Coping/Defense Mechanisms (Part 1 of 2)

Outline:

• Coping/Defense Mechanisms: Definition
• Function of Coping Mechanisms
• List of Coping Mechanisms
• Embracing Our Coping Mechanisms

Definition:

• Coping/Defense Mechanisms are our ways of managing stress, anxiety, or negative emotions.
• It could be a conscious choice on how to manage these emotions, or it could be unconscious.
• When it is conscious, we are actively choosing an action/behavior to help us manage/deal with these emotions.
• When it’s unconscious, we find ourselves thinking/acting/behaving in certain ways and might be surprised by them.

Function of Coping Mechanisms

• Our way to survive/adapt to our mental/emotional/interpersonal stimuli/“environment.”
• Our psyche cannot take too much stress/negative stimuli, as they could overwhelm our “system,” so our unconscious/subconscious kicks in, without our full (conscious) knowledge, to help us manage the situation.
• When it is conscious, then it’s our way of choosing what we want to do with the situation.

Selected List of Coping Mechanisms

• Acting Out: A person deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by actions rather than reflecting on their feelings. The action allows the person to keep the emotions out of awareness. Example: Cleaning obsessively; Overeating; Video gaming; Immersing oneself in reading, etc. This is different from “Acting Up,” in which the person is more conscious of their motivation.
• Avoidance: Mentally or physically avoiding something that causes distress; refusal to face situations, objects (people), or activities. Example: The person does not address the issue in conflict with their partner through procrastination or refusal to discuss it.
• Compensation: Making up for a weakness in one area by gaining strength in another. When one encounters failure or frustration in some sphere of activity, one overemphasizes another. People can also compensate in a conscious way. Example: – A short and slim male who is rejected by the football team, practices playing excellent baseball where his height is not much of a factor.
• Deflection: A defense mechanism consisting of redirecting attention to someone/something else. Example: In the middle of a heated discussion on how one acted in an inconsiderate way toward their partner, the person turns the table back on the offended, or talks about other good things one has done.
• Denial: Failing to recognize a thought, action, feeling, or situation, and the consequences they have on the person. The person behaves as if the threat simply doesn’t exist, or the magnitude of the threat goes unnoticed. Example: After verbally bashing someone, the person behaves as if what they said did not cause any hurt, and acts as if it’s “life as usual.”
• Devaluation: One views oneself or another as having exaggerated negative qualities. Examples: Beating oneself severely and generalizing it to one’s character over a slight mistake; Putting down one’s achievement: A child brings home a test grade of 98, and the parent says: “Where are the two points to make your test a perfect 100?”
• Displacement: The person redirects a response (often aggression) from the source of the threat to a safer target. Example: The abusive spouse takes out their anger on their mate and children after a humiliating experience at work.
• Dissociation: Splitting off or separating a group of thoughts, memories, feelings, and activities from the main portion of consciousness. One’s mind goes on something else while in a stressful situation so one doesn’t feel/fully experience the present unpleasant situation.Examples: One finds oneself having “lost track of” memory/time while driving or doing a mundane task; One’s mind conjures beach and calm ocean while being berated by someone in front of them.
• Externalization: Believing outside forces or circumstances are the cause of one’s behaviors. This defense mechanism allows one to avoid accepting responsibility for one’s behavior; Blame-shifting. Example: Blaming the traffic for “causing” our lateness when we should’ve taken into account traffic jams before starting the drive.
• Fantasy: The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by excessive daydreaming as a substitute for human relationships, or more effective action, or problem-solving: Escaping reality into a world of possibility. Example: A person comes up with fantastical reasons why their loved one disappointed them.
• Forecasting/Script Writing: One predicts what will happen based on one’s experience. This tends to be negative and serves to cause one to feel hopeless toward change. This also functions to “prepare” the person for the worst, not to become surprised when things turn out to be just as one has feared. Examples: A person was mistreated by an abusive authority figure, they assume all authority figures will mistreat them, and reacts in anticipation to how they believe they will be treated; A person had a panic attack once when they drove over a bridge, they then anticipate that they will always suffer panic attacks anytime they drive over a bridge.
• Humor: The individual deals with emotional conflict or external stressors by emphasizing the amusing or ironic aspects of the conflict or stressors. Humor is pathological when it substitutes for authentic emotional experience. Example: One shares how funny it was when their car was totaled and they were in the ICU from the accident.
• Idealization: Overestimation of the desirable qualities and underestimation of the limitations of a desired person. Idealizing helps to minimize the frustrations inherent in the relationship. Example: Instead of admitting to the frustration or disappointment when our loved one did not celebrate a special occasion, we give them excuses and assign good intent to their negligence.  
• Intellectualization: Avoiding emotion by focusing on facts and logic. The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by the excessive use of abstract thinking or the making of generalizations to control or minimize disturbing feelings. Example: Instead of admitting that we feel disappointed by our loved one, we come up with rational reasons why our loved one couldn’t deliver on their promise to us.
• Magical/Wishful Thinking: Simplistic belief that somehow things will all work out – one’s fantasy will become real without having to work toward one’s said goals. Example: A person believes that just by wishing/praying to lose weight and to find a job, one doesn’t have to take action to lose the weight or go on job interviews.
• Minimizing/Trivializing: Making small what is something big; protecting oneself from worry or anxiety by viewing significant events or problem behaviors as being less important (smaller) than they are. Example: After consistently failing to obtain one’s targeted GRE score, the person goes back on their view of the importance of achieving a high GRE score. 
• Numbing: A general restriction of emotional responsiveness; sense of detachment. This is often seen in people who have been traumatized. Example: Not having any emotional reaction after witnessing one’s closest friend dies suddenly. 
• Obsession: One’s way of fighting off deeper concerns by getting “stuck” in some other symptom. This is one’s way of avoiding what might be painful lurking underneath. Example: A person is obsessed about his health and all day long worries over what healthy food he should eat, to the extent of not being able to go to work. This “helps” him to not have to face his sense of inadequacy in the workplace. 
• Passive Aggression: The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by indirectly and unassertively expressing anger toward others. Example: While one is upset with their spouse’s overspending, the person says, “You can go ahead and overspend as you always do. You always do whatever you want anyway.”
• Projection: Attributing one's thoughts, impulses, desires, fantasies, or emotions to another person or group, or some other person/agency outside of oneself. The person is unaware of his feelings and “dumps” them onto an unsuspecting other. Example: A person hates how they look after weight gain, they say everyone else is disgusted by how they look.
• Rationalization: Creating logical reasons for bad behavior. A means of coping with unpleasant or unacceptable stressors, impulses, or ideas, by attempting to justify feelings, motives, and behaviors that others would consider unreasonable, illogical, or intolerable. Example: Instead of owning to one slapping another, the person says that the other person provoked them. 
• Reaction Formation: The person displays an exaggerated behavior opposite of their underlying feelings or motives; avoiding something by taking a polar opposite position. Overcompensation for unacceptable impulses, thoughts, wishes, or feelings. Examples: the "Yes-man" who secretly harbors contempt and a desire to seize power; A person who acts in an exaggerated kindness toward someone whom they can’t stand because they cannot accept their repulsion toward that person. 
• Regression: A mechanism of decreasing distress by unconsciously “going back in time” developmentally to a fixation point where the current conflict was not conscious. Example:  We can act independently on our own out in the world, but when we return home, we regress/revert to our younger and more dependent/needy self.
• Repetition Compulsion: Unconscious attempt to undo a wrong (see below for undoing) by repeating the same circumstances that surrounded the initial wrong. Example:  A child of physical abuse grows up and repeatedly gets involved in relationships with batterers, unconsciously hoping to make a change in the present situation as if it would then ameliorate their past experiences.
• Repression: Pushing uncomfortable thoughts into the unconscious. Involuntary exclusion/blocking of disturbing wishes, thoughts, or experiences from conscious awareness. The repressed mental content becomes unconscious. The difference between this and suppression (see below) is that repression takes place automatically and takes place in the unconscious, whereas suppression is a conscious/subconscious effort to block undesired feelings/thoughts/wishes. Example: One is unaware of their disappointment, bitterness, or unforgiveness, and develops physical ailments that might show up in the form of long-term pain: Migraines, arthritis, gastritis, or even cancer.
• Resignation: A defeatist “acceptance” of what will happen. This robs the person of hope or joy concerning the future. Example:  A person “accepts” a joyless marriage because they don’t want to feel disappointed by unmet hopes/expectations of their spouse.
• Resistance: Unconscious fight against what is being asked of one. Inability to cooperate or work toward a constructive goal. Examples:  While a person states they want to have a fulfilling marriage, they find themself setting up obstacles that get in the way of obtaining their stated goal; After setting up a goal, the person doesn’t follow through with action to achieve that goal.
• Sabotage/Self-Defeat: Similar to the Self-fulfilling prophecy below, one lives/acts out what one really believes about oneself. The person “manages” (unconsciously) to defeat their own goals to make one’s life coincide with deep-seated negative beliefs about themself. Example: While one states one sets a goal to obtain a promotion at work, the person doesn’t follow through with the plans stated by one’s manager to achieve this goal ~ this is being fueled by one’s belief that one will not be promoted at work anyway.
• Secondary Gain: An unconscious “wish” that is usually unhealthy. It lurks behind repeated behavioral patterns. Examples:  An abused victim continues to “end up” in abusive situations as a result of their unconscious desire to undo the assault, or, they are “attracted” to what is familiar versus venturing out to experience the “unknown;” A person is always helping others in need while feeling no one would do the same for them, and has a pattern of one-way relationships with others. While this person doesn’t like these dynamics, they are obtaining the respect and love from those they are helping, so the pattern continues.
• Self-fulfilling Prophecy: Similar to sabotage/self-defeat above, the person “lives out” how they view themself in the depth of their psychic core. Example: When a person believes they will never find a fulfilling relationship, they act dismissively toward a potential significant partner who might be interested in them, so they end up alone.
• Somatization/Conversion: Psychological problems turned into physical symptoms. Conflicts are represented by physical symptoms involving parts of the autonomic nervous system, commonly the GI tract, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems. Example:  A person is upset at school or work and develops a headache or stomach ache.
• Splitting: A major image-distorting mechanism in which important people in a person's life are divided into good and bad, the former idealized and the latter devalued. This compartmentalization fails to integrate the positive and negative qualities of the self or others into a cohesive image, eliminating balanced views and expectations of self and others. A borderline personality utilizes this as a bedrock defense. Examples:  A person sees one parent as perfect while the other as a monster; A person endues a friend as the best person ever while viewing another as the worst person. 
• Sublimation: Channeling negative psychic energy into acceptable activities; redirecting the “wrong” urges into socially acceptable actions. Examples:  A person may play violent video or computer games as a way to sublimate intense anger at others; A recovered eating disordered person who always used to count her caloric intake now opens a diet center to help others count their calories and lose weight.
• Suppression: Consciously holding back unwanted urges. The conscious intentional exclusion of emotionally charged thoughts and memories from consciousness. This is the technical term for what people call “stuffing” their feelings. Over time, however, suppression is like turning up the heat in a pressure cooker without letting the trapped steam be relieved before opening the lid: It blows up in one’s face! Example:  A parent feels frustrated by their child’s behavior but chooses to “let it go” to not feel the upset or disappointment in the moment. After a while though, the parent blows up at the kid, making the child feel confused by the swing of the parent’s extreme laid-back and volatile behaviors.
• Trivializing/Minimizing: Making small what is something big; protecting oneself from worry or anxiety by viewing significant events or problem behaviors as being less important (smaller) than they are. Examples:  When a person complains that they felt hurt or put down by what we said, we accuse the complainer of being too sensitive, thus not taking responsibility for the hurt we have caused; After feeling deeply hurt by our significant other, we find “reasons” why they misbehaved in the moment and brush it off as insignificant, to keep our image of that person being loving and kind toward us.
• Unconscious Wish: It is said, “There is an unconscious wish behind each fear.” The person converts what he believes will happen into fear. Example:  One is afraid of losing one’s parent to accidental death and dreams about this very fear at night. This is an indication that the person “believes” they might lose their parent to an accident.
• Undoing:  An action that serves the psychological function of negating an unacceptable action, impulse, or idea. It could also be an attempt to reverse the effects of a negative act or feeling of guilt, by compensation with a good act. Examples:  We hit the gym to burn off the extra calories after overeating; After we spoke harshly toward our child, we cook them their favorite dish or grant them special privileges. 

Embracing Our Coping Mechanisms

• Spiritually, anything and everything we do that’s contrary to God’s desire for us, is sin.
• Mentally/emotionally, what we do is our way of coping with our stresses in life. 
• 2 Corinthians 7:10 ~ “ Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” When we feel condemned by what we do or how we act, it is not godly sorrow – it’s condemnation from Satan who loves to condemn us so we would hide from God, thus the “death” at the end of this verse. Conviction, on the other hand, is the Holy Spirit prompting us to change and turn back toward God – which leads to salvation, which is reconciliation with God, and we do not feel condemned.
• It would be good to look at our coping mechanisms as something we do to aid us, vs allow them to condemn us.