Name it to tame it
Why putting a word to a feeling makes it easier to handle, and what the brain scans showed.
Someone asks how you are, and you say “fine.” Then you sit with it for a moment and realize that isn’t true. You’re on edge. Maybe disappointed. Once you have the word, something eases a little.
That small shift has a name in psychology: affect labelling. It means putting feelings into words, and it’s been studied for close to two decades.
What the brain scans showed
In a 2007 study at UCLA, researchers showed people photos of faces with strong expressions while scanning their brains. Sometimes participants picked a word that described the emotion, like “angry” or “scared.” Other times they matched the face to another face, or to a name.
Labelling the emotion lowered activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that reacts quickly to threat. At the same time, an area in the right prefrontal cortex linked to regulating emotion became more active. Simply seeing the faces didn’t have the same effect. Naming the feeling did.1
Naming a feeling turns the volume down on it.
Later studies found similar effects with spiders, stressful images and public speaking. A review by the same lab describes it as a way of regulating emotion that works even when people don’t expect it to, though naming a feeling doesn’t always make it feel smaller in the moment.2
Why it seems to work
One explanation is that finding the right word takes some thinking, and that thinking draws on the same brain systems that help calm emotional reactions. You don’t have to argue with the feeling or fix it. Naming it gives it shape and a little distance, even on days it doesn’t make it smaller.
Precision helps. “Bad” covers a lot of ground. “Restless,” “let down” or “overlooked” tells you more about what’s going on and what you might need.
How to try it
A 30-second check-in
- Pause and ask: what am I feeling right now?
- Pick the closest word. If the first one is vague, like "bad" or "stressed," try one more specific.
- Say it to yourself or write it down: "I'm feeling anxious."
- Notice what changes, if anything. There's no right answer.
This is what Brevé’s daily check-in is for. Once a day, you pick how you’re arriving and the words that fit. Over a few weeks, the words start to show you patterns.
Try next in BrevéDaily check-in
