Coping Strategies
Part 16 - Defence mechanisms

As with all things related to our psychological make-up, a greater understanding of the mind can lead us to greater choices in life, which in turn can improve our overall well-being.

As you will see from reading on, there are a heck of a lot of ways in which our minds can change, distort or warp reality. Some of these ways are quite straightforward and easy to explain, while others take a bit longer to understand.

If an event or a time in your life is painful, one of the easiest ways to deal with it is to forget that it ever happened. We can do this simply by pushing it into the furthest reaches of our mind/body/soul.

While this may be a very important method of coping at the time, in years to come it may be difficult to keep the lid on it, as pain has a habit of rising to the surface and spilling out.

If ‘it’ (whatever it may be) didn’t happen, then there is no need to be distressed about it... except that ‘it’ will become harder and harder to deny when it starts popping into your head with greater frequency and begins to wear you down.

Here is a great opportunity to blame someone else for what happened, or to put all the dislike about yourself onto someone else, because the truth is too upsetting. Sometimes what you hate about someone is the very thing you don’t like about yourself.

This is about dumping or off-loading on people (or pets) (or objects) who have nothing to do with the cause of your upset/pain/anger, etc.