Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks,
and I make mental health education videos.
Today I'm talking about
the Primitive, Psychological Defense Mechanisms.
I discussed the psychological Defense mechanisms
in a previous video,
and you can watch that one for more details.
But in short, psychological defense mechanisms are behaviors
that we engage in to protect ourselves from anxiety,
that results from mental conflict.
The behavior is unconscious,
meaning it's beyond your awareness.
It's a reflex for you to do these things,
to ward off negative thoughts and feelings.
What are some of these mental conflicts?
According to Freud's and Ego psychology,
these unconscious conflicts
are impulses produced by your lizard brain,
that your higher level mature brain finds unacceptable.
Your upbringing and moral values determine
what is and what isn't acceptable.
Picture an iceberg that has a small part above the surface
of the water that's visible,
and then a much larger part that's beneath the surface.
Examples of unacceptable conflicts
that lie beneath the surface are fear, immoral urges,
irrational wishes, selfish needs, shameful experiences,
unacceptable sexual desires, violent motives.
These impulses are generated by the Id
and the Ego uses defenses to keep them in check.
These defense mechanisms are very normal ways of coping
with everyday challenges, if you don't use them excessively.
There are lower order defense mechanisms
that are called Primitive and higher order ones
that are considered mature defenses.
The less mature defenses are the ones
that we tend to use in childhood.
And as we mature, we develop more sophisticated ways
to manage negative thoughts and emotions.
If this is something you do automatically
and is beyond your awareness, why even talk about it?
Because sometimes we get stuck
using the old immature defenses to deal with adult problems.
And these behaviors can make you feel better at first,
but in the long run,
they cause more problems and hold you back from being able
to manage your emotions consciously.
So, let's take a look at the
five Primitive Defense mechanisms
and two less Primitive Defenses.
Number one is acting out.
This is when you get upset and you have tantrums, hissy fits
or engage in self-harm.
You can see this in children,
if they miss their afternoon nap or are hungry.
If you're a parent, you're probably very familiar
with the five o'clock meltdown.
And the child isn't aware of why they're upset,
they just don't feel good and they just have to let it out.
Similarly with adults, you aren't always aware
of the trigger that's driving your reaction.
You just may suddenly feel very emotional
and have a surge of anger.
Sometimes people are driven to self harm
because it provides relief for emotions
that they don't feel equipped to express.
Number two, Compartmentalization.
This is where you mentally separate thoughts or emotions
that conflict with one another
so, that you don't have to deal with the contradiction.
An example of this is, you have a strong belief
that as a society we've been irresponsible
in creating toxic waste that's caused global warming.
You even chastise your friends for drinking
out of plastic water bottles and using Clorox wipes.
But you work at a manufacturing plant that decided
to convert all of their glass products to plastic
to save money.
And even though you loathe use of plastic,
you don't feel guilty working there because it's just a job,
you have no say in the decisions that they make,
and after all, you still use glassware in your home.
With this attitude,
you don't have to judge yourself for working at an entity
that you believe is destroying the earth.
Number three is Denial.
This is where you refuse to accept the reality
that's apparent to everyone else.
A common example of this is being in denial
about having an addiction.
Another way that this can look is to ignore signs around you
that point to a certain reality.
You don't have to say out loud,
I refuse to believe that my partner is having an affair,
but you can ignore glaring signs,
like your partner never being home at night,
or getting lots of text messages that they quickly delete.
You can see all of that,
but you ignore it because you don't want to think about it
or deal with it.
Number four, Dissociation.
This is where you mentally block out
distressing memories or experiences.
And this is a very common defense mechanism
in people who have suffered trauma.
Your mind can go to another place
while you're experiencing a trauma,
or your mind can take the memory
and then stick it into a hidden place in your mind
so, that you can't find it.
You just can't really remember.
And this doesn't have to be a major experience
like being assaulted.
I've talked to people who can't remember
most of their childhood.
They remember that there was a lot of emotional abuse
in the household,
and they remember the way it made them feel,
but they don't remember milestones
like, the first days of school
or what they did during the summers.
What did you do for your birthdays?
"It's just one big blur."
In some ways, dissociation
is an extreme form of compartmentalization.
Compartmentalization can sometimes be helpful,
if you've got bad things happening to you,
one after another, it can be helpful
to put things in certain mental categories
so, that you can prioritize how to move forward
one step at a time.
But dissociation is never a productive defense because
it numbs you and allows you to stop feeling anything.
And some people can get so used to using this defense
that they spend a lot of their time checked out
and not in the moment.
And it can also be very distressing
to have these gaps in memory
and feel disconnected from your current reality.
Number five is Reaction Formation.
This is when you have an undesirable thought
and make it better,
by acting in the opposite way that you feel.
Some people believe that homophobia is reaction formation.
The person who may have been attracted
to someone of the same sex, defends against it,
by taking this overly harsh attitude toward homosexuality.
And that harsh attitude affirms
their own heterosexual orientation.
If I hate it, then I must not be it, right?
The next two defense mechanisms are more mature
than the previous five.
And they're more mature because they cause less problems
and they're more sustainable
as a way to manage negative emotions.
The first one is Displacement.
This is where you redirect unacceptable impulses like anger
from one object or person to another object or person
who's less threatening.
An example of this is being mad at your boss,
but going home and picking a fight with your spouse
or kicking your dog.
A child who's angry at their parent may break a toy
instead of yelling back at the parent.
So, you can see how this kind of defense mechanism
can be more adaptive because
you avoid serious negative outcomes
by taking out your aggression on something
that produces less negative consequences.
Sometimes this can be a good thing,
if the displaced object is something that doesn't suffer
like a punching bag.
The last one that I'll talk about today,
is Intellectualization
This is where you think about unpleasant emotions
in an abstract way to avoid feelings.
An example of this is finding out
that your loved one has cancer
and has less than six months to live.
To avoid feeling the pain of losing your loved one,
you think about how death is part of the cycle of life,
and maybe you start thinking
about how to get their affairs in order.
Now, there is some value to thinking about these things
and not lying in the bed all day,
ruminating about how horrible your life will be
when you lose this person.
But with intellectualization, you don't really feel the pain
because you skipped over it
with this excessive abstract thinking.
It's as if you're not really a part of the situation,
you're kind of talking about it
like it's somebody else's problem.
The intellectual activity is excessive
and it's not a progression of acceptance.
This list of defenses is not exhaustive
and there's a lot more.
But these are some of the common ones.
I discussed the mature defenses
in the video that I did on Coping Skills.
How do you change your process that's unconscious?
Change starts with being aware of the behaviors.
The part of this that's unconscious
is the impulse behind the behavior,
or the conflicts underneath the surface.
If you employ a lot of defenses in your every day,
you may need the help of a therapist
to help you uncover your conflicts.
But in the absence of a therapist, do some self reflection.
Have you engaged in some of these behaviors?
Are there some thoughts or feelings that you can identify
that may have triggered the behavior?
Think hard about a moral issue
or something other people would find unacceptable,
like wanting to harm someone who made you angry.
How did you respond to that insult?
Did you sit with the emotion and let it pass?
Probably not.
Psychological defenses are the ways
that we separate ourselves
from being fully aware of unpleasant thoughts and feelings.
And being mindful of what you're experiencing in the moment
helps you not reflexively engage in these defenses.
I'll talk more about managing negative emotions
through acceptance in a later video.
Thanks for watching, see you next time.