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from: Book Review: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman, PhD
Contempt in relationships can be seen through:
Gottman views contempt as a way to convey disgust and when feelings of disgust are present, chances of reconciliation decrease.
Being defensive harms relationships in 2 ways:
- The ability to listen and respond to a spouse who is attacking suffers while the attacker gains momentum. Gottman describes the
stonewalling partner as the partner who doesn't give any casual feedback that would indicate he/she isn't listening.
- "Stonewallers act as if they could care less," he says. The
hurtful and non-productive system
of spouses initiating conversations with criticism and contempt which then lead to defensiveness and stonewalling is common for many couples.
Rather than focus entirely on predicting
the demise of marriages, the author
gratefully shifts
his focus to happy
marriages and 7 characteristics that make them successful.
The idea of friendship
being a foundation for a healthy marriage is reiterated throughout Gottman's book and there are numerous exercises in the book to assist couples in becoming
more connected with one another.
I believe couples searching for ways to change destructive patterns will find Gottman's book a useful tool. He reminds us to focus on positive feelings which have been the foundation for the relationship and to remember the importance of
our own behaviors within the relationship. He encourages us to spend time with partners. This book is a call to act with honor and respect with in
relationships.
How can I discipline
without losing my cool?
Question: I've been
married to my wonderful husband for about 6 1/2 years now. I'm raising 2 12-year-old girls (since they were 5 years old). One is my biological daughter and the other my stepdaughter.
My daughter doesn't get very good grades in school, but is responsible. My stepdaughter isn't responsible, but is good in school.
It's been suggested that I take time to my self daily, because I also have another 3 children. To make a long story short, it's hard for me to keep my cool when they're
rebellious. I don't get physical, but I get defensive and it's hard for me to stop and hear their side of the story. So,
they just get disciplined (privileges
taken away). Please tell me: What's the best
way to love and discipline without going crazy?
Answer: You say that you have 2 12-year-old
girls and 3 other children. I'm assuming that, for the moment, it's the 12-year-olds who are being rebellious.
You also say that you "get defensive and that it's hard for you to hear their side of the story and so
they just get disciplined by having privileges taken away."
1st, it sounds like you're having the normal struggles all parents have with kids who're just about to become teenagers.
2nd, it's very important to take time for yourself daily, as someone has suggested to you.
When we're stressed out, we tend to do and say things that we later regret. There's a useful acronym borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous - HALT - which stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.
These are the states in which people are most likely to relapse and drink alcohol again. But for everyone, these are also the states in which we do our worst parenting and our worst relating in our marriages.
You don't say whether or not you're working outside of the home, but whether you are or not, trying to raise
5 kids is a full-time job by itself. I'd also want to know what role your husband plays in the disciplining of the girls and
if the 2 of you are in sync when it comes to rules and follow-through.
Aside from those questions, I find that for all of us who struggle to raise children, it's our own anxiety that causes the most trouble and that when we learn to manage our anxiety, it's usually easier.
i.e., let's say that one of the 12-year-olds knows that she has to finish her homework and show it to you before
she can watch any television. Being in a rebellious mood, she shouts from the family room, "Yeah, I did it!" as she turns
on the TV.
My anxiety as a parent might be to fold. I'd worry that she hasn't done her homework and that she'll fail in school and therefore fail in life and I'd worry that I was losing control and authority and that if I lose control and authority, I'll be a "bad" parent and therefore I'll be a failure in life. I know that may sound extreme, but if we're honest with ourselves, that's what it usually comes down to.
As the adults in the family, it's our job to master our own feelings before we can expect our teens to master theirs. If you're getting exasperated, take 2 steps back from the center of the conflict and tell yourself that you don't have to come up with an immediate response.
Think it through. If need be, confer with your spouse; i.e., you might sit down with him in the bedroom and say, "She's not following
through with reporting on her homework before she turns on the TV. Can you back me up if we remove the TV from the family
room for 24 hours?"
After the two of you agree on a solution to the problem, continue to calm yourself and then the two of you can go back out and very calmly and matter-of-factly turn off the TV, unplug it and carry it into the garage or your bedroom closet.
You might think that's a pretty extreme solution for such a minor problem, but I use it to make a point. We parents often make
a simple mistake that has far-reaching consequences.
The mistake is that we have too many rules, none of which is enforced consistently. It's better to have a few rules that are sacred and
pretty much non-negotiable, so pick your battles wisely and then make sure you have a strategy.
Having a strategy means that you've thought it through and know how you will react ahead of time. While it's difficult in the middle of a hectic day to
always have a strategy ahead of time - when these more protracted power struggles begin to appear - it's in your and your children's best interests to step away from the conflict until you do.
Sometimes calmly stepping back from the conflict while you formulate your strategy can be the best thing you do for yourself and your kids.
Common Emotional Defenses
By Robert Burney
"Attempting to suppress emotions is dysfunctional; it doesn't work." Emotions are energy: E-motion = energy in motion. It's supposed to be in motion, it was meant to flow.
Emotions have a purpose, a very
good reason to be - even those emotions that feel uncomfortable.
Fear is a
warning, anger is for
protection, tears are for cleansing
and releasing.
These aren't negative emotional responses! We were taught to react negatively to them. It's our reaction that's dysfunctional and negative, not the emotion.
Emotional honesty is absolutely vital to the health of the being. Denying, distorting and blocking our emotions in reaction to false beliefs and dishonest attitudes causes emotional and mental disease.
This emotional and mental disease causes physical, biological imbalance which produces
physical disease."
(All quotes in this color are from
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls)
Growing
up in emotionally dishonest societies with wounded parents
forced us to learn ways to distance ourselves from our feelings. In this article I'm going to talk about 3 common defensive strategies we learn to protect ourselves and help us deny our emotions.
1. Speaking in the 3rd person. One of the defenses many of us have against
feeling our feelings is to speak of ourselves in the 3rd person. "You just kind of feel hurt when that happens" isn't a personal statement and doesn't carry the power of speaking in the 1st person.
"I felt hurt when that happened"
...is personal, is owning the feeling. Listen to yourself so that you can become more aware of this defense and start
changing it. Listen to
others - both in person and on TV - refer to self in the third person and you'll gain some insight into how they're wounded. You'll probably be surprised at how often you hear this defense in the
course of a day as you become more conscious.
To say,
"I feel angry" or "I feel sad"
...is owning the feelings. It's emotional honesty and helps us to get in touch with the emotional energy
that exists in our bodies. Referring to our self as "you" is a form of emotional dishonesty.
2. Story telling. This is a very common method of avoiding our feelings. Some people tell entertaining stories to avoid feelings. They may respond to a feeling statement by saying something like
'I remember back in
`85 when I. . .'
Their stories might be very entertaining but they have no personal immediate emotional content.
Some people tell stories about other people. They'll respond to an emotional moment by telling an emotional
story about some friend, acquaintance, or even a person they read about.
They may exhibit some emotion in telling the story but it's emotion for the other person, not for self. They keep a distance from their emotions by attributing the emotional energy they're touching on to being about someone other than self.
Then there is the stereotypical Codependent of the joke: when a Codependent dies someone else's life passes before their eyes. If this type of Codependent is in a relationship, everything they say will be about the other person. Direct questions about self will be answered with stories about the significant other. This is a completely unconscious result of the sad fact that they have no real concept of self as an individual entity.
Perhaps the most common story telling diversion is to get very involved in the details of the story 'she
said. . . . . then I said. . . . then she did. . . . .' The details are ultimately insignificant in relationship
to the emotions involved but because we don't know how to handle the emotions we get caught up in the details.
Often we're relating the details in order to show the listener how we were wronged in the interaction. Often we focus on how others are "wrong" in reaction to the situation
as a way of avoiding our feelings.
If someone is telling you a story and you find your mind wandering and boredom setting in - it's because they aren't being emotionally honest.
Often the person will be coming from a victim/self pity perspective and may even be crying while telling the story - but the crying they're
doing isn't emotionally honest, it's part of a role they're playing and probably have been playing
for years.
Expressing feelings in a martyr's role created by the false self is very different from expressing grief in relationship to self. The martyr who is blaming is being dishonest both emotionally and intellectually.
3. Avoiding using primary feeling words. There are only a handful of primary
feelings that all humans feel. There's some dispute about just how many are primary but for our purpose here I'm going to use
7.
Those are:
It's important to start using the primary names of these feelings in order to own them and to stop distancing ourselves from the feelings.
To say "I am anxious" or "concerned" or "apprehensive" isn't the same as saying "I feel afraid." Fear is at the root of all of those expressions but we don't have to be so in touch with our fear if we use a word that distances us from the fear.
Expressions like "confused," "irritated," "upset," "tense," "disturbed," "melancholy," "blue," "good," or "bad" aren't primary feeling words.
We were trained to be emotionally dishonest in childhood. In order to start peeling the layers of denial it is vital to get aware of our own emotional defenses. In order to start getting emotionally honest with ourselves - let alone with anyone else - it's vital to start recognizing our own emotional defenses. The little tricks of language and focus that we learned to help
us distance ourselves from feelings that we didn't know how to deal with.
Becoming willing to get conscious
of our own defenses is a vital step to getting in touch
with our own feelings. Learning to be emotionally honest with ourself is an important part of a recovery / healing path.
Defense
mechanisms - protectors against pain!
A few years back an attractive young lady told me a terrifying story about how her father
brutalized her by beating her with a shovel.
She was just a tiny child when this occurred. She would wrap herself around his legs while he madly hit her, crying
out, "Daddy! daddy I love you!"
Can you begin to imagine the horrific pain inflicted on that child. I cringe
every time I think about this story.
The young lady told me these terrifying incidents without any emotion whatsoever. She'd describe them in quite vivid detail, recounting each horrible scene with a chilling detachment that at first was difficult to understand.
Every time she described another incident I would break down and weep. But not her.
After sometime I began to see that she had NO feelings whatsoever. She showed no emotion. She never cried, never laughed... never anything.
The image that developed in my mind was of a walnut. Inside was a soft tender center but it was protected and hidden by a very, very tough shell, so tough in fact it was virtually impenetrable.
This young lady had locked her bruised and brutalized feelings away, beneath a cold, emotionless exterior where she'd never have to get in touch with those early childhood catastrophic feelings again.
She survived her childhood by suppressing her pain so successfully that she lost her ability
to feel anything as an adult. She was totally numb! That walnut shell was her defense mechanism.
Without it she would've lived in endless and catastrophic trauma all her life. But when she saw me she was an adult and her childhood beatings had occurred some 20 years earlier.
Her father had died and there was no one around to
terrorize her.
But she was still protecting herself from the childhood pain with her walnut shell.
Defense mechanisms have been described as largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt.
They're survival mechanisms which allow us to cope when our tender inner-selves are being undermined and threatened by overwhelming negative forces, whether they be physical or psychological.
We all have a repertoire of our own individual
defense mechanisms we have used and still use to cope with what we perceive within ourselves to be life's threats and dangers.
Defense mechanisms are unconsciously acted out behavior we have largely learnt from young childhood to deal with situations
that trigger off memories or feelings of previous negative experiences.
They're used to defend off the
pain! They protect us from having to relive and re-feel those times when all those deeply negative experiences seemed catastrophic, overwhelming and terrifying.
Others begin to see our "defense mechanisms" before we do! Because they're unconsciously acted out behavior,
we don't even know we have them or are using them.
Everything we do seems and feels natural or normal until someone else makes a comment or observation about
the way we respond or behave in certain situations.
And if our "defenses" are up because of earlier criticism or undermining of our wounded inner-selves, we won't find it too easy to feel safe and secure when someone else offers some insight which seems to "criticize" us! We may retaliate, sulk,
get depressed, withdraw or just go numb.
Outmoded or unnecessary defense mechanisms are the ones we find most debilitating and can produce
in us all types of neurotic behavior.
The young "walnut" lady had no feelings, but was capable of making others cry with her horrific stories.
That, I learnt after a while, was how she expressed her emotions safely. Her defenses wouldn't let her feel her pain, but she could transfer it to others who then cried on her behalf.
Defense mechanisms can cause us to live and act neurotically or in ways not helpful to ourselves or others. We may find ourselves behaving in inappropriate or confusing ways, which could affect our work, our relationships or our ability to handle distressing and stressful situations.
When our defense mechanisms interfere with and begin to play havoc with our lives and those of
others is the time we need to resolve them and lessen their impact.
Most of our defense mechanisms are survival mechanisms which in adult
life we no longer require but still unconsciously use. What we need, to reduce their crippling impact, is safety, security and honesty from those closest to us.
We need to have others help us to "see ourselves" because we're not really capable of doing that.
But always remember when you discover one "defense mechanism" in someone else, there are
always more you aren't seeing in yourself.
"Codependence is an emotional defense system
which tries to take ego credit for things that go the way we want them to and blames someone else when they don't. . . . . .
If a person hasn't been working on healing
these emotional wounds, then any feedback will be felt as criticism -
as being wrong or bad - and the persons defense
system reacts by becoming defensive."
Healthy Romantic Relationships
Have
you ever heard any of these questions or statements?
These
are the sorts of things you might hear friends or relatives say. You might even find yourself saying something
similar. These are also the sorts of things clinical psychologists hear all the time.
And it’s all because we have an unconscious.
You
might wonder, ’What is the relevance of psychology to everyday life?” Well, here is the answer.
Like it or not, the unconscious affects every aspect of our daily functioning, both personal and interpersonal.
And,
to be honest, of all the pages on this website, this page is the most painful and the most sad, for three reasons:
-
Many persons
either don’t believe in the unconscious or don’t think it’s “relevant.”
-
-
Those who do
understand the unconscious know that they usually can't do anything to help others who are trapped in it and who refuse to listen to good advice, until things get very, very bad.
My goal on this page isn't to provide a detailed theory of human unconscious functioning; I'll instead offer some easily understood information that might make the subject of unconscious functioning -and its relation to the practice of psychology
- a bit more understandable to the average person.
The
first problem with the unconscious is that it's well, unconscious. That is, by definition the unconscious represents all that's
unknown about ourselves. So how in the world can we talk about something unknown? One solution to the problem is to deny its existence or to not talk about it.
To a perfectly
logical and rational mind, therefore, the unconscious is just a lot of nonsense. Persons of this persuasion can often be found
telling others to
“stop crying - just pull yourself up by your
own bootstraps and get on with life.”
In psychological
practice, this attitude is most reflected in behavioral therapy.
To
be crass, curing a phobia with a purely behavioral treatment isn’t much different than teaching a dog not to pee on the floor. Yet, to
be honest, just as most dogs who live indoors eventually get house-broken, individuals with phobias can be cured with behavioral treatment.
Many persons might
not find it dignified to be trained like animals, but remember that B. F. Skinner, the originator of a form of behavioral treatment called operant conditioning, wrote a book called Beyond Freedom & Dignity in which he argued that autonomous human freedom and dignity were interfering with social progress and should be replaced with a “technology of behavior.”
Still,
there are those who prefer to think a bit more deeply about life and in the field of psychology they've been largely influenced by Freud.
Although Sigmund
Freud didn't originate the idea of an unconscious, he made extensive use of the concept in his treatment philosophy of psychoanalysis.
Freud
conceived of the unconscious as a sort of garbage dump for wishful impulses that we would rather not admit to ourselves.
In contrast,
Carl Jung, who began as Freud’s student, then became a colleague and ultimately became an estranged rival, distinguished
a “personal unconscious” from a “collective unconscious.” For Jung, the personal unconscious was similar
to the totality of Freud’s concept of the unconscious.
But in the collective unconscious
Jung saw images - which he called archetypes - that were, he claimed, related to personal, cultural and spiritual growth.
In fact, Jung’s followers have made a sort of pseudo-religion out of unconscious functioning.
I studied Jung
in depth for almost a decade, but ultimately I discovered that another psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, understood the unconscious better than anyone. Lacan, a brilliant French psychoanalyst, emphasized the relation of language to unconscious
functioning.
Language,
being metaphoric and symbolic, is one step - one large step - removed from “reality” and in the gap between the
symbolic and the real is all the deception, lies and fraud of human social existence.
Although
it might seem, on the surface, that our lives are structured simply by conscious thought and speech, we're really more influenced by that gap between the symbolic and the real - or, in other words, by what's
“missing” from our lives simply because we filter all our experience through our social dependence on language and the realm of the symbolic.
Therefore, the
unconscious is a side-effect, so to speak, of our separation from raw reality because of our use of language.
Lacan
saw clearly that, because separation and lack lead to desire, the unconscious is primarily governed by “the desire of the Other”- that is, by the social world (the “Other”) around us.
Thus desire could be thought of as the unspoken - and hidden - aspect of our speaking lives.
Now,
as I said earlier, “How in the world can we talk about something hidden and unknown?” Well, what's missing - or
hidden in desire - can be “mapped out,” so to speak, through a keen analysis of how a person speaks about his or her life and
problems.
As
a result of talking about dreams, i.e., or of mental associations of one thing to another,
an image can be formed of the hidden desires that may be motivating a person’s behavior.
A Metaphor and a Case Example
Imagine,
i.e., someone writing on a note pad. The sheet of paper with the writing is then removed.
But if you rub
across the surface of the next blank sheet with the side of a charcoal crayon, the writing - impressed into the second sheet
from the pressure of the pen on the top sheet - appears as empty strokes amid the charcoal blackness on the surface of the
paper.
In a similar way, the language
of unconscious motivation can be discovered indirectly through the associations that surround it.
In
a clinical case, I saw a person who had been suffering for three months from daily cramps and vomiting at two
hour intervals. His physician and a gastroenterologist were baffled. Medication had little effect. Eventually this person
was referred to me for psychological treatment.
I told him we weren’t
going to “get rid” of the vomiting; we were going to listen with compassion to what it had to tell him. So we explored his associations to the vomiting.
From the violence
in the neighborhood that seemed to trigger the vomiting, to the physical beatings and sexual abuse from his childhood, to the numerous rejections and refusals to give help that he encountered throughout his life, to his anger that he had to achieve his college education without family support and on to his recent acceptance in graduate school, we mapped out his associations.
In
the end, after three sessions of intense psychological exploration, he was able to recognize that he was terrified of beginning graduate school. Through his tears, he put that terror - all the terror of his life - into words for the first time.
“So what will
you tell the part of you that wants to vomit?” I asked.
“I’ll say:
OK guys, you can relax. I get the message. I’m terrified of starting school.”
3 days later he woke to these words of a dream: “The dictator has stepped down.” Not killed,
not assassinated - but willingly resigned.
And the vomiting stopped.
Unconscious
Defense Mechanisms
We
are all constantly being “assaulted” by others around us in their desires to get from us what will most benefit their self-interests. And so the unconscious motive to satisfy others will often conflict with our basic need for self-preservation.
Moreover,
in addition to these social demands, the physical world around us often assaults us thru accidents and natural disasters. Therefore we all must deal with emotional conflict or internal or external “assaults” on our well-being.
Common
ways of protecting ourselves emotionally were called mechanisms by Sigmund Freud. When seen in pathological
settings, these mechanisms can technically be called defense
mechanisms; when seen in everyday life, they can be more properly called dynamic mechanisms.
Modern
psychiatry, however, uses the term defense mechanism in both pathological and everyday settings.[1]
Unhealthy defenses often become a focus of psychotherapy in the quest to overcome inhibitions to emotional genuineness. Through the hard work of psychotherapy you can learn to bring into conscious awareness all the threatening thoughts, feelings, memories, wishes and fears pushed out of consciousness by your defenses.
Once
these inner experiences are properly understood consciously, you can begin to live an emotionally open and honest life and your unhealthy defenses will dissolve because they'll no longer have any useful function.
Healthy
Defenses
It’s
important to understand right from the beginning that not all defense mechanisms are “bad” or unhealthy. Some defense mechanisms allow for self-protection while maintaining a full awareness of the thoughts and feelings involved in dealing with the challenge facing you.
Anticipation. You think ahead to events that might occur in the future and consider realistic responses or solutions.
Affiliation.
You seek out others for emotional support or physical help.
Altruism. You do good and kind things for others, rather than worry about your own immediate satisfaction or fears.
Humor. You notice the amusing or ironic aspects of something.
Some
persons, however, use humor to hide aggressive impulses. It might seem that they're always good-natured and happy, but if you listen closely you can hear them ending every sentence with a “ha-ha-ha” sort of giggle.
This
in effect tells the listener, “I’m really frightened of conflict, so please don’t take seriously anything I say, lest you be offended by it and want to challenge me.”
Self-assertion.
You act toward others in a way that's emotionally genuine and honest and that isn't coercive or manipulative.
Self-observation.
You reflect upon and consider your emotions and thoughts, so as to act responsibly.
Sublimation.
You direct socially harmful impulses into socially acceptable forms of behavior.
Suppression.
You avoid thinking about disturbing experiences or feelings.
Done
in moderation and in the proper circumstances, this can be healthy and protective. But in excess it becomes avoidance, one of the characteristic qualities of post-traumatic stress disorder.
This sort
of defensive functioning serves to keep threatening thoughts, feelings, memories, wishes, or fears out of conscious awareness.
Displacement.
You transfer your feelings about one object to another, less threatening object. i.e., a man angry at his boss comes home and yells at his children.
Displacement is the shifting of actions from a desired target to a substitute target when there is some reason why the
first target is not permitted or not available.
Displacement may involve retaining
the action and simply shifting the target of that action. Where this is not feasible, the action itself may also change. Where
possible the second target will resemble the original target in some way.
Phobias may also use displacement as a mechanism for releasing
energy that is caused in other ways.
Example:
The boss gets angry and shouts at me. I go home and shout at
my wife. She then shouts at our son. With nobody left to displace anger onto, he goes and kicks the dog.
A man wins the lottery. He turns to the person next to him and
gives the person a big kiss.
A boy is afraid of horses. It turns out to be a displaced fear
of his father.
I want to speak at a meeting but cannot get a word in edgeways.
Instead, I start scribbling furiously.
A religious person who is sexually frustrated focuses their
attention on food, becoming a gourmet.
A woman, rejected by her boyfriend, goes out with another man
'on the rebound'.
If you have ever had a bad day at work, then gone home and taken out
your frustration on family and friends, you have experienced the ego defense mechanism
of displacement. Displacement involves taking out our frustrations, feelings,
and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening. Displaced aggression is a common example of this defense mechanism.
Rather than express our anger in ways that could lead to negative consequences (like arguing with our boss), we instead express
our anger towards a person or object that poses no threat (such as our spouses, children, or pets).
Dissociation.
You separate yourself from reality by a breakdown of normal conscious functions of memory or identity. i.e., in a car crash you don’t feel
like you’re experiencing it yourself, or you don’t feel like you’re experiencing it in your body, or you
develop amnesia about the final moments of the crash.
Identification.
As a normal childhood developmental process of taking in of experience symbolically in order to identify with other persons
(especially parents), this is often called introjection.
But identification can also have a defensive function, as in identification
with the aggressor.
Intellectualization.
You focus on abstract logic or philosophy and minimize feelings about an event. i.e., after an earthquake damages your home, you talk to others primarily about the structural engineering
factors of the damage.
Isolation of Affect. You remain aware of the descriptive details of an event but lose connection with the feelings about the event itself.
Reaction Formation.
Your behaviors, thoughts, or feelings are the complete opposite of your actual (unconscious) desires. i.e., you dislike your job and yet you tell everyone how wonderful it is.
Repression.
You lose all conscious memory of an event, in contrast to dissociative
amnesia in which selective elements of an event are “forgotten.”
Also,
in repression you may retain certain emotional components of the event even though you have
no memory of the event. i.e., a woman who as a child was sexually abused by her father may feel anxious and uneasy whenever finding herself alone in a room with an older man, even though she can't remember the childhood abuse itself. (Note, however, that this emotional component in itself doesn't prove that
abuse once happened, because the woman’s anxiety could have other, unconscious causes.)
Repression is another well-known defense
mechanism. Repression acts to keep information out of conscious awareness. However, these memories don't just disappear; they continue to influence our behavior. For example, a person who has repressed memories of abuse suffered as a child may later have difficulty forming relationships.
Sometimes
we do this consciously by forcing the unwanted information out of our awareness, which is known as suppression (see above),
but it is usually believed to occur unconsciously.
Undoing.
You use symbolic means to negate or make amends for unacceptable thoughts or feelings. i.e., you repetitively wash your hands as an unconscious gesture of “washing away” the guilt of feeling angry at someone you depend upon.
source of partial information about displacement: click here
source of partial information about displacement: click here
Distorting Defenses
(minor)
This sort
of defensive functioning serves to distort images of self or body or others in order to
regulate self-esteem.
Devaluation.
You tell yourself that something desirable but immediately unattainable is somehow defective. i.e., the fox in Aesop’s fable tells himself that the grapes out of his reach are probably sour. Hence the expression
“sour grapes.”
Idealization.
You attribute exaggerated positive qualities to an other.
Omnipotence.
You feel or act as if you possessed special powers or abilities superior to others. i.e., a child left alone in the house
every day after school by working parents fantasizes that he's a comic book superhero.
Defenses
Involving Disavowal (disavowal means: To disclaim knowledge of, responsibility for, or association with)
This sort
of defensive functioning serves to keep unpleasant or unacceptable thoughts or feelings out of conscious awareness.
Denial. You refuse to acknowledge what is readily apparent to others. When
you’re in denial, the truth is your enemy and your accuser.
Denial is probably one of the best known defense mechanisms, used often to describe those
who seem unable to face reality or admit and obvious truth (i.e. "He's in denial.").
Denial is an outright refusal to admit or recognize that something has occurred or is currently occurring. Drug addicts or alcoholics often deny that they have a problem, while victims of traumatic events may deny that the event ever occurred.
Denials functions to protect the ego from things that the individual cannot cope with. While this may save us from anxiety or pain, denial also requires a substantial investment of energy. Because of this, other defenses are also
used to keep these unacceptable feelings from consciousness.
Projection.
You falsely attribute to others your own unacceptable feelings. i.e., a woman complains that a friend is insulting her because he hates women, when actually she harbors a secret hatred
for men because she was sexually abused as a child.
Rationalization.
You conceal your true motives by making incorrect, self-serving explanations. i.e., a parent beats a child, saying that it
isn't abuse because “That’s how my father disciplined me.”
Distorting Defenses
(major)
This sort
of defensive functioning involves gross distortion in images of self or others.
Autistic Fantasy.
You withdraw into excessive daydreaming rather than take effective action.
Projective
Identification. As in projection, you falsely attribute to others your own
unacceptable feelings, but here you remain aware of the feelings yet believe they're justifiable reactions to another person.
i.e.,
you feel angry that you have been assigned to work on a project, but
instead of recognizing your resentment, you start to feel angry with a co-worker, believing that she lacks commitment to the project.
This sort of behavior
can lead to what is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
i.e., an insecure
and jealous person who is intensely afraid of abandonment can so often impute feelings of infidelity into others that they
eventually get sick of such suspicion and criticism and end up actually abandoning him or her.
Splitting.
You see everything as either all good or all bad, sometimes alternating between the two in regard to one person.
part of this information was found at this source site: click here
Defenses
Involving Action
This sort
of defensive functioning involves action or withdrawal.
Acting
Out. You use physical actions instead of dealing with challenges directly by reflecting on and speaking about your feelings.
i.e.,
a man has an extramarital affair because he can't verbalize his feelings of frustration or helplessness within the marriage.
Apathetic Withdrawal. You simply withdraw from interaction with the world rather than deal with its assaults and challenges.
Help-rejecting Complaining. You make a show of asking for help, yet because of hidden feelings of hostility you reject all help or advice that is offered.
i.e.,
a woman suffering from bereavement begins to lose weight. A neighbor brings some yogurt and the woman complains that she only
eats goat’s milk yogurt. A physician prescribes medication and the woman stops taking it because she doesn’t like
the way it makes her feel. A psychologist offers psychotherapy and she complains that the office is too far away. And so on.
Passive Aggression. You present a façade of compliance, yet, because of hidden resentment - that is, unconscious anger (often anger at your father) - something always happens: you get sick, the bus is
late, your car breaks down, etc., so that you ultimately obstruct, rather than complete, the task.
“Wait a minute,”
you say. “It’s not my fault that the bus was late.”
Well, that may be true in some circumstances, but we’re talking here about things - one thing or another - that happen over and over again to frustrate the plans of someone else.
And
this frustration is a sort of veiled retaliation, a quiet unconscious revenge for something someone has done that hurt you. It could be very possible that you “knew” unconsciously just how much of a delay it would take to miss that
bus and you “knew” that you could be late.
Thus,
rather than catching the bus before the bus that will get you there on time, so as to guarantee not being late, you
ignore the warning signs, “knowing” with a secret satisfaction what will happen.
In
fact, the satisfaction may be so secret that even you don’t recognize it. It may sound weird, but as is often said, “Life is stranger than fiction.”
Responding to Criticism Without Being Defensive - By
Sharon Ellison
In an
actual war, to be attacked means to have our survival threatened. Thus, we might chose between surrender, withdrawal, or counterattack. When we feel attacked
(criticized or judged) by others in conversation, we often move into that same kind of survival mentality and automatically defend ourselves. But conversation is different than war. When we defend against
criticism, we give more power to the criticism and the person dishing it out than is warranted.
While we might
need to set some limits if someone is verbally abusive, I think we often ward off criticism far too soon, discarding anything that's valid, as well as what's invalid. The person's words
may hurt, but they'll hurt less, I think, if we ask questions, decide which pieces we agree with (if any) and which ones we don't
agree with.
We can just think about it, we don't have to fight it as if we were being attacked with a lethal weapon. I watch people's self esteem increase simply from becoming less defensive in the face of criticism and judgment. Besides, we may find a priceless gem in with some junk.
The War Model: When someone
attacks, you surrender, withdraw, or counterattack
The Non-Defensive Model: Ask questions,
decide what you think and then respond!
The remainder of this article will demonstrate how to respond
non-defensively to criticism by giving examples for parents, couples and professionals. While the examples are specific to
a certain type of relationship, the information is valuable in any relationship; i.e., dealing with harsh tones or "pay-backs" can happen with children or adults, at home or at work.
Parents: Are You Letting Your Child Speak Harshly to You? Or Putting Up With Criticism
Because of Guilt?
As parents, we often love our children so much and simultaneously feel inadequate to meet all their needs. They sense this and can learn early how to make us feel guilty as a way to get what they want. I hear so many children, starting at a young age, speaking in harsh critical tones to their
parents.
Ginny may simply say "You
know I hate peas!" Sam might shout "You never want to let me do anything with my friends!" The judgment might be more deeply critical of your choices, such as, "You made dad leave! You should tell him you're sorry so he'll come
back."
When we respond to our child or teen or even our adult child's criticism,
if guilt has a hold on us, we may "take it" and even apologize, or try to explain ourselves so he or she understands why we behaved in a certain way. If we're over our own edges, we may lash back.
What
I think we can do instead is to separate the tone of the judgment from the content of what's being said. We can say to Ginny, "If you don't want peas, I still want you to tell me gently." Or, "If you speak to me harshly, then I'm not going to answer. If you speak respectfully, I'll talk to you about this."
Then, if that child, teen or adult offspring does
talk without harsh judgment, we can, if it's appropriate, offer to discuss the situation. In this way, we can't only refuse to cave in to undue criticism,
we can model for our children how to
(a) talk about what they need and feel without being judgmental
(b) respond with a blend of
firmness and openness even when someone speaks harshly to us or them.
Couples: Avoid the "Pay-Back" When One of You "Gets Critical"
When we are in intimate relationships, we often have a "ledger of offenses" that we've accumulated with each other. And what I do that offends you often prompts
the reaction in you that offends me.
So when you criticize me,
your partner, it reminds me of what you do that "makes" me react that way. And so the counterattack game begins. "Well, I
wouldn't have to react this way if you didn't always . . ." Or, "Look at you criticizing me for having a double standard.
Haven't you ever looked in a mirror?!"
Instead,
if we listen to the feedback, however judgmental it sounds, and figure out whether we think it applies to us or not, then we don't have to retaliate immediately and intensify the conflict.
Later,
during the same conversation, or perhaps even at another time, we can ask the other person (if
we're sincerely curious and not point-proving) "Do you think your sarcasm (i.e.) contributed in any way to how I reacted?" Or, "Do
you think you ever (i.e.) have double standards - or do you think you don't?"
We can bring up related issues,
if we create a transition period and deal first with the one our partner brought up.
To
remain non-defensive, we must separate how we take accountability ourselves from whether or not the other person chooses to do so at any given moment. When we need to prove our partner is as "bad as we are" or worse, we're neck-deep in the muck of power struggle.
In non-defensive communication,
we address the issue the other person has brought up trusting that we can bring up our own issue later. Doing so can give both partners a "hearing aid."
Professionals:
Drop The Game of Passing the Blame and Enhance Others' Respect
In professional relationships how we get our own work done is often dependent on how well other people do their jobs. So, frequently, when we receive criticism it's easy to "pass the buck" and justify why we had difficulty with our part based on how others contributed to that difficulty.
Instead
of starting out by shifting blame or making excuses, even if we think the problem was caused by a co-worker, we can ask questions, such as,
- "What would you suggest I do differently next time?"
- "Were you aware that I had to get the materials from Jane before I could finish the project?"
- "If she doesn't have her part of the project to me on time,
how would you suggest I deal with it?"
If the feedback is about your
own performance and not related to what anyone else has or hasn't done, you can just start by asking for more information.
You can ask for additional details about how the supervisor or co-worker sees your attitude and behavior.
Then,
if there are points where you disagree, you can still use questions, such as, "If you think I shouldn't have criticized the quality of George's work on the project, are you saying I should just accept however he does it?" Or, "Are you saying I should just accept how he did it, or do you think it was how I said it?" Or, "Do you think there's any way I can let him know when I think the quality needs improvement?"
At some point you may wish
to disagree with part or all of what the person is saying. However, if your initial response to criticism is to gather more
information, I think you'll gain professional respect. Also, if the other person is off-base, your questions may prompt her or him to re-think the criticism.
Building Wisdom & Gaining Respect
For most of us, responding to criticism
without defending our selves has meant being "defenseless," caving in, losing face, feeling bad about ourselves. On the other hand, responding defensively has meant being harsh, closed,
shutting others out.
This is a no-win choice. We
look bad and undermine our own self esteem either way. If we can learn to respond to criticism with true non-defensive openness and clarity, asking questions, stating our position and setting limits when needed, we can build our own wisdom and garner the respect of both the children and adults in our lives.
This article is based on Taking the
War Out of Our Words by Sharon Ellison, available through your local bookstore or favorite online bookseller. Sharon Ellison,
M.S. is an award winning speaker and international consultant.
Preemptive Defensiveness -
by Speaker Allen
A Memo by Speaker Allen
Copyright © 1994, 2001 by ASC
Missions Group, ntc.
The major cause of abuse, of every type, is an attitude we call preemptive defensiveness. Preemptive defensiveness is the result of powerful internal decisions reinforced by strong victim-type feelings.
The decisions vary widely,
but they all fit into a single category:
"I'm never going to
let anyone get to me again!"
A variation on this might
be found in Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind", where Scarlett O'Hara vows from the depths of her soul,
"I'm never going to
be hungry again!"
To see the potential destructiveness
in this vow, one must look at the implied follow-up statement: "No matter what I have to do, or who must be sacrificed."
A person in preemptive mode acts first. The idea is to preempt the opponent's move, to make that
move impossible. In a preemptive nuclear strike, i.e., a country fires its missiles first, before its enemy has a chance to
shoot.
As a social function, the preemptive strategy is to be strong by keeping
others too weak to be a threat. Therefore, this isn't an affirmative attitude but a defensive, destructive one. The preemptively defensive
individual may be physically strong and occupy a powerful position, but inside he is a terrified mess who sees everyone as a threat.
Preemptive defensiveness's operation
is usually quite subtle. It isn't the overriding consideration in most people's motivations, so its appearance isn't often blatant. Even when it is someone's primary concern, usually it'll still be well hidden behind
a covert facade.
After
all, it isn't safe to be identifiable as the cause of other people's misery and failure. Further, the shroud is necessary since these people often have made a considerable investment in appearing indispensable.
The
preemptively defensive individual can't stand to see someone else do well, because that implies that the other person
will gain power and be a threat, now or later. So the usual method of such people is to constantly undermine the best efforts of others. And since
the facade must be maintained, they do it in little, excusable, ways.
If you feel great, they tell you about someone who is sick or miserable. If you're in love, they'll warn you about trusting people you can never really know and talk about their divorce as proof. If you're on the verge of some great achievement, they'll say something that raises doubts in your ability, or about the correctness of what you're doing or the way you're doing it. If you decide to run for office, they'll warn you that you'll get shot.
But don't mistake this for mere pessimism:
the preemptively defensive
individual is proactive in his negativity. Where the pessimist has yielded to apathy, the preemptively defensive has taken refuge in covert hostility.
So
much for your favorite co-worker or jogging partner. What about the boss? The preemptively
defensive boss has several options available for keeping people under The Thumb. When you do something exceptional, he can take the credit.
Or, he
can give you the credit but in such a way that you look lucky, not effective. When you become too competent, he can fire you
or set you up to look bad, so you can't take his job or expose his incompetence. He can pass you over at promotion time. Or,
he can just pass on hiring you in the first place.
And how
does the preemptively defensive person treat the buying public? Like cattle, to use the
old phrase. Use them, feed off them and care nothing for their comfort. Like the automobile sales manager who has his people chant,
"The buyer is a liar,"
...trying to convince his people that the
customers have more money than they say they do and aren't "just looking" and
so on.
What happens when a corporation takes on
the flavor of being preemptively defensive? The customers get shorted on value and vendors go unpaid, sometimes forever. The competition gets subverted, sabotaged and stolen from.
The one thing you should never expect from a preemptive defensive, whether an individual or a business, is straight dealings.
Now, the disclaimers. First, let's don't run out and
do a witch-hunt. Because second, we're all to some degree preemptively defensive. So let's
not judge others too harshly. Rather, we should look for a way to get past it.
Besides, preemptive defensiveness isn't the only cause of trouble. To
look too closely for it might cause one to miss everything else! Still, Preemptive defensiveness
is something to keep in mind whenever you find yourself looking for the reason something isn't working.
How does a person
get to be this way?
If you accept that people are basically good, that they'll do the right thing whenever they can see that option, then you immediately
see two things.
First, there are no truly evil
people, there are just destructive acts. Second, if a person will always do the right thing if given the opportunity, then
maybe that's exactly what the person is *always* doing.
How
can this be? It's simple. Good people get confused and do things that others consider bad.
Preemptive defensiveness involves
people who have become confused and are doing things that they think are right under the circumstances they perceive, but which are actually destructive. Sometimes even to themselves.
This happens because of the modified perceptions of the persons in question.
How can we deal
with all this?
Before
we even try, we must take the victims out of the equation if we're to examine what's happening with the preemptively defensive person. We need to free the subject of the intensity of our outrage and take a cold hard look at his point of view.
The preemptively defensive individual is someone who
sees himself as the so-horribly-victimized effect of others that he can no longer discern which of the many people he now contacts is his potential next nightmare.
From his point of view, he has been hurt so deeply and so many times that he has finally reached a point of blind rage about it.
How intense is his rage? The answer lies in its source. It represents the accumulated value of every failure he's ever suffered at, he believes, the hands of others. The entire volume of emotional charge generated by his fundamental resistance to each and every loss,
failure of purpose and denial of identity that he's ever suffered now seethes within this once-magnificent expression-of-beingness turned vigilante.
The only thing he knows for certain becomes his
one single-minded operating policy:
"Don't ever let anyone
hurt you again."
But how can
he follow through on that policy?
He can't trust anybody. He can't let anybody get close. He can't have any contact with anybody. Unless.
Unless
they don't have the power or ability to hurt him.
And from that comes his 1st solution:
Seek out people who are so weak they can't hurt you. As a boss, this means hiring marginally competent people, hiring "Yes-men" and stealing the power and ideas of competent subordinates so they never look better than the boss. But
even that plan fails now and then. Some people will surprise you.
So he goes a step further:
Make certain that no one has the power or ability to hurt you. This where the office politics and back-stabbing come from.
Why the sneakiness? The PD dares not let others see him as he really is, or they'll certainly turn on him in
a violent instant. So he acts in advance with each person he meets, covertly disabling them to the point that he'll be safe.
He has become what we can call Preemptively Defensive (PD).
In defense
mode, he acts first to preempt the other person's attack, "just in case".
And now he looks like he's trying to keep other people down,
because he is. But he's not doing it because he wants to harm them. He's doing it because he believes it's the only way he
can defend his own existence.
And
he's not doing it for pleasure, no matter how much he seems to enjoy it. His pleasure comes not from the pain of others but
from his fleeting sense of being safe as he disables yet another potential enemy, undermines yet another potential betrayer, or weakens the underpinnings of yet another inevitably disappointing organization.
But wait, some might still say.
Even given all this, it's his actions that we must deal with. That's got to be our immediate priority, because if we let him
slide and feel sorry for him, he'll work his way through huge numbers of truly good and well-behaved people, destroying them
as he goes.
After all, this argument goes to its
logical conclusion, we can't just let some crazy run down the street swinging an ax at everyone he meets. We can't even let
his less-disturbed cousin continually disrupt the peace of our society, if we want life to be worth living.
Of course we can't. But that's not our
concern within this memo. Those arguments come from the other side of the story, our concern for the victims and ourselves. Our topic at this moment is primarily the motivations of the PD, the preemptively defensive person.
But shouldn't we be concerned about the victims and potential victims? Yes, by all means. But we must not be concerned exclusively for them. And that's where the problem I'm really addressing here comes into play.
If we don't understand the preemptively defensive person's situation, we can't help him. And if
we can't help him, we can't remove the threat he represents from the environment in a respectful and constructive way.
After all, the cost of
believing in inevitable evils is paid in fear and insecurity. This is a ticket to the so-called "dangerous environment." And that leads to putting men in cages for the rest of their
lives, to cutting up their brains with drugs, surgery and electricity to subdue them and to execution. In business, this is
called "termination".
Every one of these solutions
suffers the same nasty drawback. The PD remains PD and shows up somewhere else, initiating the same vicious cycle all over
again.
How do we manage the preemptively defensive individual within the business context? By incorporating Affirmative Direction, Articulate
Management's personnel management method. (By the way, this is not all pie-in-the-sky.
It does include steps to take when the PD doesn't respond and must be sent on his way.)
Can we help this person, if he wants to be helped? Yes, with Semantic Adjustment,
in private consultation.
Together with the above tools,
the solution is to become oriented to an affirmative perspective that allows for destructive acts and the necessity to be
prepared and willing to take corrective action. Not vengeful action and not hateful action, just corrective action.
The guy is running
down the street swinging an ax, stop him however you must, but leave your anger and outrage somewhere else. This is a tortured soul and
it deserves as much respect as the next guy. This is the true meaning of loving your enemies.
The same is true
in social and professional situations. The guy who works constantly to undermine your authority isn't trying to destroy you,
he's trying to make sure you can't hurt him. Don't take it personally.
It really isn't
personal, you know. The preemptively defensive person has everybody so generalized in his
mind, so categorized by threat potential that he never actually sees the real you. Or anyone else.
So it's not about you. You're not the target. You're just convenient and if it isn't you it'll be the
next guy. We're all the same to him.
So write
the PD off and treat him as an enemy - at your own peril. Declare him too much trouble to help today and spend tomorrow looking
over your shoulder.
All this requires several bits of attitude adjustment.
We must stop making other people's difficulties the "reasons" for an us-n-them
mentality.
We must find it in our hearts
to forgive and be firm and helpful at the same time.
And we must change our society and the way people deal with one another to something based a little more on a better understanding.
Which means that we need to realize that not everyone who disagrees with us is a bad guy.
After all, look around you. You're still here, they're still here. We're all in this mess together. The
only viable resolution to this mess is to create a real civilization where everyone has rights and true rehabilitation of
self and ability is available to all.
Business seems like as good a place
to begin as any.
Reading the articles on the pages of the emotional feelings network of sites can be a goldmine of information for you. Simply leave
your mind open and instead of hurrying through the words, think about what you're reading.
I've started a page of sharing my personal thoughts and experiences on many of the sites within the network because I want people to
understand how EVERY article offers us something whether we think it will in the beginning or not.
Don't be judgmental! Just accept the fact that
you can learn something new! Click here to visit my sharing page to see what I learned from re-reading this article about preemptive defensiveness!
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The defense mechanisms
Freud's daughter, Anna, who did psychoanalysis until she died in 1982, summarized several ego defenses in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936).
As noted above, the ego protects itself from 3 threats:
- The id, because the urges from the id can become so strong that they overwhelm the ego, bringing with them irrational chaos. Thus, we might panic if our sexual or brutally hostile urges popped into our conscience.
- The outside world or real danger. i.e., the ego would realize that a child's parents staunchly forbid any aggression; thus, showing the slightest hint of murderous urges to them would produce severe anxiety. Likewise, a fear of driving recklessly or of being rejected by a lover may have a certain basis in reality.
- The superego is a threats to the ego too.
The basic duty of the ego is to find some satisfaction for the id.
If the superego detects any
immoral aspects in our behavior, there's hell to pay in the form of self-censure and guilt.
- The ego tries to avoid this discomfort. But, keep in mind that, according to Freud's original theory, the ego defenses are successful only so long as the conscious part of the ego is unaware that another part of the ego is defending itself!
Uncovering some of your ego defenses may be interesting fun, but your defenses against
really threatening urges or ideas aren't likely to disclose what they're doing to your conscious awareness.
Anna Freud
used the defenses as hints of the repressed,
scary impulses (instincts)
that were underlying the patient's troubles.
i.e., the goodie-goodie
5 year-old dethroned king, who never shows anger towards his younger sister, his competitor, is assumed to be hiding his sibling rivalry.
The
defenses can also give us insight into our own mental processes - sometimes mental gymnastics or contortions.
All defenses involve distortions of reality; they're ways of feeling better by fooling ourselves. If we realized these defenses in our lives, we might handle reality better.
Almost all adjustment books mention these defense mechanisms, even the writers who're arrogantly critical of Freud. An excellent text about Sigmund and Anna Freud and the ego defenses is by Christopher
Monte (1980).
Repression: shoving thoughts and urges that are unacceptable or distressing into our unconscious. This is what happens to the unacceptable urges of childhood - the ego represses them.
Taboo ideas, like incest, would probably never get into consciousness or, if they got there, they'd be quickly repressed. Sometimes dreams or slips of the tongue or
attempts at humor reveal our unconscious motives.
i.e., if a teacher ridiculed you in class, you might dream he/she had a horrible
auto accident. Or, trying hard to say something nice
to the teacher a few days later, you comment after class, "each of your
lectures seems better than the next."
Or, if you were unfortunate enough to be asked to introduce your former teacher at a symposium and
said, "I'd like to prevent - huh - I mean present Dr.___," some might guess the truth. All these speculations about repressed feelings are just guesses.
Repression must be distinguished
from suppression and withdrawal. Suppression is more conscious
and deals with unpleasant but not usually utterly despicable acts or thoughts.
Examples: You may want to forget a bad experience or an unpleasant chore to be done (a term paper to write or expressing sympathy to a friend whose mother has just died). You just forget to do things or you may deliberately try to think of other things so you can "settle down" and function better.
It may, indeed, be rational to worry about one thing at a time (suppressing the other worries) and to withdraw from a stressful situation. Counting to 10 before acting in anger is another good example of brief suppression.
Dissociation: includes processes closely related to repressed and
distorted perspectives or memories. Dissociation (or
something like it) occurs in several forms, ranging from
very common occurrences, like "spacing out" or quickly forgetting an embarrassing moment, to very pathological
conditions, like flashbacks, Multiple Personality Disorder (now called DID), or Dissociative Amnesia.
It seems to be the nature of the human mind to select a preferred point of view or theory or "the right way" to do things.
Once you know or "feel" what is "right," then most different opinions or ideas seem wrong to you.
This tendency to accept one side (point of view) results in rejecting many other perspectives, even if each perspective holds some truth that might contribute to
understanding/solving a problem.
This is called right / wrong or either / or or black / white or good / bad thinking. In effect, we lose track or discount a little part of reality (in order to hold the
belief that we know the truth). If people
know you believe one thing, they tend to assume you disagree with the opposite.
Examples: if you believe in practical courses, they assume you're anti-academic; if they know you recommend psychopharmocology,
they assume you don't advocate psychotherapy; if they know you're a strong advocate of self-reliance, they assume you seldom vote for a Democrat.
Usually strong trauma, intense pain, or an identity crisis is associated with major dissociation. Combat may produce "battle fatigue" or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
can lead to memory losses, intense emotional reactions
as if you were suddenly back in a traumatic crisis, numbed feelings (e.g. cutting themselves
w/out feeling it), depersonalization (robot-like, "I know what is
happening but it doesn't seem like me"), two or more "personalities"
inside trying to control the same person, confused or Fugue states, etc.
All these reactions serve as a defense against pain, fear, helplessness, panic and other intense feelings or ideas. It's as though, under stress, our normal stream of consciousness fails to integrate all of our thoughts, emotions, somatic sensations, sense of identity, and knowledge of what happened.
Thus, one may remember what happened to them but forget how they felt. Compared to repression, in dissociative
reactions memories are splintered and distorted, not just
lost.
Indeed, there's often a repetition compulsion to repeat some part of the traumatic experience, experiencing it over and
over. We've already read about dissociation in Trauma above and we'll read more about it in Suicide in chapter 6 and in
discussions of serious pathological states in chapter 9.
Denial: refusing to admit or face a threatening
situation. Denial can be unconscious as when a
dying person refuses to admit what's going to happen or when a person with a heart condition denies that their overeating or smoking is of any consequence.
Denial can be semi-conscious as when a person refuses to see any problem in a relationship when it's pretty obvious
to everyone else. Denial is probably quite conscious when a post-puberty young man
of 13 says, usually with a grin, "I'm not interested in girls."
Research (Roth &
Cohen, 1986) has shown that there are 2 major ways
to cope with stress:
- (b) approaching, learning more, obsessing, being vigilant
and taking charge of planning what to do
The first way (denial) reduces stress; the second way (sensitization) increases our chances to cope. We all use both ways, although we may tend in general to be avoiders or approachers, while in specific situations, like facing surgery, we each have our favorite way
of coping.
Which is the better way?
Denial is probably better when the situation is out of your control (a sudden
crisis or in surgery) and approach better when you can do
something about the situation (avoid or lessen a problem).
The disadvantages of each way are: more stress and useless
worry for the approachers and more failures to act and lack of awareness for the avoiders.
As you can see, ideally we'd use both avoiding and approaching ways of coping with a particular stress over time. This knowledge about denial is gradually being gathered (Breznitz,
1983).
For instance, Lazarus has found that patients facing surgery who deny the dangers and have a false sense of security have a better post-operative recovery (Derlega & Janda, 1981).
However, many patients could've avoided surgery in the first place by carefully attending to their health. Thus, denial lets us eat lots of fat, relaxes us during our heart attack and then again interferes with our taking care of serious health problems.
Regression: resorting to earlier
ways of acting or feeling, although it's no longer appropriate.
Examples:
- Throwing a temper tantrum
like a 3-year-old at age 18.
- Under stress an adult might curl up in bed, suck their thumb and clutch their old teddy bear.
- A 23-year-old experiencing
serious financial difficulties might feel an urge to return to his/her parent's home and let them take care of him/her.
These aren't planned actions; they're old habits that return automatically.
Rationalization: Giving excuses for shortcomings & thereby avoiding self-condemnation, disappointments, or criticism by others.
Examples: After stealing from a large company, "they won't miss it. Everybody
does it." After getting about average grades on the GRE (not good enough to get into Ph. D. programs),
"I would have hated 5 more years of research & theory anyway."
This is called "sour grapes," from
Aesop's tale about the fox who decided the grapes too high to reach were sour anyway. The reverse is "sweet lemons," an assumption
that everything happens for the best, "failing the GRE's was a blessing in disguise, now I know I want to become a counselor - maybe a social worker - &
not a Ph. D."
Projection: Attributing to others one's own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, impulses, etc. So, the white person with repressed sexual urges may believe that all blacks are preoccupied with sex.
The moralistic
spouse, who is tempted to have an affair, begins to suspicion that his/her partner has been unfaithful. A slightly different form of paranoid projection is when a self-critical feeling or idea is attributed to others.
Suppose a young woman from a religious family has strong feelings against any sexual urges she might have & thus, almost never has them. She might start to believe, however, that others are critical of her whenever she wears a dress that shows her shape.
Displacement: redirecting our impulses (often anger) from the real target (because that is too dangerous) to a safer but innocent person. The classic case is the frustrated worker, who can't yell at the boss but comes home & yells at the spouse, who yells at the children, who
kick the dog, i.e. we take it out on the people we love.
Suppose we were very envious of the relationship between our sister & our mother. Our feelings may never be expressed towards them directly but take the form of resentment & distrust of most other women.
Another form of displacement is what Anna Freud described as "turning-against-self." In the last example, instead of the hatred of one's sister & mother being turned on women in general, it could be turned against oneself. This is a
commonly assumed dynamic in depression & suicide.
Reaction formation: a denial & reversal of our feelings. Love turns into hate or hate into love. "Hell has no fury like a spurned lover."
Where there's intense friction between a child & a parent, it can be converted into exaggerated shows of
affection, sometimes sickeningly sweet & overly polite.
The feelings & actions resulting from a reaction formation are often excessive, e.g., the loud, macho male may be concealing
(from himself) sexual self-doubts or homosexual urges.
Or, the person who is unconsciously attracted to the same sex may develop
an intense hatred of gays. People, such as TV preachers, who become crusaders against "loose morals" may be struggling with their
own sexual impulses.
Identification: allying with someone else & becoming like them in order to allay anxiety. Remember Freud's notion that the Oedipus & Electra Complexes are resolved by identification with the same
sexed parent.
Other examples: occasionally an oppressed person will identify with the oppressor, some Jews helped Hitler,
some women want their husbands to be dominant & feel superior to them & other women.
In other cases, a person may associate with & emulate an admired person or group to reduce anxiety. High school cliques serve this purpose. A new college freshman may feel tense & alone & out of place; she notices that most other students are "a little dressed up," not sloppy shirt & jeans.
Her roommates insist on studying from 7:00 to 10:00 every night except Friday & Saturday; they're more serious than
her old friends & their conversations reflect these differences. They commented about her "country" accent & the fact
that she didn't watch the news. She started dressing up occasionally, watched the news, got more interested in politics &
studied a lot more than ever before.
When she went home at Christmas, her friends told her she had changed & dad commented that he was losing his little girl. She didn't know it but she had identified with a new
group & learned to feel more comfortable.
Sublimation: transforming unacceptable needs into acceptable ambitions & actions. One may convert a compelling interest in getting a parent's attention into a drive
to do well in school. Sexual drives can be poured into sports. Anger & resentment of the advantages of others can be funneled into an obsession to excel in a lucrative career.
Fantasy: daydreams & their substitutes - novels & TV Soaps -are escapes, a way to avoid our real worries or boredom. We may imagine being highly successful
when we feel unsuccessful; at least we feel better for the moment.
Actually, we often benefit by rehearsing in fantasy for future successes. At other times, fantasies may provide
a way to express feelings we need to get off our chest. Fantasy is only a defense when it's an escape. Anticipation of the future thru fantasy is a mark of an intelligent species.
Many self-help methods use fantasy: covert rehearsal, covert sensitization, desensitization, venting feelings, decision making, empathy, increasing motivation & awareness & many others.
If fantasies can be therapeutic, then they can be harmful, e.g. imagining awful consequences could create fears, sad thoughts may produce depression, reliving an insult in fantasy might build anger. Fantasy may be part of the problem or part of the solution.
Compensation or
substitution: trying to make up for some feeling of inadequacy by excelling in some way.
Alfred Adler, a free-thinking student of Freud, observed that feelings of weakness & inferiority are common when we're young. Much of life, he thought, was feeling devoted to compensating for our real or imaginary weaknesses, i.e. striving for superiority. Both men & women strive for power, competency, courage, wealth & independence.
Karen Horney
wrote, "The neurotic striving for power...is born of anxiety, hatred & feelings of inferiority. ...the normal striving for power is born of strength, the neurotic of weakness."
Sometimes we work on improving in the area we're weak in, so the skinny, shy child becomes Miss or Mr. America or the kid with speech problems
becomes a politician (like Demosthenes with
rocks in his mouth or Winston Churchill).
Sometimes we find other areas to make up for our weaknesses; the unattractive student
becomes an outstanding scholar, the average student becomes an outstanding athlete, the person in an unsatisfying marriage
becomes deeply involved with the children. These are compensatory substitutions. Many are good ways of handling stress; some aren't, as when an unloved teenager seeks love promiscuously.
Undoing: if you've done something bad, sometimes you can undo it or make up for it. Example: if you've said some
very critical & hurtful things about one of your parents or a friend, later you may try to undo the harm by saying nice things about
them or by be being nice to them & apologizing (sometimes it's the overdone apology that reveals the hostility).
In essence it's having the decency to feel guilty & do something about it.
Freud used undoing to explain certain obsessive-compulsive acts, e.g. a 17-year-old with masturbation guilt felt compelled to recite the alphabet backwards every time he had a sexual thought. He thought that would undo the sin.
Intellectualization
or isolation: hiding one's emotional responses or problems under a facade of big words & pretending one has no
problem. Suppose you were listening to a friend describe going thru his parents' divorce. He may tell about deeply hurtful situations but show no sadness or anger; he gives a superficial behavioral description of what happened; he might even clinically "analyze" his parents' underlying
motives without showing his own emotions.
Likewise, people may discuss war without vividly feeling the misery of many people dying. This is a repression of the painful parts. Freud believed that the compulsive hand-washer was trying to cleanse his hands of the guilt of masturbation but the feeling of guilt was separated from the hand-washing.
There are many other defense mechanisms ("acting out" as a way of rebelling & reducing tension, "self-repudiation" to get others off your back, seeking
sympathy, etc.). More importantly, there are many other much healthier ways of coping with stress, fears & anxiety which we'll review later in this chapter & in chapter 12.
As Sigmund Freud described ego defense mechanisms, the processes were primarily unconscious. As Anna Freud
& later psychoanalysts studied these processes more intensely & re-defined them, the mechanisms came to be seen as
more conscious & available to the ego (the conscious self) for dealing with anxiety.
This new focus on the ego as a coping, self-directing part of our personality came after Freud. For Freud, however,
the great driving forces were in the id - the unconscious sexual & destructive instincts. The ego was merely "a rider of a spirited horse" who tried to have some control over the animal instincts.
The later "ego psychologists" also extended the role of the ego beyond reducing anxiety & into a means of mastering & enjoying life. Today the Cognitive theorists tend to believe, again, that the ego - the rational mind - is in charge or, at least, has the potential to make a substantial
difference.
Freud would say, if he were here today, that most of psychology has repressed & denied his disturbing insights into the powerful sexual, selfish, hostile & irrational nature of man, just as he predicted we would. Could he be right? Are we denying our basic biological & innate drives?
It's likely that each of us can sometimes recognize when we use defense mechanisms. We can't detect every time, but by being very familiar with the
common defense mechanisms & by being vigilant, we can investigate our possible use of defense mechanisms & keep ourselves honest.
Most of the time (not all, as we saw
in denial) it's helpful to stay in touch with reality. Awareness is the mark of a healthy, adjusted person. Work on it.
More recent experimental investigations of defenses
Almost all of the information about
defense mechanisms mentioned above comes from pre-W.W.II
psychoanalysts. Just to illustrate how "scientific" beliefs wax & wane, history shows that many academic psychologists during the 70's & early 80's rejected the notion of unconscious thoughts & especially, Freud's notions of unconscious ego defenses.
Clinical psychologists, however, in contrast to experimentalists, continued using the idea of defenses. Then in the late 1980's, cognitive researchers began to repeatedly find ample evidence for unconscious mental processes.
i.e., experimental studies have shown that experiences we have no conscious memory of can have an influence
on our performance of certain tasks; factors we have no awareness of can influence our decision-making; procedures that are at first conscious can be repeated often enough that
they become automatic & unconscious; in social interactions many people deceive themselves in ways that build their self-esteem; children who claim very high self-esteem are often hiding a profound sense of inferiority, etc., etc.
The researchers have often used different terms, such as "scapegoating" instead of displacement,
"self-presentation ploys" instead reaction formation, "positive illusions" instead of denial, "counterfactual thinking" instead of undoing & so on (Cramer,
2000). But, a rose is a rose...
Many benefits will come from the new experimental interests in defensive cognitive processes.
For one thing, there are clarifying distinctions being made between coping processes & defense mechanisms. Coping processes
are conscious, intentional, learned & associated with normal adjustment.
Defense mechanisms are unconscious, unintentional, self-protective instincts or dispositions & associated with pathology (Cramer, 1998). This is a meaningful
difference, because different self-change techniques will surely be needed for coping than for dealing with defenses.
Another clarification emerging from the research is the distinction between sometimes healthy or adaptive defense mechanisms & very feeling disturbed mental processes.
Sublimation, suppression (sort of conscious denial), altruism, humor & even some denial in children can be healthy & useful in certain circumstances. Also, some defenses
may temporarily help one adapt but in the long run interfere with problem-solving: intellectualization, repression, undoing,
displacement, dissociation, idealization, misjudging one's power & others.
Still other defenses alter our perception of reality & thus, interfere with solving our problems:
denial, projection, rationalization & unrealistic fantasies. Some more hidden defenses are revealed by certain maladaptive behaviors: acting out, severe
withdrawal, passive-aggressive acts & so on.
Lastly, extremely irrational defenses play a central role in serious psychoses: delusional projection, serious distortion of reality,
complete denial of basic conditions & so on. The more maladaptive defenses that one uses, the more
likely one has a serious psychiatric disorder, many symptoms & interpersonal problems.
If you compare Freud's defense mechanisms with modern research finding, the traditional defenses seem more intuitively understandable & more applicable
to a wider range of situations. Eventually, with more & more research, new findings will show us more details about when
& how defenses are used in specific circumstances. Then, we'll develop better ways to cope than
by using defenses that rely on distortions of reality.
Unconscious causes of fears
If exaggerated conscious thoughts of terrible consequences can cause fears, why can't unconscious "thoughts" or urges cause fears? This is speculation but worth understanding. The origin of many fears is mysterious. A fear of knives is fairly common but the person doesn't usually know the source. Hauck (1975) had a patient
who looked for worms, snakes & bugs between the sheets & under her bed every night for months.
Freud described a famous case, Little Hans, a 5-year-old boy who had a great fear of white horses with black mouths. Where did these fears come from?
Many persons, who develop such a fear of knives that they can't go into the kitchen or have to throw away all their knives, often have a very stressful relationship with someone. It may not be conscious, but it's easy to speculate that inside somewhere there's
a fear of losing control over their anger or self-destruction.
The knife phobia is symbolic of the stress caused by anger underneath the conscious surface. A person afraid of bugs & worms in bed may have had a traumatic, dirty, disgusting sexual experience, part of which has been repressed.
Suppose a young person is sexually approached by an older person; the young person may repress their own sexual interests
& the resulting guilt may surface as a phobia of bugs or ugly crawlies in bed. Actually, the specific phobia may spread to a variety of things - older people, specific places (like a woods), of
sex with anyone, etc.
After gathering 140 pages of information from Little Hans's father, Freud believed that Little Hans unconsciously feared his father, which got displaced to horses. What was the evidence? It was complicated & fascinating. Read
Freud.
It basically involved the Oedipus Complex. Little Hans liked getting into bed with his mother early in the morning.
He had a fascination at age 3 with his, his father's, his mother's & animals' sexual parts. His mother had told him his
penis would be cut off if he played with it.
Also, Little Hans had seen pans of blood after his little sister was born. Not long afterwards, he learned
that his mother had no penis, although he had told her he thought she would have a big one "like a horse." One can see how Little Hans or any child might think of the 3-year-old equivalent of "castration anxiety."
Little Hans also became very jealous of the attention given to his little sister (sibling rivalry). He wished she hadn't been born.
And he started to fear (wish?) that his father would leave & never come home. Obviously, Little Hans was
very troubled. But how did he get a fear of horses?
Consider the ego defenses described above. Surely the competition & hostility towards the father would be scary & be repressed. His own resentment towards the father might be projected to the father: "I hate him" becomes "he hates me" & wants to hurt me. The unconscious hostile impulses towards the competitor (the
father) may seek expression in some way, some reasonably
safe way - thru symbols or dreams.
It's too scary to think consciously about fighting with his father & being hurt, perhaps castrated, but he can develop an irrational fear of being bitten by a white horse with a black mouth. The phobia symbolizes the underlying conflict. And, by the way, the father was, of course, white & had a black mustache!
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A Good Defense Without Being Offensive - By Jacquie Hale
I recently had to learn
a lesson which I often suggest that my clients learn: how to set boundaries & convey the truth in such a way that the other person doesn't feel attacked. In other words, how to respond
when someone has irritated, frustrated, or infuriated you.
The main aspect of this kind of communication is to make "I" statements. In my case, I received an unjust criticism. I wanted to respond, "You dirty, rotten so-&-so! Who do you think you are?" I wanted to recount every fault & point out every failure in this person's history. I wanted to lash out. You know what that would have done. It wouldn't be pretty. I thought better of it. Not knowing what to say, I didn't say anything.
That was a mistake.
Not saying anything just let the injustice stew in my gut. I turned it over & over, looking at it from every angle to
see just how inaccurate the criticism was & feeling mighty justified about being indignant. I was giving up my own sense of peace & well-being, fighting a battle that had no end.
What to do? I mentioned it
to a wise friend who suggested something I should have done in the first place, "Tell him how his words affected you. Say something
like, 'When you said this, I found it very difficult to do my job properly. Please be more supportive & constructive.'" That statement is true. It probably wouldn't have caused a conflagration & more importantly, I would have set my boundaries.
Making "I" statements is a good technique. Expressing
the felt emotion is a remarkable tool for dialogue. But what if the person you must communicate with is too powerful or too unstable to be trusted or has moved out of your life completely? What if you don't feel safe telling the person anything about how you feel? What
then?
Even when it's impossible or inadvisable to express your feelings to the appropriate person, it's still important to define how you feel to yourself. You can write a letter & never deliver it. You can say it to someone who has a sympathetic ear.
But define it you must
because keeping a list of grievances can fester & bubble up when you least want them. For me, when I examined the frustration I felt from this unjust criticism, I realized that my not addressing it immediately made my life difficult; I had constant rebuttals bouncing aimlessly
around in my head.
When I asked myself what emotions I felt, what was under the frustration, I was surprised to identify feelings in my chest. We feel sadness & grief in our chests. I thought it would be anger but under it all was sadness. I'm feeling sad about having never built an alliance of mutual support with this person. I was letting go of lost dreams & more than anything, that was the root of my frustration.
What can you do to communicate
what you feel?
Scan your body for sensations.
Equate locations of sensations to the major emotions.
Belly,
solar plexus = Fear
Center of body, heart = Love
Chest = Sadness, Grief
Shoulders, jaw, back of neck = Anger
Express your emotion in a non-judgmental way.
Remember the adage:
"Good fences make good neighbors." Create good boundaries & express your emotions when someone crosses one.
© 2006, Jacqueline Hale
Your Best Defence Against Aging: Your Attitude To Life
By Priya Shah
In the international bestseller, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell explains how researchers
who study mind-reading using body language & facial expressions found that the old clichéd advice to smile when you're
feeling down really works.
Just moving those facial muscles
into a happier position can actually perk you up mentally & emotionally, say the researchers, who are finally beginning
to understand & accept the link between mind & body.
Other research has found that
simply recalling one episode of anger depresses the immune system for up to 7 hours – but 1 episode of feeling compassion
or caring enhances the immune system for about the same amount of time.
A happy outlook towards life
appears to trigger the release of endorphins. Endorphins relax the cardiovascular system & cytokines, which alert the
immune system to pay attention in detecting abnormalities like cancer cells.
Even though the physiological
make up of emotions themselves haven't yet been identified, some researchers suspect that a small portion of the brain called
the insular cortex may be the key.
The insular cortex regulates
the autonomic nervous system, which controls the automatic functions of our body such as breathing heartbeat & blood pressure.
It also plays a role in higher brain functions & helps to process anger, fear, joy, happiness & sexual arousal.
When the insular cortex is
stimulated for long periods of time, it can change heart rate & blood pressure & even cause a kind of damage to the
heart muscle that is similar to sudden cardiac death. It's not surprising then, that sorrow, anger & other negative emotions
can cause a malfunction of the insular cortex.
Whatever happens in those
six inches between your ears, one thing is certain. Optimism, laughter, love & other positive emotions can counteract
many harmful effects at any age, even in your 60's, 70's & 80's & beyond!
Research has shown that positive
attributes as dependability, trust, agreeableness & open-mindedness are associated with a 2 to 4 year increase in life
expectancy.
Let’s explore some tips
for developing a better outlook on your world.
Listen carefully to yourself.
If you have put yourself down since childhood, over a lifetime negative subliminal message can take their toll by turning
you into a pessimist.
Spend one week writing down
the phrases you use in your “self talk.” Chances are you'll find that you repeat a dozen or so phrases over &
over again that reinforce that negative image. If you know about them, you can change them.
If an issue isn't resolved
it will continue to plague you & you'll relive the negative emotions tied to that issue over & over again. Write yourself
a letter spending about 20 minutes a day for 4 days & write about what you feel.
Forget grammar, punctuation
& so on. No one else will see this but you & you can throw it away when finished.
Once you begin to write, don’t
stop until the time is up. This exercise will help you organize your thoughts & get them out of your system. By the end
of the 4 days most people feel much better about themselves.
Seek out new challenges &
opportunities. Always have something that's a goal just over the horizon. When you begin to close the gap & reach that
goal, set another & another. Keep yourself consistently moving ahead.
Try & do one new thing
every week or month. Visit a museum, go to the zoo, go to a book signing or lecture. The goal here is to eliminate monotony,
which is a sure killer of optimism.
Look for a new marvel of nature
each day. Discover an abundance of happiness. Spoil your pet or if you don’t have one, visit the human society &
adopt one.
Learn to laugh at yourself.
Allow yourself to experience grief but don’t let it control you.
Find someone who is worse
off than you & lend a hand. Volunteer at a hospital; visit a nursery or a shelter.
Have a healthy sex life. Sex
at middle age can actually become better & more satisfying than ever before.
Don’t wait to plan for
your retirement. Waiting until you are 60 will have very bad repercussions on the quality of life for your remaining years.
Here are a few quick tips
for increasing joy, hope & optimism that will work no matter what your age:
Make a list of at least 50
great things that happen to you every day.
Laugh a lot. You’ll
heal your body & your mind.
Discover a new challenge each
month.
Try meditating for just 5
minutes each day.
For more tips on anti-aging & living a longer, healthier
life, visit Anti-Aging Treatments
Author's Bio
Copyright © 2005
Priya Shah
Priya Shah edits The Glutathione Report & Health Naturale. This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.
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