how to cope the emotional painful thoughts, events.

2. • Motives cause conflicts and in turn
conflicts cause anxiety, stress and
frustration in the individual. The
failures and frustrations hurt our ego
and cause a lot of anxiety and
feelings of guilt. Under such
circumstance, we don’t want to
accept failure easily. Instead, we
resort to certain mechanisms by
which we can safeguard our self –
respect.
Introduction

3. • Coping is the way one adapts to a stressor
psychologically, physically and behaviorally.
The ego usually copes with anxiety through
rational means. When anxiety is too painful,
the individual copes by using defense
mechanisms to protect the ego and diminish
anxiety.

4. Two categories
Direct method
• These are employed by the individual
intentionally at the conscious level. These
includes:
Increasing trails or improving efforts: when one
finds it difficult to solve a problem or faces
obstacles in the path, to cope with his
environment, he can attempt with a new zeal by
increasing his efforts and improving his
behavioural process.

5. Adopting compromising means: for maintaining
harmony between his self and the
environment one may adopt the following
compromising postures:
• He may altogether changes his direction of
efforts by changing the original goals, i.e. an
aspirant for Indian Administrative service(IAS)
may direct his energies to become an officer
in a nationalized bank.

6. • Withdrawal and submissiveness: one may
learn to cope with one’s environment by just
accepting defeat and surrendering oneself to
the powerful forces of environment and
circumstances.

7. Indirect method
• Indirect methods are those methods by which a
person tries to seek temporary adjustment to
protect him for the time being against a
psychological danger.
• The ego usually copes with anxiety through
rational means. When anxiety is too painful, the
individual copes by using defense mechanisms
to protect the ego and diminish anxiety. Such
mechanisms are called mental/ego/defense
mechanisms .

8. t

9. • Defense mechanisms are methods of attempting to
protect self and cope with basic drives or
emotionally painful thoughts, feeling, or events.
• Ego mechanisms though originally conceived by
Sigmund Freud, much of the development was
done by his daughter Anna Freud.
• Defense mechanisms are considered as protective
barriers to manage instinct and affect in stressful
situations.

10. Purposes
• To reduce or eliminate anxiety
• Used to resolve the conflicts
• To reduce the anxiety or fear
• To protect self-esteem or one’s sense of
security

11. • They can be helpful when used in very small
doses, and if overused, become ineffective
and can lead to a breakdown of the
personality.

13. TYPES
ADAPTIVE
• Repression
• Rationalization
• Intellectualization
• Compensation
• Sublimation
• Substitution
MALADAPTIVE
• Displacement
• Denial
• Isolation
• Suppression
• Regression
• Reaction formation
• Projection
• Conversion
• Dissociation
• Undoing

14. DENIAL
• Unconscious refusal to admit an
unacceptable idea or behaviour.
• Denial is the refusal to accept reality or
fact acting as if a painful events,
thought or feeling did not exist while
being appearance to others.
• It is considered one of the primitive
because it is characteristics of early
childhood development
• Overuse of denial: Repression,
Dissociative disorders

15. REGRESSION
• Reverting to an older, less
mature way of handling
stresses and feelings.
• Reversion to earlier stage
of development when
faced with unacceptable,
fearful threatening
thoughts or impulses.
• Overuse: interfere with
personality Development

16. ACTING OUT
• Performing an extreme behaviour in order to
express thoughts or feelings the person feels
incapable of otherwise expressing.
• Ex: self-surgery is expression through physical
pain of what can’t be stand to feel
emotionally.

17. DISSOCIATION
• The unconscious separation of
painful feelings and emotions
from an unacceptable idea,
situation or object
• Trying to disconnect from the
real world to defend from
unbearable thoughts, feelings,
and memories
• Ex: amnesia

18. REACTION FORMATION
• Replacing unacceptable
feelings with their exact
opposites.
• Ex: A jealous boy who hates his
elder brother may show
exaggerated respect and
affection towards him.
• Overuse : failure to resolve
internal conflicts.

19. PROJECTION
• Unconsciously/ conscious blaming
someone else for one’s difficult
• Ex: A surgeon whose patient does
not respond as he anticipated,
may tend to blame the theater
nurse who helped that surgeon at
the of operation.
• Overuse: may develop into
delusion tendencies.

20. REPRESSION
• Unconscious and involuntary forgetting of
painful ideas, events and conflicts.
• Done unconsciously that little control over it.
• Repressed memories –but never retrived the
same
• Ex: forgetting a loved one’s birthday after a
fight
• Overuse: conscious perception of instincts and
feelings is blocked in repression

21. DISPLACEMENT
• Unconsciously
discharging pent-up
feelings to a less
threatening object
• Ex: a husband comes
home from a bad day at
work and yells at his wife.
• Overuse : loss of friends,
relationships, confusion
in communiction

22. UNDOING
• Trying to reverse or undo a thought
or feeling by performing an action
that signifies an opposite feeling than
original thought or feeling.
• Ex: a husband who showers his wife
with roses and chocolates on
valentine’s day may be unconsciously
seeking to undo a year of neglect
• Overuse: may send double message

23. RATIONALIZATION
• It is a process in which an individual justifies
his failure s and socially unacceptable
behaviour by giving socially approved reasons
• Ex: a student who fails in the examination may
complain that the hostel atmosphere is not
favourable and has resulted in his failure.
• Overuse: self –deception(cheating)

24. SUBLIMATION
• Consciously or unconsciously
channeling instinctual drives
into acceptable activities.
Dealing with emotional
stressors by using the energy
in constructive activities
• Ex: punching bags to channel
anger impulses. sports

25. COMPENSATION
• Consciously covering up for
a weakness by over
emphasizing or making up a
desirable trait.
• Ex: a student who fails in his
studies may compensate by
becoming the college
champion in athletics
• Overuse: modest instinctual
satisfaction occurs.

26. SUPPRESSION
• Voluntary rejection of unacceptable thoughts
or feelings from conscious awareness
• Ex: student who failed in an examination
states he is not ready to talk about his marks.
• Overuse: discomfort

27. CONVERSION
• The unconscious expression of
intrapsychic conflict symbolically through
physical symptoms
• Ex: a student awakens with a migraine
headache the morning of a final
examination and feels too ill to talk about
his marks.
• Overuse : anxiety not dealt with can lead
to actual physical disorders such as
gastric ulcer

32. DEFENSE MECHANISMS COMMONLY USED IN EACH
RESPECTIVE DISORDERS
– Paranoid – Projection
– Phobia – Displacement
– Amnesia – Dissociation
– Anorexia – Suppression
– Bipolar Disorder – Reaction Formation
– Borderline – Splitting
– Schizophrenia – Regression
– Substance Abuse – Denial
– Depression – Introjections
– OC – Undoing
– Catatonic - Repression