As human beings, we are designed to protect ourselves from danger.
Here, Carolyn Joyce explains how our defence mechanism can limit our progress. She says from the time we are born; we develop strategies to cope with unfavorable circumstances. As infants, we learn the best techniques to get our needs met by our parents, and as we grow up, we make adaptations to help us endure pain, be it psychological or existential.
Early in our lives, our defense mechanisms can feel like tools for our very survival. However, as we grow up, these same psychological defenses can start to hurt rather than help us. Because of this, getting to know each defense mechanism we’ve formed can serve the deeper purpose of helping us break free of self-imposed limitations. By recognizing and shedding our outdated defense mechanisms, we can develop within ourselves, form deeper relationships, and start to live a life that looks more like the one we desire and less like one we were prescribed by our past.
What is a Defense Mechanism?
A defense mechanism is essentially a strategy someone comes up with to help them avoid pain or anxiety. By this definition, it doesn’t sound that bad. However, a defense can operate very much like antiquated armor we wear with the hope of protecting ourselves, but instead, it actually limits our mobility and shuts out much more than we imagine. Ironically, our defense mechanisms can do a lot more damage than good when it comes to the quality of our lives.
How a Defense Mechanism Can Hurt Us
Oftentimes, a defense mechanism can offer instant gratification or immediate relief by alleviating our anxiety or cutting us off from a deeper level of feeling. We may not be conscious of it in the moment, but the reason we reach for that second glass of wine, pick that fight with our partner, or shy away from a challenge may be because we got scared and felt we had to retreat into our shell or put ourselves back in place.
For example, say we had an incredibly close night with our partner in which we felt both loved by them and loving toward them. That feeling can trigger myriad unconscious reactions: the anxiety of relying on that person, the fear of losing him or her, or the shame of not having felt that kind of love as a child. The next morning we may find ourselves feeling a slightly critical and starting to act irritable. It may even feel like a relief to complain to them or make little comments that push them away. Ultimately, we no longer feel as close to the person, and although we may feel bad, we also feel a bit safer having retreated into our defense mechanism and covering over those deeper feelings being stirred.
This process of numbing our vitality and limiting our scope of connection and experience is the ultimate sacrifice we pay to our defenses. It hurts us, and it hurts those close to us. “When people are defended, they tend to neutralize their experiences and lose considerable feeling for themselves and others.,” wrote Robert Firestone. “In this self-protective state, their gaze is focused inward on themselves rather than outward toward others. Their capacity for offering and accepting love is impaired, and they tend to limit personal transactions of both giving and receiving.”
Why Do We Form a Defense Mechanism?
All children experience hurt and frustration. No parent is perfect nor can they attune to their child’s needs 100 percent of the time. Whether we experienced neglect, rejection, intrusion, or anger directed toward us, we all made adaptations to handle unfavorable circumstances in our childhood. Early mis-attunements, as well as both large and small instances of trauma, can cause us to form self-protective defense mechanisms in order to comfort ourselves or “get by.”
Right off the bat, we learn from our parent’s behavior and way of interacting with us the best way to get our needs met. As neuropsychologist and author of Parenting from the Inside Out, Dr. Daniel Siegel puts it, “From the moment we are born we must work for a living.” A mother who doesn’t respond to our cries can teach us that staying quiet is the ideal strategy to get her to care for us. A father who is intermittently available, sometimes dousing us with affection and other times disappearing, teaches us we need to cling to get what we need from him. The attachment pattern we experience from our first day of life plays a heavy role in forming our long-term beliefs about how relationships work and how we should react to others in order to make our way.
Even if we form a secure attachment with parents or caretakers who are kind and sensitive to us, we all eventually face distressing existential realities that can incite us to retreat from life. At that point “the question is whether to live with emotional pain or to defend ourselves and escape into an unreal world,” wrote Firestone. “The resolution of this conflict toward a more defended way of life has a generally detrimental effect on an individual’s emotional health and overall functioning, yet the formation of psychological defenses is inevitable when anxiety and emotional pain build up in the developing child.”
Because when we are children, our very survival depends on those who care for us, seeing our parents as flawed or incapable can feel tremendously frightening. Thus, we form our defenses as a means to protect ourselves without having to fully face the limitations of our caretakers. Instead of seeing our parent as critical, we see ourselves as “bad,” and we form the defense mechanism of trying to prove ourselves. Instead of seeing a parent as rejecting, we see ourselves as unlovable, and we form a defense to stay out of the way, so no one can hurt us. In this way, the defense mechanisms we form are actually distortions of who we really are or who we would have been without the harmful overlays of our past.