that is defined by a pattern of occasional disobedience, argumentativeness, and irritability toward authority figures. Oppositional Defiant Disorders symptoms and conditions have been divided into three subgroups: mood (anger, irritability), behavior (argumentative), and vindictiveness. Behaviors typically do not involve aggression like that of Conduct Disorder.
P
Panic Attacks - An abrupt and sudden onset of intense fear in situations where there is an absence of actual danger. It is accompanied by feelings of disconnection from reality, fear of dying, and physical symptoms, such as heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, chest pain, dizziness, stomach pain, and sweating.
Panic Control Treatment - A type of cognitive behavioral therapy specifically aimed at reducing panic by providing education on panic disorder, training individuals how to breathe slowly, and exposing them to cues that cause panic symptoms.
Parent Management Training - An approach that helps guide parents in choosing behaviors and consequences that will help reduce oppositional and aggressive behaviors in their children, while also fostering beneficial behaviors.
Performance Anxiety: Sport, School, Work, Sex, etc. - Also called Stage Fright, extreme nervousness before and/or during a performance in a specific activity. Usually seen as overthinking and predicting negative outcomes, which can lead to irritability, anger, guilt, and avoidance.
Perinatal Anxiety - from the beginning of pregnancy up to the first year after childbirth, perinatal anxiety is intense and hard-to-control worry and fear of the worst happening to the baby or yourself. Usually followed by feelings of restlessness, and not being able to relax, as well as muscle tension, irritability, tearfulness, shortness of breath, and difficulty falling or staying asleep due to worry.
Phobias - Phobias are an anxiety disorder marked by a persistent and irrational fear of a specific situation or object, which is either avoided or endured with distress. There is a wide range of phobias, some common ones include dogs, flying, driving, spiders, social situations, needles, and enclosed spaces.
Problem-Solving Skills Training - An intervention that examines disruptive behaviors and thinking patterns, identifying where problems arise from these behaviors and thoughts, and then developing a step-by-step plan to lead to effective solutions for reducing the disruptions. Often involves role-modeling by parents and caregivers and providing reinforcement for positive behaviors.
S
Separation Anxiety - Feelings of uneasiness or nervousness when an individual is separated or is facing the idea of being separated, from the person to whom they are attached.
Social Anxiety - An intense fear of being negatively judged or embarrassed in social situations. Intense fear can occur during or in anticipation of the feared social situation, which usually causes avoidance and physical symptoms, such as sweating, nausea, dizziness, heart pounding, blushing, and shaking.
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy - A therapeutic approach that focuses on problems in the here and now and resolves problems by recognizing an individual's strengths and building solutions, as opposed to focusing on the problem.
Systematic Desensitization Therapy - A form of therapy that has individuals practice deep-muscle relaxation to a list of weakest to strongest anxiety-provoking situations, be they real or imagined. As a result, individuals gradually react less to anxiety-provoking situations. Usually applied with phobias.
R
Resilience - The process of adapting and adjusting to difficult mental and emotional life experiences, as well as overcoming internal and external challenges as they occur. Coping strategies contribute to the successful adaptation of life’s challenges.
S
Sad/ Sadness - Characterized as an emotional state that ranges from mild to extreme in intensity, and is usually caused by the loss of something, which leads to the feeling of dissatisfaction, and joylessness.
Separation Anxiety - Feelings of uneasiness or nervousness when an individual is separated or is facing the idea of being separated, from the person to whom they are attached.
Shame - An intensely unpleasant emotion that arises when you feel like you committed a dishonorable, indecent, or immoral action. Shame leads to a withdrawal from social interactions and to a range of psychological symptoms, such as low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Eating disorders are reported to be connected to feelings of shame.
Social Anxiety - An intense fear of being negatively judged or embarrassed in social situations. Intense fear can occur during or in anticipation of the feared social situation, which usually causes avoidance and physical symptoms, such as sweating, nausea, dizziness, heart pounding, blushing, and shaking.
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy - A therapeutic approach that focuses on problems in the here and now and resolves problems by
recognizing an individual`s strengths and building solutions instead of focusing on the problem.
Surprise - Surprise occurs when someone encounters something new, or unusual, or expectations are broken. Surprise is an emotion heavily associated with facial expressions, such as raising eyebrows, opening eyes wide, or mouth wide.
Systematic Desensitization Therapy - A form of therapy that has individuals practice deep-muscle relaxation to a list of weakest to strongest anxiety-provoking situations, be they real or imagined. As a result, individuals gradually react less to anxiety-provoking situations. Usually applied used with phobias.
T
Trauma - A distressing event that results in significant disruptive feelings and has long-lasting negative effects on persons functioning and view of the world. Trauma can be caused by human behavior or natural disasters.
Technology Addiction - Overuse of video games, social media, the Internet, and porn, which negatively impacts sleep, mood, work, and relationships. Fear of Missing Out is linked to technology addiction. Read more...
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