What is the Defense Mechanism Known As "Projection" and How Does It Affect Relationships?

What is the Defense Mechanism Called "Projection"?

Projection is an unconscious psychological defense mechanism where a person attributes their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, behavior, motives or character traits onto someone else.

What is Projection?

The projection acts as a shield for the person's ego. Instead of confronting uncomfortable truths about their own behavior, feelings and other uncomfortable truths (including feelings of guilt, shame, emotional insecurity or anger), the person who projects externalizes them so that, in their own mind, these problems belong to the other person.

This concept was originally developed in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theories and most depth-oriented therapists today recognize projection when it's happening in the therapy session, when couples use it in couples therapy or when individual adult clients talk about it in terms of their relationships outside of therapy.

What is Projection?

Defense mechanisms are categorized in a hierarchy ranging from "primitive" (also called "early" or "immature" if the person is an adult) to "mature". The categorization is based on when the person developed the defense mechanism and how they distort reality.

Why is Projection Considered a "Primitive Defense"?

When adults use projection as a defense mechanism, it is considered to be on the primitive end of the defense mechanism spectrum for several important reasons:

• 1. Early Development Origin: As previously mentioned, defenses are categorized on a spectrum. The early developmental defenses, like projection, are the mind's earliest boundary-making tools. Projection usually develops in early childhood before a child has the emotional and cognitive capacities to process complex internal conflicts. Projection is also considered a primitive defense because it develops when a child is still learning to differentiate "me" from "not me" (i.e., their internal world vs their external world).

• 2. A Gross Distortion of Reality: Adults with higher level, more mature defense mechanisms (rationalization, intellectualization and so on) accept reality, but they might reframe it. This is in contrast to how primitive defenses actually alter the way a person perceives reality. Projection forces a severe distortion: The individual completely misperceives an internal truth as an external threat. This fundamentally alters their view of another person's intentions or character.

• 3. All-or-Nothing Thinking: Primitive defenses, like projection, operate on binary all-or-nothing thinking. With projection, the person's ego cannot tolerate what they perceive as a "bad" trait within the inner world, so they project the trait or behavior externally. This lack of nuance is the hallmark of primitive psychological functioning (see my article: Overcoming All-or-Nothing Thinking).

Common Examples of Projection

• Relationship Insecurity: Without realizing it, someone who is feeling like they would like to end their relationship because they cannot tolerate the relationship problems. This is especially true when the problems they bring to the relationship feel intolerable. So, instead of owning and taking responsibility for their own thoughts and feelings, they accuse their partner of wanting to end the relationship. Another example: If someone is cheating, they accuse their partner of cheating or wanting to cheat.

What is Projection?

• Workplace Hostility: An employee who dislikes another coworker might tell others, "That person hates me". They convert what they are feeling, which is, "I don't like that person" into "They don't like me."

• Bullying and Insecurity: A person who criticizes others for being "weak" or "stupid" is often projecting their own deep-seated insecurities onto others.

Why Do Adults Use Projection as a Defense Mechanism?

Projection is unconscious, as I mentioned before, so it's not usually done maliciously. It often happens for specific psychological reasons:

• Reducing Anxiety and Stress: It's very difficult for a person who uses projection to face their own worst traits. Unconsciously shifting these uncomfortable thoughts, feelings  and traits onto a "scapegoat' relieves the immediate internal pressure because the traits have been externalized.

• Protecting Self Esteem: Projection allows an individual to maintain a positive self image by denying their own worst traits and habits.

• Avoiding Accountability: By focusing on the perceived faults of others, the person avoids taking responsibility for their own problems.

• Personality Disorders and Early Trauma: Projection is heavily associated with narcissistic personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder and avoidant personality disorder. It is also associated with early unresolved trauma. Note: Just because someone uses projection as a defense mechanism doesn't necessarily mean they have a personality disorder, but there is a high association between projection and personality disorders. However, if someone uses projection, they usually have early unresolved childhood trauma, which is called developmental trauma. Projection develops during early childhood and for many people it continues into adulthood if they don't get help in therapy.

How Does Projection Affect Relationships?

Projection acts like a psychological shield when the person projecting shifts internal insecurities onto a partner. This damages trust and communication in the relationship.

Projection damages relationships because it:

• Creates False Accusations: Example: A person accuses their partner of trying to control them instead of dealing with their own controlling behavior towards their partner.

• Erodes Mutual Trust: Baseless accusations makes the other person feel targeted and unsafe. Over time, the accused partner stops sharing thoughts and feelings to avoid conflict. 

What is Projection?

• Blocks Real Conflict Resolution: Arguments center on the imagined behavior instead of the actual root issue. The person who is projecting refuses to acknowledge their problem so conflicts aren't resolved and the couple keeps arguing about the same issues over and over again without resolution.

• Causes Emotional Exhaustion: The accused partner keeps defending themselves against baseless and unfair accusations. This cycle drains energy, leads to deeper resentment and perpetuates the same ongong cycle. This usually happens if the person who is projecting doesn't get help in psychotherapy with a qualified therapist.

• Triggers Reality Distortion: The projecting partner truly believes their distorted thinking, feeling and perception of reality, which is distorted. This dynamic can cause the accused partner to question their own sense of reality if they allow the projecting partner to overcome their sense of reality.

Breaking the Cycle of Using Projection as a Defense Mechanism

Since projection is unconscious and develops at a very early age, it can't be resolved without professional help in therapy.

Working with an experienced psychotherapist who understands the unconscious nature of projection (not all therapists are trained to understand projection) can help an accusing individual to pause and look at their own dynamic--before they accuse their partner.

A skilled psychotherapist can help to uncover and address deeply hidden insecurities that are at the root of using projection. She can also help an individual to develop other higher functioning ways of interacting with others, including intimate partners. 

The work isn't quick or easy because projection is a deeply ingrained defense mechanism that is used from early childhood into adulthood. A person who uses projection must be motivated to change and stick with the therapy.

The challenge is that people who use projection often go from one therapist to another because they use projection to defend against the therapist and the therapy. This means they blame the therapist--in the same way as they use projection with others.

Consequently, a licensed mental health must know how to work in a way that feels relatively safe for the client and, at the same time, gently helps the client to make unconscious projection conscious. 

That is the first step. After developing awareness of how the client uses projection, they need to be willing to take steps to change, which is also challenging because of their internal fragility.

For a client who is psychologically fragile, which includes people who use projection, the therapist needs do a thorough assessment, including assessing the client's window of tolerance and help the client to develop the necessary internal resources and coping skills to deal with making these changes.

Unfortunately, most people who use never seek help in therapy and they remain stuck in their negative cycle.

Get Help in Therapy

If you use projection as your defense mechanism, you risk placing your relationships with others, especially your intimate relationship, in jeopardy.

What is Projection?

Although it might not be easy to accept that you're using a primitive defense mechanism from early childhood, using projection and damaging your relationships is much worse.

You can learn about yourself and transform in therapy with a therapist who has an expertise in helping clients with primitive defense mechanisms. This can help you to live a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing, IFS Parts Work, EFT Couples Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

I provide a free 10-15 minute phone call before I set up an appointment.

You can reach me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or you can email me.

Also See My Articles:

IFS Therapy is a Gentle, Evidence-Based Therapy

How to Develop a Curious Mindset

Overcoming Trauma: You're Not Defined By What Happened to You

Developmental Trauma: Living in the Present As If You Were in the Past

Understanding Traumatizing Narcissists and DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender)

Riding the Waves of Transformation

Why Are So Many of Us Fearful of Change While Others Embrace It?

According to the latest research, while some people embrace change wholeheartedly, the vast majority of us don't like change--especially change we haven't chosen because it gets us out of our comfort zone.

Making Changes

As a New York City psychotherapist in private practice, I get to see how people respond to making changes--even changes they want--with a mixture of anxious anticipation, fear and ambivalence. 

On the surface, this might not seem to make sense. After all, you might say, if people are coming to therapy voluntarily because they want to make changes, why wouldn't they respond to change with open arms?

As we explore further, although it might not make sense objectively, it does make psychological sense.

Why Is Change so Hard For Most of Us?

When we look beyond the surface, we see that what most people really dislike is the lack of control and the uncertainty involved. 

Looking even further, we discover that, while we might like certain changes that we have chosen--like traveling on a much-anticipated vacation, falling in love or getting a raise at work, we tend to feel resistance to involuntary changes that are imposed on us.

Involuntary change might include:

• An unexpected life event like the death of a loved one, a new health concern or the end of a relationship where there is grief and loss

• A workplace restructuring that might involve reporting to someone new

• A financial loss

• Other similar unexpected changes

Under these involuntary circumstances, the pain and loss can feel confusing and threatening.

Why Do We Have Mixed Feelings About Change We Seek in Therapy?

The individual adults and couples I see in my private practice are all voluntary clients. None of them are mandated to come to therapy.

Making Changes in Therapy

They usually come to therapy, spending their time and hard-earned money in the effort, because some part of them wants to make changes. 

But, for most us, as we begin the change process, we also begin to have mixed feelings about it--even for changes that we really want.

Why is this?

Part of the answer is that the human brain naturally prioritizes predictability and comfort over the discomfort of growth. Even when a change is highly desired and voluntarily chosen, the status quo represents a survival strategy or behavioral pattern that has kept us safe, comfortable or, at least, it was familiar. 

With regard to safe and familiar, as the saying goes, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't."

In psychotherapy this ambivalence is called the "approach-avoidance conflict" which means that we are simultaneously drawn to the benefits of change and a better life while also being repelled by the fear and effort to change.

In addition, maladaptive behaviors always serve a purpose--even if we don't know what that purpose might be. 

Making Changes in IFS Therapy

For instance, according to IFS Therapy (Internal Family Systems Therapy), we all have many different aspects of ourselves, including protector parts, also known as defense mechanisms in psychodynamic psychotherapy. 

It's common to have protector parts that resist change because these parts assumed these roles in order to "protect" a wounded traumatized part of us.

These protector parts have "good intentions" in terms of their protective roles. Most likely, they were useful at an earlier time in our life as a survival mechanism, but their impact becomes maladaptive as we become adults and these survival mechanisms hold us back. 

For instance, if we learned to become emotionally numb in a dysfunctional family when our parents were fighting, the emotional numbness might have protected us from feeling the overwhelming pain of being abused or neglected.

But, as an adult, becoming emotionally numb while our spouse is telling us how annoyed they are about something we did isn't adaptive anymore. As adults, we need to be attuned and attentive to what our partner is saying if we want our relationship to survive.

We might really want to be a good partner, but if we have a tendency to numb ourselves (also known as "zoning out") when our partner is complaining to us, being present would mean taking the emotional risk that we are now safe enough with our partner to let go of a long-standing defense mechanism, which isn't easy to do.

Another example: If we are working on unresolved trauma, we know logically that our life would be better once we no longer carry the burden of the psychological trauma, but dealing with painful unprocessed emotions might make us want to abandon the effort.

How Can the Change Process Be Easier to Manage?

As a trauma therapist, I can't eliminate the emotional pain with making changes, especially if the change involves processing unresolved trauma, but I can and do help clients to process trauma in manageable ways when possible (see my article: Coping With Emotional Distress in Experiential Therapy Using the Somatic Experiencing Technique of Pendulation).

Although change might not be easy, there are ways to make it more manageable with the help of an experienced therapist:

• Shift Out of An All-or-Nothing Mindset: All-or-nothing thinking sets us up for disappointment when we don't make difficult changes immediately. 

Get Curious About the Change Process

• Adopt Non-Judgemental Curiosity: Instead of viewing fear and ambivalence as a personal failure, get curious about your change process (see my article: How to Develop a Curious Mindset).

• Acknowledge Protective Habits: Recognize that old habits that are no longer adaptive once kept you feeling safe.

• Separate Fear From Action: Learn to carry the physical sensation of fear in therapy while you take steps to make changes.

Progress Isn't Linear

• Expect Non-Linear Progress: Expect that growth involves inevitable ups and downs. Progress isn't a straight line (see my article: Progress in Therapy Isn't Linear).

• Identify What is Controllable: Instead of focusing on what isn't controllable, focus on what you can control right now.

• Remember Prior Resilience: Write down the times when you were able to successfully make changes due to unexpected events and recognize that you probably still have the resilience to make changes now--especially if you approach change in a manageable way rather than all at once.

Challenge Catastrophic Thinking

• Challenge Catastrophic Thinking: Evaluate whether your fears are realistic or if your mind is focusing only on worst-case scenarios (see my article: Are You Catastrophizing?).

• Process Long-Term Regret: Forgive yourself for waiting until now to make changes so that guilt doesn't become an obstacle to making changes.

Conclusion

Change can be difficult.

Even when you seek help in therapy to make much-needed changes, you can experience an approach-avoidance conflict about the process.

Get Help in Therapy

There are steps you can take in the change process, with the help of a therapist, that can make the change more manageable.

In addition, choosing a therapist that allows you to feel safe enough to make changes is important--not only for making changes--but also to have a new experience of safety if you weren't safe when you were growing up (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, IFS/Parts Work Therapist, EFT Couples Therapist, Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

As an experienced therapist, I have helped many individual adults and couples to make positive change over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

I provide a free 10-15 minute phone call before setting up a first appointment.

To set up an appointment, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

Overcoming Your Fear of Making Changes

What is a Growth Mindset vs a Fixed Mindset?

Coping With the In-Between State of Change

Why It's Important For Therapists to Provide Clients With Information About How Therapy Works

What is the Difference Between Setting Healthy Boundaries and Putting Up Walls?

I have written about setting healthy boundaries and putting up defensive walls in prior articles (see links for these articles at the end of this article).

What is the Difference Between Setting Healthy Boundaries and Putting Up Walls?

People often confuse healthy boundaries and putting up walls, so let's explore the difference between the two.

Setting Healthy Boundaries vs Putting Up Walls

The primary difference is that healthy boundaries are meant to protect connection between two or more people and putting up walls prevents connection.

The description below is a comparison between the two:

Core Motivation

• Healthy Boundaries: Self respect and love
• Putting Up Walls: Fear and self preservation

Communication

• Healthy Boundaries: Boundaries are explicit and clear
• Putting Up Walls: Walls are silent withdrawal or shutting down emotionally

Flexibility

• Healthy Boundaries: Permeable, situational and adaptive
• Putting Up Walls: Rigid, static and absolute

Relational Goal

• Healthy Boundaries: Show others where the "door" is
• Putting Up Walls: Lock others out indiscriminately

Personal Outcome

• Healthy Boundaries: Closeness, peace and security
• Putting Up Walls: isolation, loneliness and hypervigilance

Let's take a look at each one individually:

Healthy Boundaries

• Driven By Self Respect: Boundaries define what is okay and what is not based on your values, comfort level and energy.

• The "Doorway" Concept: A boundary acts as a "door' with instructions. It lets people know exactly how they can interact and achieve emotional intimacy with you. 

• Highly Communicative: Boundaries are explicitly defined. An example would be, "I want to talk about this, but I need us to speak calmly. If either of us raises our voices, I'm going to step away for 20 minutes to cool down before I come back and we resume our discussion."

• Context-Dependent: Boundaries can shift depending on trust, safety and the specific person involved.

Putting Up Walls

• Driven By Fear: Walls are defensive barriers which are often related to unresolved psychological wounds or, possibly, exhaustion.

Setting Healthy Boundaries vs Putting Up Walls

• Total Blockage: Instead of regulating the flow of the relationship, walls shut the external world out. Putting up walls assumes that vulnerability equals danger.

• Shutdown: Walls rarely come with clear, healthy communication. They can manifest as the "silent treatment", emotional coldness, ghosting or stonewalling

• Rigid and Indiscriminate: A wall implies a blanket rule for everyone. For example, "Everyone always let me down, so I'm never opening up to anyone."

Clinical Vignette

The following clinical vignette, which is a composite of many different cases, illustrates how someone can learn to take down their wall and learn to set healthy boundaries:

Eric

After a woman he was dating, Paula, told Eric that she found him hard to get to know because of the rigid walls he maintained, Eric decided to seek help in therapy to work on this issue. 

Other women had told him the same thing in the past and, since he really liked Paula, he knew his relationship with her wouldn't work out if he continued to be defensive.

Initially, Eric sought help in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) because he wanted quick tools for overcoming his problem. 

But, even after Eric developed insight in CBT into his problems and learned tools and strategies to open up, he didn't feel any more comfortable opening up (see my article: Healing From the Inside Out: Why Insight Isn't Enough).

Realizing that insight wasn't enough, Eric asked his friends to find about other types of therapy options he try and his closest friend suggested that he try one of the Experiential Therapies (see my article: What is the Difference Between "Top Down" and "Bottom Up" Approaches to Therapy?).

After Eric looked around, he began working with an Experiential Therapist who did IFS (Internal Family Systems) Therapy which is also known as Parts Work Therapy or Ego States Therapy.

Eric immediately noticed the difference. He and his IFS therapist worked on a much deeper level to help him understand why he kept walls up in his relationships with women and, more importantly, how he could learn to take down the walls and develop healthy boundaries.

IFS therapy didn't turn out to be the "quick fix" Eric hoped for, but he was gradually making progress which Paula noticed. He was able to communicate with her in a more open and flexible way. As a result, their relationship deepened and grew.

He also worked through the unresolved complex trauma that caused him to build walls with women in the first place.

Eric also learned to distinguish when he was safe with others and when he needed to set firmer boundaries. For instance, he learned to set firmer boundaries with certain family members who tended to say hurtful things to him and he felt proud of himself for that.

Conclusion

Many people confuse setting healthy boundaries with putting up walls.

Putting up walls is often the result of unresolved trauma.

Change happens on an emotional level which is why traditional talk therapy often doesn't resolve trauma (see my article: Why is Experiential Therapy More Effective Than Traditional Talk Therapy?).

Experiential therapy, which includes IFS, EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing as well as other similar therapies, can help you to go beyond just developing insight so that you can make significant emotional and psychological changes in your life.

Getting Help in Experiential Therapy

If you are struggling in your relationships because you tend to put up walls, you could benefit from working with an Experiential Therapist.

Getting Help in Experiential Therapy

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who is an Experiential Therapist so you can have healthier relationships and have live a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, IFS, Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist

I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

I provide a free 10-15 minute phone conversation before I set up a first appointment.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

Setting Healthy Boundaries in Relationships 

Overcoming Share in an Enmeshed Family 

What Are the Unspoken Expectations Between Some Mothers and Adult Daughters? 

Setting Boundaries With Family Members Who Want to Interfere in Your Relationship 

Emotional Numbing: The Wall That Once Protected You Now Imprisons You

How Therapy Can Help You With the Walls You Have Built Around Yourself  

 

Emotional Numbing: The "Wall" That Once Protected You Now Imprisons You

 I've written about emotional numbing in prior articles (see my article: How Therapy Can Help You to Take Down the "Wall" You Built Around Yourself).

In the current article, I want to dive deeper into the subject of emotional numbing that started as a survival strategy and ended up imprisoning you with social isolation, an inability to feel emotions deeply, including joy, and creating stagnation in your life.

What is Emotional Numbing?

Emotional numbing is an unconscious psychological state where an individual feels detached or indifferent. They are often unable to experience, process or express emotions.

Overcoming Emotional Numbing

What Are Some of the Symptoms of Emotional Numbing?

Someone who is experiencing emotional numbing can have some or all of the following symptoms:

• Flat Affect: A lack of emotional response, often described as "robotic" or indifferent

• Reduced Emotional Range: An inability to feel high excitement or deep sadness

• Detachment: Feeling emotionally and psychologically disconnected from others and, possibly, from surroundings

• Indiscriminate Blocking: Emotional numbing blocks all emotions including sadness, joy, excitement and gratitude

• Loss of a Sense of Self: Chronic detachment can lead to loss of identity, which can make you feel like a passive observer in your life 

• Avoidance and Isolation: Withdrawing from people and social activities

• Energy Depletion: Maintaining internal "walls" takes a lot of psychological energy which can lead to chronic fatigue or burnout

What Causes Emotional Numbing?

Emotional numbing can be caused by unresolved psychological trauma, PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), severe stress, grief, burnout or a side effect of medication (see my article: What is the Difference Between Trauma and PTSD?).

Overcoming Emotional Numbing

Emotional numbing often starts during childhood as a survival strategy or defense mechanism which is adaptive at the time because the child is in a psychologically overwhelming environment at home.

In that sense, emotional numbing helps to mitigate overwhelming stress and trauma which would be detrimental to the child.

However, when the child becomes an adult, emotional numbing is no longer adaptive because it prevents the individual from being fully present in personal relationships, friendships, social activities and at work.

As an adult, chronic emotional numbness puts a strain on relationships and daily life.

Clinical Vignette

The following clinical vignette,which is a composite of many cases, illustrates how emotional numbing which once protected a young child in a dysfunctional family from being overwhelmed but created problems later on as an adult. The vignette also illustrates how trauma therapy can help.

Nick

When Nick was growing up, he learned to cope with his parents' constant arguments by going into his room and "spacing out" with video games.

After a while, he got so good at numbing himself that he felt like he was in his own world apart from everyone and everything else.

As an adult in his first relationship, Nick had problems connecting emotionally with his girlfriend. She complained that she experienced him as emotionally detached and indifferent about her and their relationship.

At the time, Nick had no awareness about how he was numbing himself because it had become so automatic for him. At the point when he thought his girlfriend might end their relationship, Nick sought help in therapy.

Nick's therapist helped Nick to realize that the "wall" he created around himself as a child protected him from the chaos between his parents, but that same "wall" now came with a cost because he had problems connecting emotionally with his girlfriend and others.

His therapist, who was a trauma therapist, helped Nick to gradually take down his protective "wall" by working on the unresolved trauma from his childhood.

Using a combination of EMDR therapy and Parts Work therapy, over time, Nick worked through his childhood trauma so that he no longer felt the need to numb himself emotionally (see my article: Why is Experiential Therapy More Effective Than Traditional Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma?).

The work in therapy was neither quick nor easy, but Nick was able to connect emotionally with his girlfriend as he worked through his unresolved trauma.

Conclusion

Like all defense mechanisms, emotional numbing occurs on an unconscious level and it's usually related to trauma.

Trauma therapy can help to work through the original trauma so there is no longer a need for emotional numbing.

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Working with a licensed mental health professional who is a trauma therapist can help you to work through unresolved trauma and emotional numbing (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a trauma therapist so you can live a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

As a trauma therapist, I have over 25 years of experience helping individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

Allowing Yourself to Feel Your Feelings So You Can Heal 

What Happens When You Numb Yourself to Your Traumatic Past 

The Mind-Body Connection: Overcoming the Defense Mechanism of Denial With Experiential Therapy

In my prior article, The Mind-Body Connection: The Body Reacts When the Mind Gets Stuck in Denial, I discussed the defense mechanism of denial and how denial impacts people psychologically as well as physically due to the mind-body connection.

Overcoming the Defense Mechanism of Denial

In this article I'm focusing on how Experiential Therapy can help clients who use denial as a maladaptive coping mechanism  (see my article: Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective Than Regular Talk Therapy).

Denial as an Unconscious Process

For many people using denial is an unconscious process. 

People who use denial unconsciously often have little or no awareness that they are using denial to avoid emotional pain--until there are consequences as a result of the denial and avoidance.

The consequences might be a worsening of their emotional problems and/or health.

People who have more awareness about their use of denial often realize they need help, but their fear of dealing with their problems keeps them from fully acknowledging their problem so they don't seek help.

Overcoming the Defense Mechanism of Denial

What You Can Do on Your Own

• Recognize and Acknowledge the Problem: This is the first step in overcoming denial. If you recognize you engage in a pattern of denial and avoidance, you can start to make changes. Some of the signs that you use denial as a defense mechanism include:

• Getting defensive
• Avoiding thinking about a problem
• Avoiding taking action to resolve a problem

• Slow Down: You're more likely to use denial as a way to avoid a problem when you react quickly, so taking the time to slow down can help you to self reflect on how your behavior (or lack of behavior) is affecting a problem you're avoiding.

Practice Mindfulness

• Practice Mindfulness: Along with slowing down, practicing mindfulness can help you to stay calm and grounded so you can deal with stress and your own habit of denial and avoidance.

• Develop Self Awareness: Self reflection can help you to be more self aware recognize how you might be self sabotaging.

Writing in a Journal Develop Self Awareness

• Write in a Journal: Writing about your problems in an open way can help you to observe and reflect on your thoughts, emotions and behavior (see my article:  Writing Can Help You Reflect on Your Thoughts, Emotions and Behavior).

Asking For Emotional Support

• Ask for Emotional Support: Ask trusted family and friends for emotional support. Be open to their feedback and suggestions without getting defensive (see my article: Overcoming Your Discomfort With Asking For Emotional Support).

How Experiential Psychotherapy Can Help to Overcome a Pattern of Using Denial

Experiential Therapy is different than regular talk therapy (see my article: Experiential Therapy Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind).

Experiential Therapy can help you:

• Develop Self Awareness: Experiential Therapy can help you to develop better self awareness about unconscious defense mechanisms you might be using, including denial, using mind-body oriented interventions (see my article: Making the Unconscious Conscious).

• Develop Greater Self Reflective Capacity: Experiential Therapy can help you to develop or improve your self reflective capacity so that you can think about their thoughts, emotions and behaviors, including unconscious motivations. Becoming aware of unconscious motivations and using self reflection can help you to think before you act so they can make better choices (see my article: The Unconscious Mind: The Symptom Contains the Solution).

Gaining Insight in Therapy

• Gain Insight: Experiential Therapy can help you to gain insight into your thoughts, emotions and behaviors.

• Provide Clinical Feedback: Experiential Therapists can provide you with clinical feedback to help them understand your patterns and how you make decisions so you can grow and change.

• Overcome Emotional Blocks: Experiential Therapists are aware that you might have difficulty making the changes you want to make because you might have emotional blocks that need to be identified. Once emotional blocks have been discovered, Experiential Therapists can help you to work through and overcome the blocks. This is often challenging and requires a commitment to let go of dynamics that are holding you back (see my article: Overcoming Emotional Blocks).

• Facilitate Transformational Experiences in Therapy: Experiential Therapists can help facilitate transformational changes.

Get Help in Therapy

Since defense mechanisms, like denial, are often unconscious, it can be difficult to overcome emotional blocks to change on your own.

Getting Help in Experiential Therapy

If you have been unable to resolve your problems on your own, you could benefit from seeking help from an Experiential Therapist who can help you to overcome maladaptive coping strategies, like denial and avoidance.

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who has the expertise to help you lead to lead a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I am an Experiential Therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many clients to overcome obstacles to their growth.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.