NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BINAH MAGAZINE'S COLUMN: THERAPY: A SNEAK PEEK INSIDE
“She's in total denial. Not that I blame her. Who wants to deal with such a problem?”
Recognize that line?
She — whoever that she is in your life — is in denial about any number of things. That her daughter bullies others at school, that her son needs tutoring, that she is too picky about shidduchim, that her mother is very ill, that her house is a mess, that she is a lousy cook.
Or how about this line?
“So what if I wore the outfit once and then returned it? The department store doesn't sell returns anyway.”
Both of these lines indicate that a defense mechanism at play. The first is denial (refusing to face an issue), the second is rationalization (justifying actions with reasons that obscure the real motives — here that what the person is doing is theft, whichever way you slice it).
If you were wondering, here's the answer to your question: No, I am not a therapist outside of my office. I do not examine your behavior in the supermarket or shoemaker. No, I do not analyze you at the pool or park. And I do not even remotely study you or pass judgment on you in any social or other setting, or consider whether or not you could use therapy.
I walk out of my therapy room, and I become the most clueless, unobservant, and unperceptive person, noticing nothing, happily oblivious to what anyone else is thinking, doing, wearing, or feeling.
But if I choose to, I can know you better than you know yourself by how you reveal yourself through your defense mechanisms.
In psychological babble, a defense mechanism is a subconscious way we protect ourselves from anxiety-provoking situations. And there are many of them in addition to the two mentioned above.
Defense mechanisms are different from the healthy coping mechanisms we use in tough situations in a few ways. Defenses operate mostly outside of consciousness, while coping tools are rooted in the conscious, in the here-and-now. Defenses feel automatic, as if driven by something outside of us that compels us to act that way even when we hate this seemingly automatic behavior. While true coping tools are oriented to reality, defenses distort the present and are driven by the past. Defenses ease anxiety with impulse gratification, subterfuge, attempting to create a smokescreen for the real issue at hand; its main goal is to remove the disturbing affect, not solve the problem. Healthy coping involves choice, purposefulness, openness, and an ability to tolerate an uncomfortable situation in order to resolve it.
It's in the defense mechanisms a person uses — or doesn't need to use — that allows a therapist, even one outside the office, to read a person with something tantamount to x-ray vision.
Even untrained people who have a gift for being attuned to others are able to interpret behaviors. And if you are one of these socially gifted individuals, this article will simply identify one of the tools in your repertoire — understanding the defenses people use and why.
After you read about a few defenses, you may either be squirming in your seat, or couch, or wherever you are reading this because you recognize yourself, or you are enjoying the new understanding it gives you when dealing with your parent, child, workmate or husband.
Ready? Here goes.
You come home from work and your kid's briefcase is on the floor right by the door when you have told him a million times to put it away when he comes home from school. And you give it to him good. Your yelling can be heard out the window and down the block all the way to Kalamazoo. Yes, leaving a briefcase in the hallway is irritating, but it has not become a capital offense yet. Chances are what you are doing is displacement. You really want to be yelling at your workmate or boss, but can’t; instead, the safest person to yell at is your seven-year-old.
It's weird when your sister-in-law tells you, “My neighbor has a real issue with tznius. She wears her wig long and her skirts are just above her knees. I don't understand why she can't simply adhere to what she knows is right.” Your sister-in-law has forgotten how she tells you her own struggle with tznius despite her pristine outer appearance. She is using projection, attributing unacceptable thoughts and feelings onto others, denying it belongs to her, pretending she does not feel similarly.
But defenses may not necessarily be negative.
Here's a great one to use because it converts socially unacceptable impulses in a positive way, much in the same way we were taught that when someone enjoys bloodshed, they should become a shochet. It’s called sublimation. A person who relishes control may become a doctor, principal, or CEO. (Hmm, so you are wondering what sublimation is at work when someone becomes a therapist?)
Or, what Yosef Hatzaddik did in Mitzrayim when he avoided sinning because of the vision of his father before his eyes. That is internalization, when we incorporate other people into our very being and make them part of us to avoid dealing with something alone. It's how we make good decisions about child-rearing, by hearing our mother's voice inside our head.
The negative aspect of internalization is when we swallow the other person whole and lose ourselves in the process, when we make decisions that are not our own because of our anxiety that must be avoided at all costs. It's sometimes seen in how girls come back from seminary clones of their teachers (although this too can be part of a normal spiritual developmental process).
So what do I know about you when you use your defenses?
Your defenses allow me in to know who you really are, what your struggle with, who you struggle with, and sometimes even get a glimpse of the child you once were. I learn your weaknesses and your insecurities. I can figure out what relationships in your childhood were unsatisfying or skewed. They speak a language, that in the therapy room, helps me understand you so I can help you. And if I don't turn off my therapist persona outside of the therapy room, your defenses do exactly the opposite of what you wish them to do: they strip your masks so I can see who you are underneath.
Repression, identification, introjection, internationalization, fantasy, idealization, regression, somatization, splitting, compensation, undoing, withdrawal...so many defenses. So little time in a lifetime to use them all!
But why use them at all if u can throw away your defenses and live authentically instead?
Then the people in Kalamazoo can take out their ear plugs
My book, Therapy, Shmerapy, can be found in bookstores or online