Defense Mechanisms ~ 80 check-box options

**Sinny** · 03-27-2018, 06:52 PM

I don't drive.. but sometimes I want to walk into incoming traffic, so that one scored a plus.

**Charde** · 03-27-2018, 08:33 PM

Regression: 0
Displacement: 0
Denial: 0
Repression: 30
Intellectualization: 20
Reaction formation: 10
Projection: 20
Compensation: 20

I dunno. I mean, the test is kind of simplistic.

I feel like I'm pretty well-adjusted overall now, where I've perceived when younger how I would over-intellectualize or shun feelings as an example. A lot of this progress was about finding the middle road. (Taking emotions for example, you can't just hand yourself over to them, but you can't also dismiss them as they DO exist, they are signals of something, and also it's part of feeling alive and so they're okay to feel, they're part of me and not something separate as I once thought.) So many of these approaches are that way -- like, when you're bad at something, it's not good to either lie to yourself and say you are, or else to try too much to make it up with something else to again take notice away from your flaw... I think it's okay to admit what you're bad at while working in a reasonable fashion to improve what you can while accepting your own limitations. And so on. Finding the middle way, because reacting in either extreme is a distortion of sorts.

I think the main thing I might deal with now is just a lack of desire in general. Something has been too hard to get, so I just kind of accept it and stop trying and meanwhile just float along. I don't get super-depressed about it, but I also stop investing to some degree. It's like equanimity bleaching me out to some extent... being too much at peace can sometimes demotivate me to actually doing things or knowing what I want or investing in something that could matter to me.