Find the function of the emotion, then name it

Landmark fMRI study: labeling the emotion in a face reduced amygdala activity and increased right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activity, with PFC statistically mediating the amygdala drop. This is the core mechanistic basis for 'name it to tame it' — but it is an acute neuroimaging experiment in healthy adults, not a clinical-outcome trial.

Systematic review: affect labeling reliably reduces physiological and neural markers of reactivity (skin conductance, amygdala) but effects on SUBJECTIVE distress are variable — sometimes reduced, sometimes minimal or paradoxically increased (esp. with internal-state labeling or low-intensity stimuli). Clinical benefit clearer in PTSD and social anxiety; alexithymia and low emotional granularity moderate (blunt) effectiveness. No ADHD/autism arm.

Experimental comparison finding affect labeling is roughly as effective at reducing self-reported distress as reappraisal and distraction. Supports the strategy as a legitimate low-effort regulation tool, but again in general (non-neurodivergent) samples.

Emotional verbal-fluency work in adults with ADHD and ADHD+ASD: difficulty generating/identifying emotion words (alexithymia) is common and drives dysregulation. This is double-edged for the method: it confirms the TARGET problem is real, but also implies the very labeling step the method depends on is harder for exactly this population — a reason for caution, not confidence.