Therapy terms, in plain language.

A behavioral therapy that focuses on accepting difficult thoughts and feelings rather than fighting them, while moving toward what matters most to you.

ACT is part of the third-wave behavioral therapies, alongside DBT and mindfulness-based approaches. The core move is psychological flexibility: noticing what shows up internally without being run by it, then choosing actions aligned with your values. ACT works well for anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and the broader experience of feeling stuck in repeated patterns.

Source: Association for Contextual Behavioral Science

Work with us on this: Anxiety therapy

Read more: What is high-functioning anxiety?

The conscious or unconscious work of hiding ADHD symptoms, often through over-preparation, perfectionism, or social mimicry, usually to avoid judgment or rejection.

Masking is exhausting because it runs constantly in the background. Many adults, especially women and people of color, get diagnosed with ADHD late in life specifically because their masking was effective enough to fool teachers, employers, and even their own clinicians. The cost shows up as burnout, identity confusion, and the feeling of working twice as hard for the same results.

Work with us on this: ADHD therapy

Read more: Adult ADHD: what late diagnosis actually looks like · Rejection sensitivity in ADHD relationships

Therapy that explicitly supports a client's identity (sexual orientation, gender, neurodivergence, faith, cultural background) rather than treating it as the problem to fix.

Affirming care is a stance, not a single technique. The clinician brings actual training and ongoing learning around the identity in question, not just openness. The opposite, non-affirming care, can include conversion therapy, pathologizing identity, or quietly steering a client toward a different identity than their own. In California, conversion therapy on minors is illegal under SB 1172.

Work with us on this: LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy

Read more: Embracing your authentic self: counseling for LGBTQ+ individuals

An attachment style characterized by a strong drive for closeness paired with chronic worry about whether the connection is secure.

Anxious attachment usually develops in childhood when a caregiver was inconsistently available: sometimes warmly responsive, sometimes not, in ways that didn't track to the child's behavior. The adult version often shows up as protest behavior in relationships: pushing for closeness, scanning for signs of distance, escalating during conflict to force resolution. It's a pattern, not a personality, and it's modifiable.

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

Read more: Navigating relationships with avoidant partners · How emotional trauma shapes adult relationships

A repeating couples pattern where one partner pursues closeness while the other withdraws, with each move triggering more of the other.

The cycle isn't anyone's fault; it's a system that catches both people. The anxious partner reads the avoidant partner's pull-back as abandonment and pursues harder. The avoidant partner reads the pursuit as overwhelming and pulls back further. Couples therapy that names the cycle directly, and works with both halves at once, is what unhooks it.

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

Read more: Navigating relationships with avoidant partners · How the Gottman Method increases intimacy

Patterns of how people connect, seek closeness, and respond to distress in relationships, originally identified in research by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.

The four commonly named styles in adult attachment research are secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized (sometimes called fearful-avoidant). Styles aren't fixed traits; they shift with context, partner, and intentional work. Understanding your own and your partner's style is often the first move that makes couples therapy productive instead of just venting.

Source: American Psychological Association — Attachment

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

Read more: Navigating relationships with avoidant partners · How emotional trauma shapes adult relationships

Sue Johnson's term for a specific moment when a partner failed to be there during a critical time of need, vulnerability, or distress. The event tends to keep a relationship stuck in cycles regardless of other work until it's directly addressed.

Attachment injuries are distinct from ordinary conflict. They're moments that violate the implicit attachment assumption that a partner will be available in crisis: a hospital visit a partner skipped, silence after a miscarriage, dismissal after a job loss. Sue Johnson's EFT framework treats attachment injuries as specific therapeutic targets that need processing before broader couples work can fully take. Unprocessed injuries are often what looks like resistance in couples therapy.

Source: International Centre for Excellence in EFT

Work with us on this: EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy)

Read more: What even is EFT?

An attachment style characterized by self-reliance, discomfort with emotional dependence, and a tendency to pull back when intimacy intensifies.

Avoidant attachment usually develops when a child's bids for closeness were consistently met with distance, criticism, or impatience. The adult version often shows up as needing space during conflict, deactivating emotionally when the relationship gets serious, or feeling crowded by a partner's needs. The work isn't to become anxiously attached; it's to develop secure enough capacity to stay present with closeness when it shows up.

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

Read more: Navigating relationships with avoidant partners

A Gottman concept for the small, often subtle attempts partners make to get attention, affection, or engagement from each other. Whether a bid gets turned toward, turned away from, or turned against is one of the strongest predictors of relationship health.

The Gottmans' research showed that masters of marriage turn toward their partner's bids about 86 percent of the time, while disasters turn toward only about 33 percent. Bids are often small (a comment about the weather, a sigh, pointing something out) and easy to miss, so couples learn to overlook each other in the texture of daily life. Couples therapy that helps partners notice and respond to bids changes the daily rhythm of the relationship more than working on big-conflict skills.

Source: Gottman Institute: bids for connection

Work with us on this: Gottman Method

Read more: How the Gottman Method increases intimacy · One hour a week can save your relationship

A focus and self-regulation strategy where being in the presence of another person, whether in person, on video, or in parallel via audio, makes it easier to start, stay with, or complete a task.

Body doubling is widely used in ADHD communities to externalize accountability and work around executive function bottlenecks. The mechanism isn't pressure or judgment; it's nervous-system coregulation and a low-stakes social anchor that helps attention land. Apps like Focusmate, study-with-me streams, and ADHD coaching groups formalize what neurodivergent people have long done in libraries and coffee shops.

Work with us on this: ADHD therapy

Read more: Adult ADHD: what late diagnosis actually looks like

A brain-body trauma therapy developed by David Grand in 2003 that uses fixed eye positions ("brainspots") to access and process trauma stored in the subcortical brain.

Brainspotting grew directly out of EMDR work; Grand observed that when a client's eyes paused at a specific position during reprocessing, deeper material surfaced. The technique uses one stable eye position rather than the bilateral movement of EMDR, with the clinician often using a pointer to mark the spot. Research is newer and smaller than EMDR's evidence base, but clinical reports show effectiveness for trauma, performance anxiety, and somatic complaints. It's often well-tolerated by clients who find EMDR's bilateral stimulation too activating.

Source: Brainspotting International

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

A specific syndrome of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced sense of effectiveness, usually arising from chronic workplace stress and increasingly recognized in caregiving and parenting.

Burnout was first described by psychologist Christina Maslach and was added to the WHO's ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon in 2019. It isn't depression, though it overlaps. The hallmark is the depletion-cynicism-ineffectiveness triad, and recovery typically requires actual structural changes (workload, control, meaning) rather than just rest.

Source: WHO: burnout classification

Work with us on this: Anxiety therapy

Read more: Mental health at work · What is high-functioning anxiety?

A cognitive distortion where the mind jumps to the worst-case outcome and treats it as the likely one, often skipping the intermediate possibilities entirely.

Catastrophizing is one of the most common patterns CBT addresses, and it shows up across anxiety, depression, OCD, and chronic pain. The CBT move isn't "think positive," it's "look at the actual evidence and the actual probability." Asking yourself what the realistic range of outcomes is often defuses the catastrophic one. Mindfulness practice helps too, since catastrophic thoughts often have a felt-sense quality that mindfulness teaches you to notice without getting pulled into.

Work with us on this: Anxiety therapy

Read more: What is high-functioning anxiety?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a short-term, structured therapy that identifies the thought patterns driving distress and works to change them, alongside behavioral experiments that test those patterns against reality.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most-researched psychotherapies, with strong evidence for anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, and a range of other conditions. The core move is examining automatic thoughts that fuel emotional reactions, not replacing them with positive thinking but with more accurate thinking. It's often time-limited (8 to 20 sessions) and goal-directed.

Source: American Psychological Association: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for PTSD

Work with us on this: Anxiety therapy

Read more: CBT and sex therapy · EMDR vs CBT for trauma: which is right for you?

A pattern where one person's sense of self, mood, or worth becomes excessively dependent on another person's behavior, feelings, or approval, often paired with caretaking that crosses into self-abandonment.

The term originated in addiction-recovery literature describing partners of alcoholics, then expanded broadly into pop psychology. Modern clinical use is more cautious; what looks like "codependency" is often better described as anxious attachment, enmeshment, or a fawning trauma response. The treatment isn't to detach or set rigid boundaries, it's to recover access to your own preferences, needs, and limits inside the relationship.

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

Read more: Navigating relationships with avoidant partners

The ability to tell a clear, integrated story about your own life, including difficult or traumatic parts, that holds together rather than fragmenting under examination.

The concept comes from Daniel Siegel's work on attachment and adult development. Research using the Adult Attachment Interview shows that the strongest predictor of secure attachment in your own children isn't whether you had a happy childhood, but whether you can tell a coherent story about whatever childhood you had. Trauma therapy is partly the work of building that coherence: turning fragments and gaps into a narrative that can be held without overwhelming the person telling it.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: Narrative therapy in overcoming life's challenges

The experience of feeling joy, warmth, or happiness when watching a partner connect romantically or sexually with someone else. Sometimes called the opposite of jealousy, though most poly clinicians treat it as a separate emotion that can coexist with jealousy.

Compersion is described and valued in polyamory communities but isn't a required experience to be successfully non-monogamous. Many people in ENM relationships function well without it; some develop it over years, others never do, and that doesn't mean the structure is failing. Clinically, compersion tends to grow when the existing relationship feels secure, agreements are being respected, and the partner's NRE isn't displacing core attention.

Work with us on this: LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy

A trauma response stemming from prolonged, repeated trauma, often relational and starting in childhood, characterized by emotion regulation difficulty, negative self-concept, and difficulty in close relationships, on top of standard PTSD symptoms.

C-PTSD was added to the WHO's ICD-11 in 2019 as a distinct diagnosis from PTSD. It tends to require longer treatment than acute PTSD because the trauma shaped early development rather than disrupting an already-formed self. EMDR, IFS, and somatic therapies are common evidence-based approaches; the work usually unfolds in phases (stabilization, processing, integration) rather than linearly.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: Fawning isn't kindness: the fourth trauma response · How the nervous system responds to trauma

A pattern where sexual thoughts or behaviors feel out of control, cause significant distress, and persist despite negative consequences. Recognized in the WHO's ICD-11 as Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder; not formally listed in the DSM-5.

The clinical literature has largely moved away from the term 'sex addiction,' which AASECT does not endorse, because the addiction model imports assumptions that don't match what the research shows. Compulsive sexual behavior is a real clinical presentation, and treating it well requires distinguishing it from religious or cultural shame about sex, from non-monogamy or kink that's working for the person, and from a partner's distress about sexual behavior the client doesn't actually want to change.

Work with us on this: Sex therapy

Read more: Sex therapy 101

The nervous-system process where one person's calm or activation influences another's. Two regulated nervous systems can settle a dysregulated third, or escalate each other when both are activated.

Coregulation is foundational in attachment, parenting, and couples work. Babies coregulate with caregivers; couples coregulate during conflict or fail to; therapists coregulate with clients in session. Polyvagal theory frames it as the way our autonomic nervous systems read other nervous systems and respond. It's why a calm partner sometimes makes a stressed partner more stressed. Coregulation only works when both nervous systems perceive safety.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma · Glimmers and the nervous system

A polyamory concept describing the structural advantages an established couple holds over new partners in their relationship structure: shared finances, household, family connections, legal status, and social legitimacy.

The term came out of work by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert in More Than Two and has become widely cited in poly discourse. Naming couple privilege isn't an accusation, it's a recognition that the established relationship has built-in resources newer connections don't, and that ignoring this asymmetry tends to cause harm. ENM-affirming therapy often involves making the privilege explicit so it can be navigated together rather than imposed silently.

Work with us on this: LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy

Therapy with both partners present, focused on the relationship as the client rather than either individual.

Modern evidence-based couples therapies include the Gottman Method, EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy), and Discernment Counseling for stay-or-go conversations. Couples therapy isn't a referee match or 50/50 negotiation; it's structured work on the patterns that keep showing up between two people. The therapist's job is to make the dynamic visible enough that both partners can choose differently.

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

Read more: How couples therapy revitalizes a relationship · One hour a week can save your relationship

A skills-based therapy combining cognitive-behavioral techniques with mindfulness, originally developed by Marsha Linehan for borderline personality disorder and now used broadly for emotion regulation and self-harm.

DBT teaches four skill sets: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. It's often delivered in a structured format with individual therapy plus skills group, and has strong research support for chronic suicidality, self-harm, eating disorders, and emotion dysregulation. The dialectic is the central insight: accepting yourself as you are AND working to change.

Source: Behavioral Tech: DBT overview

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

A pattern in long-term relationships where two partners want sex at different frequencies, in different ways, or at different times. The most common presenting concern in couples sex therapy.

Desire discrepancy is normal in most long-term relationships; it becomes a problem when the gap is causing distress, withdrawal, or repeated injury. The clinical work involves understanding each partner's actual desire style (often responsive vs spontaneous), identifying brakes in the responsive partner, and rebuilding initiation patterns that work for both. Most cases respond well to 8 to 16 sessions of sex therapy.

Work with us on this: Sex therapy

Read more: Dead bedrooms and the roommate phase · Responsive vs spontaneous desire

A Bowen family systems concept describing the capacity to maintain a clear sense of self (thoughts, feelings, values) while staying emotionally connected to others, especially under pressure.

Murray Bowen developed differentiation as the central concept in his family systems theory in the 1960s. Higher differentiation means you can disagree with a parent without going to war or going silent; stay close to a partner in conflict without merging or fleeing; tolerate other people's distress without rescuing or fixing. It's a developmental capacity, not a personality trait, and it's a major focus of couples therapy with chronically enmeshed dynamics.

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

A short-term, structured approach (typically 1 to 5 sessions) for couples where one partner is leaning out and the other wants to stay, designed to help both partners reach clarity before committing to a direction.

Discernment counseling was developed by Bill Doherty at the University of Minnesota. The goal isn't to save the marriage; the goal is clarity. Couples leave with one of three outcomes: continue as-is, divorce, or commit to six months of intensive couples therapy. It's the right tool when traditional couples therapy isn't working because one partner has already half-left.

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

Read more: Discernment counseling: when one partner wants out

The fourth and most complex adult attachment style, sometimes called fearful-avoidant. About 5 to 10 percent of adults in general samples and a much higher percentage in trauma-survivor and clinical samples. Characterized by contradictory pulls toward and away from closeness, often within the same hour.

Disorganized attachment develops when a caregiver was simultaneously the source of comfort and the source of fear or unpredictability, often in the context of childhood trauma or a parent's own unresolved trauma. The child couldn't develop a coherent strategy because both reaching and withdrawing felt dangerous. The adult version often shows alongside complex PTSD. Mary Main, Erik Hesse, and Giovanni Liotti are among the researchers who developed and extended the concept. Therapy usually requires trauma-informed work alongside attachment work; treating disorganized attachment as straightforward insecurity misses the trauma layer underneath.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma · Fawning isn't kindness: the fourth trauma response

A protective nervous-system response where conscious awareness disconnects from the body, the present moment, the surroundings, or the self. Ranges from mild (zoning out) to severe (dissociative identity disorder).

Dissociation sits on a spectrum. Daydreaming and highway hypnosis live at the mild end; full depersonalization, derealization, and dissociative identity disorder live at the clinical end. It's particularly common in trauma survivors because dissociating was once the only available way to survive an unbearable experience. Treating dissociation usually involves slow, paced trauma work (often EMDR, IFS, or sensorimotor) that doesn't push the system past its window of tolerance.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma

A model of sexual response, popularized by Emily Nagoski, that frames desire as the balance between sexual accelerators (what turns you on) and sexual brakes (what turns you off), both of which are individually unique and contextually variable.

The dual control model replaces the older linear arousal-desire-orgasm model with something more accurate: most people don't have constant accelerators or brakes; they respond to context. Sex therapy using this frame focuses less on increasing accelerators and more on identifying and reducing brakes: stress, distraction, body image, relationship friction, unprocessed history.

Source: Emily Nagoski: Come As You Are

Work with us on this: Sex therapy

Read more: Dead bedrooms and the roommate phase

A research-supported phenomenon where adults who had insecure childhood attachment develop secure attachment patterns later in life through corrective relational experiences and intentional inner work.

Earned secure attachment is hopeful evidence that attachment isn't destiny. It typically develops through some combination of long-term therapy, a securely-attached partner or close friend, or significant insight work that lets someone tell a coherent narrative of their own history. The defining feature isn't a perfect childhood; it's the capacity to make sense of an imperfect one.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How emotional trauma shapes adult relationships

An attachment-based couples therapy developed by Sue Johnson, focused on identifying the negative emotional cycle in a relationship and helping partners create new, secure patterns of connection.

EFT has some of the strongest outcome research in couples therapy, with around 70 to 75 percent of couples moving from distress to recovery in randomized trials. The work moves through three stages: de-escalating the cycle, restructuring interactions to allow vulnerability and responsiveness, and consolidating new patterns. It works particularly well for couples stuck in the anxious-avoidant cycle.

Source: International Centre for Excellence in EFT

Work with us on this: EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy)

Read more: What even is EFT?

An evidence-based trauma therapy that uses bilateral stimulation (typically guided eye movements, taps, or sounds) to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories so they're integrated rather than stuck.

EMDR was developed by Francine Shapiro in 1987 and is now considered a first-line treatment for PTSD by the WHO, APA, and Department of Veterans Affairs. Sessions move through eight phases, with the reprocessing phase being the work most people associate with EMDR. It often works in fewer sessions than traditional talk therapy for trauma, particularly for single-event traumas, though complex trauma typically needs longer.

Source: EMDR International Association

Work with us on this: EMDR therapy

Read more: EMDR unveiled: a guided journey through healing · EMDR vs CBT for trauma: which is right for you?

An umbrella term for relationship structures where all partners knowingly and willingly engage in romantic, sexual, or emotional connections with more than one person.

ENM includes polyamory, open relationships, swinging, and relationship anarchy, among other configurations. The defining feature is consent and transparency, which distinguishes ENM from cheating. Research from Amy Moors, Terri Conley, and others suggests ENM relationships show comparable satisfaction, attachment, and functioning to monogamous relationships. ENM-affirming therapy means a clinician treats the structure of your relationship as neutral and works the patterns inside it.

Work with us on this: LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy

A family or relationship pattern where the boundaries between people are insufficiently differentiated, so one person's feelings, needs, or identity routinely override another's, often in the name of love or closeness.

Enmeshment differs from healthy closeness in that it requires individuals to give up internal autonomy to maintain the connection. Common signs include a parent treating an adult child as their primary confidant, a partner who reads any difference of opinion as rejection, or a family system where one member's distress immediately becomes everyone's emergency. Untangling enmeshment is slow relational work; the goal is interdependence, not detachment.

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

The set of mental processes that allow someone to plan, focus, hold information in working memory, regulate emotions, switch tasks, and follow through on goals. Most disrupted in ADHD, autism, traumatic brain injury, and some forms of depression.

Executive function isn't a single ability; it's a cluster including working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, planning, and self-monitoring. Russell Barkley's research at UMass Chan Medical School established that ADHD is fundamentally an executive-function disorder, not an attention disorder per se. The clinical implication is that "try harder" doesn't fix executive-function gaps; external scaffolding (calendars, body doubling, breaking tasks down) does.

Source: CHADD: executive function and ADHD

Work with us on this: ADHD therapy

Read more: Adult ADHD: what late diagnosis actually looks like

A trauma response, the fourth one alongside fight, flight, and freeze, characterized by appeasing or merging with a perceived threat as a way to stay safe.

Fawning was named by Pete Walker in his work on complex PTSD. It looks like agreeableness, peacekeeping, or accommodation, but the root is threat detection rather than kindness. Fawning often develops in childhoods where conflict, anger, or unhappiness in a caregiver was dangerous to be around. Recognizing fawning is usually the first step toward recovering access to your own preferences.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: Fawning isn't kindness: the fourth trauma response

The body's internal experience of an emotion or memory, prior to language. A foundational concept in somatic and body-based therapies like Focusing, Somatic Experiencing, and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.

Eugene Gendlin coined the term in his Focusing work in the 1970s, describing the bodily knowing that's often more accurate than what the mind reports. Somatic therapies use the felt sense as the entry point to processing trauma, because the body usually holds what cognition has dissociated or rationalized away. Tracking the felt sense is the somatic equivalent of free association in psychoanalysis.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

A Gottman concept describing the physiological overwhelm that takes over during conflict, where heart rate exceeds about 100 BPM, cortisol spikes, cognitive narrowing sets in, and constructive engagement becomes impossible.

When a partner is flooded, they aren't capable of repair attempts, perspective-taking, or nuanced listening; the body is in fight-or-flight mode, not conversation mode. The Gottman repair for flooding is a structured 20 to 30 minute break with explicit return time; the time needs to actually be used to physiologically settle, not to rehearse arguments. Couples often learn to spot the early signs of flooding in themselves before it fully takes over.

Source: Gottman Institute: physiological flooding

Work with us on this: Gottman Method

Read more: Conflict isn't the problem, communication is

A Gottman term for the four communication patterns most strongly predictive of relationship breakdown: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Contempt is the most damaging of the four.

The Gottmans' longitudinal research can predict divorce with about 93 percent accuracy partly by counting the frequency and intensity of the Four Horsemen during a 15-minute couple conversation. Each Horseman has a specific antidote: criticism is countered by softened startup, contempt by building fondness and admiration, defensiveness by accepting some responsibility, and stonewalling by physiological self-soothing during a break. Naming the Four Horsemen with clients is often the first move in Gottman-method couples therapy.

Source: Gottman Institute: Four Horsemen

Work with us on this: Gottman Method

Read more: The Four Horsemen explained · How the Gottman Method increases intimacy

A specific manipulation tactic where one person systematically undermines another's perception of reality, whether by denying events, dismissing emotions, or rewriting history, until the target doubts their own judgment.

The term comes from the 1944 film Gaslight. Gaslighting is a pattern, not a single statement, and it's a hallmark of psychologically abusive relationships. The word is now used loosely in pop culture for any disagreement; clinically, it specifically requires the systematic, intentional erosion of someone's ability to trust their own perception.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: It Ends With Us: domestic violence and EMDR healing

Small, often fleeting moments where the nervous system registers safety, warmth, or connection. The opposite of triggers, named by Deb Dana in her polyvagal-informed clinical work.

Glimmers became popular on TikTok as "little moments of joy," but that softens what the concept actually is. A glimmer is specifically a polyvagal cue of safety, something that nudges the nervous system toward ventral vagal regulation: eye contact with a barista who smiles, a particular pattern of light, a friend's voice. Trauma narrows the capacity to notice glimmers; clinical work involves rebuilding that capacity deliberately.

Source: Deb Dana, Rhythm of Regulation

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: Glimmers and the nervous system

A research-based couples therapy developed by John and Julie Gottman, drawing on four decades of observational research on what differentiates happy couples from unhappy ones.

The Gottman Method gives couples tools for managing conflict, building friendship, and creating shared meaning. Core concepts include the Four Horsemen (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling), bids for connection, and the Sound Relationship House. It's strongest as a structured, skills-based approach for couples who want concrete tools alongside the emotional work.

Source: Gottman Institute: research overview

Work with us on this: Gottman Method

Read more: How the Gottman Method increases intimacy · One hour a week can save your relationship

An informal term for chronic anxiety that hides behind achievement, productivity, and the appearance of having it all together. It's often missed by clinicians because the person looks fine on paper.

High-functioning anxiety isn't a formal DSM diagnosis. It usually overlaps with generalized anxiety disorder, perfectionism, or trauma-driven over-functioning. The hallmark is a high external success rate paired with internal exhaustion, sleep problems, irritability, and persistent rumination, often alongside the feeling that slowing down is dangerous.

Work with us on this: Anxiety therapy

Read more: What is high-functioning anxiety? · Mental health at work

A heightened, sustained state of alertness to threat where the nervous system is constantly scanning for danger. A core symptom of PTSD and complex trauma.

Hypervigilance was protective in the original threat context (it kept the person alive), but it doesn't downshift when the threat is over. Adults who grew up in unpredictable or dangerous homes often describe always being "on," reading micro-expressions, anticipating problems, feeling exhausted by social spaces. Trauma therapy that addresses hypervigilance focuses on widening the window of tolerance and teaching the nervous system, slowly, that safety is now reliably present.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma

A therapy developed by Richard Schwartz that frames the mind as containing distinct parts (protectors, exiles, managers, firefighters) alongside a core Self that has the capacity to lead all of them.

IFS is a non-pathologizing model: every part has a positive intent, even the parts that look destructive. The work is to build relationship between the Self and each part rather than getting rid of any of them. IFS is increasingly used alongside EMDR and somatic work for complex trauma, and it's gentler than many trauma approaches because the protective parts get attended to first.

Source: IFS Institute

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma

A clinical stance that treats kink, BDSM, and fetish interests as healthy, consensual variations of human sexuality rather than pathology, and brings actual training to working with kink-identified clients.

Kink-affirming therapy is distinct from kink-tolerant therapy. Tolerant means a clinician won't moralize about it; affirming means they understand the structures (negotiation, aftercare, scene dynamics, power exchange in long-term relationships) well enough to work with them clinically when they show up. The Kink Clinical Practice Guidelines from the Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance is the closest thing to a formal standard.

Work with us on this: Sex therapy

Read more: Sex therapy 101

The developmental transition into motherhood, equivalent in scope to adolescence. Identity reorganizes, the body changes, relationships shift, and a new self emerges over months and years, not a single event.

The term was coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s and revived by reproductive psychologist Aurelie Athan at Columbia in the 2010s. Matrescence is distinct from postpartum mental illness, though they can overlap. Naming the transition often helps new mothers stop pathologizing the disorientation, ambivalence, and identity grief that come with becoming someone new.

Source: Aurelie Athan, matrescence research at Columbia

Work with us on this: Women's therapy

Read more: Matrescence: the word for what's happening when you become a mother

Your partner's partner. The other person in your polycule that you're connected to indirectly through a shared partner, rather than dating directly.

Different polycules handle metamour relationships differently. In kitchen-table polyamory, metamours often know each other well and socialize together. In parallel polyamory, metamours may not interact or even meet. Neither configuration is inherently healthier; what matters is that everyone consents to the structure and that the structure fits the people in it.

Work with us on this: LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy

The practice of paying attention to the present moment, on purpose, without judgment. It's a foundational skill in many modern therapies and a stand-alone clinical intervention with strong evidence for anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.

Modern mindfulness in clinical settings traces back to Jon Kabat-Zinn's MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) protocol developed in 1979. It's not relaxation, religion, or emptying the mind; it's attentional training. Most therapeutic uses involve short daily practice (5 to 20 minutes) and structured exercises during sessions.

Work with us on this: Anxiety therapy

Read more: Mindfulness techniques and sex therapy · Glimmers and the nervous system

A Gottman concept describing the state in a distressed relationship where neutral or even positive partner behavior gets perceived as negative, a global negative filter that takes hold once conflict has gone on long enough.

The opposite is positive sentiment override, where partners give each other the benefit of the doubt by default. Negative sentiment override is one of the strongest predictors that a couple is heading toward separation in the Gottmans' research, because it changes how every interaction lands. Even genuine repair attempts get read as manipulation or insincerity. Couples therapy in this state isn't just about communication skills; it's about rebuilding enough goodwill that repair attempts can be received again.

Source: Gottman Institute: research overview

Work with us on this: Gottman Method

Read more: Conflict isn't the problem, communication is

The intense early-relationship state of falling, often lasting six to eighteen months, characterized by hyper-focus on the new partner, dopamine and norepinephrine activation, and a temporarily muted experience of the rest of life.

NRE happens in monogamous relationships too, but the term came out of polyamory communities because of how visible the dynamic becomes when an existing partner has to navigate it. Helen Fisher's fMRI research at Rutgers established that early-stage romantic love activates the brain's dopamine reward system in patterns similar to addiction, which is why NRE can't be fully willed away during the period it's active.

Work with us on this: LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy

In Internal Family Systems, a part is a distinct inner sub-personality with its own perspective, feelings, memories, and motivations. Every person has many parts, and each one carries positive intent, even the parts that look destructive.

IFS sorts parts into three broad roles: managers (who try to keep daily life running and prevent harm), firefighters (who jump in when difficult feelings break through, often with intense or impulsive responses), and exiles (the vulnerable, often younger parts that hold pain and have been locked away for protection). The work of IFS isn't to eliminate any part; it's to help each one unburden the extreme role it's been carrying so the Self can lead.

Source: IFS Institute

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

An internal demand for flawlessness, often paired with harsh self-criticism and avoidance of tasks that risk failure. Distinct from healthy striving in that the standards are unreachable and the cost is exhausting.

Clinically, perfectionism is associated with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and high-functioning anxiety. Brené Brown's research distinguishes perfectionism from healthy achievement-seeking: perfectionism is fundamentally about avoiding shame, while striving is about pursuing growth. Treatment usually involves examining where the standards originated, building tolerance for imperfect outcomes, and processing the shame that perfectionism is trying to outrun.

Work with us on this: Anxiety therapy

Read more: What is high-functioning anxiety?

A form of ethical non-monogamy involving multiple loving relationships, with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

Polyamory differs from open relationships (which are usually a couple structure with outside sexual partners) in centering emotional and romantic connection across multiple partners, not just sexual access. Configurations vary widely (hierarchical with primary plus secondaries, non-hierarchical, kitchen-table, parallel), and the structure that works for any given polycule depends on the people in it. Research from Amy Moors and others shows comparable relationship satisfaction and attachment health in polyamorous and monogamous relationships when consent and communication are present.

Work with us on this: LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy

A polyamorous community term for the state of having reached your emotional, time, or logistical capacity for romantic partners. Not closed to non-monogamy, but not currently looking to add new connections.

Polysaturation is the polyamorous answer to 'are you open?' Yes, the structure is open; no, the bandwidth is not. Naming the limit honestly tends to protect existing relationships from overextension and prospective new connections from being underserved. The term is community-coined rather than clinical, but it shows up often in ENM-affirming therapy because saturation patterns track closely with relationship distress and time-management strain.

Work with us on this: LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy

A framework developed by Stephen Porges describing how the autonomic nervous system organizes social engagement, fight-or-flight, and shutdown responses through different branches of the vagus nerve.

Polyvagal theory is influential in trauma therapy because it gives clinicians and clients a shared language for nervous system states: ventral vagal (safe and social), sympathetic (fight or flight), and dorsal vagal (freeze/shutdown). Some details of the theory are debated in neuroscience, but the clinical applications, particularly around co-regulation and safety, have been widely adopted.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma · Glimmers and the nervous system

Positive psychological change that can emerge after trauma, distinct from resilience. Includes a deeper sense of personal strength, closer relationships, greater appreciation for life, spiritual development, and shifted priorities.

Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun developed the concept in the 1990s through research showing that many trauma survivors report meaningful growth alongside (not instead of) their suffering. Post-traumatic growth doesn't justify trauma or mean it was "meant to happen." It describes what some survivors do with what they've been through. Trauma therapy can support growth without pressuring it.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Psychological harm caused by religious teachings, practices, or community dynamics, particularly in high-control or fundamentalist environments. Often shows up as anxiety, depression, identity confusion, sexual shame, or PTSD symptoms after leaving the faith.

Religious trauma is increasingly recognized clinically, with Marlene Winell coining "Religious Trauma Syndrome" to describe a cluster of symptoms common after leaving high-control religion. The therapy work involves processing specific traumatic experiences, rebuilding access to your own moral and sexual agency, and grieving the community, certainty, or relationship with the divine that may have been lost. Therapists trained in religious trauma understand the difference between someone leaving faith and someone deconstructing within faith.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Any action either partner takes during conflict to de-escalate, soften, or reset the interaction: a joke, an apology, a touch, naming what's happening, asking to start over.

Repair attempts are one of the strongest research-backed predictors of long-term relationship success. The Gottmans' research found that the difference between Masters and Disasters of relationships isn't whether they fight or how often they fight; it's whether their repair attempts land. Building a couple's capacity to make and receive repair attempts is one of the most useful pieces of work in couples therapy.

Source: Gottman Institute: research overview

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

Read more: Conflict isn't the problem, communication is · How the Gottman Method increases intimacy

A foundational technique in trauma therapy where the clinician helps the client identify and strengthen internal and external sources of safety, stability, and capacity before doing memory-processing work.

Resourcing comes from somatic experiencing and is central to most trauma modalities. Resources can be sensory (a particular place that feels safe), interpersonal (a person you trust), somatic (a posture or breath pattern), or symbolic (an image or memory). The clinical principle is that you can't process what you can't tolerate, so resourcing comes before the difficult work and gets returned to repeatedly. Skipping resourcing is one of the most common causes of re-traumatization in trauma therapy.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

A normal style of sexual desire that arrives after sexual context is already in motion, in response to touch, attention, or stimulation, rather than appearing spontaneously beforehand.

Emily Nagoski's work, drawing on the dual control model, popularized the responsive vs spontaneous desire framework. Research suggests around 30 percent of women, 5 percent of men, and a meaningful share of non-binary people experience desire primarily responsively. Responsive desire is not low desire; it's a different starting point. The clinical implication is that initiating from a felt urge of "I'm in the mood" is the wrong measure for responsive-desire partners. They get in the mood when the conditions are right.

Source: Emily Nagoski, Come As You Are

Work with us on this: Sex therapy

Read more: Dead bedrooms and the roommate phase · Responsive vs spontaneous desire

An intense, often physically painful emotional response to perceived rejection, criticism, or failure. Most commonly described in adults with ADHD, though not formally part of the DSM.

RSD was clinically described by William Dodson and is now widely recognized in the ADHD community. The internal experience is often disproportionate to the external trigger: minutes of anguish over a slightly delayed text reply. It tends to drive both perfectionism (avoid the pain by never failing) and avoidance (avoid the situations that might trigger it). Treatment typically combines ADHD-affirming therapy, sometimes medication, and skills for catching and naming the cascade as it begins.

Work with us on this: ADHD therapy

Read more: Rejection sensitivity in ADHD relationships · Adult ADHD: what late diagnosis actually looks like

Repetitively cycling through the same upsetting thoughts, worries, or memories without movement toward resolution. A maintaining factor in depression, anxiety, and OCD.

Rumination differs from problem-solving in that it doesn't generate new information or move toward action; it keeps replaying. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema's research established rumination as one of the strongest predictors of depression in women. Effective treatment usually combines cognitive work (catching the rumination and redirecting), behavioral activation (doing something rather than thinking about it), and mindfulness (noticing the pattern without getting pulled deeper into it).

Work with us on this: Anxiety therapy

Read more: What is high-functioning anxiety?

The attachment style characterized by comfort with both closeness and autonomy. Around 55 to 60 percent of adults in research samples score as secure. The goal of most attachment-focused therapy, not as a personality trait but as a set of nervous-system patterns that make adult relationships work.

Secure attachment usually develops when a primary caregiver was reliably responsive enough to a child's bids for connection. The adult expression includes the capacity to ask for support and accept it, give support without losing yourself, disagree without it threatening the bond, and repair after conflict rather than retreat or escalate. Stress doesn't typically trigger a full-blown attachment crisis. The research on earned secure attachment shows that secure patterns can develop in adulthood through corrective relational experience, particularly long-term therapy or a securely attached partner.

Source: The Attachment Project: secure attachment overview

Work with us on this: Couples therapy

Read more: Navigating relationships with avoidant partners

An IFS term for the state of being grounded in your core Self (calm, curious, compassionate, courageous) rather than blended with a part that's running the show.

Richard Schwartz identified eight qualities of Self that emerge when no part is dominant: calmness, curiosity, compassion, confidence, courage, clarity, creativity, and connectedness (the '8 Cs'). Being Self-led doesn't mean parts go away; it means they trust the Self to take the lead. Therapy in the IFS model is largely the work of helping parts step back enough that Self-leadership becomes possible, then letting Self lead the unburdening of the parts that have been carrying the most.

Source: IFS Institute

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

A foundational sex therapy technique developed by Masters and Johnson in the 1960s, a structured series of touch exercises that progressively rebuild physical and emotional intimacy by deliberately removing performance pressure.

Sensate focus typically begins with non-sexual touch, attention to sensation rather than outcome, and a clear agreement about what's on and off the table at each stage. The exercises are done at home, never in session. It remains one of the most evidence-based interventions in sex therapy, particularly for couples dealing with desire discrepancy, performance anxiety, or post-trauma reintegration.

Work with us on this: Sex therapy

Read more: Communication and sex therapy · Sex therapy 101

A body-based trauma therapy developed by Pat Ogden that integrates cognitive, emotional, and somatic processing, with particular attention to how trauma is stored in posture, movement, and habitual body patterns.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is built on attachment theory, neuroscience, and trauma research. It's structured in three phases: stabilization (resourcing the nervous system), processing (working with traumatic memory through the body), and integration. It overlaps with somatic experiencing in working bottom-up rather than top-down, with particular attention to the way movement and posture carry trauma history.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma

A state where input from one or more senses exceeds what the nervous system can comfortably process, leading to shutdown, irritability, anxiety, or the need to flee the environment.

Sensory overload is particularly common in autism, ADHD, and PTSD, though anyone can experience it. The autonomic nervous system reads the input as threat, even when the source is benign (a crowded restaurant, fluorescent lights, multiple conversations at once). Recovery usually requires reducing stimulation deliberately rather than pushing through. Therapy work involves recognizing early signs and building permission to exit overwhelming environments before shutdown sets in.

Work with us on this: ADHD therapy

A specialized form of psychotherapy that addresses sexual concerns (desire, pleasure, pain, performance, disconnect) with a clinician specifically trained to treat sex as a normal, healthy part of human experience.

Sex therapy is talk therapy, not anything physical with the therapist. Common concerns include low or mismatched desire, erectile or arousal difficulty, painful intercourse, performance anxiety, sexual trauma recovery, and questions of identity, kink, or non-monogamy. The most rigorous certification is through AASECT, though many excellent sex therapists work without it. California allows any licensed therapist to do sex therapy; the differentiator is specialty training, not licensure.

Work with us on this: Sex therapy

Read more: Sex therapy 101 · How sex therapy enhances your relationship

A reduced therapy fee offered to clients who can't afford a clinician's standard rate, set either by income, by hardship, or by negotiation at the consult.

Sliding-scale spots in California vary by therapist; some advertise them, many don't. The cleanest way to ask is at the free consult: name that the standard rate isn't in your budget and ask whether sliding scale is possible. Worst case, the therapist refers you to someone whose rates fit; best case, they make it work. Open Path Collective is a network specifically built around sliding-scale rates of $30 to $80 per session.

Work with us on this: How much does therapy cost in California?

A form of polyamory where the practitioner doesn't seek or maintain a primary or hierarchical partnership, by intention rather than circumstance.

Solo polyamory is distinct from being single between relationships. The person is in ongoing, often multiple, romantic and sexual relationships, but doesn't share a household, finances, or hierarchical priority with any one partner. The structure is sometimes a relief from earlier merger-based relationships and sometimes about preserving autonomy as a long-term value. The work in therapy often centers on processing cultural pressure toward escalation (move-in, marry, merge) and being clear about preferences rather than apologizing for them.

Work with us on this: LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy

A body-based trauma therapy developed by Peter Levine that works with the felt sense (internal body sensation) to discharge trapped traumatic activation from the nervous system.

Somatic Experiencing is one of the foundational somatic trauma therapies and influenced both sensorimotor psychotherapy and modern trauma-informed care broadly. Levine's central insight came from observing wild animals: prey animals who survive a near-death encounter shake, breathe, and discharge, and don't develop chronic trauma. Humans, with cortical capacity to override that discharge, often carry the activation. SE works to allow the discharge to complete, gradually and titrated, so the nervous system can settle.

Source: Somatic Experiencing International

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma

A style of sexual desire where wanting shows up before anything sexual is happening, as a thought, fantasy, or pull toward a partner. The cultural script assumes this is what desire is supposed to feel like for everyone.

Emily Nagoski's research and clinical work distinguished spontaneous from responsive desire, naming both as normal. Spontaneous desire is more often described in men but appears across genders. The clinical issue isn't whether someone has spontaneous or responsive desire; it's whether the partners in a relationship understand and accommodate the difference. Mistaking responsive desire for absence of desire is one of the most common misreads in long-term couples.

Source: Emily Nagoski, Come As You Are

Work with us on this: Sex therapy

Read more: Dead bedrooms and the roommate phase

One of the Gottmans' Four Horsemen, a conflict response where one partner shuts down, withdraws, or stops engaging entirely, often as a way of self-protecting against feeling overwhelmed.

Stonewalling isn't always intentional unkindness. The body usually goes into physiological flooding before the shutdown (heart rate over 100, cortisol spike, cognitive narrowing), and the withdrawal is the nervous system's attempt to recover. The Gottman repair for stonewalling is a structured 20-minute break with explicit return time, used proactively before flooding becomes total.

Work with us on this: Gottman Method

Read more: Conflict isn't the problem, communication is

The delivery of clinical services via secure video, phone, or messaging. For therapy, this has been the dominant mode in California since 2020 and is now the default for most private-practice clinicians.

California law allows licensed therapists to see any client physically located in California, regardless of where the therapist is. Outcome research consistently shows telehealth psychotherapy is comparable in effectiveness to in-person work for most concerns. The right platform is HIPAA-compliant with a signed BAA. Common options include Zoom for Healthcare, SimplePractice, Doxy.me, and Google Meet (under Google Workspace BAA).

Work with us on this: Online therapy

The collaborative working relationship between therapist and client, particularly the felt sense of trust, agreement on goals, and shared understanding of the work. The strongest predictor of therapy outcome across modalities.

Meta-analyses by Bruce Wampold and others consistently show that the therapeutic alliance accounts for more variance in outcome than the specific modality used. Choosing a therapist who feels right is not a luxury; it's a clinical variable. If the alliance isn't building by session four or five, naming that with the therapist (or considering a switch) is often the right call rather than waiting longer.

Work with us on this: Finding the right therapist

The ADHD pattern of perceiving time inaccurately: a task that takes an hour feels like ten minutes, a deadline a week away feels distant until suddenly it's tomorrow, and getting somewhere on time takes significantly more cognitive effort than for neurotypical brains.

Russell Barkley's research framed time blindness as one of the core executive-function deficits in ADHD. The internal sense of duration, sequencing, and how long until something happens is disrupted. Practical accommodations (visual timers, calendar blocks, external reminders) usually work better than internal discipline. Treatment also involves de-shaming: time blindness isn't laziness or disrespect, it's a neurological feature.

Source: CHADD: about ADHD

Work with us on this: ADHD therapy

Read more: Adult ADHD: what late diagnosis actually looks like

A strong emotional attachment that forms between a person and someone who has harmed them, often involving cycles of intermittent reinforcement (kindness followed by harm followed by kindness).

Trauma bonds are common in abusive relationships, cult dynamics, and high-control religious environments. The neurochemistry is real: intermittent positive reinforcement produces stronger attachment than consistent positive reinforcement, which is why escaping a trauma bond is often more difficult than leaving a steadily neutral relationship. Therapy work involves processing the original trauma, recognizing the pattern, and slowly rebuilding capacity to receive consistent care without distrust.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: It Ends With Us: domestic violence and EMDR healing

A clinical stance that recognizes how widespread trauma is, builds safety into the therapy environment, and avoids practices that can re-traumatize clients, without requiring trauma to be the focus of the work.

Trauma-informed care is broader than trauma therapy itself. It shapes how a clinician asks questions, paces sessions, holds power dynamics, and responds to dysregulation. SAMHSA's framework names six principles: safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural awareness. Trauma-informed isn't the same as trauma-trained. The first is a stance, the second is specific clinical training.

Source: SAMHSA: concept of trauma and trauma-informed approach

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Stimuli (sights, sounds, smells, conversations, situations) that activate a trauma response by reminding the nervous system of past unresolved experience.

The word has been diluted in pop culture to mean any uncomfortable reminder. Clinically, a trigger produces a disproportionate physiological response (racing heart, dissociation, flashback, panic) because the nervous system reads the present as the past. Treating triggers means processing the underlying memory (often through EMDR, IFS, or somatic work) rather than avoiding the trigger forever.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma · Fawning isn't kindness: the fourth trauma response

A concept developed by Dan Siegel describing the zone of nervous system arousal where you can think, feel, and connect at the same time. Outside that window, you're either hyperaroused (panic, rage, flooding) or hypoaroused (numb, dissociated, shut down).

Trauma narrows the window. Healing is partly about widening it: increasing the range of stress your nervous system can hold while staying connected to yourself and others. Most modern trauma therapies (EMDR, IFS, somatic experiencing, sensorimotor) explicitly work with the window, pacing the work to keep clients in it as much as possible.

Work with us on this: Trauma therapy

Read more: How the nervous system responds to trauma