Doomscrolling
The tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing.
Dissociation
While dissociating, one may feel disconnected from themselves and the world around them. Often dissociation is one way the mind copes with excessive stress, such as during a traumatic event.
Body Neutrality
At its core, body neutrality is the idea that we can exist without having to think too deeply or often about our bodies - either positively or negatively. You can simply exist and be worthy of self and social respect without thinking about your body at all. It encourages us to accept the ebb and flow of our relationships with our bodies- whether it be feeling good about it one day and not as good about it the next
Rupture & Repair
“Rupture and repair” refers to the breaking and restoring of connection with one another. Since human beings are wired for social connection, and connection is what researchers say brings most human beings happiness, rupture and repair is a crucial concept to have awareness around for wellbeing. Stemming from attachment theory, rupture is the disruption of a perceived “positive” relationship and repair is the healing that is facilitated to mend that rupture or fracture, resulting in a deeper and more strengthened relationship.
Touched-out
A psychological and physiological response that a “body feeding” parent has as a result of the need to provide continuous physical comfort to their child. It means that they have spent so much time in physical contact with another human that the thought of any more touching makes them feel ill or repulsed. It’s something that new parents are especially prone to, as small children are all-consuming and need both their mental and physical attention.
Parentification
A process by which the child is made to take on the role of “parent” to their own parent or sibling due to a reluctant or not able parent. In this process, children are pushed into taking on the role of caretaker, and giving up their role as the child.
Interoception
“The hidden sense that shapes wellbeing”. It is your brain’s perception of your body’s state, transmitted from receptors on all your internal organs. It is your brain’s representation of sensations from your own body.
Aversive Racism
Attempts to avoid non-white people and communities or to be formal, correct, and cold in dealings with them.
Trauma-Informed Care (TIC)
TIC is an approach that guides itself from the assumption that an individual is more likely than not to have a trauma history. TIC recognizes the prevalence of traumatic experiences in society and acknowledges the ongoing role trauma may play in an individual's life.
Attachment Theory
Attachment theory believes that humans are born with an innate drive to develop deep emotional bonds with their caregivers. A bond that exists beyond the basic fulfilment of physiological needs, but also of emotional needs. The safety or lack thereof of our early relationships go on to influence our psychological wellbeing and interpersonal-connectedness later on in life.
Polyvagal Theory
Polyvagal Theory is a tool for working with trauma as well as understanding social connection and communication. The polyvagal theory posits how all of us experience some degree of trauma in our early lives. Whether this trauma was a singular event that brought great fear or a prolonged sense of feeling unsafe. Each of these experiences elicits responses that remain ingrained in our nervous systems and frequently emerge to add fear to situations experienced later in life. Polyvagal theory offers a precise science about the vagus nerve, which is one part of our autonomic nervous system (our control room).
Metacognition
Metacognition is quite simply “thinking about thinking”. It involves conscious awareness of one’s thoughts. Separating the thought from you, the onlooker. This emboldening idea lends the notion that if we have the ability to observe our thoughts, we may possibly have the power to change our thoughts.
Metta Meditation
Metta meditation is one of many types of Buddhist Meditation. The term is derived from the Pali language, meaning friendliness, amity, goodwill, benevolence, loving-kindness, and active interest in others. The goal of such meditation is to cultivate kindness for oneself and for all those around us. The main technique of this meditation involves reciting positive affirmations towards oneself and these surrounding beings.
Egosyntonic
Egosyntonic refers to values, feelings, and behaviors that are in harmony with the needs and goals of the ego, and one's ideal self-image.
Egodystonic
Egodystonic is the opposite, wherein, one's thoughts and behaviors conflict with the needs and goals of one's ego and ideal self-image.
Projection
In psychology, projection is a defense mechanism, wherein one may attribute intolerable thoughts, impulses, urges, or feelings that they do not want to admit, onto other people.