Definitions

Definitions

Medical jargon can be confusing! Throughout my blog, you’ll find I sometimes mention certain medical conditions that can be caused by trauma experienced, as well as certain types of treatment that are often used to help people with those traumas and resulting conditions. For easier referencing, I compile those terms and definitions here and will continue to update any time I make a new reference to something.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

A condition of persistent mental and emotional stress occurring as a result of injury or severe psychological shock, typically involving disturbance of sleep and constant vivid recall of the experience, with dulled responses to others and to the outside world.

Source: Oxford Languages

Anxiety

A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.


A nervous disorder characterized by a state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension, typically with compulsive behavior or panic attacks.

Source: Oxford Languages

Bipolar and

Bi-polar disorder

Bi-polar Disorder:


1) having or relating to two poles or extremities."a sharply bipolar division of affluent and underclass"


2)  (of psychiatric illness) characterized by both manic and depressive episodes, or manic ones only.

Source: Oxford Languages

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is a mental illness that brings severe high and low moods and changes in sleep, energy, thinking, and behavior.


People who have bipolar disorder can have periods in which they feel overly happy and energized and other periods of feeling very sad, hopeless, and sluggish.


In between those periods, they usually feel normal. You can think of the highs and the lows as two "poles" of mood, which is why it's called "bipolar" disorder.

Source: Web MD

Brainspotting

According to therapist and creator David Grand, the direction in which people look or gaze can affect the way they feel.


During brainspotting, therapists help people position their eyes in ways that enable them to target sources of negative emotion. With the aid of a pointer, trained brainspotting therapists slowly guide the eyes of people in therapy across their field of vision to find appropriate “brainspots,” with a brainspot being an eye position that activates a traumatic memory or painful emotion.


Practitioners of the procedure believe it allows therapists to access emotions on a deeper level and target the physical effects of trauma.

Source: Good Therapy

A powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms.


Brainspotting is a simultaneous form of diagnosis and treatment, enhanced with Biolateral sound, which is deep, direct, and powerful yet focused and containing.

Dissociation

Dissociation is a disconnection between a person’s sensory experience, thoughts, sense of self, or personal history.


People may feel a sense of unreality and lose their connection to time, place, and identity.

Depression

A constant feeling of sadness and loss of interest, which stops you doing your normal activities

A mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems.


You may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and sometimes you may feel as if life isn’t worth living.

Source: Mayo Clinic

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a common type of talk therapy (psychotherapy). You work with a mental health counselor (psychotherapist or therapist) in a structured way, attending a limited number of sessions.


CBT helps you become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking so you can view challenging situations more clearly and respond to them in a more effective way.

Source: Mayo Clinic

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a psychotherapy therapy technique that utilizes sensory input such as eye movements to help people recover from trauma.

During EMDR therapy sessions, you relive traumatic or triggering experiences in brief doses while the therapist directs your eye movements.

Source: Health Line

(Grand Mal) Tonic-Clonic Seizure

A tonic-clonic seizure makes a person’s whole body twitch and jerk, then it causes them to become unconscious.


The condition is also known by an older term “Grand mal seizure.”

Epilepsy

A central nervous system (neurological) disorder in which brain activity becomes abnormal, causing seizures or periods of unusual behavior, sensations, and sometimes loss of awareness.

Source: Mayo Clinic

Trauma

Any type of distressing event or experience that can have an impact on a person’s ability to cope and function.


Trauma can result in emotional, physical, and psychological harm.

An emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical.


Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea.

Source: APA.org

Narcissism

Selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.

Source: Oxford Languages

A mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.


But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism.”

Source: Mayo Clinic

Hypervigilance

A state of heightened alertness accompanied by behavior that aims to prevent danger.

A state of being constantly tense, on guard, and exceptionally aware of your environment.

Schizophrenia

A long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.


(In general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements.

Source: Oxford Languages

A chronic brain disorder that affects less than one percent of the U.S. population. When schizophrenia is active, symptoms can include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, trouble with thinking and lack of motivation.

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