Recognizing Psychological Defenses
Ami and I were having a conversation about psychological defenses so I thought I would post some info here:
You must learn that you have been using some very clever unconscious psychological defenses to push out of awareness all the unpleasant and frightening emotions which hurt you as a child.
As one way to block out unpleasant and frightening emotions, many children block out any awareness of the situations that cause these emotions. Hence they can lose situational awareness and bodily awareness in the process. Maybe they always bump into things and have accidents. Maybe they cannot perceive the emotional cues given off by others, and so they will lack empathy. Maybe they cannot perceive the beauty of nature, and so they will lack wonder. Maybe they will develop eating disorders, such as anorexia or obesity.
If body awareness is a problem, practice a psychological technique called autogenics as an aid.
As another way to block out unpleasant and frightening emotions, many children simply dampen all their emotional reactions, dwelling in the realm of intellect and reason.
Learning to recognize your psychological defenses can take as much hard work as recognizing your emotions in the first place, so make the task into a form of prayerful scrutiny. Take the time to remember things that happened to you as a child; ask yourself what emotions you must have been feeling at that time; and reflect on what defenses you used at that time to protect yourself from unpleasant emotions. Use a list of psychological defenses as an aid.
3. Learning How the Past “Lives” in the Present
Having learned to recognize emotions and your defenses against them, your next task will be to learn that the past essentially continues to live in the present; that is, when you experience emotional stimulation in the present you will be unconsciously pushed into responding to those emotions according to your old psychological defenses.
Thus you will see that all the unpleasant and frightening emotions which you have been pushing out of awareness all your life have been secret causes for all the problems and conflicts you have been experiencing all your life.
Just as a child who does not understand the concept of dirt and disease will resist taking a bath, persons who do not believe they are governed by unconscious defenses will resist spiritual purification. When confronted by personal trials—such as a difficult marriage, or an illness—they will tend to seek a way to “get rid of the problem.” And what a wasted opportunity! If only they would look inside themselves with deep scrutiny so as to recognize and then remedy the unconscious conflicts keeping the problem alive, they could see that the trial is God’s way of calling them to overcome old weaknesses and develop new virtues.
(See thread on False Spiritual Peace)
Therefore, you must examine your life very carefully so as to make a conscious, enlightened connection between your suppressed emotions and your current behavioral problems. (If you look carefully, you will find fantasies of grandiosity, revenge, and sexuality frequently running through your mind, and these fantasies can prod you into acting in ways that are, well, unbecoming to Christian conduct.) This scrutiny will show you how your life, up to now, has been largely controlled by the unconscious repetition of old emotional conflicts.
4. Learning New Behaviors
Having mastered the previous steps so that you can easily recognize how the past essentially continues to live in the present, you must make a conscious effort to resist the temptation to fall into old defensive patterns, and you must train yourself to act with new and different behaviors.
Make no mistake here: this is hard work.
How many persons say “Jesus, I trust in You!” as a rote part of their prayers? And how many of these same persons fly into a panic when some difficulty or trial afflicts them? Immediately, they want to get satisfaction, get back at the person who hurt them, or just get anything in compensation. And in so doing they completely forget what Christianity is all about: taking up your cross in imitation of Christ.
So it’s essential that you train yourself to make a disciplined, conscious decision in the moment to understand and resist transient defensive fantasies and instead to bear pain and suffering gracefully, in imitation of Christ, with mercy and forgiveness. In every moment of difficulty you will, like a frightened child, think first of protecting your pride, but you must now, with a deliberate act of will, set aside that pride, realizing that if Christ could bear all insults in complete obedience to the Father’s will, then you, too, must live by that same obedience.
Summary
Note carefully that unless you work through all these stages—either in psychotherapy or through prayer and spiritual purgation—it is nearly impossible to live a genuinely humble life. You cannot surrender your pain and suffering completely to God if you persist in clinging, deep in your heart, to psychological defense mechanisms that shield you from that very pain. How can you say that you trust in God if you’re always protecting yourself with your own wits? In the past, particularly as a child, blame, resentment, and anger may have served to ensure your survival by masking your hurt and vulnerability, but in reality these things are totally opposed to Christian love.
