Emotional Fire Extinguishers 101
This DBT skill asks you to change your body chemistry fast using temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing, or muscle relaxation — essentially the emotional fire extinguisher.
What is TIPP?
In the late 1700s, this reformer advocated for humane treatment of patients in asylums, removing chains and promoting dignity.
Who was Philippe Pinel?
This almond-shaped structure detects threat faster than your rational brain and can trigger panic before you realize the email wasn’t actually aggressive.
What is the amygdala?
This planet is known as the “Red Planet,” a nickname that might remind veterans of dusty deployments and red-hued desert terrain.
What is Mars?
This nerve is the main highway of the parasympathetic nervous system and plays a major role in heart rate variability and emotional regulation.
What is the vagus nerve?
This structured, present-focused therapy helps people identify and change distorted thinking patterns that influence mood and behavior.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)?
Instead of arguing with your thoughts, this ACT skill teaches you to observe them like passing cars while you stand safely on the sidewalk.
What is cognitive defusion?
This early 20th-century treatment induced seizures with electricity and, despite stigma, remains an evidence-based option for severe depression today.
What is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)?
Low activity in this reward and motivation hub is linked with anhedonia — when nothing feels rewarding, even pizza and paychecks.
What is the nucleus accumbens (ventral striatum)?
This force keeps satellites, the Moon, and military GPS systems in orbit around Earth — without it, navigation would be… adventurous.
What is gravity?
Higher HRV generally reflects greater flexibility in this system, allowing the body to shift out of survival mode and return to regulation.
What is autonomic nervous system flexibility (self-regulation capacity)?
This therapy emphasizes mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based action rather than trying to eliminate uncomfortable thoughts and feelings.
What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)?
When your mind insists “Everyone thinks I’m a failure,” this CBT technique requires gathering real evidence for and against the belief like a skeptical detective.
What is cognitive restructuring (or examining the evidence)?
Before modern medications, this surgical procedure severed connections in the frontal lobes and often caused profound personality changes.
What is a lobotomy (leucotomy)?
emotional impulses and “talk down” the amygdala — and tends to show reduced activity in mood disorders.
What is the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (or medial PFC)?
This protective magnetic shield around Earth deflects solar radiation and charged particles, acting like planetary body armor.
What is the magnetosphere?
Trauma can lower HRV by keeping this brain threat-detection center overactive, making the body interpret neutral situations as danger.
What is the amygdala?
This skills-based therapy developed by Marsha Linehan teaches distress tolerance, emotional regulation, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness.
What is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)?
This DBT distress tolerance skill encourages fully accepting reality as it is — not because you like it, but because fighting reality increases suffering.
What is radical acceptance?
This movement in the mid-20th century aimed to shift care from large institutions to community-based treatment settings.
What is deinstitutionalization?
This structure acts as the brain’s “context memory librarian,” helping distinguish past vs. present threats; chronic stress can shrink its volume and worsen depression and anxiety.
What is the hippocampus?
When the Sun releases bursts of charged particles, they can disrupt communications and GPS systems; this phenomenon is known as a solar ______.
What is a solar storm (or solar flare / coronal mass ejection)?
Slow, paced breathing around ~5–6 breaths per minute can increase HRV by stimulating this physiological reflex linking heart rate and respiration.
What is respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)?
This insight-oriented approach explores unconscious processes and early life experiences to understand present emotional struggles.
What is psychodynamic therapy?
This ACT principle suggests that meaningful action guided by personal values should continue even when anxiety, fear, or discomfort are riding shotgun.
What is committed action?
Developed by Aaron Beck in the 1960s, this therapy focuses on identifying and restructuring distorted thinking patterns.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)?
This network activates during rumination and self-focused worry, often overactive in depression when the mind won’t stop replaying life’s “greatest hits of regret.”
What is the default mode network (DMN)?
This planet has the most extensive ring system in our solar system — like cosmic perimeter security you can actually see.
What is Saturn?
This trauma-informed concept describes how the nervous system detects safety or danger outside conscious awareness, shaping defensive responses.
What is neuroception?
This therapy focuses on unconditional positive regard, empathy, and authenticity, trusting that people naturally move toward growth.
What is person-centered (Rogerian) therapy?
This DBT interpersonal effectiveness skill balances self-respect, relationship goals, and objective needs — like negotiating without becoming a doormat or a bulldozer.
What is DEAR MAN (with GIVE & FAST effectiveness skills)?
This mid-20th century psychopharmacological discovery, originally developed as an antihistamine, led to the first effective medication treatment for psychosis and transformed psychiatric hospitals worldwide.
What is chlorpromazine’s discovery and the birth of modern psychopharmacology?
(Accept: the psychopharmacology revolution)
This small but powerful brain region connects the nervous system to the endocrine system and triggers the stress response via the HPA axis.
What is the hypothalamus?
This region beyond Neptune contains icy remnants from the early solar system and is home to dwarf planets like Pluto.
What is the Kuiper Belt?
This vagus-mediated state supports connection, emotional regulation, and social engagement; trauma can reduce access to it, lowering HRV and resilience.
What is the ventral vagal state (ventral vagal complex)?
This trauma-focused approach helps individuals reprocess distressing memories using bilateral stimulation such as guided eye movements.
What is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)?
When overwhelmed, this grounding CBT/DBT strategy brings attention to the present moment by naming sensory experiences — often used to interrupt spiraling thoughts.
What is the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique (sensory grounding)?
This landmark 1963 U.S. legislation funded community mental health centers and accelerated the shift away from long-term institutionalization toward outpatient care.
What is the Community Mental Health Act (1963)?
This salience-detecting brain region helps switch between emotional reactivity and executive control; hyperactivity here is linked to heightened anxiety, threat sensitivity, and constant “something’s wrong” scanning.
What is the anterior insula (or salience network hub)?
This effect, predicted by Einstein, explains how massive objects like planets and stars warp spacetime — the same physics used to precisely synchronize GPS satellites.
What is gravitational time dilation (or general relativity effects)?
This HRV biofeedback principle trains individuals to breathe at their resonance frequency to strengthen vagal tone, improve emotional regulation, and increase resilience after trauma.
What is resonance frequency breathing (HRV biofeedback breathing)?
This therapy examines how individuals function within relational systems and patterns, often involving partners or family members to improve communication and dynamics.
What is family systems therapy (or couples/family therapy)?