Psychological defence mechanisms are behaviours that people use to separate themselves from unpleasant behaviours, actions, or thoughts. While essential in nature to protect us from sustaining immense psychological harm, some people use them as a means of avoiding their emotions and excusing their behaviour. Thus, we find it important for you to understand what these mechanisms are, and to switch to some healthier mechanisms in case you are using some long-term harmful ones excessively!
The following mechanisms are classified as unhealthy ones, when used excessively:
Denial
Denial is the practice of refusing to accept certain unpleasant realities or facts. Doing so spares a person the unpleasantness of having to deal with the emotional impact. They may choose to downplay certain truths when reporting to seniors. This obviously hinders work effectiveness as the time spent in denial would be ultimately wasted.
2. Repression
Repression is the unconscious act of hiding painful memories and irrational beliefs. Our subconscious hopes to hide them such that they would disappear and we would forget them entirely. In reality, however, this is not possible; they often just sink into somewhere unnoticeable to us. These painful memories often produce waves of physical or mental discomfort at intervals, such as chronic heart pain. A person with suppressed memories may also often suddenly feel depressed for seemingly no reason. This would also definitely affect work performance when the person feels suddenly unwell during work.
3) Projection
This is the act of projecting one’s unacceptable or immoral thoughts to others. An example of this is a married man who is attracted to a female colleague accusing her of flirting with him. This defence mechanism obviously creates huge problems in the workplace as people view other colleagues unfairly, which might lead to strained relationships or even downright arguments from breaking out, affecting workplace morale.
4) Displacement
This refers to a person directing his/her frustrations or anger on an unrelated person rather than the rightful recipient. An example would be an employee being scolded at work screaming at his spouse or children when he/she gets back home (rather than talking back to his/her boss). It occurs because it is much easier and safer to focus on a less threatening person, as the consequences of doing so are less immediate and harmful.
This behaviour, when used excessively, could seriously affect a person’s interpersonal work relationships if the target of venting is another colleague. Even if the person does not choose the workplace as the subject of displacement, the loss of friends and loved ones outside work could also cause serious psychological harm to the person in the long run, and thus eventually affect his/her future work performance.
5) Regression
This is when a person reverts to behaviours that are reminiscent of an earlier stage of development when faced with stress or other unpleasant situations. For example, an adult using the regression mechanism might revert to childhood-like behaviours such as sulking and throwing tantrums when faced with difficulties or problems at the workplace.
This mechanism may lead to a serious decrease in productivity of work as the person is actively avoiding the problem rather than trying to solve it. In addition, team dynamics would also be influenced negatively as colleagues would likely find it annoying to work with someone who always exhibits immature behaviour.
6) Rationalisation
This is, in blunt words-----making up reasons or excuses for something you did, rather than admitting the true, often uncomfortable reason. For example, an employee might blame poor internet connection rather than poor time management on failing to hand in a project on time.
This can cultivate a negative workplace culture where people tend to blameshift, affecting team performance and mutual trust. In addition, it can prevent individuals from recognizing and correcting the true cause of issues, thus making future improvement difficult.
We do not mean that the above defence mechanisms are completely unacceptable or not used. Rather, we simply believe that they should not be used excessively. It is completely alright to, say for example------repress feelings for a while, especially when you have to focus on something important rationally for the time being. But eventually, we should take some time to face the problems with an open and growth mindset.
Sometimes, we might not even notice ourselves utilising the defence mechanisms above for a period of time. We thus suggest spending a bit of time each day to categorise our thoughts of the day and self-reflect. This way, we can pull ourselves back from any unhealthy defence mechanisms we were using and start the next day of work fresh and anew!
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