Naming a feeling does not make it worse

The idea is that giving a feeling a name gives it more power. Better not to look at it at all.

Others believe the opposite, that naming a feeling helps. The study below asked how that could work.

People lay in a brain scanner and looked at upsetting images. Sometimes they picked a word for the feeling in the image. Other times they handled the image another way.

Researchers call the first task affect labeling. In plain words, it is putting a feeling into words.

In the scanner, naming the feeling lowered brain activity linked to emotion.

Naming also raised activity in another area. The authors read the two as linked. That is a working model, not a settled fact.

This measured brain activity while people looked at pictures. It did not measure how people felt days later, or what they did next.

A brain response is not the same as a behavior. The study did not test The Archivist Method.

Naming is part of the first step of the practice. To catch a pattern, you name it as it starts.

Behavioral Interception is the practice of catching an automatic pattern as it begins, intercepting its usual response, and practicing a different action until it becomes more natural.

Start with the body signal, the first physical sign in your chest, throat or jaw. Feel it, then name it in a few plain words. Say the name of the pattern too.