Psychological defense mechanism is a natural psychological defense function to resist pressure, eliminate bad emotions and achieve psychological balance when people are frustrated. The premise of starting the psychological defense mechanism is frustration and stress response.
Everyone's daily life is undergoing great changes. The natural and social changes people encounter are all kinds of challenges. In order to adapt to changes and seek development, people's psychology is constantly moving every day, including understanding the situation, analyzing problems, making decisions and taking actions. However, due to subjective and objective constraints, "life will go wrong in nine cases out of ten", and efforts will often fail. This psychological state in which personal motives are not realized and needs are not met is called frustration. When frustrated, there is passion and pressure response.
Passion is a violent, rapid and transient emotion, such as ecstasy, anger, fear and despair. Passion is always accompanied by the whole body reaction, including the tension of internal organs and the strong changes of external expressions, postures and movements. This state of systemic reaction is called "stress".
Stress is a normal psychological and physiological phenomenon. In fact, because life is full of contradictions and changes, large and small pressure reactions often occur in people's real life. For example, crossing the intersection was almost hit by a car; Husband and wife quarreled fiercely; Laid off; Fail the exam; When you receive the notice of punishment, you will have a stress reaction. The essence of stress response is psychological contradiction. It is difficult to make a decision because of the vague understanding of various influencing factors in the environment, the development law and prospect of the goal, and what methods should be taken to deal with difficulties. I'm afraid that if I make a mistake, there will be setbacks. Therefore, people often hesitate on difficult problems, and intense or long-term hesitation leads to psychological conflicts. Psychological conflicts can be roughly divided into the following categories:
Two-way conflict:
When two mutually attractive but mutually exclusive goals exist at the same time, and the situation requires that only one can be selected, a two-way conflict will occur. Just as you can't have both, you must give up one. For example:
1) I want to work as soon as possible to reduce the burden on my family and go to college for further study;
2) The jobs in both places are very beautiful, and both of them are willing to be hired, so you must choose one;
3) It's cute to meet two people when choosing a spouse.
Avoidance-Avoidance conflict:
These two goals are annoying and will hurt some of their own interests. But the situation forces us to choose one of them. For example: monotonous and boring work or hard and tiring work, which should I apply for? In the face of bad people, if you don't want to be bullied, you must take the risk to resist. What should you do? . In real life, avoidance-avoidance conflict can only be to escape from the whole environment or change the nature of the other party. However, this is usually difficult to do.
Avoid conflict:
The same goal is both satisfying and annoying. For example, a girl likes the delicious sugar, but she doesn't want to get fat; A boy wants to go to college, but he is worried about not studying well; A person wants to get married, but he is afraid to take on all kinds of responsibilities to support his family; The patient wants to treat the disease by surgery, but he is afraid of the danger of surgery; Make a friend, love his honesty and hate his stupidity. This situation may lead individuals to avoid conflicts with their goals. .
Double avoidance of conflict:
The complex pattern of overlapping multiple avoidance conflicts. That is, if you make progress, you can only get good and bad results; If you shrink back, it will also bring misfortune and happiness. Stop. The situation does not allow. In real life, most of the major problems people encounter fall into this category.
If the above psychological contradictions involve people's fundamental interests or major needs, it will cause people's stress response.
Stress reaction has positive significance to people's life;
It has the function of concentrating the whole body energy (the energy of various organs of the body and the ability to think positively), tapping the full potential of the body and mind, and solving the current problems quickly. So it is indispensable for people. If a person can't have a stress response in an emergency, then his adaptability to life will be greatly reduced, and bad consequences will follow. Just as a country has no emergency mechanism to mobilize and mobilize its troops in the face of aggression, it can only wait for extinction. But if people's stress response is too much and too strong, it will also have negative significance. Stress is divided into "alert period", "combat period" and "exhaustion period". Constant psychological struggle will drag the body into the "exhaustion period" Even if you can't get sick, excessive energy consumption will inevitably lead to physical loss and accumulation to form aging. Intense and long-term stress can easily lead to physical and mental illness and even death.
In the face of the same setbacks, everyone's ability to resist pressure and bear the level is different. Its intensity is related to the diversity of life, the complexity of experience, the amount of knowledge and experience and the ability of individuals to adapt to difficult situations.
People with mental health have formed a scientific concept and a correct cognitive structure because of their deep understanding of nature, society and self, so they don't have to start natural psychological defense when they fail, but deal with setbacks rationally. This rational response includes scientific concept, correct cognitive structure, unremitting struggle process and correct attitude to adapt to reality:
1) scientific concept: it is a highly generalized general understanding of all kinds of things in the world. Including world outlook (the overall view of the world's origin), values (the understanding of the importance of various things in the world and their relationship with themselves, on the basis of which one forms one's own view of right and wrong), outlook on life (the understanding of the value and essence of life), beliefs (systematic and solidified directional understanding) and attitudes (simplification and habituation of various things).
2) Correct cognitive structure. Cognitive structure is a highly generalized and logical cognitive framework in the brain formed on the basis of ideas, including a systematic understanding of various facts, changing principles, laws and logics. It is a classification processor that absorbs new knowledge in the future, and it is also a telescope and microscope for re-cognition. When the cognitive structure is too pedantic to integrate new knowledge, it will also transform itself through thinking to adapt to new knowledge.
3) Persistent struggle process. Its formula is: motivation-goal-frustration-summing up experience, changing methods, trying again-frustration-lowering the requirements for goals, choosing similar lower goals, trying again-frustration-changing the direction of efforts, re-selecting goals, and then starting to work hard.
4) The correct attitude to adapt to reality. This attitude is manifested in various beneficial psychological mechanisms to deal with failure:
Reasoning-use reason to control and suppress unreasonable or unrealistic desires and delay meeting some of your own needs; So they can adjust their goals and pace and move on.
Sublimation-guide unrealistic or harmful desires to a lofty and beneficial direction, and start a continuous struggle with a goal that is beneficial to society or yourself.
Compensation-change the original direction of efforts, replace failed goals with goals in other fields, and succeed in new fields.
Humor-use a wise, implicit, pun, allegory, humor and coincidence language to get rid of psychological difficulties, resolve external difficulties and help yourself enter a new realm.
Appropriate venting-talk, discuss and communicate with relatives and friends who care about themselves. Talented people can rely on poetry and calligraphy, singing and dancing, running, jumping, throwing and other cultural and sports activities to pin their depressed feelings. After a long time, it will enter the sublimation stage.
Modern psychological science research shows that the correct cognitive structure can inhibit suicide. The research result of suicide in Karolinska Medical College in Germany shows that whether suicide occurs is negatively correlated with individual intelligence by three times. Because smart people are more successful in life and better at controlling crises, the smarter they are (the correct cognitive structure), the less likely they are to commit suicide. These studies further prove the correctness of cognitive theory.