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Glossary

1. Physiological demands (nouns): They are the normal demands our body makes while doing a physical activity. They can be very basic like eating or breathing enough to survive or they can modify relative to the activity that is being performed. In the case of psychology if those demands are not met it can become really dangerous to the body, and it may cause it to shut down.^Ref
2. Psychological demands (nouns): those demands are our pressure that we put on ourselves. Psychological demands can be either mental or emotional pressure. Such demands may include deadlines or a heavy workload. When exceeded they become detrimental to a person’s health.^Ref
3. Sympathetic nervous system (nouns/part of the body): it is the part of the nervous system that controls the flight or fight mechanism. It stretches out from the brain and through each disc and vertebrae. Neurotransmitters send to the brain stimulus to activate the fight or flight response.^Ref
4. Fight or flight (noun/action): it is an automatic physiological reaction to a threat that the body perceives as a danger to our safety. The body prepares itself to either confront or flee the danger. It is triggered by the sympathetic nervous system, and it causes a higher blood pressure, heart rate and state of alertness.^Ref
5. American Psychological association (organization): it’s the main point of research in the United States for psychology. It helps guide most psychologists to find information for their work. It’s a sort of archive where all the information is stocked up.^Ref
6. Chronic (adjective): Something that lasts throughout a long period of time. It is often assigned to the medical field where a disease may become chronic whenever it lasts for a long time and becomes recurrent.^Ref
7. Amygdala (noun): Small part of the limbic system in the brain responsible for linking emotions to other functions, such as senses, memories, and others.^Ref
8. PTSD (noun): Post traumatic stress disorder is a condition where people recall traumatic events, and it plagues them throughout their entire life. Often accompanied with stress, it is a condition that is very hard to treat and there really isn’t an actual cure to it.^Ref
9. Coping mechanisms (nouns): they are strategies that people use to manage stress and anxiety or in our case trauma. Some of those mechanisms include seeking help, meditation or in some negative cases people may cope with their problem by closing themselves and being alone to try and cope with the trauma or stress.^Ref
10. Numbness (noun): numbness or in this case emotional numbness is a feeling of being unbothered or being unable to feel something. In this context, it means to be unable to feel emotions after a major traumatic event has occurred in the past.^Ref
11. Hyper vigilance (noun): it is a state a person can enter after experiencing a very high stress level situation. The person enters a state where they have enhanced sensory sensitivity.^Ref
12. Rationalization (verb): it is a mechanism in the brain where the person tries to give an explanation to every single problem that is happening. The explanation makes sense for the person that is concerned.^Ref
13. Dissotiation (noun): it is the separation of a person’s mind from their feelings and sense of identity. It often occurs as a reaction to high stress or high anxiety events. In our case dissociation happens when a person is subject to a traumatic event. It’s basically a feeling of being disconnected from our body.^Ref
14. Panic (noun): it is a sudden and overwhelming feeling of fear or anxiety. It’s a natural response to a perceived threat and symptoms of panic can include: a faster heart rate, sweating and shortness of breath.^Ref
15. Sigmund Freud (name): the most renowned psychologist. He most notably created psychoanalysis which helped to treat some pathologies that are linked to the psychological side of a person.^Ref
16. Carl Rogers (name): one of the most prominent figures in psychology. He is the founder of the humanistic psychology.^Ref
17. Memory: Recollection of moments past as you perceived them. It functions like a library of more or less accessible information.^Ref
18. Conditions of worth (nouns): They are rules that we put on ourselves to dictate whether we are lovable and acceptable to others. It also dictates some actions we might take if they don’t match our conditions.^Ref
19. Incongruence (noun): it is when things don’t fit together and there is a lack of consistency in a group of things. In psychology it may refer to someone’s ideal self being different from someone’s real self.^Ref
20. Congruence (noun): it is an agreement or harmony between different systems or things. It means a person’s self concept is in alignment with itself.^Ref
21. Ivan Pavlov (name): Russian resaercher that discovered conditional behaviour in animals and laid the groundwork for behavioral psychology.^Ref
22. Pathological (adjective): Something (often a behaviour) compulsive, that is done out of impulse tha comes from a disease, be it physical or mental.^Ref
23. Neutral stimulus (noun): Stimulus that ellicits no particular reaction. If paired with a stimulus that does, it becomes conditional through association.^Ref

Sources

American Psychological Association. (N.M). Cognitive psychology. APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/cognitive-psychology

Canby, N. K., Cosby, E. A., Palitsky, R., Kaplan, D. M., Lee, J., Mahdavi, G., Lopez, A. A., Goldman, R. E., Eichel, K., Lindahl, J. R., & Britton, W. B. (2025). Childhood trauma and subclinical PTSD symptoms predict adverse effects and worse outcomes across two mindfulness-based programs for active depression. PloS One, 20(1), e0318499. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0318499

Desjardins, S. (2024, January). 350-HA1-LG: Initiation à la psychologie [printed class notes]. Collège Lionel-Groulx.

Friedman, M. J., Resick, P. A., & Keane, T. M. (2014). Posttraumatic stress disorder: Overview, diagnosis, and treatment. In The management of posttraumatic stress disorder. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/

Hölzel, B. K., Carmody, J., Vangel, M., Congleton, C., Yerramsetti, S. M., Gard, T., & Lazar, S. W. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. *Psychiatry Research*, *191*(1), 36–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006

Home. (n.d.). MBCT.Com. Retrieved September 19, 2025, from https://www.mbct.com/

Joseph, S. (2004). Client-centred therapy, post-traumatic stress disorder and post-traumatic growth: Theoretical perspectives and practical implications. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 77(1), 101–119. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephen-Joseph-11/publication/8675070_Client-centred_therapy_post-traumatic_stress_disorder_and_post-traumatic_growth_Theoretical_perspectives_and_practical_implications/links/5bd84746299bf1124fae0c80/Client-centred-therapy-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-and-post-traumatic-growth-Theoretical-perspectives-and-practical-implications.pdf

McLeod, S. A. (2023). Cognitive approach. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive.html

National Institute of Mental Health. (2023). Post-traumatic stress disorder. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd

Orem-Johnson, D. W., Barnes, V. A., Rees, B., Tobin, J., & Walton, K. G. (2024). Effectiveness of Meditation Techniques in Treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Medicina, 60(12), 2050. https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina60122050

TEDx Talks (Director). (2014, April 22). *The mindful way through depression: Zindel Segal at TEDxUTSC* [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A4w3W94ygA

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2023). Common reactions after trauma. National Center for PTSD. https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/isitptsd/common_reactions.asp

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