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PREVIOUS: Defense Mechanisms (#1)

SITE: “Types & Uses of Defense Mechanisms”

 

ALL DEFENSES are used to avoid some form of anxiety
♝ Acting out – coping with stress by compulsively taking actions, instead of actually feeling one’s emotions about the situation
♝ Affiliation – dealing with emotional conflicts, internal stressors, or external threats by turning to others for support, help, or connection

♝ Aim Inhibition – settling for a modified version of one’s original goal (as in “Those who can’t – teach”)
♝ Altruism – gaining satisfaction by self-sacrificing service to others, or participating in beneficial social causes

♝ Asceticism – moral  & practical renunciation of specific or all pleasurable experiences, to avoid internal conflict re. impulse-gratification (to find safety by rigid self-denial)
♝ Avoidance – refusing to deal with or face an unpleasant person, object or situation

♝ Compensation – trying to make up for what one sees as personal deficiencies
♝ Conversion – repressed mental & emotional conflicts turned into a physical symptom (excessive sweating, temporary paralysis or blindness….)

♝ Denial – unconscious need to refuse admitting important parts of oneself, of ones own experiences or of external reality, even though these things may actually be known or perceived by others
♝ Displacement – shifting emotions or mental conflicts about one person or situation toward another. It’s ‘dumping onto’ one person what one feels towards someone else (kicking the dog instead of the boss)

♝ Fantasy – a retreat into a dream world, mental drifting back to ‘better times’ or to an ideal place…. used instead of when concrete, adult action is needed OR when the current situation is experienced as completely hopeless
♝ Idealization – making up a fantasy image of PPT (people, places, things), rather than seeming them realistically, in order
to deny aggressive or competitive feelings towards someone they love or are afraid of

♝ Identification: model oneself on another’s persona, in place of developing a ‘Self’ of their own
♝ Intellectualization – warding off unacceptable emotions & desires by only thinking about PPT rather than experiencing them directly

♝ Introjection – the child’s developing Self absorbing PPT in their environments a separate eep state. Extreme: psychologically imprinting oneself onto another’s whole personality, to avoid their own powerful emotions such as love, rage, hate, envy…. that they’re terrified of
♝ Isolation (not isolating) – cutting off the memory of painful emotions connected to a distressing situation or trauma, so it no longer triggers anxiety

♝ Projection – attributing to others ones own unacceptable but unconscious thoughts & emotions. Disowning unwanted parts of oneself by only seeing them in others, & then hating that person or quality
♝ Rationalization – use convincing ‘logical’ reasons to justify an idea, emotion or action, to avoid recognizing the real but unacceptable underlying motive for ones bad behavior (like getting defensive)

♝ Reaction formation – compulsively saying & doing the extreme opposite of what one really wants, but is afraid of (violently preaching against lust, while not admitting to being filled with sexual longing)  (CHART INFO ⬇️ )
♝ Regression – unconsciously retreating to the actions, feelings & beliefs of an earlier developmental phase when feeling threatened (toddler’s thumb sucking)

♝ Repression – keeping unwanted thoughts & emotions out of awareness, which can include forgetting actual painful or traumatic events associated with painful emotions (opposite of ‘Isolation’)
♝ Reversal – turning a feeling, attitude or behavior into its opposite
EXP: when masochism is replaced by sadism, love into hate….

♝ Simple denial: unpleasant things are treated as if they don’t exist
♝ Splitting – characteristic of Borderlines, – the inability to hold in ones conscious mind both positive & negative qualities of the Self or others in a whole (like loving & hating the same person or thing at the same time)

♝ Somatization – when intolerable impulses or conflicts are converted into physical symptoms (suppresses rage into an auto-immune disease)
♝ Sublimation – redirect id impulses (a socially objectionable desire or goal) into socially acceptable activities, while still retaining the original longing. It’s considered the most “mature” defense. (Play football instead of fighting, make art instead of adultery)

♝ Suppression – painful emotions & events are consciously ‘stuffed’ down
♝ Undoing – involves symbolically nullifying or voiding an unacceptable or guilt-provoking act, thought, or feeling (Nullify = make it of no importance or as irrelevant  // Void = make as if it never happened at all)

NEXT: Enneagram Strengths #1