Glossary

The words behind how you feel

Plain-language definitions — no jargon, no diagnosis, just clarity about the patterns you have been living inside.

Emotional regulation

Emotional regulation is the ability to notice, understand and steady your emotional responses, so feelings can inform you without flooding you.

Nervous system dysregulation

Nervous system dysregulation describes a stress-response system that stays activated — or shut down — when it no longer needs to be.

Fight, flight, freeze and fawn are the four broad ways a nervous system responds to perceived threat: confronting it (fight), escaping it (flight), shutting down in the face of it (freeze), or appeasing it (fawn).

High-functioning anxiety

High-functioning anxiety describes appearing capable, organised and successful on the outside while feeling tense, restless, over-responsible or unable to switch off on the inside.

People-pleasing

People-pleasing is the habitual prioritising of other people's comfort, approval and needs over your own — not from generosity, but as a safety strategy.

Rumination

Rumination is repetitive, circular thinking about the same concerns — replaying past conversations, rehearsing future scenarios — without arriving anywhere new.

Somatic regulation

Somatic regulation means settling the nervous system through the body — breath, grounding, posture, releasing held tension — rather than through thought.

Emotional flooding

Emotional flooding is what happens when emotional intensity rises faster than your nervous system can process it: the thinking brain goes partially offline, and you are swept into reaction — tears, shutdown, snapping, or a desperate need to escape.

Window of tolerance

The window of tolerance is the zone of arousal in which you can feel emotions and still function — think clearly, connect, choose.

Self-abandonment

Self-abandonment is the habit of overriding your own needs, feelings, limits and preferences — usually to preserve someone else's comfort or approval — until checking in with yourself stops occurring to you at all.

Before you go

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