VI. Glossary

  • Exposure : A process used in behavioural therapy in which you are exposed to anxiety-causing situations either in person, through images or video, writing and texting.
  • Extinguishing : you break the connection between the stressful event and situation and your typical response. For many people with anxiety, it may be avoidance, isolation or panic.
  • Generalization : you take a more positive response you learned to get over one fear or anxious situation and apply it to other similar stressful situations. For example, you learn to change your fear of travel by first dealing with your fear of buses, and eventually move on to the train, a flight, or a boat ride.
  • Discrimination : you can learn to respond differently to different types of events or situations that used to lead to anxiety.
  • Counter-conditioning : developing a new response to an event or situation that used to lead to fear, anxiety, or avoidance.
  • Behavioural Experiments : a style of behavioural therapy that uses “one-time” tests of people’s beliefs and thought patterns about an anxiety-causing event.
  • Systematic Desensitization : A form of behavioural therapy that guides people to use a relaxation response to stressful events instead of panicking.
  • Cognitive Therapy : Therapy for anxiety and other mood disorders that help clients overcome dysfunctional thinking, core beliefs, emotions or behaviour.
  • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy : A therapy that combines elements of cognitive and behavioural therapies to address the cognitive distortions and the behaviour that can result from them.
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) : A version of cognitive behavioural therapy that involves acceptance and compassion of internal experiences like negative thoughts and fears that can cause anxiety responses so that behavioural strategies can have a lasting change.
  • Exposure Therapy : A form of systematic desensitization in which exposure to a known anxiety-causing event is increased progressively in order to remove fear and panic response.
  • Behavioural Therapy : Therapy for anxiety and other mood disorders that use observation and interventions directed towards altering problem behaviours, rather than the thoughts behind them.
  • Worry Safety Behaviour : An anxious behaviour you have to make sure your fear does not come true (e.g. you may check the locks repeatedly because of a fear that you may not be safe).
  • Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) : Therapy used to address anxiety and psychological trauma in which imagery and physical responses to traumatic event are held in memory while side-to-side eye movements are introduced in order to “unlock” psychological distress and more positive views of trauma are “re-processed”.
  • Written Exposure Therapy : A style of Exposure therapy in which focus is placed on writing down in detail, the anxiety-causing event in order to process the event and reduce fear.
  • Phobias : Anxiety disorders in which irrational fears are connected with a specific event or subject (spiders, height, social settings, etc.)
  • Stressors : An event or subject that leads to stress, anxiety or panic.
  • Cognitive distortions : Inaccurate beliefs or views that foster negative moods, emotions or health.
  • Self-talk : self-statements about ourselves that can reflect your moods, feelings, or beliefs and which can account for your behaviour.