Mind Games: The Use and Misuse of Defense Mechanisms

“Buried emotions are like rejected people; they make us pay a high price for having rejected them.” –Rev. John Powell

There once was a woman who discovered a corroded pipe in her basement. To hide the ugly sight, she built a wall around it. Once the wall was painted, papered, and decorated, she was relieved to know that neither she nor anyone else would ever have to look at that corroded pipe again.

For a time, she was content. But then she noticed a wet spot in the carpet. No matter how thoroughly she dried it, it soon returned even worse than before. Soon she was constantly cleaning and drying the carpet. All the effort was making her exhausted and stressed. Whenever she fell behind, the carpet began to mildew and the floorboards began to rot. She blamed the problem on the high water table, or perhaps heavy rains.

Occasionally she would think of the corroded pipe behind the wall. Perhaps it was the cause of her problems. But quickly she turned her mind away from that possibility, for she had invested so much in building and decorating the wall that she was very afraid to pull it down. It was easier, and less messy, she told herself, to just keep cleaning up the carpet.

After many months, the worn-out woman burst into rage and tore the wall down. There was the rotted pipe, steadily weeping water down its length. She collapsed into tears. Even when she could cry no more, she simply sat staring at the leaking pipe. It appeared to be beyond repair. She didn’t know how anything could fix it. Her despair was complete. Her house could never be made beautiful again. She simply waited for the strength to cry some more.

Hiding unresolved internal conflicts is like hiding a corroded pipe. The problem is still there. Like water from a leaky pipe, negative emotions inevitably seep out into other areas of one’s life. If the root problem is not addressed, these problems begin to multiply. They drain away energy from other duties of life. They demand notice. And even when they are finally faced, they can appear to be an unsolvable, impossible burden if they are confronted without the support and love of others.

Defense Mechanisms and Coping Skills

The term “defense mechanism” refers to any of several ways in which the human mind attempts to avoid or hide anxiety-provoking truths. The military term “defense” is used because a mind that is using defense mechanisms is fighting an internal conflict. It is striving to protect what the person wants to believe from being overthrown by what is really true.

Defense mechanisms all serve, in one way or another, to sustain denial–the denial of one’s unwanted emotions or the denial of one’s flaws, mistakes, or responsibilities. Some defense mechanisms concentrate on containing the unwanted emotions. Others provide a means to release pent-up emotions in ways that disguise their true meaning or source, thereby preserving deniability.

Defense mechanisms are to the mind what safety features are to a car. For example, when a collision causes a car’s air bag to fire, this protects the driver. But if the air bag is not deflated and put back into place, the car won’t work properly.

Similarly, if the driver’s side mirror is bumped, it is designed to fold back instead of breaking off. This good design protects the mirror, but it also leaves it in the wrong position. If the driver doesn’t put the mirror back in its right place, he won’t be able to see traffic properly and may make wrong or even dangerous decisions.

The same principle is true with psychological defense mechanisms. They have temporary value. They can save us from “losing our minds” by confronting too much all at once, without the support of others. But when we rely too much on these defense mechanisms (or “coping skills”), especially when we keep them in place as permanent “fixes” to our problems, the mechanisms themselves become part of the problem.

If the walls we erect to defend ourselves are never taken down, they become a prison. They deprive us of the freedom to explore the fullness of our own potential and the richness of relationships with others. As long as we hide some truth about ourselves, we cannot know who we really are. As long as we withhold ourselves from others, we cannot experience their embrace of who we are.

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Excerpted from Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion, by Theresa Burke with David C. Reardon. © 2002, Theresa Karminski Burke. Reprinted with permission. The book will be available in May 2002 from Acorn Books. To order, call 1-888-412-2676.

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Orignially printed in The Post-Abortion Review, Vol. 10(1), Jan.-March 2002. Copyright 2002, Elliot Institute.

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