More fantastic defense mechanisms! My two favorite, which I consciously use the most, are intellectualization and humor.
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Defense Mechanism
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Description
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Example
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| Acting out | Behaving in a manner that expresses impulse or unconscious wishes without awareness/understanding of the emotion driving behavior | Temper tantrum, drug use, promiscuity …unconscious wish may be a desire for attention, emotion may be loneliness |
| Altruism | Concern for other’s well-being, in an either excessive or successful manner. Actions/service to others that brings enjoyment, distraction, or avoidance of problems. | A church member who volunteers for any and every responsibility; the friend who bends over backward to serve, at their own expense. |
| Anticipation | Realistic planning for future discomfort. Adequate anticipation may yield appropriate preparation for future event/circumstance creating anxiety. | Spending so much time planning for future events that events are not enjoyed. |
| Denial | Declaring or thinking whatever is true is false. Refusal to accept reality, external facts, events, implications bc nature of the reality threatens individual. Emotional conflicts resolved by refusal to acknowledge unpleasant external realities. | Alcoholic who refuses to believe his drinking makes an impact on his job performance or family life |
| Displacement | Aggression or even sexual impulses redirected to a more acceptable party. Emotion pointed to safer outlet. Separation of emotion from its real object. Emotion dissuaded to object, party that brings less risk. | Mother may yell at child when she feels angry at husband. In this case she displaces her anger toward child bc child appears to be a more acceptable target; less threatening, less risk in outcome. |
| Dissociation | Mod of internal identity, character to avoid painful emotions. Separation of naturally occurring feeling from event or thought. Extreme compartmentalizing. Feel separated from their bodies. Feel events are not really happening. Conscious thought process is elsewhere, not in present moment. | Individual day dreams excessively to avoid painful realities, even situation they currently experience. |
| Distortion | Large reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs. | Individual convinces themselves everyone around them dislikes them to prevent attachments, risk of rejection; or, convinces self that everyone adores them to feed ego and avoid painful realities. |
| Fantasy | Propensity to withdrawal into fantasy for resolution of conflicts, in both the inner and outer world. | Excessive daydreaming which may interfere with functioning in external world. |
| Humor | Allows for exploration of absurdity, or emotions & ideas unpleasant to focus on or too terrible to talk about, in a way that brings pleasure to others. Wit, a type of humor that displaces. Wit brings attention to the distressing, which remains unpleasant. | Excessive humor used to mask emotions and avoid addressing underlying “true” issues. |
| Hypochondriasis | Turning negative feelings into pain, illness, and anxiety instead of expressing feelings or addressing issues. | Experiencing symptoms of various illnesses. Psychosomatic symptoms. |
| Idealization | Unconsciously choosing to perceive another individual as having more positive qualities than he or she may actually have. | Perceiving an average looking person to be extremely beautiful |
| Identification | The unconscious modeling of one’s self upon another person’s character and behavior. Or conscious efforts to model and conform to a group. | Mimicking another’s dress, or mannerisms. |
| Intellectualization | Taking an extremely objective viewpoint without regard for emotions. Focusing on only intellectual parts of a situation to create distance from relevant anxiety provoking emotions. Avoiding unacceptable emotions by focusing on the intellectual aspects. Thinking about wishes in emotionally bland, formal ways, not acting on them. | After learning they have a terminal illness, an individual begins spending all time studying about the illness to avoid thinking abt the direct effect in their own life. |
| Introjection | Identifying with some idea or object so deeply that it becomes a part of another person. | Deeply associating a belonging with an absent person; the object mentally represents that person (in a very extreme form, necrophilia). |
| Isolation | The general form of separation of feelings from ideas and events. | Describing a murder with graphic details with no emotional response. |
| Passive aggression | Aggression towards others expressed indirectly or passively. | Overly compliant on the outside, with underlying resistance or hostility. |
| Projection | Attributing one’s own unacknowledged unacceptable/unwanted thoughts and emotions to another. Reduces anxiety, allows expression of undesirable impulse or desire without conscious awareness. | Assuming that someone you extremely dislike extremely dislikes you. Severe prejudice, severe jealousy, hyper vigilance to external danger, and “injustice collecting”. |
| Rationalization | Creating false but credible justifications. Convincing oneself no wrong was done or all is or was all right through faulty/false reasoning. Indicator of this defense mechanism can be seen socially as the formulation of convenient excuses. | You are turned down by someone you are interested in, and rationalize that you were not that attracted to them. Protects self-esteem. |
| Reaction Formation | Overacting in the opposite way to a fear. Converting unconscious wishes or impulses perceived to be dangerous into opposites; behavior completely opposite of what one really wants or feels; taking opposite belief because true belief causes anxiety. Works effectively for coping in the short term, will eventually break down. | A manager treats employee whom they extremely dislike ultra kindly, making many special efforts to cater to that person and thus hide true feelings of dislike. |
| Regression | Reverting to coping at an earlier stage of development. | Adult throwing a temper tantrum |
| Repression | Pulling thoughts into unconscious, preventing painful or dangerous thoughts from entering consciousness; seemingly unexplainable naivety, memory lapse or lack of awareness of one’s own situation and condition. Emotion is conscious, idea behind it absent. Pushing uncomfortable thoughts into the subconscious. | Individual abused as a child represses feelings and memories, so that feelings and memories no longer remain in the conscious memory. The abuse continues to affect the individual’s behavior in relationships. |
| Sublimation | Redirecting ‘wrong’ urges into socially acceptable actions. | Individual redirects murder impulses and becomes a surgeon. |