Your Unconscious D-Fense
(read time: 3 min)
With the Super Bowl on its way this weekend, it seems appropriate that we tackle defense, as in defense mechanisms.
The phrase “defense mechanism” gets tossed about quite a lot, and not always in the correct way. The reason people use it incorrectly is because defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies, compared to coping mechanisms which are conscious. In either case, these are your go-to thoughts and actions to protect you from bad feelings when something challenges your sense of self.
YOUR BOOST
Defense mechanisms lurk in all of us, no need to feel bad about it or yourself. They are remnants of the immature ways we dealt with stress as a kiddo.
Just don't be ignorant about it. Watch for them, and take note. Knowing yours can go a long way to helping build your resilience in the face of stress and leads to much healthier relationships.
THE SCIENCE
As a child, when you felt insecure, fear kicked your survival instinct into gear by employing immature defense mechanisms. Over time, If you had adults modeling mature coping mechanisms, you learned to consciously address stressors in healthy ways.
If only it was that simple, right? For most of us, those childhood insecurities have a sneaky way of popping back up… and when those buttons are pushed, we revert to immature thoughts and actions to fend off feeling bad.
Think about a recent frustrating experience, one that made you insecure about who you are. Did you tend towards any of these common defense mechanisms:
Denial: if the problem doesn’t exist you don’t need to talk about it or acknowledge any feelings related to it.
Projection: denying that the negative feeling resides in you while attributing them to others.
Reaction Formation: acting the opposite to what you are feeling or thinking in order to hide your true feelings even from yourself.
Rationalization: using reasoning to justify something upsetting that occurred so that the actual reasons for the event are avoided and replaced with other seemingly reasonable explanations.
Or did you observe yourself taking a pause and then using healthy and conscious coping mechanisms like these:
Adaptive: dealing with difficult feelings head-on and adding balance. I think of these as forms of moving meditation, like gardening, exercising, creating art, or baking.
Emotion-Based: calming the difficult feelings by processing them verbally and physically. This includes talk therapy, journaling, and trauma-informed yoga.
Problem-Based: solving the problem at the root of the stress.
In all these forms of coping, you’ll notice the negative feelings are not ignored or avoided. Healthy coping means acknowledging that tough feelings exist, sitting with them to process it all, and then moving forward.
TAKE HOME
Bringing even this slight awareness of your defense mechanisms to your conscious mind can help you make small, but powerful changes to how you consciously cope with insecurity, stressors, and anxiety.
No shame, no guilt, just more good days,
-Nicole