Common Defense Mechanisms Used:

Marc Jade Adlawan (CI)

• Compensation
• An attempt to overcome a real or imagined short coming, inferiority, inabilities and
weaknesses.
• A blind woman becomes proficient in playing piano.

• Conversion
• Emotional problems are converted to physical symptoms
• A student unprepared for a report suffered headache the day she is supposed to deliver
her report.

• Denial *(COMMON TO ALCOHOLICS)

• Failure to acknowledge an intolerable thought, feeling, experience or reality
• A middle-aged man after being admitted to the CCU because of an AMI, insists that he
is in the hospital for just a diagnostic work-up.

• Displacement *(COMMON TO PHOBIC PATIENTS)

• the redirection of feelings to a less threatening object
• An adolescent boy, after an argument with his father, goes to the room and kicked his
room’s door.

• Fantasy
• Conscious distortion of unconscious feelings or wishes
• A boy who is being bullied by his friends wished he had the power of Wolverine.

• Fixation
• An unhealthy mechanism which is an arrest of maturation at certain stages of
development.
• A boy never overcame being fully reliant from his mother.

• Introjection *(COMMON TO DEPRESSED PEOPLE)

• Symbolic assimilation or taking into oneself a love/hatred object. Derived from the word
"introject" which literally means to take into or ingest.
• Common to depressed clients. SELF BLAMING
• Identification
• An individual integrates certain aspects of someone else's personality into one's own.
• A young school teacher adopts his former mentor's teaching style when conducting class
sessions.

• Intellectualization
• An overuse of intellectual concepts by an individual to avoid expression of feelings
• A man who was asked to share a memorable experience about his grandmother who
died discussed the stages of death and dying by Elizabeth Kubler Ross.

• Projection *(COMMON TO ANTISOCIAL AND PARANOID)

• Attributing to others one's unconscious wishes/fear.
• Literally, this means to "throw off.
• A student who failed a subject blames his failure on poor teaching.

• Reaction – Formation (MGA PLASTIC PEEPS) (COMMON TO MANIC PATIENTS)

• Expression of feeling that is the direct opposite of one's real feeling.
• Also referred to as overcompensation.
• A student who dislikes one of her classmates may act or show concern toward her.

• Rationalization *(COMMON TO NARCISSISTIC)

• An individual finds a justifiable cause and acceptable reasons just to be saved from an
embarrassing and anxiety producing thoughts or situations.
• A basketball player claims that he missed the shot and lost the game because of the
distractions made by the audience.

• Regression
• Is the turning back to earlier patterns of behavior in solving personal conflicts.
• Commonly seen to schizophrenic patients
• A person who becomes ill in the face of disappointment has regressed to a form of
childish behavior.

• Repression
• It is the involuntary or unconscious forgetting of an unpleasant ideas or impulses.
• During the nurse-patient relationships, patients often unconsciously avoid discussing
those experiences producing anxiety which are emotionally difficult to verbalize.

• Suppression
• Permits the individual to store away or consciously forget the unpleasant, painful and
unacceptable thoughts, desires, experiences and impulses.
• "I'll think it about tomorrow", "I'd rather go now", "Can we change the topic?"
 • A boy walked out from the group and said "I have to go now", when he was asked what
was happened to their relationship with his girlfriend.

• Substitution
• Replacing the desired unattainable goal with one that is attainable
• A woman who failed the nursing board exam 3 times, worked as a nursing aide just to be
in the hospital.

• Sublimation
• The redirection of unacceptable instinctual drive with one that is socially acceptable
• Instead of harming his mother, a man expressed his anger by composing a song.

• Symbolization
• Less threatening object is used to represent another
• A woman, missing her husband finds comfort in hugging her son who looks like his
father.

• Undoing *(COMMON TO OCD)

• An attempt to erase an act, thought, feeling, guilt or desire
• A man gives her wife a bunch of roses after their argument last night.