Psychology Terms A–Z

Cognitive shuffling is a sleep technique where you visualize a rapid sequence of random, unrelated images to interrupt anxious thought patterns and ease your brain into sleep.

The brain’s built-up ability to stay steadier even with aging or brain changes.

A thinking pattern that makes a situation feel more negative, extreme, or hopeless than it really is.

Need for Cognition is a personal tendency to enjoy deep thinking and exploring complex problems. People high in Need for Cognition love new ideas and challenging tasks.

A way of catching harsh thoughts and replacing them with more balanced, realistic ones.

The mental map you build to understand places, routes, or how something is organized.

A trauma therapy that helps people work through painful beliefs that formed after what happened.

A mental shortcut that can push our thinking in a predictable but sometimes misleading direction.

The mind’s tendency to save effort by making quick judgments instead of thinking deeply every time.

The ability to adjust your thinking when life changes or a different approach is needed.

An emotion-regulation strategy that changes how you interpret a situation so the feeling itself naturally shifts. It is known to be healthier for mind and relationships than suppressing emotions.

Cognitive defusion is an ACT skill that teaches you to observe your thoughts as passing mental events rather than absolute truths — creating distance between you and your thinking mind.

The way we interpret a situation and decide what it means for us.

A therapy that helps change unhelpful thought and behavior patterns.

A structured therapy for insomnia that helps change sleep habits and anxious thoughts about sleep.

Retrieval is the process of accessing and bringing stored information back into conscious awareness when you need it. It is the final stage of memory — encoding, storage, and retrieval — and represents the very moment we 'remember' something.

Internet Gaming Disorder is a condition where excessive online gaming causes serious disruption to everyday life.

Internet addiction is a state in which a person cannot control their own internet use and becomes excessively dependent on it to the point where it causes problems in daily life.

Work addiction refers to a state where compulsive preoccupation with work causes health, relationships, and life balance to break down. Unlike simply working hard, the core issue is a loss of control — an inability to stop working.

Work-life balance means maintaining a healthy equilibrium between your professional responsibilities and your personal life.

Sense of Coherence is an inner conviction that life is understandable, manageable, and meaningful. It's the strength that allows you to believe 'things will be okay' even in difficult situations.

Daily hassles are the minor, repetitive stressors of everyday life — things like traffic jams, work deadlines, and household chores. Though they seem small, they can accumulate and affect your mental health just as much as major life events.

Sunday Scaries refers to the anxious and low mood that creeps in on Sunday evenings. Worry about the upcoming Monday is the main cause.

A daily intention is the conscious act of setting a direction for your day — deciding how you want to feel and show up before the day begins. Even one small intention can shift the entire tone of your day.

The body’s roughly 24-hour internal clock that helps regulate sleep, energy, and daily body functions.

Sleep problems that happen when the body clock is out of sync with daily life.

A daily self-monitoring tool used in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to track emotions, urges, behaviors, and skill use. Keeping this record every day is a valuable habit that helps you observe your inner state and create meaningful change.

A state of being genuine, in which what you feel and recognize inside is consistent with what you express outwardly.

Episodic memory is your autobiographical memory of personally experienced events, including the time, place, and emotions associated with them. It captures specific experiences like 'meeting a friend at a café yesterday' in vivid, contextual detail.

Reading Disorder is a learning disability where a person has significant difficulty reading and understanding written text, despite having normal intelligence. It is not caused by laziness or lack of effort, but by differences in how the brain processes written information.

The field of psychology focused on understanding, assessing, and treating mental health difficulties.

This field addresses the wide range of emotional changes and mental health challenges that can arise during pregnancy and the period surrounding childbirth. Appropriate support for conditions like prenatal and postpartum depression is critically important.

The hypnagogic state is a unique transitional state between wakefulness and sleep experienced just before falling asleep. During this time, you may experience vivid images or sounds, and this is a completely natural phenomenon.

Hypnagogia is the vivid sensory experiences — images, sounds, and physical sensations — that occur in the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep.

When a mental health condition is serious enough to make daily life difficult, inpatient treatment means staying at a hospital to receive intensive, round-the-clock care.

Stimulus generalization is when a response learned for one specific stimulus also appears in response to similar stimuli.

Stimulus Control Therapy strengthens the connection between your bed and sleep, so that lying down naturally triggers sleepiness. It works by retraining your brain to associate the bed with falling asleep quickly.

Self-worth is the inner feeling of 'I am someone who matters.' It is a deep belief that allows you to respect and value yourself unconditionally, regardless of external achievements.

Self-monitoring is the ability to observe and regulate your own behavior in social situations. People differ in how much they adjust their self-expression to fit the context, and this plays an important role in relationships and self-understanding.

Self-renewal is the process of restoring your tired mind and body and refilling your life with fresh energy. It means continuously caring for yourself and becoming renewed.

Self-management is the ability to care for and regulate your own health and lifestyle habits. It's an important concept that applies broadly, from managing chronic illness to handling everyday stress.

Self-care refers to activities you consciously do to support your physical, emotional, and mental health.

Self-motivation is the inner drive that moves you toward your goals without external rewards or pressure. It is a force that comes from deep within your heart.

Self-leadership is the ability to motivate yourself, set your own direction, and guide your own actions without external instruction or management. It means becoming the true leader of your own life.

Self-neglect refers to a state in which a person fails to take care of their own basic physical and emotional needs.

Self-sabotage is a behavioral pattern where you unconsciously undermine your own success even while actively pursuing your goals.

The ability to stay emotionally connected to others while still maintaining your own independent thoughts and feelings. It's about being close to people without losing your sense of self.

Self-blame is a thinking pattern where you look to yourself as the cause when something goes wrong, holding yourself responsible and criticizing yourself harshly.

Self-reflection is the process of looking back on your own thoughts, feelings, and actions to gain a deeper understanding of your inner world. It's a warm and gentle exploration of yourself, aimed at becoming a better version of who you are.

Self-acceptance is the attitude of embracing your strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, exactly as they are. Recognizing that an imperfect you is still fully worthy is where self-acceptance begins.