we humans are extraordinarily and painfully vulnerable creatures especially in our early years we are at huge danger of being psychologically damaged by those around us damage is in one way or another always caused by a shortfall of tenderness and care as we might put it it's caused by a shortfall of Love examples of shortfalls of Love are very varied perhaps at an early point someone went missing or someone died someone was cruel or someone misunderstood and as a result of this deficit universally some kind of wound was sustained we are psychologically very ingenious creatures in
the face of any wound we develop an array of very clever defense mechanisms the purpose of defense mechanisms is to protect us against further damage to help us to get through to the next stage of existence to keep us going in extremis to save our lives for example to protect us against this wound a parent who goes missing we develop this defense mechanism an inability to feel sad whenever anyone is absent or to protect us against an alcoholic caregiver we develop the defense of huge Independence and self-containment and so on the problem with our defense
mechanisms is that they always exact a price while they protected us very well at a certain age the more time passes the more they become unsuited to the conditions that we face in the here and now what were once ingenious adaptations to a hostile environment become over the years the causes of behaviors that limit our chances and ruin things for us for example to return to the above table but with a new column on the right to protect us against this wound apparent who goes missing we develop this defense mechanism an inability to feel sad
whenever anyone is absent and then the price of our defense mechanism is that our relationships are shallow and brittle or to protect us against an alcoholic caregiver we develop the defense mechanism of huge Independence and self-containment and then the price we can't depend on anyone a loneliness and further examples follow it's in the nature of how our minds work that we generally can't see the connection between how our defense mechanisms operate in the here and now and the wounds we sustained in the past these defense mechanisms give us what we call symptoms Syms we have
a tendency to just accept these symptoms even if they're very painful often we don't even notice them for example we accept that we're not so good at love or we accept that we're quite lonely or we don't notice that we're manically cheerful or we don't notice how much we're underperforming at work in order to heal ourselves from our symptoms and the emotional wounds that lie beneath them we have to learn to understand ourselves better our happiness relies on becoming more self aware the more we can work at understanding ourselves the healthier Freer and more creative
we can be how then can we unpick the legacy of emotional wounds self- understanding is a seven stage process firstly we need to learn to identify our symptoms for this we need to grow more ambitious about who we want to become in the future we need to scan the present and wonder how things could be improved we should ask what would I like to get rid of in myself what fruitless habits compulsions or areas of stuckness would I like to overcome what's more painful than it needs to be what patterns of difficulty can I notice
once I look carefully secondly we need to identify our defense mechanisms these can be very hard to spot but it helps to consider a list of what some very common defense mechanisms are to see if they ring any bells we might never have thought of these things as defense mechanisms but we may nevertheless feel a moment of recognition when we hear of the following falling in love with unavailable people ensuring our relationships always fail underperforming at work being very independent addiction to alcohol porn exercise work feeling numb hypervigilance continuous anxiety constant sadness depression thirdly we're
used to thinking of defense mechanisms in rather negative terms they're typically framed in problematic ways like illnesses that have no rationale they do cause us difficulties but to think of them negatively only doesn't allow us to understand that they actually have a logic and that it's only on the basis of understanding their logic that we can overcome them so long as we continue to see them as meaningless freakish aberration we'll never rid ourselves of them we must therefore learn to look at defense mechanisms as highly ingenious a very clever strategies that once would have done
a very good job at keeping us safe we need to look for the upside of whatever defense mechanism we recognize in ourselves we should ask what was this defense mechanism clever at doing for us how did it help us how was it in its way rather wise and admirable so common defense mechanisms falling in love with unavailable people what's the clever upside of the defense mechanism we don't have to be let down or common defense mechanism of ensuring our relationships always fail what's the clever upside we don't need to experience loss underperforming at work what's
the clever upside we don't have to risk generating Envy being very independent what's the clever upside no one can disappoint us and so on fourthly now we need to reconstruct why a defense mechanism was ever necessary in our life what was it about our past that would have made it necessary to have our specific defensive strategy in place what wounds did we sustain what happened in the past to make life difficult we might not be used to thinking in this way the past may be a long way back now but we need to proceed like
archaeologists who try to reconstruct from the fragments in the here and now some of the circumstances of a bygone era let's add another column to our chart and try to fill it in as best we can so common defense mechanisms falling in love with unavailable people clever upside we don't have to be let down now what wound might we have suffered in the past to make this defense mechanism necessary maybe Mom was never there or imagine the common defense mechanism of ensuring our relationships always fail what's the clever upside we don't need to experience loss
now what wound might we have suffered in the past to make a defense mechanism like this necessary perhaps dad was erratic or take the idea of underperforming at work what's the clever upside we don't have to risk generating Envy what wound might we have suffered in the past to make this defense mechanism necessary maybe there was an older sibling who was bullying and jealous and so on fifthly now we should do something very unfamiliar we should congratulate ourselves on having been rather clever with our defense mechanisms far from being some silly neurotic feature of Our
Lives defense mechanisms have been an ingenious way of keeping us away from Devastation let's take a moment to feel proud of our smart Minds for devising a means of carrying us p danger onto the next stage of life let's feel compassion and admiration for our defensive strategy six now having given ourselves all due congratulations we then need to do something else realize that our defense mechanisms are in fact past their cell by date they were once undoubtedly pretty clever we can feel grateful to them but now they don't serve any purpose anymore now they make
life worse than it needs to be in the circumstances of the present they aren't required we can afford to say goodbye to them indeed we must do so let's add another column to our chart to make it clear to ourselves how we're losing out because of a defense mechanism so common defense mechanism falling in love with unavailable people the clever upside of the defense mechanism we don't have to be let down what wound might we have suffered in the past to make a defense mechanism here necessary mom was never there and what price are we
paying now for our defense mechanis M we can't enjoy intimacy or let's take another example common defense mechanism ensuring our relationships always fail what's the clever upside we don't need to experience loss what wound might we have suffered perhaps dad was erratic and what price are we paying now for our defense mechanism we haven't been able to have the family that we want and there are plenty of other kinds of price that we're paying now we're underselling ourselves we feel isolated our health is suffering badly life doesn't feel very real we're worried sick our Spirits
are low seventh now that we have the following a defense mechanism in view its logic and its punishing price we are in an excellent position to carry out the next step deciding to say goodbye to the defense mechanism very gently we can let our minds know that the mechanism that once kept us safe can be let go of we can be safe in other ways indeed our future flourishing depends on us surrendering our hold on our Former Defense once it made sense to be numb now it no longer does once it made sense to be
fiercely independent now it no longer does once we had to be sad and fearful now we can be hopeful and free
