Psychological Defenses

There are many different strategies that we use when dealing with our issues. In this article, we’ll take a look at three broad psychological coping strategies that we might employ to handle our problems. These defenses usually serve to momentarily solve an issue, but often at a cost.

To illustrate these defenses, we will need to focus on a particular symptom someone might struggle with - let’s look at the feeling of worthlessness as an example.

Avoidance

Maybe at times we are in touch with feeling worthless, and at others we aren’t. Perhaps there are activities that distract us from the feeling, and these activities become something of a focal point for us, where a lot of desire is attached. Any kind of addiction can mask a particular symptom. The addiction then becomes the more obvious problem, instead of the painful self concept the addiction is hiding. We might be so skilled at hiding the problem that we are only very dimly aware of struggling with an issue, and the exact nature of what it is might elude us. If we keep moving, keep deflecting, keep cracking jokes, keep working or loving or playing hard enough, we do not need to think about pain. Any situation that might stimulate the guarded against feeling is also avoided. Depth in relationships will often take a hit here, because opening up to others in a real way risks revealing the pain, or begins to make us feel afraid of being subjected to the feeling again by the other person’s action or inaction. Therefore intimacy is avoided, and our worlds become safer again, although much emptier.

Overcompensation

Perhaps we organise ourselves around the opposite end of the spectrum. Instead of being in touch with a feeling of worthlessness, we are instead predominantly in touch with a grandiose feeling of self assurance and superiority. We are not the problem, other people are. We might feel a deep desire for a world of ideals - the ideal relationship, the ideal city to live in, the ideal career path, the ideal appearance. We may so consciously desire these things that the original concept of the worthless self is out of touch, and instead the world around us becomes devalued. In this instance, relationships are spoiled mostly by our being unable to appreciate them. The part of us that feels worthless is projected. Every worthwhile relationship is unable to provide us with any kind of meaningful sustenance, because we keep imagining a better relationship, a better partner, a better situation. The obsession with having the best masks a kind of traumatic experience of disappointment. In a sense, we may have once felt so injured by the events of our lives, that we now consciously or unconsciously feel entitled to compensation from everything around us. Because we cannot appreciate what people are really offering us, we also can’t hold on to it. Relationships become hollow, unsatisfying and interchangeable.

Surrender

While the above two strategies are active, surrender is passive. Let’s say we are in touch with a feeling of worthlessness. We give in to the feeling. We may be overcome with a deep sense of hopelessness and depression. This kind of experience often carries an intense sense of anger at ourselves, and attempts to solve the issue might involve punishing ourselves through self harm, persecutory self talk, or even thoughts of suicide. Sometimes the desire here is for someone else to save us from the feeling. Others are thus seen as ideal, while the self is denigrated. We give up on truly reciprocal relationships because we feel so worthless, while the other person is given all the power.

In these above examples, we covered three broad ways of dealing with a core experience of the self. The experience of worthlessness is just one of many that people may defend against. It might be an impulse, it might be a feeling, it might be a belief, or even a perception that brings anxiety. The above three strategies may encapsulate a variety of different psychological defenses within each. These defenses would need articles of their own to outline. Some of us will tend towards one of these strategies, while others will use more of a mixture. At times we may surrender, at times we may avoid, and at times we might overcompensate. It can be useful to consider which of these we may tend to use, in what contexts, and how it is potentially costing us.

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