Anxiety Flashcards
Reality anxiety
Is a fear of tangible dangers in the real world
Most are justifiable like fire, hurricanes, earthquakes, and similar disasters.
Wild animals, speeding cars, and burning buildings
Positive purpose of guiding our behavior to escape or protect ourselves from actual dangers
Our fear subsides when threat isn’t present
Reality based fears can be carried to extremes
-won’t leave home because of fear of being hit by a car, won’t light a match because of fear of fire
Anxiety
To Freud, a feeling of fear and dread without an obvious cause;
An objectless fear, often we cannot point it’s source to a specific object that induced it
Freud made anxiety an important part of his personality theory, asserting that it is fundamental to the development of neurotic and psychotic behavior
He Suggested that the prototype of all anxiety is the birth trauma
- secure in the womb, but at birth we begin having to adapt to reality because instinct demands it
- newborns nervous system (immature & ill prepared) is bombarded with sensory stimuli
- consequently, infant engages in massive motor movements, heightened breathing, and increased heart rate.
- birth trauma with tension &fear that the id instincts won’t be satisfied is our 1st experience with anxiety
If we can’t cope with anxiety were in danger of being overwhelmed which can be traumatic
The person is reduced to a state of helplessness (like infancy) (when ego is threatened)
Reality anxiety
Neurotic anxiety
Moral anxiety
Neurotic anxiety
Involves a conflict between id and ego
Troublesome to mental health
Basis is in childhood, conflict between instinctual gratification and reality
Children are punished for overtly expressing sexual or aggressive impulses. The wish to gratify certain id impulses causes anxiety
Neurotic anxiety is an unconscious fear of being punished for impulsively displaying id-dominated behavior
Fear isn’t of the instincts, but of what happens as a result of gratifying the instincts
Conflict becomes one between the id and the ego, and its origin is in reality
Moral anxiety
Involves a conflict between id and superego
A fear of ones conscious
When you are motivated to express an instinctual impulse that is contrary to your moral code, your superego retaliates by causing you to feel shame or guilt.
Function of how well developed the superego is
Strong inhibiting conscious will experience greater conflict than someone with a less stringent set of moral guidelines
Has some basis in reality
Shame and guilt are from feelings from within, our conscience causes fear and anxiety
Anxiety serves as a warning to the person that something is amiss within the personality
-induces tension, thus a drive for hunger and thirst, were motivated to satisfy this
Defense mechanisms
Strategies the ego uses to defend itself against the anxiety provoked by conflicts of everyday life.
Defense mechanisms involve denials or distortions of reality
Rarely use just one defense mechanism at a time during anxiety
Two characteristics:
1) they are denials or distortion of reality
2) they operate unconsciously. We are unaware of them, meaning that the conscious level we hold distorted or unreal images of our world and ourselves
Repression
A defense mechanism that involves unconscious denial of something that causes anxiety
An involuntary removal of something from conscious awareness
Unconscious type of forgetting of the existence of something that brings us discomfort or pain and is the most fundamental and frequently used defense mechanism
Can operate on memories of situations or people, on our perception of the present (may fail to see some obviously disturbing event), and even on the body’s physiological functioning
-man can strongly repress sex drive & become impotent
Once its operating it is hard to stop it. Because we repress to protect ourselves.
To remove it we have to know that the idea or memory isn’t dangerous anymore
Denial
A defense mechanism that involves denying the existence of an external threat or traumatic event
Person with terminal illness may deny the imminence of death
Parents deny the loss of a child after their death by keeping their room unchanged
Reaction formation
A defense mechanism that involves expressing an id impulse that is the opposite of the one that is truly driving the person
Person strongly driven by threatening sexual impulses may repress those impulses and replace them with more socially acceptable behaviors
-may reverse them and become a rabid crusader against porn.
Aggressive person may become overly social and friendly
Projection
A defense mechanism that involves attributing a disturbing impulse to someone else
If someone is lustful, a liar, aggressive, or something else will thing everyone else is too. Not themselves.
“I don’t hate him, he hates me”
Regression
A defense mechanism that involves retreating to an earlier, less frustrating period of life and displaying the usually childish behaviors characteristic of that more secure time
Usually is a return to one of the psychosexual stages of childhood development
Rationalization
A defense mechanism that involves reinterpreting our behavior to make it more acceptable and less threatening to us
Justify by persuading ourselves there is a rational explanation to our actions
Fired from job=not a good job anyway
Break Ups=see they have more faults
It’s less threatening to blame someone/thing for our failures
Displacement
A defense mechanism that involves shifting id impulses from a threatening object or from one that is unavailable to an object that is available
For example. Replacing hostility toward one’s boss with hostility towards ones child
Child may hit younger siblings
Adult shouts at dog
Original object is replaced by something that’s not threatening
The substitute object won’t reduce the tension as satisfactory as the original object
If involved in a lot of displacements, reservoir of undischarged tension accumulates, and you will be driven to find new ways of reducing tension
Sublimation
A defense mechanism that involves altering or displacing id impulses by diverting instinctual energy into socially acceptable behaviors.
Sexual energy, turned into artistically creative behaviors
Freud believed a lot of human activities, especially artistic, are from id impulses that have been redirected into socially accepted outlets
Compromise
Doesn’t bring total satisfaction, but leads to a buildup of undischarged tension
