sandorski
No Lifer
People Who Deny Reality
By Charles Shahar Posted: 11.06.2006
snipped for size
Emotional ego defenses are subtler than physical defenses. These include:
(1) Repression: Pushing back emotions that are unacceptable to your ego. Blocking or denial of emotions such as anger, fear, frustration or dislike; or even love and compassion.
(2) Reaction-Formation: Reacting in ways opposite to what you really feel. For instance, you may feel resentment toward your child, but smother them with affection instead.
(3) Projection: Attributing unacceptable feelings to others, when in fact you feel these yourself.
(4) Displacement: Reacting in a certain way to someone, usually a safe target, when in fact you have such feelings about someone else.
(5) Regression: Experiencing feelings of an earlier developmental stage, and not responding to situations in an adult and responsible way.
Intellectual defenses are subtler yet.
(1) Mental Blocking: Refusing to consider certain thoughts, including blocking memories of past experiences.
(2) Minimization: Rationalizing away the source of the threat by minimizing its effects on you.
(3) Faulty Attribution: Attributing a certain cause to your distress that is unassociated with your feelings.
(4) Disassociation: Talking about something as if it didn't apply to you. Usually this can be noticed when a person does not own what they say by not including themselves in the description, and speaking about it in a more abstract way.
This is why I Deny the existence of Leprechauns. The thought that I'm too lazy to find the pot of Gold(have you seen the Price of Gold recently? 😱) at the end of the rainbow makes my Life unbearable. Gotta go back to the Leprechaun Denial Webring to cheer myself up. BRB.