I'm sorry. I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain.

~ Cassandra Clare

Cassandra Clare Defense Mechanism Humor Sarcasm

We think that boxes take everything that’s bad and they lock all that nasty stuff out, when in reality they take everything that we are and they lock all of those great things in.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Craig D. Lounsbrough Abilities Boundaries Boxes Defense Mechanism Fear Fearful Frightened Mediocrity Potential Protection Reluctance Safety Tentative Walls

Attending a funeral would leave the average person insane, if they truly believed that sooner or later they are also going to die.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Mokokoma Mokhonoana Aphorism Aphorisms Aphorist Aphorists Attend Believe Crazy Dead Death Defense Mechanism Defense Mechanisms Denial Denial Of Death Die Funeral Funerals Funny Gone Too Soon Hereafter Hilarious Humor Humorous Humour Immortal Immortality Insane Insanity Joke Jokes Life Life After Death Life And Death Mortal Mortality Mourn Quotations Quotes Rest In Peace Rip Sane Sanity Satire Sincere Sincerity The Hereafter

The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arguably, the genuine ego is more of a circumstantial defense mechanism rather than a steady arrogance in need of starvation.

~ Criss Jami

Criss Jami Arrogance Challenge Defense Mechanism Ego Envy Narcissist Persecution Psychology Starvation Worth

Envy is a sign of insecurity, yes; but so is longing to be envied.

~ Criss Jami

Criss Jami Criticism Defense Defense Mechanism Envy Envy And Attitude Hate Haters Hating Hypocrisy Insecurity Longings Psychology Security Signs Spite

Being in a state of denial is auniversally human response tosituations which threaten tooverwhelm. People who were abusedas children sometimes carry theirdenial like precious cargo without aport of destination. It enabled us tosurvive our childhood experiences, and often we still live in survival mode decades beyond the actual abuse. We protect ourselves to excess because we learned abruptly and painfully that no one else would.

~ Sarah E. Olson

Sarah E. Olson Abuse Survivor Child Abuse Defense Defense Mechanism Denial Protection Psychology Repression Secret Secret History Self Protection Survival Survivor Trauma Traumatic Memories Traumatic Stress Victim

Professing not to care is a primordial defense mechanism. Whenever a person finds oneself mired in failure and despondency, rebelling is a viable option to preserve false personal pride.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Kilroy J. Oldster Defense Mechanism Defensiveness Depression Depression Quotes Despondency Failure Failure Quotes Pride Vanity

...repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman Abuse Survivors Abused Child Abusive Parents Betrayal Betrayal Trauma Child Abuse Complex Ptsd Coping Defense Mechanism Helpelessness Out Of Control Overwhelmed Overwhelming Parental Abuse Personality Personality Disorders Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Powerlessness Psychological Defence Ptsd Terrifying Trauma Traumatic Experiences Traumatized Trust Unsafe Untrustworthy

In the space of solitude, a writer attempts to remember how they became whom they are but nobody’s memory is up to this demanding task. No matter how much a person harrows the fertile lanes of memory, some memories are lost by the passage of time, psychological defense mechanisms screen other memories from detection, the ephemeral character of other memories are invariably to elusive to arrest with reciprocal language.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Kilroy J. Oldster Defense Mechanism Lanuage Memoir Memoir Writing Memories Memory Recollection Writing Writing Process

The ego with its protective defense mechanisms is the biggest impediment to attaining spiritual growth.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Kilroy J. Oldster Defense Mechanism Defensiveness Ego Enlightenment Enlightenment And Attitude Enlightenment Principles Enlightenment Quotes Personal Development Personal Growth

She's terrified that all these sensations and images are coming out of her — but I think she's even more terrified to find out why. Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing.

~ David L. Calof

David L. Calof Abuse Abuse Survivors Abusive Childhood Abusive Parents Avoidance Child Abuse Child Rape Childhood Abuse Defense Mechanism Denial Denial Of Abuse Denial Of Child Abuse Denial Of Incest Dissociated Amnesia Dissociative Amnesia Fear Of Truth Flashback Flashbacks Healing Healing Abuse Healing From Abuse Healing Insights Incest Intrusive Minimization Minimizing Minimizing Issues Parental Abuse Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Psychological Defence Ptsd Reliving The Past Sadistic Abuse Subconscious Subconscious Mind Survivors Trauma Memories Traumatic Experiences Traumatic Memories Traumatized

Denial of one's need for others is the most common type of defense against bonding. If people come from a situation, whether growing up or later in life, where good, safe relationships were not available to them, they learn to deny that they even want them. Why want what you can't have? They slowly get rid of their awareness of the need.

~ Henry Cloud

Henry Cloud Bonding Defense Mechanism Denial Emotional Needs Healthy Relationships L Needs Self Awareness

I was persisting in reading my present environment in the light of my old one.

~ Richard Wright

Richard Wright Acclimation Adaptation Culture Defense Defense Mechanism Enculturation Evolved Consciousness Evolving Flinch

Like a lot of people with mental illness, I spend a lot of time fronting. It’s really important to me to not appear crazy, to fit in, to seem normal, to do the things “normal people” do, to blend in. As a defense mechanism, fronting makes a lot of sense, and you hone that mechanism after years of being crazy. Fronting is what allows you to hold down a job and maintain relationships with people, it’s the thing that sometimes keeps you from falling apart. It’s the thing that allows you to have a burst of tears in the shower or behind the front seat of your car and then coolly collect yourself and stroll into a social engagement…We are rewarded for hiding ourselves. We become the poster children for “productive” mentally ill people, because we are so organized and together. The fact that we can function, at great cost to ourselves, is used to beat up the people who cannot function.Because unlike the people who cannot front, or who fronted too hard and fell off the cliff, we are able to “keep it together,” whatever it takes.

~ S. E. Smith

S. E. Smith Crazy Defense Mechanism Emotional Pain Faking Normal Faking Well Fitting In Hiding Feelings Keeping It Together Mental Illness Mental Illness Stigma Pretending To Be Ok Psychological Defense Putting On A Brave Face Stigma

Perfectionism is the unparalleled defense for emotionally abandoned children. The existential unattainability of perfection saves the child from giving up, unless or until, scant success forces him to retreat into the depression of a dissociative disorder, or launches him hyperactively into an incipient conduct disorder. Perfectionism also provides a sense of meaning and direction for the powerless and unsupported child. In the guise of self-control, striving to be perfect offers a simulacrum of a sense of control. Self-control is also safer to pursue because abandoning parents typically reserve their severest punishment for children who are vocal about their negligence.

~ Pete Walker

Pete Walker Abandonment Abusive Parents Child Abuse Child Neglect Conduct Disorder Defense Mechanism Dissociation Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotional Abuse Emotionally Unavailable Mental Health Mental Illness Perfectionism Powerlessness Psychological Abuse Punishment Self Control Survivors Survivors Of Abuse

Dissociative identity disorder is conceptualized as a childhood onset, posttraumatic developmental disorder in which the child is unable to consolidate a unified sense of self. Detachment from emotional and physical pain during trauma can result in alterations in memory encoding and storage. In turn, this leads to fragmentation and compartmentalization of memory and impairments in retrieving memory.2,4,19 Exposure to early, usually repeated trauma results in the creation of discrete behavioral states that can persist and, over later development, become elaborated, ultimately developing into the alternate identities of dissociative identity disorder.

~ Bethany L. Brand

Bethany L. Brand Abused Children Alter Identities Alter Identity Alter Personalities Alter Personality Alters Child Abuse Compartmentalization Coping Mechanism Defense Mechanism Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotional Pain Memory Loss Mental Illness Personality Development Posttraumatic Posttraumatic Stress Sense Of Self Trauma Traumatized