The Importance of Defense Mechanisms for Anxiety: How do They Work and Why Should You Care?
When you feel anxious or have an anxiety attack, your body and mind react in ways that can help you deal with the situation. These natural defense mechanisms make it easier to cope with stressful situations by either keeping you from being aware of them or helping you get past them faster.
What Are Defense Mechanisms?
Defense mechanisms are automatic mental and emotional processes that protect us. They are helpful in small doses to help us cope with stress and anxiety. But if they’re used too often or without awareness, they can contribute to mental health problems.
The most common types of defense mechanisms include repression, denial, regression, identification, and emotional reasoning. These are coping mechanisms. You may not even realize you’re using defense mechanisms because they happen at a subconscious level. It’s essential to understand how they work and know when to use them and when to stop.
Repression
Repression is when you hold something inside and push it out of your awareness. It’s an unconscious defense mechanism that keeps painful memories from your consciousness. It also prevents new situations from being linked to those emotions.
The downside is that it can cause problems when the repressed information becomes relevant again. This can lead to anxiety and other mental health issues. Repression is most strongly linked to anxiety disorders like OCD and phobias. The best way to deal with repressed memories is to bring them to the surface and process them so they’re no longer causing problems.
Denial
Denial is a defense mechanism that helps you cope with anxiety by refusing to acknowledge a fact or reality that you find too unpleasant to accept. This is an unconscious process that works by preventing a stressful or anxiety-provoking fact from reaching your conscious mind.
Denial can be helpful in the short term when you need to ignore something to deal with something more important. But in the long term, it can be harmful, especially when it comes to anxiety and stress. Denial is closely linked to trauma and can prevent you from dealing with long-term effects.
Regression
Regression is when you revert to an earlier state of being. It’s a defense mechanism that allows you to return to a previous state of being and feel comforted by the security of being younger.
It can be helpful to regress when you’re feeling overwhelmed, but it can also cause problems if you stay in that childlike state. There are two types of regression: normal and pathological. Ordinary regression is helpful and temporary, while pathological regression is harmful and long-term.
Identification
Identification is when you take on the personality traits of someone you admire. This defense mechanism comes into play when you need to manage stress and anxiety by emulating someone with the characteristics you admire and wish to possess. It can lead to the development of a personality disorder if used too much.
Confusion
Confusion is a defense mechanism that causes you to feel overwhelmed with too many emotions. It’s like a puzzle with too many pieces. Your mind can’t process everything at once and becomes confused about which emotions belong and which need attention. You can prevent it from lasting too long by getting outside help and taking things one at a time.
Defense mechanisms are an important part of managing stress and anxiety. They are automatic psychological reactions triggered by a sense of threat. They help us cope with difficult emotions and situations by distracting us or changing our perception of them. It’s important to know when to use them and when to stop.
The author of this article is a therapist from the Sensera app. Sensera is a daily 10-minute self-therapy app. It’ll help you to cope with various mental problems (anxiety, self-esteem, relationship issues). Feel better with CBT audio sessions and exercises. Download now to become happier!
