affect-labeling

Putting feelings into words — naming an emotion reduces its intensity. The act of labeling (not the word chosen) appears to be the active ingredient: the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex down-regulates the amygdala when you name what you feel, lowering subjective affect, skin conductance, and amygdala activity (Torre & Lieberman, 2018; Wikipedia, read 2026-06-18).

Unlike reappraisal, affect labeling feels effortless — it does not feel like a strategy, which is why it is called an implicit emotion regulation. And it leaves a residue: stimuli labeled once stir smaller responses later.