Every one of us develops defense mechanisms throughout our lives. Even as an infant, when parents leave you to sleep or play alone, you have to learn how to cope. Most coping and defense mechanisms are a way of dealing with negative emotions such as fear or frustration and their primary purpose is to distort, manipulate or even deny the reality of situations in order to reduce anxiety or feelings of inadequacy. There are an extensive variety of mechanisms that are used for these purposes. You see them every day in everyone you interact with — if you are looking. Most of these mechanisms that have been developed over the many years of your life are so entrenched into your being, that you truly are unaware of the role they play in your day-to-day life. One way that defense mechanisms can hurt rather than help is by justifying their need to remain a stable force in your life. For example, a woman that has cut off connection to her family members because said family members cause her undo stress and drama. She feels her relationship with them cannot be sustained because of the mental anguish they bring to her life. She will justify the cut off from them in order to maintain a peaceful, stress-free life. If she lets them into her life, they will likely continuously hurt her and therefore the only way to move forward and avoid being mistreated is to cut off from them. However, it is this woman’s defense mechanism to keep everyone at a distance for fear of being hurt. It is her continuous need to seek out justifiable reasons to maintain distance in order to protect herself from the pain that others can bring if allowed into her heart and mind. Her own defense mechanism is preventing her from having any real, close, vulnerable relationships.
Another example is a man that acts out in anger. His defense mechanism is to display extreme behavior to express feelings he otherwise cannot express rationally. When he acts out, it is a pressure release that makes him feel calmer. He justifies this behavior based on other people’s words, choices, behaviors – he says, “if you wouldn’t make me so mad, I wouldn’t act like that”. It’s the other people in the world around him that don’t know how to behave, therefore he is simply reacting. Projection is another widespread defense mechanism that most people are completely unaware that they are doing. Projection is the misattribution of a person’s undesired thoughts, feelings or impulses onto another person. Because an individual was abandoned as a child in some form, whether physically or emotionally, she will accuse her husband of not loving her and not wanting her based on her fear of being unloved and unwanted. These defense mechanisms are the worst kind because in this example, the woman will ultimately create a scenario where her husband does abandon her – projection of creates the very environment we were so afraid of to begin with. A man that was taught to not trust others or let them too close to their heart will live in fear of being duped or hurt or lied to which he will display through accusations, ultimately creating the environment in which his wife feels monitored and controlled and her safety is in hiding everything from him and seeking out trust and acceptance from another man. The lack of insight into projection can often end in the very situation they feared the most, justifying their lack of trust and therefore perpetuating the defense mechanisms need to be in place.
You may have needed your defense mechanisms when you were a child and you were powerless over your environment, but are these defense mechanisms possibly causing you pain now rather than protecting you from the pain you were trying to avoid? What is the answer to living your life without defense mechanisms making your choices for you?
INSIGHT
The more insight you have as why you revert to these mechanisms, the more control you have over them as opposed to them having control over you.
Come see me and we can walk through the ways in which these once needed defense mechanisms might be hindering your chance at real connection, real intimacy, and real love. My office is a safe place to allow these walls and barriers that have protected you in the past to come down.