Defence Mechanisms
I wrote this on my other non-roleplay blog, and just realised this would be a great thing to include about the mentality of some characters. I know I constantly come across characters that show they use these mechanisms constantly. Some are entirely revolved around these!
Defence mechanisms:
Repression:
An unconscious mechanism to keep disturbing and or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious. These can be repressed due to otherwise feeling guilty about them. It's not very effective however, because whilst forcing the memories into your unconscious, they're still technically there, and they'll still create anxiety.
Projection:
Projection relies on taking their own thoughts and feelings, gathering them all up and dropping them on another person. For example if you hate someone, you can pick up this feeling of hate, and drop it on them, saying/believing that they hate you instead.
Displacement:
This is simply the redirection of an impulse onto a weak, helpless or defenceless target. To be perfectly honest this sounds incredibly like bullying. The idea, is that with aggression, you displace the feeling by punching a wall for example.
Sublimation:
Juuuust like displacement, this works on creating a constructive outcome by displacing emotions. For example, something like sport can be a good use of the emotion.
Denial:
Involves the blocking of events from awareness. If it's too much to handle for someone, they can just refuse to experience it. It's a fairly primitive response to danger, and no one can really avoid reality for very long.
Regression:
Something bad happening? Just curl up into a ball and start sucking your thumb. Regression is the defence mechanism that is happening when you regress to a point of childlike mentality and behaviour over a particular situation.
Rationalization:
A distortion of the facts to make something less threatening. Similar to sanding down sharp edges on a chair.
Reaction formation:
Beyond the point of denial, the individual reacts in different/opposite ways to how they actually feel. The easiest way to explain this, would be if a homosexual man, adopts a anti-homosexual attitude to convince themselves of their supposed heterosexuality.
Defence mechanisms:
Repression:
An unconscious mechanism to keep disturbing and or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious. These can be repressed due to otherwise feeling guilty about them. It's not very effective however, because whilst forcing the memories into your unconscious, they're still technically there, and they'll still create anxiety.
Projection:
Projection relies on taking their own thoughts and feelings, gathering them all up and dropping them on another person. For example if you hate someone, you can pick up this feeling of hate, and drop it on them, saying/believing that they hate you instead.
Displacement:
This is simply the redirection of an impulse onto a weak, helpless or defenceless target. To be perfectly honest this sounds incredibly like bullying. The idea, is that with aggression, you displace the feeling by punching a wall for example.
Sublimation:
Juuuust like displacement, this works on creating a constructive outcome by displacing emotions. For example, something like sport can be a good use of the emotion.
Denial:
Involves the blocking of events from awareness. If it's too much to handle for someone, they can just refuse to experience it. It's a fairly primitive response to danger, and no one can really avoid reality for very long.
Regression:
Something bad happening? Just curl up into a ball and start sucking your thumb. Regression is the defence mechanism that is happening when you regress to a point of childlike mentality and behaviour over a particular situation.
Rationalization:
A distortion of the facts to make something less threatening. Similar to sanding down sharp edges on a chair.
Reaction formation:
Beyond the point of denial, the individual reacts in different/opposite ways to how they actually feel. The easiest way to explain this, would be if a homosexual man, adopts a anti-homosexual attitude to convince themselves of their supposed heterosexuality.
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