Defense Mechanisms Flashcards
What is Displacement?
Place UNWANTED/UNPLEASANT feelings onto someone LESS THREATENING or an innocent bystander
Ex: A supervisor makes you angry, so you take out the angry emotion on a safer source such as a spouse or friend
Projection
Take your emotions and placing it on to others
Ex: A depressed client passes their sadness onto the therapist
Introjection
To internalize someone else’s emotions or beliefs
EX: A shy person incorporates a confident friend’s attitude
Projective Identification
Seen in Borderline Personality Disorder
Identifying others as having the unwanted emotion one is feeling; however, he/she DOES NOT demonstrate those emotions
Ex: Sally, a client with borderline disorder, is feeling angry. however, Sally DOES NOT demonstrate angry emotions. She then states that her therapist in “in an angry mood.”
Splitting
Clients with borderline personality disorder identify a person as being all good or all bad to simplify their unpleasant and complex emotions
Ex: She’s a great therapist” … moments later, “she’s a horrible therapist.”
Rationalization
Making excuses or justifying actions to avoid unwanted feelings
Ex: You weren’t hired for a job you wanted. You then state, “It’s too far a commute anyway.”
Sublimation
A positive way of getting rid of unwanted feelings
EX : Angry at boss so go to a kickboxing class
Reaction-Formation
Turn unpleasant feelings into the opposite feeling
Ex: A person has a sudden loss shows happiness
Undoing
Taking back unwanted behaviors with praises or gifts
Ex: “Making up” for scolding children through gifts
Isolation of Affect
Expressing no emotions when confronted with difficult events
-No emotions during a crisis
Denial
Refusing to acknowledge feelings into the opposite feeling
Repression
Burying unpleasant thoughts and memories and forgetting them
