COPING AND

DEFENSE
MECHANISM
LESSON 6
WHAT ARE COPING MECHANISM?
These refer to the scam total of ways in which
people deal with minor to major stress and trauma.
Some of these processes are unconscious ones,
others
are learned behavior, and still others are skills that
individuals consciously master in order to reduce
stress or other intense emotions like depression.
Not all ways coping are equally beneficial, and
some can actually be very detrimental.
 What are Defense Mechanisms?
These refer to an individuals’ way of reacting to
frustration. These are unconscious psychological
strategies brought into play by various entities to cope
with reality and to maintain self- image. Healthy
persons normally use different defenses throughout life.
According to Freud, defense mechanisms are methods
that ego uses to avoid recognizing ideas or emotions
that may cause personal anxiety; it is the unrealistic
strategies used by the ego to discharge tension,
List of Coping and Defense Mechanisms
1. Acting Out. This means literally acting out the
desires that are forbidden by the Super ego and yet
desired by the Id. We thus cope with the pressure to
do what we believe is wrong by giving in to the
desire. A person who is acting out desires may do it
in spite of his/her conscience or may do it with
relatively little thought. Thus, the act may be being
deliberately bad or may be thoughtless
wrongdoing.
2. Aim Inhibition. Sometimes we have desires and
goals that we believe that we are unable to achieve.
In aim inhibition, we lower our sights, reducing our
goals to something that we believe is actually more
possible or realistic.

3. Altruism. Avoid your own pains by

concentrating on the pains of others. Maybe you
can heal yourself and feel good by healing them
and helping them to feel good.
4. Attack. The best form of defense is attack; it is a common
saying and is also a common action, and when we feel
threatened or attacked (even psychologically), we will attack
back. When a person feels stressed in some way, he/she may
lash out at whoever is in the way, whether the other person is
a real cause or not. He/she may also attack inanimate objects.

5. Avoidance. In avoidance, we simply find ways of

avoiding having to face uncomfortable situations, things or
activities. The discomfort, for example, may come from
unconscious sexual or aggressive impulses.
6. Compartmentalization. It is a “divide and conquer”
process for separating thoughts that will conflict with one
another. This may happen when there are different beliefs
or even when there are conflicting values.

7. Compensation. Where a person has a weakness in one

area, they may compensate by accentuating or building
up strengths in another area. Thus, when they are faced
with their weakness, they can say, but I am good at…!,
and hence feel reasonably good about the situation.
8. Conversion. It occurs where cognitive tensions manifest
themselves in physical symptoms. The symptom may well be
symbolic and dramatic and it often acts as a communication
about the situation. Extreme symptoms may include paralysis,
blindness, deafness, becoming mute or having a seizure while
lesser symptoms include tiredness, headaches and twitches.

9. Denial. It is simply refusing to acknowledge that an event

has occurred. The person affected simply acts as if nothing has
happened, behaving in ways that others may see as bizarre.
10. Displacement. It refers to the shifting of actions from
a desired target to a substitute, target when there are some
reasons why the first target is not permitted or not
available

11. Dissociation. It involves separating a set of thoughts

or activities from the main area of conscious mind, in
order to avoid the conflict that this would cause. This can
also appear as taking an objective, third-person
perspective, where you 'go to the balcony' and look down
on the situation in order to remove emotion from your
12. Emotionality. When we become stressed or tension
is caused, a number of negative emotions may start to
build, including anger, frustration, fear, jealousy and so
on. When we display these emotions, it can affect
others around us, arousing similar or polar feelings.
Some people are either not good at restraining their
emotions or are less concerned about the effect on
others and more about the personal benefits of
emotional outbursts. As a result, they regularly and
habitually display extreme emotions.
13. Fantasy or Day Dreaming. When we cannot achieve or
do something that we want, we channel the energy created by
the desire into fantastic imaginings. Fantasy also provides
temporary relief from the general stresses of everyday living.

14. Fight-or-Flight Reaction. When we perceive a

significant threat to us, then our bodies get ready either for a
fight to the death or a desperate flight from certain defeat by
a clearly superior adversary.
15. Help-rejecting Complaining. A person becomes upset or
otherwise elicits supporting actions from other people. When
helpful suggestions or other comfort is offered, however,
he/she reject this and return to his/her complaint.

16. Idealization. It is the over-estimation of the desirable

qualities and underestimation of the limitations of a desired
thing. We also tend to idealize those things that we have
chosen or acquired. The opposite of idealization is
demonization, where something that is not desired or disliked
has its weak points exaggerated and its strong points played
17. Identification. It occurs when a person changes apparent
facets of his/her personality such that he/she appears to be
more like other people. This process may be to copy specific
people or it may be to change to an idealized prototype.

18. Intellectualization. This refers to a "flight into reason",

where the person avoids uncomfortable emotions by focusing
on facts and logic. The situation is treated as an interesting
problem that engages the person on a rational basis, whilst
the emotional aspects are completely ignored as being
irrelevant.
19. Introjection. It occurs as a coping mechanism when we
take on attributes of other people who seem better able to
cope with the situation than we do.

20. Passive Aggression. A person who uses passive-

aggressive method to cope with stresses docs this by
‘attacking’ others through passive means. Passive aggression
often appears when a person is asked to do something which
he/she wants to avoid for some reason (such as priority of
other work). By appearing to agree but not making any real
commitment, he/she can avoid the action.
21. Post-traumatic Growth. An individual who has suffered
a traumatic experience somehow finds ways to turn it into
something good. Typically, interpersonal relationships are
improved, with friends and family valued more and more
time being spent in helping others. Self-perception changes
through the increase in resiliency gained from realizing you
can cope with hardship.
22. Projection. When a person has uncomfortable thoughts or
feelings, he/she may project these onto other people, assigning
the thoughts or feelings that he/she need to repress to a
convenient alternative target. Projection may also happen to
obliterate attributes of other people with which we are
uncomfortable.

23. Provocation or Free-floating. When a person feels

stressed, his/her way to avoid dealing with the real issues is
to provoke others into some kind of reaction.
24. Reaction Formation. It occurs when a person feels an
urge to do or say something and then actually does or says
something that is effectively the opposite of what he/she
really wants. It also appears as a defense against a feared
social punishment.

25. Rationalization. When something happens that we

find difficult to accept, then we will make up a logical
reason why it has happened. We rationalize to ourselves.
26. Regression. It involves taking the position of a child
in some problematic situation, rather than acting in a more
adult way. This is usually in response to stressful
situations, with greater levels of stress potentially leading
to more overt regressive acts. Regressive behavior can be
simple and harmless, such as a person who is sucking a
pen (as a Freudian regression to oral fixation).
27. Repression. It involves placing uncomfortable
thoughts in relatively inaccessible areas of the
subconscious mind. Thus, when things occur that we are
unable to cope with now, we push them away, either
planning to deal with them at another time or hoping that
they will fade away on their own accord. The level of
‘forgetting’ in repression can vary from a temporary
abolition of uncomfortable thoughts to a high level of
amnesia, where events that caused the anxiety are buried
very deep.
28. Self-harming. It refers to the person's physically
deliberately hurting himself in some way or otherwise puts
himself at high risk of harm.

29. Somatization. It occurs where a psychological

problem turns into physical and subconscious symptoms.
This can range from simple twitching to skin rashes, heart
problems and worse.
30. Sublimation. It is the transformation of unwanted
impulses into something less harmful. This can simply be a
distracting release or may be a constructive and valuable
piece of work. Many sports and games are sublimations of
aggressive urges, as we sublimate the desire to fight into
the ritualistic activities of formal competition.

31. Suppression. This is where the person consciously and

deliberately pushes down any thought that leads to feelings
of anxiety. Actions that take the person into anxiety-
creating situations may also be avoided
32. Substitution. This takes something that leads to
discomfort and replace it with something that does not
lead to discomfort.

33. Symbolization. It is a way of handling inner

conflicts by turning them into distinct symbols. Symbols
are often physical items, although there may also be
symbolic acts and metaphoric ideas.
34. Trivializing. When we are faced with a disappointment
over something that is important to us, we are faced with the
problem of having our expectations and predictions dashed.
We may even have told other people about it beforehand,
making it doubly embarrassing that we have not gained what
we expected. One way is to make something a joke, laughing
it off.

35. Undoing. It refers to performance of an act to ‘undo’ a

previous unacceptable act or thought. Confession is a form of
undoing, including that done in a church to a priest or a secret