You are most likely aware of the fact that psychological defense mechanisms pop up from time to time, especially during experiences that cause intense mental and emotional pain. You probably already know about some of the most popular ones – like denial or projection – and you might even be able to identify your personal defensive tendencies in daily life. Yet, most of us are only aware of our psychological defensiveness in hindsight, despite the damage it can cause in our lives. This blog post brings awareness to the concept of defense mechanisms and its specific expressions, so that one can begin to notice them in the moment, which is the only path to dismantling them altogether. If one is willing and able to take such steps, the reward is priceless and indescribable. I will define the concept of psychological defense mechanisms, explain why they exist, provide a list of the most common ones with specific examples, demonstrate how to disarm them, and offer an understanding of why this all matters.
What Are Defense Mechanisms?
Defense mechanisms are the psychological tools we use during moments of distress to ward off from our awareness any uncomfortable mental or emotional material. In other words, we use defenses to push away distressing psychic stimuli. There are essentially two classes of defense mechanisms, primitive and mature, which are categorized by their level of severity. Primitive or severe defenses tend to focus on manipulating the external environment in order to bring internal stability, which makes them largely more destructive, like control or acting out. Mature or mild defenses tend to focus inward and only minimally attempt to modify the external world – like withdrawal or intellectualization – but can be equally as destructive internally. And some can fall into both categories depending on how they manifest, like idealization and devaluation. Regardless of how evolved each strategy is, the common factor among defenses is that they originate, operate, alter, and obfuscate on the mental plane of existence. While they may spill over into the physical dimension, they are primarily psychological.
Due to their inherent nature and function, defense mechanisms meet three basic criteria, or demonstrate three characteristics, which can help determine whether a certain (inner or outer) behavior is a defense mechanism or not:
- Defenses are employed to avoid feelings. Their immediate purpose and function is to resist uncomfortable feelings and emotions. Emotions are powerful energies that drive our thoughts and behaviors. They are responsible for our level of fulfillment and for the range of human experience, whether high or low, rich or dull. As we all know, some emotions feel great while others feel terrible. And contrary to popular belief, not everyone agrees on which ones are positive vs. negative or enjoyable vs. uncomfortable. This is a personal preference shaped by one’s genetics, personality, upbringing, and life experience. Yet, despite personal predilections, we all attempt to increase the emotions we like and decrease the emotions we dislike, and this is where defenses come in. When a particular feeling shows up that we don’t like, we will generally use some defense(s) to push that feeling away. It’s our psyche’s way of removing displeasure and disharmony and restoring pleasure and harmony in the system.
- Defenses are employed to maintain ego-identity. Their larger purpose and function is to protect and maintain a person’s egoic structure. In fact, it’s the ego that deploys defenses in the first place. The ego utilizes defenses to preserve itself and its identity of separateness. They are the very mechanisms that keep the ego intact, thereby preventing Self-realization. When an emotion or feeling is felt, it can be intense on several levels. An emotion is essentially a packet of information-energy vibrating at a particular frequency. Depending on the emotion and one’s capacity, this influx of information-energy can ripple like a seismic event in one’s body-psyche. If our psyche is not equipped to handle and integrate such an event in our being, then it will register as a dangerous threat, leading the ego to squash the foreign invasion with its preferred defense(s).
- Defenses are employed unconsciously. Overall, their entire purpose and function is to generate ignorance or unawareness – of our feelings and our true nature. They are an unconscious process. Defenses only thrive in the darkness of the subconscious mind because that is their birthplace, so they only have power over us when we are unaware. Most people don’t realize that many of their internal and external behaviors are defensive, let alone understand how to stop doing them. As there are levels, awareness and defensiveness are inversely proportional to one another: as defensiveness goes up, awareness goes down, and as awareness goes up, defensiveness goes down.
It’s important to remember these three characteristics – emotionally avoidant, egoic, and subconscious – because it’s easy to mistake something for a defense when it’s not one, and a lot of people get into trouble in their relationships this way. Take humor or rationalization, for example. In many circumstances, these are perfectly healthy and adaptive responses to life, but sometimes they can be easy ways to avoid dealing with reality. As such, defensiveness is an entirely subjective matter. So ask yourself: “Are any of my thoughts or behaviors reifying my separate identity, preventing me from accessing my feelings, and happening without my full participation?”
Why Do Defense Mechanisms Exist?
Defense mechanisms are a universal component to being human, found in every time and place. While different cultures may have unique defensive strategies they pull from, we all use them in some form or another. But why do they exist? Other than the reasons described above, defense mechanisms exist for one main reason: they are useful. Like all things in this world, defenses have the potential to help or to hurt, depending on how one employs them. Due to their general destructiveness in all areas of life, they tend to get a bad rap, and for good reason. However, defenses can be extremely beneficial for our survival and protection, and they usually start out that way.
Defense mechanisms generally form as healthy, creative, and adaptive ways of experiencing the world when we are young; they can aid in our physical survival and psychological well-being. Say, for example, that you were abused or criticized as a child. In your innocent wisdom, you felt that such treatment was wrong, and it made you angry, so you lashed out. But you got in trouble for doing so, which only increased the unfair treatment and made you angrier. You quickly learned that lashing out was not appropriate, even dangerous for you, so you unconsciously figured out a way to make the situation safer: rather than turn your anger outward toward your offender, you turned it inward toward yourself. The anger got suppressed, lashing out ceased, and the punishment diminished. It may not have been an ideal outcome, but at least it was better than the alternative. And so, introjection or turning against the self developed, where you learned that it was better to blame yourself for others’ actions – the inner critic was born. This example shows how a defense mechanism can be practical, thereby perpetuated.
There are an infinite number of scenarios for how various defenses can emerge, and each of us draws from a particular toolbox of them, usually formed in childhood, that help us in different situations. This collection of defenses – determined by our temperament, stressors, and role models – results in our distinct personality type. There’s an entire branch of psychology (i.e. psychoanalytic psychology) that categorizes personality types based on which defenses are primarily in use, and it’s considered an accurate classification system. Think about that… our personality type can be determined not by our values and skills, but by how we resist reality. This is an indication of how fundamental defensiveness is to the human condition.
How Do Defense Mechanisms Cause Harm?
Although defenses are usually adaptive in the early stages of life when our young psyches are ill-equipped to receive the full blast of emotional information-energy, there comes a time when these defenses are no longer helpful. Instead, they cause internal suffering, anxiety, and discontent rather than alleviate it. What was once a reliable crutch gradually becomes an obstacle to our mental and physical health. This change occurs because, over time, there is a build-up of unconscious and unexpressed energy in the psyche, which begins to exert pressure for release. Remember the anger that your poor inner child suppressed in the example above? Where do you think that emotion ended up going? It didn’t simply disappear just because you pushed it out of your consciousness. As it wasn’t fully processed and released, it got stored in the subconscious mind, which is located in the energy body that is superimposed onto and inextricably woven into the physical body. When we consistently use defenses, the stored or trapped energy accumulates, causing all sorts of mental, emotional, and physical problems, like dissociation or somatization. The issue we’re then faced with is trying to figure out the source of such turmoil and how to fix it, but these defensive processes have been utilized unconsciously for so long, we simply don’t know we have them, let alone how to disable them to let out some steam.
How Does One Unravel Defense Mechanisms?
The task then becomes about increasing awareness of our defenses, and then consciously putting them aside. We have created a habit; now we must unravel it and replace it with something healthier, whether that is swapping a primitive defense for a mature one, or letting it go altogether. It may seem that letting go of our defenses makes us more emotionally vulnerable, and that might be true depending on the context, but we may also find freedom and peace by doing so, as the result is an internal opening. Disarming defenses doesn’t mean risking our physical safety. As defenses are psychological, it’s possible to protect ourselves from bodily harm without the use of defenses. By consciously dismantling our defenses, which reside as barriers around the spiritual heart, we create a psychological space within us for repressed energetic, emotional, and psychological material to arise to the surface of consciousness and be released. It’s important to note that this hidden subconscious material will likely be painful and uncomfortable when it enters our consciousness. After all, it was suppressed for a reason. But if healing is what we want, and we’ve recognized that defenses are getting in the way of our goals, then it’s imperative to release our defenses along with the content buried below them. Realize that what lies hidden in the subconscious is never as terrible as we suspect it is, for it often arrives with distorted false narratives that dissolve once they properly enter the light of awareness. The ego wants you to think that the subconscious should not be accessed, but this is how it maintains its rule, for doing so threatens its very existence. As Franklin Roosevelt counseled, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The bottom line is this: What we resist, persists. What we resolve, dissolves.
…continued in Part 2…