Replacing Defense Mechanisms (and Other Anxiety Quirks)
November 6th, 2006 by Ryan Oelke
After commenting on Aaron’s post, “It’s Only Life“, I thought I’d elaborate what I said in this post. When we become aware of our defense mechanisms, avoidance behaviors, irrational thought patterns, and in general, our “anxiety quirks”, it’s natural to want to stop them. However, I believe we must be cautious in doing so because we not only need to stop them but develop healthier habits to replace them. All our psychological quirks serve various purposes, but in sum they keep us together in the healthiest way possible.
That’s the beauty of our body-mind: it will try it’s hardest to hold everything together and keep us moving, no matter what. So, while we may look at these quirks with frustration and dislike, they are helping us. The problem is that they have also solidified and are obstacles to enjoying life at a higher level than is currently possible and so we must investigate them, change, and create healthier ways of being. Should we simply try to “stop our quirks”, first off we probably won’t succeed because, as I’ve said, they are serving a purpose and your psyche will take care of you by keeping them in place, and this will simply leave us feeling discouraged. Secondly, and most importantly, when these are not in place the causes of them still are. In other words, you may stop an avoidance behavior but your fear is still present. What will happen then? Besides probably feeling even more anxious we will simply develop another quirk. Instead we must simultaneously work on stopping these quirks, understand how they arise, and develop healthier habits.
As an example, rather than stopping the avoidance behavior of not attending a social gathering I push myself to go, but still I have the fear of what may happen at the event, which is fueled by an irrational thought pattern, “I will do something stupid and people will think I’m weird.” And maybe I even force myself to be a “social butterfly” rather than my normal behavior which is to avoid conversation. But given that I still have that thought pattern and I have not created any different way of approaching these situations I am almost certain to experience disappointment and anxiety. But, an alternative is to realize that I have this thought pattern, to challenge and examine it, and to develop a more accurate thought, and based on that I attend the event with a new understanding and behavior supported by that understanding. Even better would be to have a way to process things afterwards, say if I do experience anxiety. This is a much healthier and ultimately successful approach then simply “stopping a behavior”.
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2 Responses to “Replacing Defense Mechanisms (and Other Anxiety Quirks)”
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Social Anxiety Blog wrote on 11/6/06 at 9:45 pm :
Hi Ryan,
I agree with you, to try to block, stop or eliminate our social anxious thoughts or behaviors isn’t going to help us at all.
Anxiety sympthoms are the result of some kind of problem at the emotional level, for instance that tremendous fear we feel when interacting with others is the result (sympthom) of not being able to adquire adecuate social skills when we were kids, probably bad experiences we had in social situations back then: with our mother, father, some relative, etc.
So as you mentioned we must work on our emotions, we must try to understand the purpose of them, we must find a reason for them and with that we must try to integrate better habits into our lifes.
For example I have found that when I am anxious, writing is a good way to transform the anxiety feeling, I write about what I am feeling or about what I think is happening, that has helped me. Some other people could choose exercising, some others need to talk to some one about what they are feeling, etc.
The point is, we must recognize our feelings, not avoid them…
Peace.
Aaron wrote on 12/6/06 at 4:34 pm :
I’ve been meaning to comment here. Mostly just to thank you because this post came at a good time for me. I’d gotten trapped in trying to essentially kill all my bad patterns at once and it made me more anxious than ever. Now, I’ve realized it’s more than okay to leave some quirks in place while I slowly go about the work of dealing with SAD. So, thanks once more.