The Practical Guide to Defense Mechanisms

Confront demons, know maidens

The concrete signs we’re in avoidance mode.

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Defense mechanisms are psychological phenomena created by the unconscious to block us from emotional pain. Except pain is the foundation of growth, so as they numb the pain, defense mechanisms ensure arrested development. Therefore, it’s vital to recognize our defenses before we can look at and accept the pain they’re defending us against. No one wants to be the tragedy of a man who’s so out of touch that he doesn’t even get that he doesn’t get it.

But when we look up defense mechanisms we get a slew of highfalutin terms like regression, reaction formation, and displacement. It would be helpful, therefore, to identify how defenses appear in the real world. Let’s leave the fancy terminology for the academes who try to make psychology sound more complicated than it is.

Here are concrete signs we’re in avoidance mode.

Apathy: Behind the affect of indifference lies avoided anxiety. We only construct a dispassionate persona to distance ourselves from threats we perceive in the environment.

Fatigue: Few men younger than 46 ever has a physical reason for fatigue. Rather, it’s a defense against the dread of not doing what we know we need to do. We’re on the wrong path, so we may as well feel tired if we’re only going to work against ourselves.

Back pain: Unless there’s a physical reason for the pain—and there almost never is—it’s the body’s passive aggressive way to tell us to avoid anxiety by getting hooked on opioids.

Booze: One of the most difficult parts of my job is getting guys to see their partying and fun are ways of acting out. No problem in ripping through a booze cruise every so often, but if the bar is part of the routine, then it’s the adult version of thumb sucking.

Porn: Similar to booze, but most guys intuitively get it’s a distraction from loneliness.

Identity politics: Tribalism is a shortcut to the development of a healthy ego. Who needs all the pesky suffering and failure when you can cut in line with your indigenous garb?

Life hacks: This goes for all magic bullet solutions. To navigate the messiness of life requires us to dig deep and get honest, not simply arrange power cords with paper clips.

Religion and atheism: Belief structure, or lack thereof, are an important part of our personal development. But we can become too committed to a worldview—even in the face of contradictory evidence—which is a sure sign we latch onto that view as a distraction from ourselves.

Crappy clothes: If we feel like a childe, then we won’t look at our situation as if we were an adult. A great way to feel like a child is to insist joggers are chinos.

Fidget spinners: Stillness is often our guide to the pain.

Crossfit: Helplessness takes on many forms, one of them is to 35 clean and jerks in a row.

Charity: The subtext of fundraisers is, “I must not be a bad person if I donate my money to [cause du jour].” Harvey Weinstein is the harbinger. When the Hollywood pedophile rings are exposed (*dons tinfoil hat*), take note that the most aggressive diddlers are the most aggressive do-gooders.

Social ills: Society is a word we made up to distract us from our own problems.

Resentment toward women: Men are the conduit through which women contact reality. If we’re a hot mess of deflection, then women have no protection except that of feminism.

Graduate school: It’s a scary world out there, but face it with a craft, we hide away in a it by developing a craft we hide away in collegiate Gothic to put letters next to our name. This is especially true for business school, but I’m sure .

Drug abuse: This includes social media abuse, which is defined as checking Twitter more than three times per week, Instagram more than once per week, and simply being on Facebook.

Seinfeld reruns: The misfortunes of others feels good so we conclude we’re making a bigger deal out of our issues than we are. This way, we’re justified in not facing them all while feeling quite satisfied with ourselves.

Apologies: We treat apologies like handshakes—something we do to socialize with our fellow men. Give yourself three apologies a year for when you really screw up and leave it at that. Otherwise, the only thing we’re truly sorry about is our inability to confront reality.

Politics: To be part of something larger than ourselves is to be less a part of ourselves.

Stoicism: Disconnection from emotions and so reality never sounded so smart.

Boredom: The human experience is the greatest experience in the history of the universe as far as we know. Maybe it’s not good enough, or maybe involvement in its gradations is too painful.

Of course, this is only how we avoid emotions. It’s important to manage emotions as well. Good thing there’s a way to do this without making us feel like a girl, and there’s even a way to do it that makes us strong. Psychological health may not guarantee fame and fortune, but at least it staves off the tragedy.