Buzzwords & Therapy Speak
〰️
Buzzwords & Therapy Speak 〰️
What is Trauma?
Trauma is the lasting impact of an experience that someone found physically or emotionally harmful or threatening. It can come from a single event, like a serious accident, or repeated experiences, like abuse or neglect. Trauma can affect how someone feels, thinks, behaves, or relates to others, sometimes long after the experience has ended.
What is PTSD?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that can develop after someone experiences or witnesses a traumatic event. It can cause unwanted memories, nightmares, avoidance of reminders, or feeling constantly on guard. These symptoms last longer than a month and interfere with everyday life. Not everyone who experiences trauma develops PTSD.
What is Depression?
Depression is a mental health condition that affects a person's mood, thoughts, energy, and daily life. Someone experiencing depression may feel sad, empty, irritable, or lose interest in things they normally enjoy. Unlike an occasional bad day, depression involves symptoms that persist and can make everyday activities more difficult.
What is attachment?
Attachment is the emotional connection we form with people who are important to us. Our early relationships help shape how we learn to trust others, seek comfort, and feel safe in relationships. These experiences can influence how we connect with people as adults, although our relationship patterns can change over time.
What is emotion regulation?
Emotional regulation is our ability to manage how we experience and respond to emotions. For example, you might feel angry during an argument but choose to take a moment before responding. It doesn't mean avoiding emotions or always staying calm. It means having ways to manage feelings and choose how to respond.
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a feeling of worry, fear, or nervousness about something that might happen. It's a normal response to stress or uncertainty, but when anxiety becomes frequent, overwhelming, or difficult to control, it can interfere with everyday life. It can also cause physical symptoms like a racing heart, muscle tension, or trouble sleeping.
What are triggers?
A trigger is something that brings on an emotional, mental, or physical reaction. Triggers can be people, places, sounds, smells, memories, or situations that remind someone of a previous experience. For example, someone who experienced a frightening car accident might feel anxious when hearing tires screech.
What is identity?
Identity is your sense of who you are. It includes things like your personality, values, beliefs, culture, relationships, and life experiences. Your identity can change and develop as you grow, learn, and experience new things.
What are boundaries?
Boundaries are the limits we set around what we're comfortable with and how we allow others to treat us. They help us communicate our needs, protect our well-being, and maintain healthy relationships. For example, a boundary might involve telling someone you're not available to answer work messages after a certain time.
What is dissociation?
Dissociation is a feeling of disconnection from yourself, your thoughts, memories, or surroundings. For example, someone might feel detached from their body, as though they're watching themselves from the outside, or feel like the world around them isn't quite real. Dissociation can happen during periods of intense stress or trauma, but it can also occur for other reasons.
What is emotional processing?
Emotional processing is how we recognize, understand, and make sense of our feelings and experiences. It can involve identifying what we're feeling, understanding why we're feeling it, and learning how to respond. For example, someone might realize that their anger during an argument is connected to feeling hurt or dismissed.
What are core beliefs?
Core beliefs are deeply held ideas about ourselves, other people, and the world. They often develop through our experiences and influence how we interpret situations, sometimes without us even realizing it. For example, someone who believes "I'm not good enough" might interpret a small mistake as proof that they're a failure, even when others don't see it that way. These beliefs can be so deeply ingrained that we aren't always consciously aware of them.
What is DBT therapy?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a type of therapy that helps people manage difficult emotions, handle stressful situations, and build healthier relationships. It focuses on four main skill areas: mindfulness (being aware of the present moment), distress tolerance (getting through difficult situations without making them worse), emotion regulation (understanding and managing emotions), and interpersonal effectiveness (communicating needs, setting boundaries, and navigating relationships). DBT also teaches us how to balance accepting ourselves as we are while working toward positive changes.
What are coping skills?
Coping skills are the things we do to manage stress, difficult emotions, or challenging situations. They might include talking to someone, exercising, taking a break, or distracting ourselves. Some coping strategies are helpful over time, while others provide temporary relief but can create additional problems.
What is EMDR therapy?
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based therapy used to help people process traumatic memories and other distressing experiences. It uses bilateral stimulation, which involves alternating stimulation of the left and right sides of the body, such as guided eye movements, tapping, or sounds. During EMDR, you briefly focus on a distressing memory while engaging in this stimulation. The goal is to reduce the emotional distress connected to the memory and help you develop a more helpful understanding of the experience.
Curious to Learn More About Yourself?
Sometimes having a better understanding of our experiences can be a helpful place to start. Below are a few questionnaires that explore topics like trauma, childhood experiences, attachment, and dissociation.
These tools are meant to encourage curiosity and self-reflection, not to provide a diagnosis. Your results don't define you, and they may not capture the full picture of your experiences. If something comes up that you'd like to understand better, we can always explore it together in therapy.
Mental Health & Emotional Well-Being
1. Trauma & PTSD — PCL-5
20 questions | Approximately 5–10 minutes
The PTSD Checklist (PCL-5) explores symptoms that can develop after a traumatic experience, including unwanted memories, avoiding reminders, changes in mood, and feeling on edge. It can help you recognize how past experiences may be affecting your everyday life.
View the PCL-5 Assessment (Free PDF)
2. Childhood Experiences — ACEs Questionnaire
10 questions | Approximately 2–5 minutes
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) questionnaire explores difficult experiences before age 18, including abuse, neglect, and challenges within the household. It can help you reflect on how your childhood experiences may relate to your health and well-being today. Your score doesn't determine whether you have trauma or define how those experiences affected you.
View the Free ACEs Questionnaire
3. Dissociation — DES-II
28 questions | Approximately 5–10 minutes
The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES-II) explores experiences of feeling disconnected from yourself, your memories, or your surroundings. It asks about things like losing track of time, feeling detached from your body, or having gaps in your memory.
Take the Dissociation Assessment
4. Anxiety — GAD-7
7 questions | Approximately 2–3 minutes
The Generalized Anxiety Disorder questionnaire (GAD-7) explores common anxiety symptoms, including excessive worry, restlessness, irritability, and difficulty relaxing. It can help you recognize how often anxiety has been showing up in your life over the past two weeks.
Explore Free Anxiety Screenings
5. Depression — PHQ-9
9 questions | Approximately 2–3 minutes
The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) explores common symptoms of depression, including changes in mood, energy, sleep, motivation, and interest in everyday activities. It can help you better understand how these symptoms may have been affecting you over the past two weeks.
Explore Free Depression Screenings
6. Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms — OCD Screening
Time varies by questionnaire
OCD can involve unwanted, repetitive thoughts and behaviors or mental rituals that someone feels driven to perform. Screening questionnaires can help you explore experiences such as intrusive thoughts, checking, reassurance-seeking, and repetitive behaviors.
Personality & Self-Discovery
7. Attachment & Relationships — ECR
36 questions | Approximately 5–10 minutes
The Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) questionnaire explores how you experience closeness, trust, rejection, and emotional connection in romantic relationships. It can help you better understand patterns in how you connect with others, especially when it comes to intimacy and emotional security.
Take the Attachment Assessment
8. Big Five Personality Assessment
50 questions | Approximately 5–10 minutes
The Big Five is a research-based personality assessment that explores five major personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (emotional sensitivity). It can help you better understand how you approach new experiences, interact with others, manage responsibilities, and respond to stress.
There are no right or wrong personality types. The results simply offer another way to get curious about what makes you, you!
Take the Big Five Personality Assessment
9. Enneagram Personality Test
54 questions | Approximately 5–10 minutes
The Enneagram is a personality framework that describes nine different personality types, each associated with certain motivations, fears, and ways of responding to the world. It can be a fun way to explore what drives your choices, how you relate to others, and patterns you might recognize in yourself.
Unlike the Big Five, the Enneagram has limited scientific support, so it's best used as a tool for curiosity and self-reflection rather than a definitive measure of personality.
Take the Enneagram Personality Test
Family History & Relationships
10. Genogram — Exploring Your Family History
Self-guided activity | Approximately 15–30 minutes or longer
A genogram is like a family tree, but with a little more depth. It helps you explore family relationships and patterns across generations, including emotional closeness, conflict, communication, and significant life experiences.
Creating one can offer a new perspective on your family history and how those experiences may have shaped your own beliefs, behaviors, and relationships. You don't need to know every detail about your family to get started.
Create Your Own Genogram — Free Family Therapy Template
A Friendly Reminder
These questionnaires and activities are tools for learning and self-reflection, not a replacement for a professional evaluation or diagnosis. Some questions may bring up uncomfortable feelings or memories, and it's always okay to take a break or decide not to complete one.
Your experiences are more than a score on a questionnaire. If something comes up that you'd like to better understand, you're welcome to bring it into our work together.