And even though someone tells you that you heard / heard, you still don’t remember? This is what the body deals with when dealing with a difficult situation for itself (or when we are under great stress and cognitively we are not able to process too many stimuli, organic and neurological disorders are also possible, but for today’s needs gröner – we ignore it) .Well, our body is so clever that it will cope with situations when something is difficult for us. And it does not have to mean objectively occurring difficulties, it may be a situation when realizing something difficult will cause us pain – in this way we protect ourselves from difficult, threatening content.
Clever, right gröner? As for me – very much. However, it is worth knowing them and sometimes thinking about them, because, unfortunately, it also happens that they work to our disadvantage and cause confusion and misunderstanding of ourselves. Over i.a. These are the mechanisms we work with during psychotherapy, because although they are generally designed to serve us, the confrontation with difficult content is key in getting to know ourselves (as well as discovering why they are problematic).
Some of these mechanisms (yes, they are defense mechanisms) serve us well, some, especially when used excessively, work against us, e.g. they cut us off in some way from reality. So today, about some defense mechanisms, the most common and mostly “mature” ones. The second category gröner – “immature”, are behaviors that, to put it simply, we can observe in movies (maybe about it someday).
1. HUMOR
Have you ever burst out laughing when, objectively speaking, it was out of place? Or comment on some sad event in a humorous way? Did you make jokes, used jokes, be ironic, did you relieve tension caused by something difficult? Yes- humor is the first of the defense mechanisms. Thanks to such a reaction, we soothe unpleasant feelings and a sense of discomfort, obtain a distance and a more objective view of the situation, and most importantly – we can reflect on the meaning of a specific event. You’re not so weird when you laugh at something difficult – that’s what you do
2. DISPLACEMENT
Do you know this state when you come home upset with a situation, for example at work, and suddenly, all of a sudden, you get angry with your partner, you don’t know why? The problem at home suddenly seems extremely annoying. This is just another defense mechanism – displacement. It happens unconsciously gröner, and its name is simply due to the displacement of the feelings that we direct from one object to another. These are the situations when we often hear from another person “don’t take it out on me” and actually – it’s hard to deny it, it’s a bit right …
3. INTELLECTUALIZATION
Suddenly you find 1000 or more logical reasons, reasons and explanations why it is what it is, or something happened. This abstract thinking helps you to avoid unpleasant feelings and control tension.
4. AFFECT ISOLATION
Difficult expression for a simple mechanism – this is the state when in reaction to something unpleasant we react with a total lack of emotions, we find ourselves in a state of detachment from feelings, usually we do not know why, it can be compared to a feeling of emptiness. Often we even realize that we should feel something – but it does not change the fact that our emotions are then hidden somewhere so deep that it just happens the opposite. This mechanism often accompanies us when we are dealing with extremely difficult and traumatic situations.
5. RATIONALIZATION
Have you done something not entirely good, lawful, moral or your views are not entirely socially acceptable, unacceptable gröner? The way you think about it is a defense mechanism, specifically justifying this content so that you can tolerate it. Sometimes it happens that you speak loudly about what is contradictory from the moral, legal point of view, etc. But at the same time you explain your approach, behavior, and even though somewhere in the soil you feel an “internal” grinding, it is a way of “solving the situation” makes you feel justified, understood, and briefly speaks – you feel better. Brief example: “I cheated, but the state robs me at every step.”
6. DISPOSAL
And here we come to the famous repression and example from the beginning of this text. Repression is an unconscious mechanism (and it is worth noting it, because we also use similar, but conscious techniques gröner), which makes us avoid difficult confrontations. Unacceptable thoughts, impulses or memories are pushed into the unconscious and their access to consciousness is blocked – hence the “I don’t remember” effect. Women experiencing violence often, for example, “do not remember what it was like”, they may not even remember