Anything From Denial to Humor Helps Us to Deal with the Emotional Stresses We Face Every Day

When we get stressed out, we automatically turn to a range of defense mechanisms to help us slow the flood of emotions — or pause them — so we can process them in our own way. Some of those techniques are healthier than others, so let’s review them and see how they evolved.

Legendary neurologist Sigmund Freud was a pioneer in identifying the psychological defense system as part of the human psychic. He defined the human personality as a hybrid of the ego, id, and superego. The id is the pleasure-seeking child in you that is curious and likes to play without rules. Meanwhile, your ego develops as you mature, working within the rules but willing to break them to suit its purposes.

Later in life, you develop the moral compass of the superego, which sees the world as more black and white, and controls the impulses of the other two elements. This helps us get along in society and its regulations. It also pits various parts of your personality against each other, depending on what we want and what we will do to get it. 

The ego, in particular, uses unconscious defense mechanisms to distort reality to rationalize a desired behavior and reduce anxiety levels arising from them. 

Here are some examples:

• Denial – refusing to acknowledge something you are not ready to accept, such as a breakup or a death
• Sublimation – Channeling certain behaviors into situations where they are socially acceptable, such as boxing to release aggression
• Reaction Formation – Behaving out of character to fit in, such as adopting a macho swagger when you are not that type of person
• Displacement – Targeting your emotions at an inanimate object rather than the person who triggered them, such as punching a wall

Since Freud’s time, several others have created their own theories and labels for our reactions. That includes his former colleague Alfred Adler, who called his approach as “safeguarding strategies.” He framed these based on the perceived need to belong and get along with others, despite our sense of inferiority.

These techniques tend to be manipulative and deflect blame, for example:

• Making excuses, such as saying they have bad luck
• Distancing, such as procrastinating
• Aggression, such as blaming others for their shortcomings
• Depreciation, such as claiming their spouses could not survive without them

Another Freud cohort, Karen Horney, developed her other approach in the 1930s, based on how children learn to cope with abusive or neglectful parents. She interpreted their outlook as seeing interpersonal relationships as a problem they had to solve using three strategies:

• Pleasing others

• Avoiding others

• Dominating others

Two decades later, social psychologist Leon Festinger coined the phrase cognitive dissonance as an explanation for how humans try to find a balance between our attitudes and how we behave. This tension is the dissonance. For example, a heavy drinker can quit the destructive habit or by denying it harms him or her. Either way, they no longer feel that tension between right and wrong.

Also in the 1950s, humanist psychologist Carl Rogers narrowed the dissonance to two options: denial and perceptual distortion. This highlights any discord between a person’s authentic inner voice and the person you present to the world.  The interplay between those two creates anxiety and leads to you either selectively perceiving who you are or distorting (a form of denying) your awareness of this disconnect.

The existentialist school of thought in psychology followed in the 1960s and 1970s, saying Freud has oversimplified our reactions to experiences. Led by Rollo May, they focused on how people face their mortality by avoidance, confrontation, and anxiety. That empowers powerful motivations such as hoarding, seeking pleasure, or dominating others for power.

To cope, you need to face those urges directly to live our lives the way we should. At that stage, humans tend to disassociate, conform, or follow convention rather than follow their own path. Instead, we find solace in distracting ourselves by watching other people’s dramas, like that found on soap operas or reality shows.

Psychologist Albert Bandura developed the concept of self-exoneration mechanisms in the 1990s. In his mind, we pardon ourselves for our poor decisions and behavior via a set of justifications, such as:

• Advantageous Comparison, such as pointing out a lack of fatal consequences
• Displacement of Responsibility, such as blaming your boss or parents
• Devaluing Others, such as labeling business competitors as not worthy of respect

These days, we tend to look at these types of behaviors as coping mechanisms, as we deal with trauma, low self-esteem, stress, and other challenges that life throws at us. Therefore, we talk about adaptation and self-regulation in dealing with external and unconscious struggles.

A leader in this field is Harvard University psychiatrist George Vaillant, who has taken Freud’s concepts and tested them on study participants over several years. He has concluded that our coping strategies are “unconscious homeostatic mechanisms that reduce the disorganizing effects of sudden stress.” In that sense, our responses evolve over time as we adapt creatively or even pathologically. One of his key examples is how a teenager rebels by shoplifting, then conforms by choosing a career as a police officer then embraces altruism by volunteering with rebellious adolescents.

He breaks his hierarchy of defenses into four layers:

• Psychotic Defences, unhealthy delusional projections, denial, and distortion
• Immature Defences, such as dissociation, paranoia, and passive aggression
• Neurotic Defences, such as repression, phobias, amnesia, or compulsive behavior
• Mature Defences, such as humor, suppression, altruism, or channeling energy into constructive projects.

Those in the final stage are more resilient and tend to have healthier and more productive lives. Therefore, that should be your goal as you try to adapt to the challenges around you.

You can choose to hide from the negative situations around you or deny they exist, or you can face them while being aware of the emotions they evoke in you. By harnessing the power of your thoughts and your energy, you will lead a life that is truer to who you are.

In other words, laugh a little, volunteer a little, and find a hobby you love. Then you don’t have to worry as much about the inner struggles that could weigh you down.

Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201802/the-wisdom-defense-mechanisms