- "The wind of change"
- "Mine doesn't understand yours"
- "I didn't really want to"
- "Ocean"
- "Apotheosis of the Absurd"
- "The whole world is a theater"
One of the important properties mature person With high level development of intelligence, emotional sphere and other important qualities successful personality - the ability to defend themselves against the psychological attacks of ill-wishers. The balance of emotions is an important defensive fortress that an envious person or competitor seeks to destroy. After all, it is worth taking a person out of himself - he immediately loses the ability to think logically, make informed decisions, and see the dirty tricks in the actions of other people.
Offensive words, reproaches, nagging, spreading gossip and other methods of psychological attack act like bee venom - if a person is stung by one or more bees, then nothing bad will happen to him. But if a whole swarm attacks him, the attacked one may even die. It is the same with the emotional attacks of enemies - one injection may not piss off the opponent, but if you annoy him over and over again, the baiting tactics will bear fruit. The stronger the psychological sphere is protected, the more " bee stings A person is able to endure. But there are those who are similar to allergy sufferers - even one serving of poison completely unsettles them and even endangers their lives, they are so not protected from external attacks.
They can remain greenhouse flowers for life and be protected from contact with aggressive personalities, and can learn the necessary techniques of psychological defense and become stronger opponents in this bloodless war.
Most prestigious and highly paid professions involve working with people, so encounters with hostile and even inadequate characters are inevitable. If you have chosen the path through thorns to the stars of high achievements, then you should take the utmost care to strengthen the approaches to your nerves. Otherwise, they will be ruffled by all and sundry.
A strong psyche depends on the innate qualities of a person, his upbringing, worldview, understanding of the psychology of other people, attentiveness, ability to analyze the behavior and motives of opponents.
First of all, you need to learn to understand that a person is going to psychological attack in the case when he has no other way to prove his case, such as facts, evidence, legal norms. When the opponent cannot do anything in more effective and obvious ways, he uses the only remaining opportunity - to drive the opponent out of himself so that he surrenders under the pressure of emotional attacks. Therefore, you need to have a stable position, be aware of your rightness from a moral and legal point of view, have a firm confidence in the steadfastness of your opinion and understand that the enemy will not be able to get you in any other way than psychological harassment. So, you need to be ready for this and perceive the attacks as a dishonest game. weak man- after all, a strong and fair personality will not stoop to this. Such an attitude puts you in the position of an elephant, at which the importunate Pug barks - it barks, but cannot do anything.
And to make it easier to cope with aggressive ill-wishers, use the following psychological defense methods that have been tested on psychological trainings and have shown their effectiveness in real life.
"The wind of change"
Remember which words, facial expressions or intonations are the most painful for you, how you can be guaranteed to get angry or depressed. Recall and vividly imagine a situation where the offender is trying to anger you with such tricks. Speak to yourself the most offensive words that can hurt you, visualize the expression on your opponent's face, which drives you crazy.
Feel this state of anger or, on the contrary, confusion that such behavior causes in you. Feel it inside yourself, disassemble it into separate emotions and sensations. What do you feel? It may be a rapid heartbeat, you are thrown into a fever, or maybe your legs are taken away, thoughts are confused, tears come to your eyes. Remember these feelings well. Now imagine that you are standing in a strong wind, and it blows away both the words of the offender and the negative emotions in response. You see how he screams and swears, but all this is useless, because his cry and your reaction to his anger flies away with the wind.
Do this exercise in a quiet environment several times, and you will feel that you are already more calm about such attacks in your direction. And when faced with this situation in real life, again imagine that you are standing in a strong wind and the words of the offender, along with your emotions, fly off to the side without causing harm.
"Mine doesn't understand yours"
If you are in an unpleasant situation, shouting at you, cursing and throwing insults at you, then imagine that you are deaf or you have loud music on your headphones. Imagine that you do not hear this person at all, he opens his mouth, waves his arms, his face is distorted by a grimace of anger, and calm water surrounds you, in which you sway peacefully, like algae, and do not react to external stimuli. Words cannot affect you, they do not penetrate your consciousness, because you do not hear them. Observing such calmness, the enemy will quickly run out of steam, and you will be able to turn the tide in your favor.
"Kindergarten, nursery group"
If you imagine that your enemies are three-year-old unintelligent kids, then you can learn not to treat their attacks so painfully. Imagine that you are a teacher and your opponents are kindergarten children. They run, scream, act up, get indignant ... But how can you be offended by them?
Detail the situation, imagine how the enemies fall awkwardly, angrily tear toys, babble their childish curses, whimper. You must be calm and balanced, because at the moment you are the only adequate person among those present. Thinking in this way, it is impossible to take attempts to offend or humiliate seriously - they will only cause mild irony.
"I didn't really want to"
V this method it is proposed to put oneself in the place of the fox from the fable "The Fox and the Grapes" - having failed to get what she wanted, the animal simply convinced itself of its unimportance so as not to be upset. In a situation where a friend or just a good acquaintance suddenly finds himself in the camp of the enemy, it is better to simply convince yourself that his opinion is not so important, his support is not so necessary, and his attacks are acid and unripe grapes, due to which you still don't want to see him among your friends. It is known that the most painful blow to us is dealt by those whom we trust. If this happened, it’s better not to take it as a tragedy, but to act like a fox, saying: “He was not such a close friend to me.”
"Ocean"
Seas and oceans take in water stormy rivers yet remain majestically calm. In the same way, in any situation, you are able, like the ocean, to remain calm even during the outpouring of stormy streams of abuse on you.
"Apotheosis of the Absurd"
This method of psychological defense is that the situation must be brought to the point of absurdity, after which it cannot be taken seriously either by the instigators of the conflict or its alleged victim. Most often, the aggressor starts from afar - hints, makes cautious attacks, watching the person's reaction. In this case, it is necessary to immediately exaggerate the situation to such a degree of delusion that it turns out to be bizarrely and unnaturally inflated, and any attacks in this direction arouse only laughter and irony.
"The whole world is a theater"
There are always people around us against whom we are emotionally unstable. Gather them on one stage of an imaginary puppet theater and play a funny performance in your head with the participation of these people. Bring to the fore their most stupid, funny and ridiculous characteristics - greed, slovenliness, arrogance, vanity. Make them victims of your shortcomings. Make you do funny things and look comical. The main thing is that they start to make you laugh. Then, when you meet them, you will no longer be embarrassed and afraid to fight back.
These methods and techniques of psychological defense will help you learn how to stop the emotional attacks of opponents, so as not to be a hostage to your own psychological weakness and instability against aggressive and hostile people.
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Yuri Platonov, doctor psychological sciences, Professor of St. Petersburg state university, rector of the St. Petersburg State Institute of Psychology and social work, Honored Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation.
Everyone is involved in defense processes. mental functions, but each time one of them can dominate and take on the bulk of the work of transforming traumatic information. It can be perception, attention, memory, imagination, thinking, emotions. In this publication, we will try to consider the ways of psychological protection of the individual, which are most significant for its positive interaction in social groups.
Being a social, conscious and independent being, a person is able to resolve internal and external conflicts, deal with anxiety and tension not only automatically (unconsciously), but also guided by a specially formulated program.
All mental functions are involved in protective processes, but each time one of them can dominate and take on the main part of the work of transforming traumatic information. It can be perception, attention, memory, imagination, thinking, emotions.
In this publication, we will try to consider the ways of psychological protection of the individual, which are most significant for its positive interaction in social groups.
Classification of the main methods of psychological protection
Negation- this is the desire to avoid new information that is incompatible with the prevailing ideas about oneself.
Protection manifests itself in ignoring potentially disturbing information, avoiding it. It is like a barrier located right at the entrance of the perceiving system. He does not allow unwanted information there, which is irreversibly lost for a person and subsequently cannot be restored. Thus, denial leads to the fact that some information either immediately or subsequently cannot reach consciousness.
When denied, a person becomes especially inattentive to those areas of life and facets of events that are fraught with trouble for him. For example, a leader can criticize his employee for a long time and emotionally and suddenly find out with indignation that he has long been "turned off" and does not react at all to moralizing.
Denial can allow a person to preventively (preemptively) isolate themselves from traumatic events. Thus, for example, the fear of failure operates, when a person strives not to be in a situation in which he can fail. For many people, this manifests itself in the avoidance of competition or in the refusal of activities in which a person is not strong, especially in comparison with others.
The incentive to launch denial can be not only external, but also internal, when a person tries not to think about something, to drive away thoughts of unpleasantness. If you can’t admit something to yourself, then the best way out is, if possible, not to look into this terrible and dark corner. Often, having done something at the wrong time or in the wrong way, and nothing can be corrected, “protection” makes a person ignore a dangerous situation, behave as if nothing special is happening.
A generalized assessment of the danger of information is made with its preliminary holistic perception and a rough emotional assessment as "something undesirable is brewing." Such an assessment leads to a weakening of attention when detailed information about this dangerous event is completely excluded from subsequent processing. Outwardly, a person either fences himself off from new information (“It is, but not for me”), or does not notice, believing that they do not exist. Therefore, many people, before starting to watch a movie or read new book, ask the question: “What is the end, good or bad?”.
The statement "I believe" denotes a certain special state of the psyche, in which everything that comes into conflict with the object of faith tends to be denied. Sincere and sufficiently strong faith organizes such an attitude towards all incoming information, when a person, without suspecting it, subjects it to a thorough preliminary sorting, selecting only that which serves to preserve faith. Faith tends to be much more universal and categorical than understanding. When there is already faith in something, there is no place for a new one. A person rejects new ideas, often without trying to give a rational explanation for such behavior. Any attempt on the object of veneration causes the same reaction on the part of the individual, as if it were an attempt on her life.
suppression- protection, manifested in forgetting, blocking unpleasant, unwanted information, either when it is transferred from perception to memory, or when it is brought out of memory into consciousness. Since in this case the information is already the content of the psyche, since it was perceived and experienced, it is, as it were, provided with special marks, which then allow it to be retained.
The peculiarity of suppression is that the content of the experienced information is forgotten, and its emotional, motor, vegetative and psychosomatic manifestations can persist, manifesting itself in obsessive movements and states, mistakes, slips of the tongue, and slips of the tongue. These symptoms symbolically reflect the relationship between real behavior and repressed information. To fix traces in long-term memory, they must be emotionally colored in a special way - marked. In order to remember something, a person needs to return to the state in which he received the information. If then he was angry or upset (for example, by asking him to do something), then in order to remember this, he must return to this state again. Since he does not want to feel so bad again, he is unlikely to remember. When a person eliminates the thought that he does not want or cannot do something, he says to himself like this: “It wasn’t so necessary”, “I’m not interested in this, I don’t like it”, thereby revealing a negative emotional labeling.
crowding out, unlike suppression, is not associated with the exclusion from the consciousness of information about what happened as a whole, but only with forgetting the true, but unacceptable for a person, motive for an act. (Motive is an incentive to a specific activity).
Thus, it is not the event itself (action, experience, situation) that is forgotten, but only its cause, the fundamental principle. Forgetting the true motive, a person replaces it with a false one, hiding the real one from himself and from others. Recall errors, as a consequence of repression, arise from an internal protest that changes the train of thought. Repression is considered to be the most effective defense mechanism, as it is able to cope with such powerful instinctual impulses that other forms of defense cannot cope. However, displacement requires a constant expenditure of energy, and these expenditures cause inhibition of other types of vital activity.
Repression is a universal means of avoiding internal conflict by eliminating socially undesirable aspirations and drives from consciousness. However, repressed and repressed drives make themselves felt in neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms (for example, in phobias and fears).
Repression is considered a primitive and ineffective psychological defense mechanism for the following reasons:
- the repressed nevertheless breaks through into consciousness;
- unresolved conflict is manifested in a high level of anxiety and discomfort.
Repression is activated in the event of a desire that conflicts with other desires of the individual and is incompatible with the ethical views of the individual. As a result of conflict and internal struggle, thought and representation (the carrier of incompatible desire) are forced out, eliminated from consciousness and forgotten.
The increased anxiety resulting from incomplete repression thus has a functional meaning, since it can force a person to either try to perceive and evaluate the traumatic situation in a new way, or to activate other defense mechanisms. However, usually the consequence of repression is a neurosis - a disease of a person who is not able to resolve his internal conflict.
Rationalization- this is a defense mechanism associated with the awareness and use in thinking of only that part of the perceived information, thanks to which own behavior appears as well controlled and not contradictory to objective circumstances.
The essence of rationalization is in finding a "worthy" place for an incomprehensible or unworthy impulse or act in a person's system of internal guidelines, values without destroying this system. To this end, the unacceptable part of the situation is removed from consciousness, transformed in a special way, and only after that is realized in an altered form. With the help of rationalization, a person easily "closes his eyes" to the discrepancy between cause and effect, which is so noticeable to an external observer.
Rationalization is a pseudo-rational explanation by a person of his own aspirations, motives for actions, actions, actually caused by reasons, the recognition of which would threaten the loss of self-respect. Self-affirmation, protection of one's own "I" is the main motive for the actualization of this mechanism of psychological protection of the individual.
The most striking phenomena of rationalization are called "green (sour) grapes" and "sweet lemon". The phenomenon of "green (sour) grapes" (known from Krylov's fable "The Fox and the Grapes") is a kind of depreciation of an inaccessible object. If it is impossible to achieve the desired goal or take possession of the desired object, the person devalues them.
Rationalization is actualized when a person is afraid to realize the situation and seeks to hide from himself the fact that in his actions he was guided by socially undesirable motives. The motive behind rationalization is to explain the behavior and, at the same time, to protect the self-image.
Jet formations- this is the replacement of undesirable tendencies with directly opposite ones.
For example, a child's exaggerated love for his mother or father may be the result of preventing a socially undesirable feeling - hatred of parents. A child who has been aggressive towards parents develops exceptional tenderness towards them and worries about their safety; jealousy and aggression are transformed into disinterestedness and concern for others.
Certain social and intrapersonal prohibitions on the manifestation of certain feelings (for example, a young man is afraid to show his sympathy for a girl) lead to the formation of opposite tendencies - reactive formations: sympathy turns into antipathy, love - into hatred, etc.
This inadequacy, often excessive feeling, its emphasis is an indicator of reactive formation. If I show the same avalanche of feelings for the boss as I do for family and friends, then this is a signal that this excessive attitude towards the boss is basically reactive. The question is appropriate here: “Why do I want to sympathize with the leader so much and support him, what negative feelings are hidden behind this?”
Or the reverse situation: “Why do I look so ironically and coldly at the person I love? Why am I showing distance from him (her)?”
A defense like "sweet lemon" is an exaggeration of the value of what you have (according to the well-known principle - "a bird in the hand is better than a crane in the sky").
Most often, rationalization is achieved using two typical options reasoning: 1) " Green grapes»; 2) "sweet lemon". The first of them is based on understating the value of an act that could not be done, or a result that was not achieved.
substitution- this is a psychological defense mechanism against an unpleasant situation, which is based on the transfer of a reaction from an inaccessible object to an accessible one or the replacement of an unacceptable action with an acceptable one. Due to this transfer, the tension created by the unmet need is discharged.
Substitution is the protection that all people (both adults and children) must use in Everyday life. Thus, many people often do not have the opportunity not only to punish their offenders for their misdeeds or unfair behavior, but simply to contradict them. Therefore, pets, parents, children, etc. can act as a “lightning rod” in a situation of anger. Whims that cannot be directed at the leader (an object unacceptable for this) can perfectly be directed at other performers as an object that is quite acceptable for this ( "Here's who's to blame." In other words, substitution is the transfer of needs and desires to another, more accessible object. If it is impossible to satisfy some of his needs with the help of one object, a person can find another object (more accessible) to satisfy it.
So, the essence of substitution is to redirect the reaction. If, in the presence of any need, the desired path for its satisfaction is closed, the activity of a person is looking for another way out to achieve the goal. Protection is carried out through the transfer of excitation, unable to find a normal output, to another executive system. However, the ability of a person to reorient his actions from personally unacceptable to acceptable, or from socially disapproved to approved, is limited. The limitation is determined by the fact that the greatest satisfaction from the action that replaces the desired occurs in a person when the motives of these actions are consistent.
irony in ancient Greek means "to tell a lie", "to mock", "to pretend". An ironist is a person who "deceives with words."
The modern understanding of the dual nature of irony is as follows:
- Irony is an expressive device that is the opposite of the expressed idea. I say the opposite of what I mean. In form I praise, in fact I condemn. And vice versa: I humiliate in form, in fact exalt, praise, “stroke”. Ironically, my "yes" always means "no", and behind the expression "no" looms "yes".
- Whatever the noble purpose of irony, for example, to generate high idea, to open one's eyes to something, including oneself, yet this idea is ironically affirmed by negative means.
- Despite the generosity of the ideas of irony, or even despite its disinterestedness, irony gives self-satisfaction.
- A person who uses irony is credited with the features of a subtle mind, observation, slowness, inactivity of a sage (not instant reactivity).
How mental condition irony is a changed sign of my experience of the situation from “minus” to “plus”. Anxiety gave way to confidence, hostility to condescension... A person is in states that are autonomous in relation to a situation, another person, an object: I am already a subject rather than an object of these situations, and therefore I have the ability to control these states.
irony like mental process turns what is terrible, terrible, intolerable, hostile, anxious, into the opposite for me.
Dream- these are unconscious actions of the "I" in a state of sleep, which may be accompanied by emotional experiences.
A dream can be considered as a special kind of substitution, through which an inaccessible action is transferred to another plane - from real world into the world of dreams. By suppressing the inaccessibility complex, it accumulates energy in the unconscious, threatening the conscious world with its invasion. Secret repentance, remorse, subconscious fears lead to their breakthrough in a dream. The task of a dream is to express complex feelings in pictures and give a person the opportunity to experience them, thereby replacing real situations. However, feelings cannot be directly depicted. Only the action that reflects this feeling is visually representable. It is impossible to portray fear, but it is possible to depict such an expression of fear as flight. It is difficult to show a feeling of love, but a demonstration of rapprochement and affection is quite achievable. Therefore, the actions that unfold in its plot have a substitute character in a dream.
From the point of view of psychology, a dream is a message or reflection of the situations that a person encounters, his history, life circumstances, his inherent ways and forms of behavior, the practical results that his choice has led to. In a dream, errors of human behavior are reflected not only in relation to oneself, but also to others, including any organic deficiency in terms of physical health.
Mental activity is continuous, so the process of generating images during a dream does not stop.
Sleep can focus attention:
- on the current situation or problem (a photographic snapshot of reality);
- on the causes of the problem;
- on the way out of the problem (its solution).
Dreams allow you to bring passions out, in a dream there can be a release, purification, discharge to the limit of out-of-control emotions, in a dream you can realize the desired behavior, assert yourself and believe in yourself. Dreaming is an alternative way to satisfy desires. In sleep, unfulfilled desires are sorted, combined, and transformed in such a way that the dream sequence provides additional satisfaction or less stress. However, it is not always important whether the satisfaction occurs in the physical and sensual reality or in the inner imaginary reality of the dream, if the accumulated energy is sufficiently discharged. Such a dream brings relief, especially when you constantly think about something and worry.
Sublimation It is one of the highest and most effective human defense mechanisms. It implements the replacement of unattainable goals in accordance with the highest social values.
Sublimation is the switching of impulses that are socially undesirable in a given situation (aggressiveness, sexual energy) to other forms of activity that are socially desirable for the individual and society. Aggressive energy, being transformed, is able to sublimate (discharge) in sports (boxing, wrestling) or in strict methods of education (for example, with too demanding parents and teachers), eroticism - in friendship, in creativity, etc. When a direct discharge of instinctive (aggressive , sexual) drives is impossible, there is an activity in which these impulses can be discharged.
Sublimation realizes the substitution of the instinctive goal in accordance with the highest social values. The forms of substitution are varied. For adults, this is not only going into a dream, but also going into work, religion, and all kinds of hobbies. In children, regression reactions and immature forms of behavior are also accompanied by substitution with the help of rituals and obsessive actions, which act as complexes of involuntary reactions that allow a person to satisfy a forbidden unconscious desire. According to Z. Freud, relying on sublimation, a person is able to overcome the impact of sexual and aggressive desires seeking a way out, which can neither be suppressed nor satisfied by directing them in another direction.
When a person feels weak and helpless, he identifies, identifies himself with successful or authoritative people. Thanks to subconscious protective processes, one part of the instinctive desires is repressed, the other is directed to other goals. Some external events are ignored, others are overestimated in the direction necessary for a person. Protection allows you to reject some aspects of your "I", attribute them to strangers or, on the contrary, supplement your "I" at the expense of qualities "captured" from other people. Such a transformation of information allows you to maintain the stability of ideas about the world, about yourself and your place in the world, so as not to lose support, guidelines and self-respect.
The world around us is constantly becoming more complex, so necessary condition life activity is the constant complication of protection and the expansion of its repertoire.
Identification- a kind of projection associated with the unconscious identification of oneself with another person, the transfer to oneself of feelings and qualities desired, but inaccessible.
Identification is the elevation of oneself to another by expanding the boundaries of one's own "I". Identification is associated with a process in which a person, as if including another in his "I", borrows his thoughts, feelings and actions. This allows him to overcome his feelings of inferiority and anxiety, to change his "I" in such a way that it is better adapted to the social environment, and this is the protective function of the identification mechanism.
Through identification, symbolic possession of a desired but unattainable object is achieved. Through arbitrary identification with the aggressor, the subject can get rid of fear. In a broad sense, identification is an unconscious desire to inherit a model, an ideal. Identification provides an opportunity to overcome one's own weakness and feelings of inferiority. A person with the help of this psychological defense mechanism gets rid of feelings of inferiority and alienation.
An immature form of identification is imitation. This defensive reaction differs from identification in that it is integral. Her immaturity is revealed in the expressed desire to imitate a certain person, a loved one, a hero in everything. In an adult, imitation is selective: he singles out only the trait he likes from another and is able to identify separately with this quality, without extending his positive reaction to all other qualities of this person.
Usually, identification is manifested in the performance of real or fictional roles. For example, children play mother-daughter, school, war, transformers, etc., consistently play different roles and perform various actions: punish child dolls, hide from enemies, protect the weak. A person identifies with those whom he loves more, whom he values higher, thereby creating the basis for self-esteem.
Fantasy (dream) is a very common reaction to disappointment and failure. For example, an insufficiently physically developed person can enjoy dreaming of participating in the World Championship, and an unsuccessful athlete can imagine how all sorts of troubles happen to his opponent, which makes it easier for him to experience.
Fantasies serve as compensation. They help to maintain weak hopes, alleviate feelings of inferiority, and reduce the traumatic effect of insults and insults.
Freud said that a happy person never fantasizes, only an unsatisfied one does. Unsatisfied desires are driving forces fantasies, each fantasy is a manifestation of desire, a proofreading of reality that somehow does not satisfy the individual.
In ambitious fantasies, the object of a person's desire is himself. In erotically colored desires, the object can be someone from a close or distant social environment, who in reality cannot be the object of desire.
And finally, fantasy plays the role of a substitute action, since a person cannot solve the real situation or believes that he cannot. And then, instead of a real situation, an imaginary, illusory situation is imagined, which is resolved by a fantasizing person. If it is difficult to resolve the real conflict, then a substitution conflict is resolved. In defensive fantasy, inner freedom from external coercion is experienced palliatively. The result of the psychoprotective use of fantasy can be a life in a world of illusions.
Transfer is a defense mechanism that ensures the satisfaction of desire on substitute objects.
The simplest and most common type of transfer is displacement - the replacement of the objects of outpouring of the accumulated negative energy"Thanatos" in the form of aggression, resentment.
The boss, in the presence of other colleagues, gave you a dressing. You cannot answer him the same. You understand the situation: if I answer the boss in the same way, stop him, put him under siege, then even more trouble may result. Therefore, your "wise self" is looking for objects on which you can take out your resentment, your aggression. Fortunately, there are many such objects “at hand”. The main property of these objects should be their silence, resignation, the inability to besiege you. They should be as silent and obedient as you silently and obediently listened to reproaches and humiliating characteristics (Lazy! Incompetent! Insolent!) from your boss and generally anyone who is stronger. Your anger, unreacted to the true culprit, is transferred to someone who is even weaker than you, even lower on the ladder of the social hierarchy, to a subordinate, who, in turn, transfers it further down, etc. The chains of displacement can be endless. Its links can be both living beings and inanimate things ( broken dishes during family scandals, broken windows of electric train cars, etc.).
Projection- a psychological defense mechanism associated with the unconscious transfer of one's own unacceptable feelings, desires and aspirations to another person. It is based on the unconscious rejection of one's experiences, doubts, attitudes and attributing them to other people in order to shift the responsibility for what is happening inside the "I" to the outside world.
For example, if the subject or object with which the satisfaction of your needs and desires was associated is inaccessible to you, then you transfer all your feelings and possibilities for satisfying needs to another person. And if your dream of becoming a writer has not come true, then you can choose the profession of a teacher of literature as a substitute, partially satisfying your creative needs.
The effectiveness of substitution depends on how similar the replacement object is to the previous one, with which the satisfaction of the need was first associated. The maximum similarity of the replacement object guarantees satisfaction more needs that were first associated with the previous object.
No matter how wrong the person himself is, he is ready to blame everyone except himself. Declares that he is not loved, although in reality he does not love himself, reproaches others for his own mistakes and shortcomings and ascribes to them his own vices and weaknesses. By narrowing the boundaries of the “I”, this allows the individual to relate to internal problems as if they were happening outside, and to get rid of displeasure as if it came from outside, and not due to internal reasons. If the "enemy" is outside, then more radical and effective ways punishments that are usually used in relation to external “harmfulness”, and not sparing, more acceptable in relation to oneself.
Thus, projection is manifested in a person's tendency to believe that other people have the same motives, feelings, desires, values, character traits that are inherent in himself. At the same time, he is not aware of his socially undesirable motives.
Such, for example, is the mechanism of the religious-mythological worldview. Primitive perception is characterized by a person's tendency to personify animals, trees, nature, attributing their own motives, desires, feelings to them. The writer transfers his own needs, feelings, character traits to the heroes of his works.
The projection is easier on the one whose situation, whose personality traits like a projector. A person using a projection will always see an offensive hint in a harmless remark. Even in a noble deed he can see malicious intent, intrigue. A person of immense kindness, the one who is popularly called "holy simplicity", is not capable of projection. He does not see malicious intent, malevolence in actions towards himself, because he himself is not capable of this.
introjection- this is the tendency to appropriate the beliefs, attitudes of other people without criticism, without trying to change them and make them your own. A person endows himself with traits, properties of other people. For example, he takes on the functions of an annoying mentor, since the manifestation of such a trait in other people annoys or injures him. In order to remove internal conflict and avoid psychological discomfort, a person appropriates the beliefs, values and attitudes of other people.
The earliest introject is parental teaching, which is assimilated by a person without a critical understanding of its value.
An example of introjection: an impressionable man tries to hold back his tears because he has learned the parental attitude that an adult should not cry in the presence of strangers. Or a person constantly criticizes himself, because he has learned (introjected) such an attitude of parents towards himself.
The probability of occurrence of this method of protection is the higher, the stronger and (or) longer the impact of external or internal blockers of desires, on the one hand, and the more impossible it is to remove these blockers and fulfill one’s desires, achieve one’s goals, on the other hand. At the same time, the impossibility of eliminating the frustrator is accompanied by the displacement of negative energy on the replacement object.
The subject's turning against himself turns into the formation of bodily and mental symptoms, i.e., signs of illness. Physical bodily symptoms include: cold feet and hands, sweating, cardiac arrhythmia, dizziness, severe headaches, high or low blood pressure, muscle cramps, dermatitis, bronchial asthma, etc.
Depersonalization(from lat. de - negation, person - person) - this is the perception of other people as impersonal, devoid of individuality representatives of a certain group. If the subject does not allow himself to think of others as people who have feelings and personality, he protects himself from their perception on an emotional level.
With depersonalization, other people are perceived only as the embodiment of their social role: they are patients, doctors, teachers. The act of depersonalizing other people can, to a certain extent, "protect" the subject. This makes it possible, for example, for physicians to treat their patients without experiencing their suffering. In addition, it enables them to hide their real feelings (like or dislike) behind a professional mask.
One of the important properties of a mature person with a high level of development of intellect, emotional sphere and other important qualities of a successful personality is the ability to defend oneself from psychological attacks of ill-wishers. The balance of emotions is an important defensive fortress that an envious person or competitor seeks to destroy. After all, it is worth taking a person out of himself - he immediately loses the ability to think logically, make informed decisions, and see the dirty tricks in the actions of other people.
Offensive words, reproaches, nagging, spreading gossip and other methods of psychological attack act like bee venom - if a person is stung by one or more bees, then nothing bad will happen to him. But if a whole swarm attacks him, the attacked one may even die. It is the same with the emotional attacks of enemies - one injection may not piss off the opponent, but if you annoy him over and over again, the baiting tactics will bear fruit. The stronger the psychological sphere is protected, the more “bee stings” a person can withstand. But there are those who are similar to allergy sufferers - even one serving of poison completely unsettles them and even endangers their lives, they are so not protected from external attacks.
They can remain hothouse flowers for life and protect themselves from contact with aggressive personalities, or they can learn the necessary psychological defense techniques and become stronger opponents in this bloodless war.
Most prestigious and highly paid professions involve working with people, so encounters with hostile and even inadequate characters are inevitable. If you have chosen the path through thorns to the stars of high achievements, then you should take the utmost care to strengthen the approaches to your nerves. Otherwise, they will be ruffled by all and sundry.
A strong psyche depends on the innate qualities of a person, his upbringing, worldview, understanding of the psychology of other people, attentiveness, ability to analyze the behavior and motives of opponents.
First of all, it is necessary to learn to understand that a person goes on a psychological attack when he has no other way to prove his case, such as facts, evidence, legal norms. When the opponent cannot do anything in more effective and obvious ways, he uses the only remaining opportunity - to drive the opponent out of himself so that he surrenders under the pressure of emotional attacks. Therefore, you need to have a stable position, be aware of your rightness from a moral and legal point of view, have a firm confidence in the steadfastness of your opinion and understand that the enemy will not be able to get you in any other way than psychological harassment. So, it is necessary to be ready for this and perceive attacks as a dishonest game of a weak person - after all, a strong and fair person will not stoop to such a level. Such an attitude puts you in the position of an elephant, at which the importunate Pug barks - it barks, but cannot do anything.
And to make it easier to cope with aggressive ill-wishers, use the following methods of psychological defense, which have been tested in psychological training and have shown their effectiveness in real life.
"The wind of change"
Remember which words, facial expressions or intonations are the most painful for you, how you can be guaranteed to get angry or depressed. Recall and vividly imagine a situation where the offender is trying to anger you with such tricks. Speak to yourself the most offensive words that can hurt you, visualize the expression on your opponent's face, which drives you crazy.
Feel this state of anger or, on the contrary, confusion that such behavior causes in you. Feel it inside yourself, disassemble it into separate emotions and sensations. What do you feel? It may be a rapid heartbeat, you are thrown into a fever, or maybe your legs are taken away, thoughts are confused, tears come to your eyes. Remember these feelings well. Now imagine that you are standing in a strong wind, and it blows away both the words of the offender and the negative emotions in response. You see how he screams and swears, but all this is useless, because his cry and your reaction to his anger flies away with the wind.
Do it the exercise in a quiet environment several times, and you will feel that you are already more calm about such attacks in your direction. And when faced with this situation in real life, again imagine that you are standing in a strong wind and the words of the offender, along with your emotions, fly off to the side without causing harm.
"Mine doesn't understand yours"
If you are in an unpleasant situation, shouting at you, cursing and throwing insults at you, then imagine that you are deaf or you have loud music on your headphones. Imagine that you do not hear this person at all, he opens his mouth, waves his arms, his face is distorted by a grimace of anger, and calm water surrounds you, in which you sway peacefully, like algae, and do not react to external stimuli. Words cannot affect you, they do not penetrate your consciousness, because you do not hear them. Observing such calmness, the enemy will quickly run out of steam, and you will be able to turn the tide in your favor.
"Kindergarten, nursery group"
If you imagine that your enemies are three-year-old unintelligent kids, then you can learn not to treat their attacks so painfully. Imagine that you are a teacher and your opponents are kindergarten children. They run, scream, act up, get indignant ... But how can you be offended by them?
Detail the situation, imagine how the enemies fall awkwardly, angrily tear toys, babble their childish curses, whimper. You must be calm and balanced, because at the moment you are the only adequate person among those present. Thinking in this way, it is impossible to take attempts to offend or humiliate seriously - they will only cause mild irony.
"I didn't really want to"
In this method, it is proposed to put oneself in the place of the fox from the fable "The Fox and the Grapes" - having failed to get what she wanted, the animal simply convinced itself of its unimportance so as not to be upset. In a situation where a friend or just a good acquaintance suddenly finds himself in the camp of the enemy, it is better to simply convince yourself that his opinion is not so important, his support is not so necessary, and his attacks are acid and unripe grapes, due to which you still don't want to see him among your friends. It is known that the most painful blow to us is dealt by those whom we trust. If this happened, it’s better not to take it as a tragedy, but to act like a fox, saying: “He was not such a close friend to me.”
"Ocean"
Seas and oceans take in the waters of turbulent rivers, but at the same time remain majestically calm. In the same way, in any situation, you are able, like the ocean, to remain calm even during the outpouring of stormy streams of abuse on you.
"Apotheosis of the Absurd"
This method of psychological defense is that the situation must be brought to the point of absurdity, after which it cannot be taken seriously either by the instigators of the conflict or its alleged victim. Most often, the aggressor starts from afar - hints, makes cautious attacks, watching the person's reaction. In this case, it is necessary to immediately exaggerate the situation to such a degree of delusion that it turns out to be bizarrely and unnaturally inflated, and any attacks in this direction arouse only laughter and irony.
"The whole world is a theater"
There are always people around us against whom we are emotionally unstable. Gather them on one stage of an imaginary puppet theater and play a funny performance in your head with the participation of these people. Bring to the fore their most stupid, funny and ridiculous characteristics - greed, slovenliness, arrogance, vanity. Make them victims of your shortcomings. Make you do funny things and look comical. The main thing is that they start to make you laugh. Then, when you meet them, you will no longer be embarrassed and afraid to fight back.
These methods and techniques of psychological defense will help you learn how to stop the emotional attacks of opponents, so as not to be a hostage to your own psychological weakness and instability against aggressive and hostile people.
In situations where the intensity of the need increases, and the conditions for its satisfaction are absent, behavior is regulated using psychological defense mechanisms. F. V. Bassin defines psychological defense as a normal mechanism aimed at preventing behavioral disorders not only within the framework of conflicts between consciousness and the unconscious, but also between different emotionally colored attitudes. This special mental activity is realized in the form of specific information processing techniques that can protect a person from shame and loss of self-esteem in the context of a motivational conflict. Psychological defense is manifested in the tendency of a person to maintain a habitual opinion about himself, to reduce dissonance, rejecting or distorting information that is regarded as unfavorable and destroys the initial ideas about himself and others.
The mechanism of psychological defense is associated with the reorganization of the conscious and unconscious components of the value system and the change in the entire hierarchy of personal values, aimed at depriving the significance and thereby neutralizing psychologically traumatic moments. The functions of psychological defense are contradictory in the sense that, by contributing to the adaptation of a person to his inner world and mental state (preserving an acceptable level of self-esteem), they can worsen his adaptability to the external social environment. For example, a drop in aspirations after failure can be seen as a defense mechanism that prevents disappointment from subsequent failures, but at the same time reduces the likelihood of victory. E.A. Kostandov offered a logically coherent and convincing presentation of the deep physiological component of psychological defense. Negative emotional experiences form a stable reflex connection in the cerebral cortex. It, in turn, raises the thresholds of sensitivity and thereby inhibits the signals associated with the events that cause such experiences, preventing their awareness. Temporal connections between unconscious stimuli can
imprinted in long-term memory, be extremely persistent. This allows us to understand the way in which persistent emotional experiences arise in cases where their cause remains unconscious for the person experiencing them. Kostandov recognizes the existence of a sensitive mechanism in the brain that reacts to physically very weak, but very significant stimuli for a given person. Despite the fact that these stimuli are not recognized by a person, they can cause a number of vegetative reactions in him, leading to changes in the physiological and psychological state.
How to explain the persistence of centers of negative emotional arousal that arise when experiencing conflicts? An interesting thought on this subject is expressed by E. T. Sokolova. . She draws attention to the well-known fact that any obstacle leads to an interruption of the action until the obstacle is overcome or the person refuses to overcome it. At the same time, the action turns out to be incomplete either in its external, material plane, or in the internal, as long as the decision to overcome the obstacle or to abandon the action has not yet been made. In the case when a person does not realize the specific meaning of certain circumstances, the act of awareness itself turns out to be incomplete first of all. As shown by Zeigarnik's experiments, it is the unfinished actions (and the circumstances accompanying them) that are remembered better than the completed ones and, most importantly, are remembered involuntarily. Levin's works also show that unfinished actions form a tendency towards their completion, and if direct completion is impossible, a person begins to perform substitutive actions. It can be assumed that the mechanisms of psychological defense are some specialized forms of substitution actions.
Under experimental conditions, a situation was reproduced that clearly revealed the effect of psychological protection. The students were asked to identify and respond as quickly as possible to a series of words presented on the screen in the absence of time. Among the words were taboo words (swear words, indecent ones) and neutral ones. It turned out that the recognition threshold for taboo words was significantly higher than for neutral ones.
It is important to note that not only the traumatic thought itself is forgotten, but also a number of others associated with it by association.
Psychological defense mechanisms usually include denial, repression, projection, identification, rationalization, inclusion, substitution, alienation, etc.
rejection It boils down to the fact that information that disturbs and can lead to conflict is not perceived. This refers to the conflict that arises when motives appear that contradict the basic attitudes of the individual, or information that threatens self-preservation, prestige, self-esteem. This method of protection comes into play in conflicts of any kind, without requiring prior learning, and is characterized by a noticeable distortion of the perception of reality. Denial is formed in childhood and often does not allow a person to adequately assess what is happening around, which, in turn, causes difficulties in behavior. For example, in a mass sociological study, adults were asked whether they were convinced by press reports that smoking causes lung cancer. A positive answer was given by 54% of non-smokers and only 28% of smokers. The majority of smokers denied the significance of the facts given, since accepting them would mean realizing a serious danger to their own health.
Repression is the most universal way to get rid of internal conflict by actively turning off
cheniya from the consciousness of an unacceptable motive or unpleasant information. For example, facts that are especially inconvenient for us are especially easily forgotten. crowding out- an unconscious mental act in which unacceptable information or motive is rejected by censorship at the threshold of consciousness. Injured pride, hurt pride and resentment can give rise to declaring false motives for one's actions in order to hide the true ones not only from others, but also from oneself. True, but unpleasant motives are repressed in order to be replaced by others that are acceptable from the point of view of the social environment and therefore do not cause shame and remorse. A false motive in this case can be dangerous because it allows you to cover up personal egoistic aspirations with socially acceptable arguments.
The repressed motive, not finding resolution in behavior, retains, however, its emotional and vegetative components. Despite the fact that the content side of the traumatic situation is not realized and a person can actively forget the very fact that he has committed some unseemly act, for example, he was afraid, nevertheless, the conflict persists, and the emotional-vegetative stress caused by it can subjectively be perceived as a state of indefinite anxiety. . Therefore, repressed drives can manifest themselves in neurotic and psychophysiological symptoms. Slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, awkward movements also often indicate repression. Interestingly, what is most quickly repressed and forgotten by a person is not the bad that people have done to him, but the bad that he has done to himself or others. Ingratitude is associated with repression, all kinds of envy and innumerable components of inferiority complexes are repressed with great force. An excellent example of repression is given in an episode from Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, where Nikolai Rostov speaks with sincere enthusiasm about his bravery on the battlefield. In reality, he was afraid, but the repression was so strong that he himself believed in his achievement.
In repression, unresolved conflict reveals itself various symptoms, high levels of anxiety and discomfort. A striking example of displacement is described in the work of A. M. Svyadosh. “Patient X., 28 years old, one day, going down the stairs in the morning to go to work, he suddenly stopped, as he had a thought: was the door left open? He returned and checked - the door was tightly closed. From that time on, an obsessive doubt began to haunt him: did the door remain open? When leaving the house, the door was closed by his wife with bolts, latches, locks, and yet, many times a day, leaving work, he was forced to return home to check if the door was left open. He understood the groundlessness of his anxiety, struggled with it, but could not overcome it. The patient himself could not associate his disease with any cause. It seemed to him that it had arisen without any external reason. And the prehistory of the disease is as follows. The patient was married a second time, he loved his first wife very much and lived with her for about two years. Towards the end of this period, he became quick-tempered, irritable, and relations with his wife began to deteriorate. One day, when he came home and left the door open, he found a note from his wife, in which she said that she had left him for another person. The patient very painfully experienced the departure of his wife, asked her to return, but she refused. A year and a half later, he married again. This marriage turned out to be successful, and they lived together for about two years, when a painful condition suddenly developed. The wife noted that shortly before the appearance of the described obsession, the husband became quick-tempered, irritable, grouchy, and in connection with this, relations between them worsened. The patient himself did not notice this. In this case, the obsessive state reflected the experiences of the person. The resulting internal connection between open door and the departure of the first wife meant, in a hidden symbolic form, the fear of losing the second wife when relations with her began to deteriorate. The thought of loss turned out to be so painful for him that it was repressed, that is, it did not find reflection in consciousness, and broke through in a latent form in the form of fear of finding the door of the house open. Psychotherapy helped to realize this connection, led to getting rid of this condition. Thus, repression means suppression, exclusion from the consciousness of an impulse that provokes tension and anxiety.
It happens that a person must make some kind of difficult decision, associated for him with long-term worries and experiences. In this case, he may suddenly "forget" about this matter. Similarly, he is able to completely lose the memory of his unethical act, an unfulfilled promise. An amnesic barrier arises - protective oblivion, L. N. Tolstoy called this "pushing apart the mental mechanism", which makes it possible to forget what would make life unbearable) Let's give an example of a similar situation from the novel "Resurrection". “These memories did not agree with her current worldview and therefore were completely erased from her memory, or rather they were stored somewhere in her memory untouched, but they were so locked up, smeared over, like bees cover up the nests of bugs (worms), which can destroy all bee work. so that there would be no access to them ... Maslova remembered many, but not about Nekhlyudov. She never remembered her childhood and youth, and especially her love for Nekhlyudov. It hurt too much. These memories lay somewhere far away untouched in her soul. Even in a dream, she never saw Nekhlyudov ... She needed to firmly and completely forget about all this, so as not to kill herself, not to become insane.
It is important that a person does not pretend, but really forgets unwanted, traumatic information, it is completely ousted from his memory. Therefore, if we notice that we repeatedly forget something, then it's time to ask ourselves whether we really want to use this information.
Projection- unconscious transfer (attribution) of one's own feelings, desires and inclinations, in which a person does not want to admit to himself, realizing their social unacceptability, to another person. For example, when a person has shown aggression towards someone, he often has a tendency to lower the attractive qualities of the victim. A person who constantly ascribes to others his own aspirations, contrary to his moral standards, even received a special name - a hypocrite.
Identification- an unconscious transfer to oneself of feelings and qualities inherent in another person and not available, but desirable for oneself. In children, this is the simplest mechanism for mastering the norms of social behavior.
and ethical values. So, the boy unconsciously tries to be like his father and thereby earn his love and respect. Through identification, the symbolic possession of a desired but unattainable object is also achieved. In an extended interpretation, identification is an unconscious adherence to patterns, ideals, which allows you to overcome your own weakness and feeling of inferiority.
Rationalization- a pseudo-reasonable explanation by a person of his desires, actions, in fact caused by reasons, the recognition of which would threaten the loss of self-respect. In particular, rationalization is associated with an attempt to reduce the value of the inaccessible. So, experiencing a mental trauma, a person protects himself from its destructive impact by overestimating the significance of the traumatic factor in the direction of its decrease: having not received what he passionately desired, he convinces himself that “I didn’t really want to.” Rationalization is used by a person in those special cases when he, fearful of realizing the situation, tries to hide from himself the fact that his actions are prompted by motives that are in conflict with his own moral standards. For example, the heroine of Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" Natasha needs to get rid of the thought of betraying love, betraying Prince Andrei. “Having returned home, Natasha did not sleep all night; she was tormented by the insoluble question, whom did she love: Anatole or Prince Andrei? Natasha is doing internal psychological work to explain the events that have happened with reasonable causes. This work eliminates the emotional conflict between ideas of decency and real behavior. In the end, the heroine says:
“It seems to me that I have loved him (Anatole) for a hundred years. And I didn’t love anyone like him. )