Psychological terms

Shock & Disbelief

Definition: The early “system lock-up” phase after major loss—numbness, inertia, and difficulty orienting to time and tasks.

Field note: When this is active, the outside world reads “quiet.” Inside, it’s triage.

Used in: Reader’s Guide

Dissociation

Definition: A disruption in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, or behavior (American Psychological Association, n.d.-a).

Field note: Not “dramatic.” Often it’s just distance—like you’re watching yourself from the other side of glass.

Time Distortion

Definition: A shift in time perception (sped up, slowed down, unreal), often during high stress or altered states (American Psychological Association, n.d.-b).

Field note: Missed appointments, early arrivals, and “what day is it?” are common tells.

Fight / Flight / Freeze

Definition: Automatic threat responses governed by stress physiology; “freeze” can present as immobilization or shutdown, not laziness (Cleveland Clinic, 2024a).

Field note: If you can’t move, don’t moralize it—name it.

Freeze Response (Triage)

Definition: An immobilization/shutdown response that can reduce impulsive fallout when you’re overloaded (Cleveland Clinic, 2024a).

Used in: The Freeze Response: Triage in Tough Times

Anger (Boundary Alarm)

Definition: Anger can function as information—often signaling violated expectations, crossed lines, or threatened dignity (American Psychological Association, n.d.-c).

Field note: The goal isn’t “no anger.” The goal is anger that becomes a boundary, not a blast radius.

Used in: Understanding Anger: Your Boundary Alarm

Grief

Definition: The psychological response to loss that can include emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological changes.

Model used here: The Dual Process Model describes oscillation between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping (Stroebe & Schut, 1999).

Used in: Understanding Grief: The Mental Loop Explained

Bargaining (Grief)

Definition: “Deal-making” and “if only” loops that attempt to rewrite the past to reduce pain. In non-death losses, it can disguise itself as analysis (Cleveland Clinic, 2024b).

Counterfactual Thinking

Definition: Thoughts about alternatives to past events (“what might have been”), often tied to learning and behavior regulation—but corrosive when it becomes looping regret (Epstude & Roese, 2008).

Used in: Counterfactual Thinking: How Bargaining Shapes Our Grief

Rumination

Definition: Repetitive, self-focused thinking about distress that tends to maintain or intensify negative mood states (American Psychological Association, 2023; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991).

Field note: Motion without output—your mind pacing the same hallway.

Used in: Understanding Grief: The Mental Loop Explained

Analysis Paralysis

Definition: Overthinking that blocks decision-making and action—too many loops, not enough traction (Cleveland Clinic, 2023).

Procrastination (Mood Repair)

Definition: Task delay often driven by short-term emotion regulation (mood repair), especially when tasks feel aversive (Steel, 2007; Pychyl & Sirois, 2016).

Field note: The negotiation voice—“later… after coffee… when I feel ready…”—is usually the tell.

Used in: Breaking the Cycle of Anxiety: Strategies for Closure

Behavioral Activation (BA)

Definition: A structured approach that increases engagement in meaningful activity to improve mood and functioning—often described as “move your way into clearer thinking” (Wang et al., 2022).

Used in: Behavioral Activation: Small Steps to Rebuild Today

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Definition: A family of evidence-based treatments targeting the relationship among thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (American Psychological Association, n.d.-d).

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Definition: A values-based behavioral therapy focused on increasing psychological flexibility—acting meaningfully while discomfort is present (Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, n.d.).

Social Rejection as “Pain”

Definition: Social exclusion can activate neural systems overlapping with physical pain; rejection registers in the body, not just the mind (Eisenberger et al., 2003).

Used in: The Pain of Rejection: A Sociological Perspective

Dark Empathy / “Dark Empath”

Definition: A proposed profile combining higher empathy with darker personality traits (e.g., antagonism or manipulativeness). Research suggests this cluster can exist and may present differently than low-empathy “dark trait” profiles (Heym et al., 2021).

Field note: The risk isn’t sensitivity. The risk is sensitivity used as leverage.

Used in: Understanding Dark Empathy and Its Implications

Cognitive Empathy vs. Affective Empathy

Definition: Cognitive empathy involves understanding another person’s perspective; affective empathy involves sharing or resonating with another’s emotional state (Decety & Jackson, 2004).

Thin Slicing

Definition: Forming impressions or predictions from very brief behavioral samples; research suggests people can make surprisingly accurate judgments in certain contexts (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1992).

Field note: “I can read people fast” may be thin-slicing. Useful—until it turns into certainty without verification.

Burnout

Definition: A syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, characterized by exhaustion, mental distance/cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy (World Health Organization, 2019a, 2019b).

Used in: About

Sociological terms

Sociological Imagination

Definition: The capacity to connect “private trouble” to public conditions—how biography runs inside institutions, markets, and history (Mills, 1959).

Anomie

Definition: Instability or normlessness when old standards stop working and new norms aren’t stable yet (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2025).

Field note: Moral static. Drift. “The rules changed but nobody announced it.”

Norm of Reciprocity

Definition: The social expectation that benefits and care should be returned over time—reciprocity as social glue (Gouldner, 1960).

Used in: The Pain of Rejection

Role Exit

Definition: The process of disengaging from a central social role and adapting to an “ex-role” identity (Ebaugh, 1988).

Field note: You don’t just lose a job. You lose the self that job organized.

Used in: Breaking the Cycle of Anxiety and Choosing Stability

Presentation of Self / Impression Management

Definition: The ways people manage the impressions others form of them during social interaction (Goffman, 1959).

Field note: Sometimes you’re not “lying.” You’re performing for survival.

Emotional Labor

Definition: Managing feelings and emotional display as part of paid work—often to produce a desired state in others (Hochschild, 1983).

Used in: Understanding Dark Empathy

Institutions

Definition: Durable social structures that shape behavior through roles, incentives, and constraints—workplaces, markets, and “rules you live inside.”

Total Institutions

Definition: Closed worlds with regimented routines (e.g., prisons, hospitals) where identity can be reshaped by institutional structure (Goffman, 1961).

Power, Hierarchy, and “Containability”

Definition: How organizations protect continuity by selecting for predictability—who looks “safe” to hire, promote, or keep close (Mills, 1956).

Perceived Overqualification

Definition: The perception that a worker’s skills, education, or experience exceed job requirements; often linked to hiring bias and assumptions about turnover or fit (see discussions in organizational psychology and labor sociology).

Field note: Sometimes “overqualified” is just “hard to control.”

Used in: The Hidden Dangers of Being Overqualified and Choosing Stability

Circle of Influence

Definition: A practical boundary: focus on what you can control or influence, instead of spiraling over what you can’t (Covey, 1989).

Thinkers referenced (and why they fit here)

• C. Wright Mills — private trouble ↔ public issue; institutions, power, and biography inside history (Mills, 1956, 1959).
• Émile Durkheim — anomie; how social conditions shape individual distress (see Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2025).
• Erving Goffman — role performance, identity under constraint, and institutional shaping of the self (Goffman, 1959, 1961).
• Arlie Russell Hochschild — emotional labor and the commodification of feeling in work systems (Hochschild, 1983).
• Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh — role exit as identity transition (Ebaugh, 1988).

Suggested reading list (aligned with recurring themes)

• Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination.
• Mills, C. W. (1956). The Power Elite.
• Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
• Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums.
• Ebaugh, H. R. F. (1988). Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit.
• Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart.
• Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). Dual process model of coping with bereavement.

Bookmark: the 3-line close (used across the project)

• One line I am keeping: ________________________________
• One boundary I am setting: _____________________________
• One step for tomorrow: ________________________________

Godspeed.

References (APA)

• Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1992). Thin slices of expressive behavior as predictors of interpersonal consequences: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 111(2), 256–274.
• American Psychological Association. (2023). Rumination. In APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/rumination
• American Psychological Association. (n.d.-a). Dissociation. In APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/dissociation
• American Psychological Association. (n.d.-b). Time distortion. In APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/time-distortion
• American Psychological Association. (n.d.-c). Anger. In APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/anger
• American Psychological Association. (n.d.-d). Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cognitive-behavioral
• Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. (n.d.). The six core processes of ACT. https://contextualscience.org/six_core_processes_act
• Cleveland Clinic. (2023). Analysis paralysis. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/analysis-paralysis
• Cleveland Clinic. (2024a, July 22). What happens during fight-or-flight response? https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-happens-to-your-body-during-the-fight-or-flight-response
• Cleveland Clinic. (2024b). Five stages of grief. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/stages-of-grief
• Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 habits of highly effective people. Free Press.
• Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004). The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 3(2), 71–100.
• Ebaugh, H. R. F. (1988). Becoming an ex: The process of role exit. University of Chicago Press.
• Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–292. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1089134
• Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2025, November 11). Anomie. https://www.britannica.com/topic/anomie
• Epstude, K., & Roese, N. J. (2008). The functional theory of counterfactual thinking. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(2), 168–192. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2408534/
• Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday.
• Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. Anchor Books.
• Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178.
• Heym, N., et al. (2021). The dark empath: Characterising dark traits in the presence of empathy. Personality and Individual Differences. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110172
• Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.
• Mills, C. W. (1956). The power elite. Oxford University Press.
• Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
• Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1991). Responses to depression and their effects on the duration of depressive episodes. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100(4), 569–582.
• Pychyl, T. A., & Sirois, F. M. (2016). Procrastination, emotion regulation, and well-being. In F. M. Sirois & T. A. Pychyl (Eds.), Procrastination, health, and well-being (pp. 163–188). Elsevier.
• Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65
• Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.
• Wang, X., et al. (2022). A narrative review of empirical literature of behavioral activation. Frontiers in Psychology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9082162/
• World Health Organization. (2019a, May 28). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases. https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases
• World Health Organization. (2019b). Burn-out an occupational phenomenon (FAQ). https://www.who.int/standards/classifications/frequently-asked-questions/burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon