Plain language definitions for words that get thrown around but rarely explained properly.
Clinical: A disconnection between thoughts, identity, consciousness, and memory.
Plain language: Your brain's emergency exit. When things get too intense, your system checks out to protect you. You might feel floaty, numb, like you are watching yourself from outside, or like time skipped.
Your nervous system learned that when things get overwhelming, leaving is safer than staying present. It is not weakness. It is a survival response that worked at some point.
Clinical: A state of increased alertness and scanning for threats.
Plain language: Your threat scanner is stuck on high. You notice every shift in tone, every micro-expression, every sound. Your body acts like danger is always close, even when you are safe.
Clinical: Difficulty managing emotional responses and returning to baseline.
Plain language: Your emotional thermostat is broken. You swing from too hot to too cold with no middle ground. Small things feel huge. You cannot calm yourself down, or you shut down completely.
Plain language: The four things your nervous system does when it senses danger. Not choices. Automatic survival programs.
Clinical: An involuntary state of intense romantic infatuation with obsessive thoughts about the object of affection.
Plain language: Obsessive love on steroids. Your brain gets hijacked by one person. You cannot stop thinking about them, analyzing them, craving their attention. It feels like love but it is actually your nervous system in crisis.
Limerence is often attachment trauma dressed as romance. Your brain found someone who activates old wounds, and now it is trying to "win" the love it never got. The intensity is not passion. It is dysregulation.
Clinical: An attachment formed through cycles of abuse and intermittent reinforcement.
Plain language: The reason you cannot leave even though you know you should. Your nervous system got addicted to the cycle of pain and relief. The bad times make the good times feel like salvation.
Plain language: You crave closeness but do not trust it will stay. You reach, cling, test, and spiral when you do not get reassurance. Love feels like a constant emergency.
Plain language: Closeness feels dangerous, so you keep distance. You value independence, shut down when things get emotional, and leave before you can be left. Alone feels safer than vulnerable.
Plain language: You want love AND you are terrified of it. You push and pull. You crave closeness then panic when you get it. Your system learned that the people who were supposed to protect you were also the threat.
Clinical: Having a brain that functions differently from the statistical norm.
Plain language: Your brain is wired differently. This includes autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other variations. It is not broken. It is different operating system running in a world designed for another one.
Plain language: Hiding your natural responses to appear "normal." Suppressing stims, forcing eye contact, scripting conversations, performing neurotypical behavior. It is exhausting and it costs you.
Plain language: What happens when you mask too long, push through too much, and your system finally collapses. It is not laziness. It is your brain and body shutting down from chronic overload.
Clinical: A personality disorder characterized by emotional instability, impulsivity, and unstable relationships.
Plain language: Your emotional skin is thinner than most people's. You feel everything at full volume. Your sense of self shifts. You love hard and fear abandonment harder. The label makes you sound scary, but you are usually the one most scared.
Clinical: A personality disorder characterized by grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy.
Plain language: A protective structure built around deep shame. The grandiosity is a shield. Underneath is usually a terrified child who learned that vulnerability equals destruction. The internet uses "narcissist" for anyone who hurts them. Real NPD is a specific pattern, not just being selfish.
Plain language: Black and white thinking about people. Someone is either all good or all bad, with no middle ground. When they disappoint you, they flip from angel to enemy instantly. It is not manipulation. It is a brain that never learned to hold complexity.
Plain language: When your sense of self is not one solid thing but multiple pieces that do not always talk to each other. Different versions of you show up in different situations, sometimes with different memories, values, or ways of being.