0:07

Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forrest Hanson.

0:09

If you're new to the show, thanks for listening

0:11

today. And if you've listened before, welcome back. Today,

0:14

we're going to be exploring the concept of

0:16

psychological defenses, including what they are, where they

0:19

come from, and what we can do to

0:21

work with them more effectively. Now, this is

0:23

a big topic and I

0:25

think that we're going to be touching on a

0:27

lot of different material during this episode. And I

0:29

also know that Rick has been really looking forward

0:31

to this one for a while because it includes

0:34

some psychoanalysis content that he has just been dying

0:36

to get into. So, speaking of

0:38

which, I'm joined today by Dr. Rick Hanson.

0:40

He's a clinical psychologist and he's also my

0:42

dad. So, dad, how are you doing today?

0:45

I'm great. And you said it, this topic

0:47

is super rich. And I want to say

0:49

in advance that it's

0:51

rooted in a tradition that's

0:54

fairly intellectual psychoanalysis, which

0:56

also is very focused on

0:58

practical benefits. So, people

1:01

listening can keep looking at their own

1:03

mind stream in terms of how these

1:05

various defenses operate. And also

1:07

sometimes thinking about the mental

1:09

processes of other people, because

1:12

sometimes it's easier, frankly, to

1:14

see defenses as they're operating

1:16

in the minds of others,

1:18

particularly defenses that are of the sort

1:20

that we tend to use ourselves and

1:23

try not to be so aware of

1:25

inside ourselves, but boy, can we see

1:27

them really quickly in our friends and

1:30

family, co-workers and partners. Yeah,

1:32

maybe particularly the last of those. I

1:35

mean, in relationships, this is an enormous topic. We

1:37

might get into it a little bit at the

1:40

end of this episode and might even spend a

1:42

whole separate episode on that topic because it's such

1:44

a big one. And just to let

1:46

people know before we get started today, as you might be able

1:48

to hear, I'm a little under the weather. I've

1:50

been a little sick the last couple of days. I've

1:52

also moved. So if you're watching the video and you

1:54

can find us on YouTube, if you're listening to the

1:56

podcast feed and you would rather be watching the video,

1:58

that's why it looks different. different in the background. So

2:01

there's just been a lot going on, but we also

2:03

have like a five year streak at this point of

2:05

never missing a Monday. And I didn't want to break

2:07

that streak. I'm very proud

2:09

of that. So, hey, here we are today.

2:11

I'm kind of playing hurt a little bit.

2:13

So I might be referring out to Rick

2:15

a little bit more during this conversation. So

2:17

let's just start there, dad. Well, can I

2:19

say first forest dad? Oh, go ahead, yeah.

2:21

I want to really credit you for that

2:23

five year streak and for rallying, rallying today.

2:25

Good for you. Well, thanks dad. I appreciate

2:27

that. And so let's just kind of start

2:30

at the beginning here. What do we mean

2:32

when we say psychological defense? I've

2:34

reflected a bit on this and I

2:36

want to quickly sketch four aspects of

2:38

what we mean by this that are

2:41

both interesting in their own right

2:43

and will create a framework for what we're going

2:45

to get into. So first,

2:47

a defense is something we

2:49

do to keep it bay that

2:52

which is threatening. Second, what's

2:55

the location of that which

2:57

we're defending against? In

2:59

this context, it is inside our

3:02

own mind. The enemy

3:04

is within, they're in the building,

3:06

do, do, do, do, do, right?

3:10

And so immediately we get a sense

3:12

that this is about getting at stuff

3:14

that we tend to ward off, deny,

3:16

push away, push down in ourselves.

3:18

And sometimes we do this in

3:21

others to avoid stirring it up

3:23

in ourselves. So it has

3:25

that context to it. Third,

3:29

to put this in historical

3:31

context of psychoanalysis and Freud

3:34

and the work done by his daughter,

3:36

Anna Freud, who was brilliant in her

3:38

own right, in at the turn of

3:40

the century from the 1800s to the 1900s in terms

3:42

of Freud and

3:45

in the early 1900s in terms

3:48

of the work of Anna Freud.

3:50

So in that context, there

3:53

is a framing in which

3:55

we are defending against stuff

3:57

that is icky. dirty,

4:01

unclean, nasty, primitive.

4:03

It's framed in that way. And it's

4:05

framed in that way on two counts,

4:07

at least two counts. One is

4:10

we have the culture of the Victorian era in

4:12

which very well educated,

4:15

very privileged people like

4:17

Freud and his family were caught

4:20

up in sort of being proper

4:23

and defending against and keeping at

4:25

bay nasty impulses

4:27

and particularly sexuality, including

4:30

women's sexuality. And

4:32

the second major kind of input into

4:34

this sense of inner division

4:37

and managing that which is

4:40

problematic was informed a lot

4:42

by colonialism. In

4:44

that exploitation, there

4:46

was a kind of management of the ways in

4:48

which those trillions of

4:51

dollars of resources that were

4:53

extracted from those continents

4:55

and the people there to

4:57

kind of justify that and to think

4:59

it through. There was a view of

5:01

the people in those countries as primitive

5:04

heathens needing to be

5:06

evangelized, brought into Christianity. And

5:09

so there too, we have this really interesting

5:12

kind of guilt almost. If you think

5:14

about a defense here as well for

5:17

European elite culture in general, taking

5:20

these resources, justifying

5:22

that by looking down on the

5:24

people who lived in those countries.

5:27

So there's that context. And then last point,

5:29

interestingly, Freud himself was

5:32

a neurologist. The

5:34

1800s were characterized by the discovery

5:36

of all these previously unknown unseen

5:38

forces, electricity, magnetism.

5:40

There's a lot of interest

5:43

in what powerful dynamic

5:45

forces could be lurking in

5:47

our biology and in our

5:49

physics unbeknownst to us. And

5:52

so that notion of dynamic processes

5:55

in conflict with each other, in

5:57

forms of turbulence with each other and

6:00

needing to be managed in various ways,

6:02

also very much informs the backdrop in

6:04

which we're going to be exploring defenses.

6:07

That's really interesting, Dad, and there's a lot there. And

6:10

what you're saying, obviously, it's like a very rich

6:12

text. So I'm going to try to kind of

6:14

simplify and boil it down a little bit to

6:16

people more functionally thinking about psychological defenses. So

6:19

these are largely subconscious strategies that

6:21

we have to protect ourselves against

6:24

different kinds of discomfort, often

6:26

anxiety and often anxiety related, as

6:29

you were saying, Dad, to fears

6:31

about our true nature, that there

6:33

is this aspect of ourselves that

6:35

we really don't like or

6:38

this thing that we feel a lot of

6:40

shame about. And so we push it away

6:42

using a variety of different strategies. So

6:44

importantly, there is an aspect of truth

6:47

to the thing that we're worried about.

6:49

And that's, I think, a really interesting

6:51

aspect of defenses, that we're pushing something

6:54

away that is at least a little

6:56

bit true or that we fear is

6:58

at least a little bit true. And

7:02

then most of them have three features. First,

7:04

they are largely unconscious. And we'll talk

7:06

about this probably in some detail during this

7:08

conversation, just how unconscious are they, how

7:10

aware of them are they, and how

7:12

can developing more awareness be a useful tool

7:14

here for people. And second,

7:17

they help us reduce anxiety and

7:19

particularly anxiety related to threats to

7:21

our self-concept or self-esteem, as I

7:24

was talking about earlier. And

7:26

then third, really importantly, these defenses

7:28

are not totally true. They're based

7:31

on a kind of inaccurate interpretation

7:33

of reality. We're either twisting reality

7:35

into something that we can find

7:37

more acceptable, or we're

7:39

distorting other people's behavior into something

7:41

that matches our narrative a little

7:44

bit better, or we

7:46

are in some way kind of displacing

7:48

a desire, an impulse, a

7:50

fear that we have from where it should

7:52

be onto something else. And these are all

7:54

kind of classic defenses. And I would love

7:56

it here, Dad, if you could give people

7:58

a couple of very practical things. examples of

8:01

what I'm talking about here. Well,

8:03

first let me say that that's a

8:05

wonderful summary in common sense terms. And

8:08

I do want to flag your highlighting

8:10

of anxiety, which is appropriate, while

8:13

acknowledging that sometimes

8:16

we enact a

8:18

defense to ward off

8:20

a dreaded experience or

8:22

to prevent risking a dreaded experience as you and I

8:24

have talked about. And sometimes

8:26

the dreaded experience is itself

8:29

anxiety. Very often though,

8:31

the anxiety is what Freud called

8:33

signal anxiety. It's the

8:35

anxiety in his framing, at

8:38

least originally, that we might experience

8:40

when something starts bubbling up from

8:43

below the waterline and starting to force

8:45

its way into consciousness to be known

8:47

and around which is a

8:49

lot of anxiety, which then enacts the

8:52

defense to shove it back down below

8:54

the waterline. Some examples,

8:56

gosh, there's so many

8:58

great ones. One of the

9:00

classic examples was what

9:02

was called glove paralysis in a

9:05

famous case of Freud's in which

9:08

a young woman presented as

9:10

being paralyzed in her, I

9:12

believe, right hand at the line

9:14

of the glove so that she could not

9:16

move her hand. And she was also, I

9:19

think, insensitive to being

9:21

touched on the hand,

9:24

but the territory that

9:26

was paralyzed did

9:28

not follow any standard nerve tracks.

9:30

So it must have been psychogenic,

9:32

that's a term, of

9:35

psychological origin. And in

9:37

the psychoanalysis of her,

9:39

it became revealed that her

9:42

extremely authoritarian jerk of a

9:44

father was a big bully

9:46

in their home. And here we are, 1910, 1905 maybe,

9:51

she wanted to slap him. So

9:54

the desire was to slap him.

9:56

And very often what we tend

9:58

to repress or enact

10:00

offenses against our desires of

10:03

various kinds with associated emotions.

10:06

So it's the desire that gets

10:08

suppressed. The desire was to whack

10:10

him. She could not tolerate that

10:12

desire, so then she enacted this

10:15

extreme form of defending against that

10:17

desire. That's a classic example, quite

10:20

extreme, much more common.

10:22

So let's suppose a

10:24

person has a view of

10:27

another person as really good,

10:29

maybe let's say

10:32

a spiritual teacher, a minister, and

10:34

then you hear somebody else

10:37

saying, well, you know, my

10:39

minister has been doing some creepy stuff with

10:41

me or trying to, you know, and

10:44

blah, there's denial. So

10:46

a funny kind of way of

10:48

thinking about defenses is in terms

10:50

of difficulty we have in terms

10:53

of PSJ's two models of cognition

10:55

with accommodating new information into familiar

10:57

structures that must be

10:59

shifted to receive that new information.

11:02

So that would be an interesting

11:04

example. Another one would be

11:07

someone who deep

11:09

down feels inadequate and weak

11:11

and pathetic and small

11:13

and manages that sometimes

11:16

based on the kind of culture

11:18

they're in, like male socialization, for

11:21

example, by compensating

11:23

for that underlying feeling of

11:25

inadequacy, but by becoming a

11:27

bully, by becoming domineering. And

11:30

there's actually a particular term for that

11:32

defense, which we'll get into a little

11:34

later. One last one,

11:36

I'll just say, let's suppose that you're

11:38

a kid, understandably, you're mad at your

11:41

parent, maybe your parent is overly critical

11:43

or overly punishing, makes you

11:45

feel small. So then, you know,

11:48

you see this in primates, the big

11:50

monkey picks on the medium sized monkey,

11:52

who then picks on the little monkey

11:54

displacement. So these are three common sense

11:56

examples. To give a

11:58

little bit of additional context, into this

12:00

and also help people who are listening learn

12:02

a little bit of terminology if they're interested

12:05

in this. So the concept of defenses, as

12:07

you were talking about earlier, was pioneered by

12:09

Sigmund Freud, but it was his daughter Anna

12:11

Freud that really went in and did a

12:13

lot more detailed work on it. Particularly she

12:15

wrote a book called The Ego and the

12:18

Mechanisms of Defense, which she wrote I think

12:20

in 1936. And she focused

12:22

particularly on these five different defenses, a few

12:24

of which you've already alluded to here. So

12:26

first is repression. If you're listening to a

12:29

podcast like this, you've probably heard of

12:31

repression before. And this is when we

12:33

block a thought or a feeling or

12:35

an impulse of one kind or another

12:37

from our conscious awareness. An example of

12:39

that could be blocking the memory of

12:41

a difficult experience that a person had,

12:44

or maybe even being unaware of these repressed

12:46

feelings like you were talking about in the

12:49

instance of the glove paralysis. The daughter had

12:51

these really intense feelings towards the father,

12:53

so she found this very intense form of

12:55

repression that led to her being unable to

12:58

access a part of her body even. Then

13:01

another example of a defense is regression. This

13:03

is when we revert to behaviors, typically of

13:05

kind of an earlier developmental stage. You might

13:07

think of somebody who is in a very

13:10

difficult circumstance, so they revert to soothing themselves

13:12

using mechanisms that might have been present for

13:14

them when they were a child. Third,

13:17

we have projection. And this is

13:19

attributing our own unacceptable thoughts or

13:22

feelings to other people. If

13:24

you have any involvement in political discourse

13:26

in any country, you have probably heard

13:29

the word projection before. Everybody constantly accuses

13:31

everybody else of projecting. We're

13:33

not going to get into that during this

13:35

episode, but you're probably familiar with that one.

13:37

Then fourth, it's the example that you gave before

13:39

that reaction formation. And this is behaving in

13:41

a way that's opposite to one's true feelings.

13:43

So you feel weak and puny, so you

13:45

act big and strong. And then

13:47

the fifth one that you really dug

13:49

into was called sublimation. And this is

13:51

a really important and kind of complex

13:53

one, because it's an example of a

13:55

more positive defense mechanism. And this is

13:58

when a person channels their those thoughts

14:00

and feelings that they might want to

14:02

repress, or

14:05

those aspects of personality that they fear

14:07

are more dark and socially

14:09

unacceptable into some productive

14:12

act. And

14:14

this is like the classic archetype of

14:17

the tortured artist, or maybe

14:19

in a more general modern pop

14:21

culture way, somebody who

14:23

has urges that are like violent or

14:25

aggressive in nature, who goes on to

14:27

become a professional athlete, or any other

14:29

example you can think of, where

14:32

we're sort of funneling that

14:34

energy into a more productive

14:36

environment, or using it in a more productive

14:38

way. Before I go on here, Dad, is there anything that you would

14:40

like to say about any of that? Yes. For

14:43

the person who is enacting the

14:46

defense, first, often,

14:49

the defense as a

14:51

solution to a previous

14:54

problem is actually increasingly

14:56

burdensome today. And routinely,

14:59

what brings people to therapy is

15:01

that, the way I put it, is

15:03

they're walking around in a suit of armor that's

15:05

three sizes too small. It

15:07

was a necessary means to various

15:09

functional ends, which we'll get into

15:11

more about when they were younger,

15:13

but now it's problematic. So the

15:15

defense itself is understood often in

15:18

a frame of being

15:20

costly. Maybe there's some benefits that

15:22

it achieves through its functions, but

15:24

there's some costs. Additionally, the

15:27

person, presumably, is

15:29

identified with the defense. The

15:31

defense makes sense to them, in the beginning at

15:33

least. They're largely unaware of its function. They

15:37

just seem to be that way,

15:41

and there's just not much they could do about it. I

15:44

would add one last little thing, which is

15:46

that in the title of her book is

15:48

implicit a key point here, which

15:50

is that she also really

15:52

started to identify healthy ego

15:54

functions of various kinds. And

15:57

so we have a sense of the ego. as

16:01

a core, we could think of

16:03

it even like a cluster of

16:06

functions that roughly coheres

16:09

that would be consistent with a kind of

16:11

Buddhist view. Okay, it's differentiated,

16:13

it's made of parts that are

16:15

connected and changing. Okay, but it

16:17

is a persistent cluster and without

16:19

having a functioning ego

16:21

in this broad sense, which is

16:23

different from being egotistical or arrogant

16:26

or conceited, superior, just its

16:28

normal functioning, without having that roughly

16:30

coherent cluster, person's in deep

16:32

trouble. All right, so you have that

16:35

coherent cluster and it needs

16:37

to manage, it needs to manage the

16:39

demands of the world coming from the

16:41

outside, it needs to manage these eruptions,

16:44

these volcanic eruptions from the lower depths

16:46

of the inner plumbing coming

16:49

in from the inside, right? And

16:51

the ego is doing this through

16:53

these various strategies. You could think

16:55

of a defense as a kind

16:57

of a strategy, a coping mechanism. So

17:00

you've referenced some terminology here, dad. You've

17:02

talked about the function of the ego.

17:04

We've also alluded to this more primal

17:06

aspect of personality that has all of

17:08

these unacceptable urges that we try to

17:10

manage, that's the id. This

17:12

terminology is built into

17:15

psychoanalysis and it's particularly tied to

17:17

Freud's model of the mind and

17:19

the consciousness and just like how

17:21

personality structure works inside somebody. Now,

17:24

some of this stuff is a little out

17:26

there in terms of the concept

17:28

of it. And I think that it's best understood

17:30

kind of conceptually more than

17:33

as a truth claim about the nature

17:35

of reality. That's how I personally approach

17:37

it. I'm not totally sure if we

17:39

all actually have these distinct aspects of

17:41

personality, super ego, ego and id inside

17:44

of all of us. That's a truth

17:46

claim that I'm not personally willing to

17:48

make but I do think that it's

17:50

a useful model and particularly is helpful

17:52

to understand how defenses function and what

17:54

their purpose is. So if we can

17:56

do it, I would love to take

17:58

like five minutes to do

18:00

a basic overview of this psychoanalytic terminology

18:02

and to let you just kind of

18:05

like run wild here a little bit,

18:07

particularly as it

18:09

pertains to what we're gonna be talking about in terms of

18:11

the function of psychological defenses. So do you think you're up

18:13

for that? Oh, sure. And I'll take

18:16

less than five minutes, I think. So my

18:18

own framing on this is to have

18:20

a lot of sympathy for the

18:23

beleaguered ego. And

18:25

by ego, I'm using that single word

18:28

as if it's a unitary entity. I

18:30

really mean it much more as a

18:32

dynamic, cohering cluster

18:35

of capabilities and

18:37

perspectives that loosely together

18:39

relate to the sense of the

18:41

interior eye. So

18:44

in that sympathetic framing, this

18:47

eye that also is

18:50

in a developmental model, Freud,

18:53

among his brilliant contributions, was to

18:55

really track the development of the

18:58

self through various stages

19:00

in early childhood, moving into the

19:02

teens and then adulthood, and

19:05

in which there is this

19:07

kind of developmental movement from

19:09

the infant baby who

19:12

is seen as pureed, raw, no

19:17

coherent sense of identity

19:19

yet, definitely no conscience,

19:22

no superego, if you will, and

19:25

gradually being socialized by

19:27

society. So

19:29

the child develops over time, and over

19:31

time needs to

19:33

acquire these various defenses.

19:36

And defenses are also stacked developmentally

19:39

in honor Freud's model from very,

19:41

very young defenses. Or

19:43

we could say if all else

19:45

fails, pull the ripcord on the

19:48

parachute defenses like dissociating entirely under

19:50

trauma. Those defenses

19:52

are where we start, but hopefully it's not where

19:54

we end up. And a lot

19:57

of the project of therapy is about

19:59

helping people develop. develop more mature defenses

20:02

and become a normal neurotic

20:06

in Freud's language. Okay,

20:08

so there's a developmental trajectory here,

20:11

and there's a sense of the

20:13

beleaguered eye who's

20:15

managing all these various pressures. Again,

20:18

pressures in this more

20:20

hydraulic model of functioning

20:22

with plumbing and forces

20:25

in the larger context of the

20:27

science, the cutting-edge science in the

20:29

1800s, there was a lot

20:32

about unseen forces and their dynamics with each

20:34

other. We have

20:36

then with regard to the sense

20:38

of the eye, ego functions,

20:41

executive functions we talk about a

20:43

lot today, self-regulation,

20:47

being deliberate, deliberate

20:49

control, willpower, you know, we have

20:51

a pretty common sense understanding of

20:53

ego. We also probably have

20:55

a pretty common sense experience

20:57

near, sense of our

21:01

conscience as well

21:03

as the shoulds that we internalize

21:05

from all kinds of other sources

21:07

as we grow up, some

21:10

of which over time we come

21:12

to see are actually pretty wise, and

21:14

over time others we come to see are, oh

21:17

no, that was a

21:20

load of hooey, I'm not going

21:22

to believe that anymore. So we

21:24

have a sense of the shoulds,

21:26

conscience, shoulds, societal standards. We can

21:28

think of cultures like

21:31

Vienna in 1910, Victoria and

21:33

England, maybe some other cultures

21:36

in which there's a very strict sense of

21:39

propriety. Okay, that's

21:41

superego territory. Then

21:44

the id, the id

21:47

is a little harder to get at because by

21:49

its very nature it's that which is

21:54

more outside the realm of language, it's

21:57

more what we tend to be kind of a

22:00

afraid of because it could get us into

22:02

trouble. There are a

22:04

lot of societal prescriptions against

22:07

displaying id

22:09

kind of stuff. You know, it's a

22:11

little harder to understand, but that's sad.

22:13

I think we

22:16

can all have a direct

22:18

experience of the

22:22

emerging raw emotion in

22:25

certain situations, that

22:27

particularly raw emotion that's full

22:29

of desire. And

22:33

we can also have a sense

22:36

of an amorality, even

22:38

a more feral quality in

22:41

ourselves. You know, the

22:43

id territory is really generative.

22:45

It's a major source of

22:48

our passions and

22:50

our sense of aliveness. You

22:52

know, the superego is pretty

22:54

deadening. So it's

22:57

important to be able to find ways

22:59

to integrate. That's a lot of what

23:01

this project is about. It's about integration.

23:03

And Freud was dealing with people who

23:06

had warded off, if you will, intensive

23:09

superego elements and also

23:11

warded off id-like elements.

23:13

And the psycho-analytic project

23:15

a lot was about

23:18

bringing into the light that which had

23:21

previously been in the shadows and

23:23

fostering a greater sense of integration

23:25

and balance overall. And

23:27

then, of course, just to finish, we

23:29

had people like Jung who came in

23:31

and in effect was saying, well, the

23:35

framing here is that the

23:37

id is nasty and

23:39

has to be regulated. And then Jung

23:41

came along and said, well, wait a

23:43

second. A lot of what

23:46

you're calling id is

23:48

incredibly rich, archetypal

23:50

material, nonverbal

23:54

imagination, depths

23:57

of intuition. Really, good

24:00

stuff in there, don't be so quick to

24:03

frame the id in a

24:05

very kind of nasty inner

24:07

colonialism kind of frame. I

24:10

think that's really interesting, Dad, and I want to

24:12

take what you've said so far about this, which

24:14

is very much seeped both in

24:17

the history of psychoanalysis and the history

24:19

of psychology, where I think that

24:21

there's a certain—I forget

24:23

the exact phrase, but there's

24:26

a kind of secular recapitulation here

24:28

of what you're talking about between the

24:31

history inside of this one moment and the

24:33

history of psychology as— Oh, that's great.

24:36

I think you're doing— There's some phrase that you've

24:38

had. —a philogony— A philogony something. Or

24:40

ontogeny. Ontogeny, something about that. Anyways, okay, sorry.

24:42

We've lost like half of our illustrations now.

24:45

They're gone. They're out the window.

24:48

They're like, what the heck are these guys talking

24:50

about? Anyways. Wait, wait, let's talk about

24:52

fractal holograms. No, no, no, no. We're

24:54

good. We're good. We're good, better than enough.

24:56

We've got to maintain some semblance of audience

24:58

here, and I appreciate everybody who's hanging on

25:00

before we get to actual functional material about

25:02

what we could do about all of this

25:05

mess, but I want to

25:07

relate some of what we're saying here to

25:09

the topic of psychological defenses, in part because

25:11

when I was learning about this, I just

25:13

found it super fascinating. So, let's refer to

25:15

the ad as like our instinctual urges for

25:17

simplicity here. And also out

25:20

of a desire to give it, like you're

25:22

saying, a slightly more positive connotation than in

25:24

the manner that it's typically talked about. Like

25:27

we can think of a baby as being mostly id, if

25:29

you want to talk about it that way, right?

25:32

It's this sort of just experienced desire.

25:35

If you feel sad, you cry. If

25:37

you're hungry, you look for

25:39

food, whatever it is. And

25:41

as you've said a couple of times during this

25:43

conversation, dad, a lot of the

25:45

desires, particularly contextually in the cultural milieu

25:48

that Freud was talking about were sexual

25:50

in nature. They were repressed

25:52

sexual urges. So with that as

25:54

context, let's just talk about it as instinct. So

25:57

we've got this thing inside of us

25:59

that's got all of these instincts. desires.

26:01

But we have these other parts of

26:03

us, particularly the superego that functions as

26:05

that kind of like internalized societal standard.

26:07

We can think about it maybe that

26:09

way. And accompanying the superego are

26:11

all of these ideals for who we hope

26:13

we actually are, who we wish to be

26:15

at some point. And then we've

26:17

got that beleaguered ego who's trying

26:20

to compromise between our moral conscience

26:22

on the one hand and these

26:24

instinctual urges on the other. And

26:26

so how does it do that, right? The it has

26:28

all of this energy. Some of that

26:31

energy is productive. Some of it is maybe

26:33

less productive and less appropriate for a whole

26:35

bunch of different reasons, but it's

26:37

all energy. And that energy has to be managed

26:39

in some kind of way. You can't just bottle

26:41

it up forever. And when

26:43

the ego can't resolve that conflict

26:46

between the superego and the it,

26:48

we start to get anxious. We start to

26:50

freak out a little bit. We feel the

26:52

energy bubbling up in ways that we're uncomfortable

26:55

with. And this is

26:57

when the psychological defenses come in, in

26:59

terms of that classic psychoanalytic sort of

27:01

Freudian framework, right? And those

27:03

defenses allow us to do two things.

27:05

First, they allow us to express out

27:07

some of the it's energy and more

27:09

acceptable ways. We think about things like

27:11

sublimation. And then second,

27:14

they help us keep

27:16

the parts of ourselves that we don't

27:18

like further outside of

27:20

awareness. If you think about those

27:23

aspects of denial or projection, or

27:25

maybe an example

27:27

of let's say like a student fails a test,

27:30

there are a lot of different reasons that

27:32

they might have failed that test, right? And, you

27:34

know, they might all be true to some extent. But a

27:36

big reason was maybe that that student just didn't study that

27:38

much, didn't do as much work as they should have done.

27:41

But they don't necessarily go there. They

27:43

go to my teacher was bad, and

27:45

the other kids weren't knowing me and

27:47

I had a headache and I was

27:50

late that day and, and, and, and

27:52

there's always another explanation. And this is

27:54

a form of a psychological defense that

27:56

helps somebody not see some

27:58

aspect about themselves or some. that they did

28:01

in a true light, but also in one that stings

28:03

a little bit on the way down. And

28:05

then as we were saying that part of the process

28:07

here is moving to more productive or more useful forms

28:10

of defense and away from ones

28:12

that have more costs associated with them.

28:14

Now that's a very psychoanalytic way of approaching

28:17

this whole question, right? And maybe a more

28:19

like modern framework, a little bit more behavioral,

28:21

a little bit more social-emotional. Defenses

28:23

are just things that help us solve

28:25

different important emotional problems. And

28:28

this means that they are highly functional for

28:30

us. They exist for reasons. Your defenses are

28:32

there for good reasons. My defenses are there

28:34

for good reasons. And we all have defenses

28:37

because they help us manage different difficult emotions

28:39

and feel better about ourselves. We all want

28:41

to feel a little better about ourselves, right?

28:44

And what I really want to emphasize here

28:46

at the end of this little mini monologue

28:48

is the functional nature of all of this.

28:51

Anything that we try to do from here on out

28:54

to teach about or learn about our defenses

28:56

is not intended as a way to remove

28:58

them from a person. The

29:00

question is how do we get to the same end

29:03

using more productive means? Yeah.

29:06

One of the things I like about integrating

29:09

and combining psychoanalytically

29:11

informed approaches with

29:14

cognitive behavioral manifestations

29:17

is that we're taking into account

29:19

both the depths of people and

29:22

the really important surface

29:25

expressions in changes of behavior

29:27

in the real world. So

29:30

I'll just mention a couple of additional

29:32

defenses, a couple that are on a

29:35

Freud's list and a couple I'll add.

29:37

One is the whole idea of

29:40

altruism being driven by an attempt

29:42

to push away feeling bad by

29:45

trying to do things that make

29:47

you feel good. And

29:49

one of the problems I want

29:51

to name with focus on defenses

29:54

is that it can pathologize all

29:56

kinds of things that are beautiful and wonderful in us that really help us to come

29:58

together. And I think that's a good thing. really call for

30:01

a much simpler explanation. If

30:03

we just say to somebody who's being generous

30:05

and kind to others, oh, you're just doing

30:07

that because it makes you feel good, well,

30:12

yeah, happily, biologically, we

30:14

evolved ways to feel

30:16

good when we are

30:18

kind to others. Thank

30:20

you, Mother Nature. And

30:23

that's not the primary reason why

30:25

people do it. So to minimize

30:28

and reduce the nobility of their

30:30

impulse to be kind to others,

30:32

too, well, it's just a form

30:35

of selfishness, who on you?

30:37

Just this really not good. So we have

30:40

to be a little careful about, again,

30:42

getting overincorporating

30:45

into the psychoanalytic model which

30:47

does tend to load fairly

30:49

heavily on an emphasis on

30:51

that which is sort of nasty inside us that

30:53

we're just trying to manage as best we can.

30:56

There's a lot of wonderfulness and nobility

30:59

inside us that we're also expressing as

31:01

best we can. Okay, another one

31:03

that I want to name that was not

31:05

an honor for us, the

31:07

original list, is this notion

31:10

of splitting. And the

31:12

fundamental idea, again, in this developmental model,

31:14

is that the young child is

31:17

not very capable of ambivalence. Basically,

31:20

there's good mommy and

31:22

bad mommy, good daddy, bad daddy,

31:24

they're split. But then

31:27

with time, the child moves from

31:29

that initial sense of splitting into

31:31

a more mature sense of ambivalence

31:33

in which they see their parent,

31:36

let's say, as a whole mosaic

31:38

with many, many good qualities and

31:41

some problematic ones. Okay, in

31:44

the splitting, one

31:46

thing that can happen deep down inside

31:49

is that a child will need

31:51

to preserve a sense of, I'll

31:53

use this one, good mommy, which

31:56

then gets split off from

32:00

neglectful mommy and

32:03

is held on to deep inside

32:06

the child, very protected, very defended

32:08

to maintain some kind

32:10

of contact with a sense

32:12

of a good mommy underneath it all for the

32:14

sake of the child's own development. So the child

32:16

is then split off that aspect

32:18

of the parent in order

32:20

to maintain some kind of relationship with the

32:23

parent. And then later in life

32:25

a person may be able to function

32:27

quite well, as I said, maybe

32:30

in a business environment that doesn't

32:32

trigger, doesn't activate this young material,

32:34

but in their intimate personal

32:36

relationships, including mate relationships, that

32:39

sort of replicate family-type

32:41

relationships, there's this tendency

32:44

to split all

32:46

good, all bad representations of their

32:48

partner, maybe by

32:50

starting out by idealizing them, that's

32:53

the good partner, and then over

32:55

time devaluing them,

32:58

knocking them off their pedestal,

33:00

and seeing them as entirely bad. So that

33:02

would be a kind of

33:04

defense that's not uncommon, particularly when

33:07

you're dealing with people with narcissistic

33:09

or borderline tendencies in

33:11

their relationships. The other defense that is

33:13

not really named is more of an

33:15

interpersonal defense, this idea of

33:18

preserving an optimal distance with other people.

33:20

So to defend against the

33:22

uncomfortable feelings that arise with

33:24

growing closeness, people will do

33:26

various things to distance interpersonally.

33:29

Intellectualizing, joking, picking

33:31

a quarrel, doing

33:34

a geographic where they move away,

33:38

or reduce contact with the other

33:40

person, that's another kind of a

33:42

defense. Great, I think that

33:44

those are really helpful examples for people to know, and

33:47

it's also just kind of fascinating stuff, right? Like all

33:49

the different ways that our

33:52

mind or psyche finds to

33:54

compartmentalize information or to preserve

33:57

our emotions and regulate them to help us deal with

33:59

them. with anxiety. And I think it

34:01

does just really emphasize the idea

34:04

that these are these are functional things

34:06

that are happening inside of us. They have

34:08

purposes, they're useful in nature. And our defenses

34:10

play a really crucial role in maintaining our

34:13

mental health and they help us deal

34:15

with life and manage stress and even

34:18

stabilize our sense of who we

34:20

are, particularly for people who

34:22

maybe are, as you've said, in previous episodes

34:25

of the podcast ad, a little

34:27

bit less tightly cohered, they have a little

34:29

bit more space inside of their personality structure.

34:32

And so our goal isn't to overcome

34:35

our defenses in some way here,

34:37

it's to move to more adaptive

34:39

forms of coping. Because while

34:41

these defenses are functional in nature, they're

34:44

often kind of maladaptive in behavior, right?

34:46

Because they rely often on the

34:48

manipulation of reality. They're just not based

34:50

on pure one to one interpretation

34:52

of reality, seeing things clearly like the

34:55

example that you gave a splitting their

34:57

dad, there's a twisting of reality

34:59

in some way, we're breaking this individual

35:01

into these two separate parts. And we know

35:03

that that's not actually true. They're

35:06

really one whole cohered person, but it's

35:08

just hard for us to wrap our

35:11

minds around that emotionally. And

35:13

so this means that our defenses can put stress on

35:15

our relationships. I've definitely had that happen in my life.

35:18

And they often stop us from dealing

35:20

with the real problems that we have

35:22

because we've kind of taken this protective

35:25

emotional shortcut, rather than

35:28

really facing reality. And

35:31

so something that I want to ask you

35:33

about is clinically working with somebody around these

35:35

kinds of issues. How do you

35:37

get in here? Because one of the problems with

35:39

our defenses is that they're often automatic

35:42

or somewhat unconscious in nature,

35:44

and they can be very

35:46

slippery, like they're, they're

35:48

tied to a sort of interpretation

35:51

of reality that is held

35:53

too strongly while also not

35:56

really being totally true. They're

35:58

also tied to a lot of shame material. We've talked

36:00

about the impulses of the ed as being

36:02

kind of uncouth or unclean in these different

36:04

ways, and people don't want to see

36:07

that. They don't want to see those aspects about themselves.

36:09

So I'm wondering when you're working with people, how do

36:11

you start to work with this stuff? In

36:13

a way, I think of the four

36:16

stages of any kind of learning.

36:20

And one way this is

36:22

described is that you start

36:24

out with unconscious incompetence, and

36:26

then second, conscious incompetence, third,

36:28

conscious competence, and fourth, unconscious

36:30

competence. So to track that,

36:32

I want to give an

36:34

example here of

36:37

one in which I've seen fairly often when

36:40

I was working in schools a

36:42

lot, where there would be a

36:44

parent, and often a

36:46

male parent when you think about gender

36:48

socialization, who

36:50

themselves had their

36:53

own soft, vulnerable,

36:57

maybe sad, hurt

37:00

feelings, attacked, suppressed, punished,

37:02

shamed, and so forth when they were

37:04

a child. So those

37:07

feelings then became repressed, warded

37:10

off, held at bay. And

37:12

along with that, this father

37:16

internalized the contempt

37:19

that he experienced as a boy for

37:22

crying or breaking down or wetting his

37:24

pants or something like that as a

37:26

young boy, and

37:28

developed a kind of contempt

37:31

himself for those parts within

37:33

himself. Barely

37:36

standard process. And then becoming

37:38

a father when his own

37:40

son as a first grader,

37:42

let's say, or a fourth grader

37:45

or eighth grader was

37:48

expressing vulnerability, was feeling sad,

37:50

was feeling hurt, was breaking

37:52

down, was crying, say. The

37:55

father defended against the

37:57

upwelling in kind of simple ways.

37:59

sympathetic resonance inside

38:02

himself of those

38:04

feelings that he had shoved down

38:06

into the basement that were getting

38:08

stirred up by his son acting

38:11

in those ways. And then the

38:13

father would go overboard in being

38:16

contemptuous of those feelings in

38:18

his son and being critical

38:20

and punishing about them as

38:22

he learned to do when he was young, when other people

38:24

did that to him. We

38:27

can understand this example and

38:29

we can understand it in a sympathetic

38:31

way for all the players. You

38:33

know, the boy the father once was, the pain

38:36

of the father right now doing things that

38:39

are problematic and going to create issues over

38:41

time with his own son and the experience

38:43

of the son. How

38:45

do we help this person? Very

38:48

often we start with someone, as

38:50

I said earlier, coming in because

38:52

a solution to previous

38:55

issues is now a problem.

38:58

Maybe we talk about court-ordered

39:01

therapy, this could be spousal-ordered

39:03

therapy. So the

39:05

father's now in the office. What do you do?

39:08

And you start to unpack, you start to understand

39:10

the situation. And initially you tend

39:12

to run into a lot of justifications. And

39:16

the father's hardly aware of, I'm just being

39:18

normal. You should have seen my dad, let's

39:21

say. So this is the

39:23

first stage of unconscious incompetence. And

39:25

I say incompetence because it's kind of a neutral way to put

39:27

it. It's just not

39:29

skillful. There are more skillful ways.

39:32

That's what we're looking for. So initially

39:34

it's just happening. The person's

39:36

not even aware of it happening. They're definitely

39:38

not aware of the worded-off material. And

39:42

I've had people who had described to

39:44

me fabulous childhood initially. But when you

39:46

start to really unpack it, you hear

39:48

all this sort of stuff. Like,

39:50

what? Your father hits you multiple times

39:53

a week? What? You

39:55

know, your mom was on tranquilizers

39:57

and just kind of useless.

40:00

by the time you got out from school in the afternoon, what? You

40:03

were in a military family and you moved

40:05

every year, so you never had any kind

40:07

of stable friend group. You could take refuge

40:09

in, what? Your

40:12

beloved grandmother died when you were six

40:14

years old and everything changed after that.

40:16

You just start hearing a whole story

40:18

here. But the person is completely unaware

40:21

of it. They're unconscious, stage one. So

40:23

then you've asked me, how do you help the

40:25

person? And now to move through

40:28

the process, one of the really important

40:30

things to do is to start by

40:32

joining with the defense, not

40:34

tearing the scab off the wound,

40:37

not ripping away the exoskeleton,

40:41

the scaffolding the person has acquired,

40:43

not dragging them out of the

40:45

leaky rowboat that is a

40:47

functioning vehicle and they know no other so

40:50

far, but to start by really appreciating the

40:52

importance of what they're trying to accomplish. So

40:55

you join with them and you gradually surface it.

40:58

And along the way, you're trying to resource

41:00

someone so that they can tolerate the

41:02

grief, the sorrow of

41:05

the cost to them and to

41:07

those they love of their

41:09

defenses being enacted and also

41:11

the defended against material that's

41:13

really hard to be with.

41:16

And at that point, the person is in the conscious

41:19

incompetence stage. They're increasingly

41:21

aware of the operation of

41:23

the defense. They're still yelling at their

41:26

kid, even though they hate themselves for

41:28

doing it and they apologize

41:30

afterward, but they're still doing it. Then

41:33

you start moving increasingly into the

41:35

third stage of getting more and

41:37

more deliberate regulation of

41:39

what's happening in part

41:41

by just helping people practice

41:43

other ways of being and

41:46

developing supporting characteristics like mindfulness

41:48

and self-compassion, which are good

41:50

general purpose factors, developing

41:53

examples of how to be a

41:56

good father, even in kind of

41:58

classic gender normative ways. which

42:01

are much more nurturing and encouraging and

42:03

let go of the really heavily toxic

42:06

aspect of contempt and disdain for that

42:08

which is arising in another person, which

42:10

is very toxic. And then you start

42:13

moving over time into that fourth stage

42:15

in which these new ways of being

42:17

become more and more automatic. The

42:20

person starts moving from states

42:23

of more sophisticated

42:25

defenses or more sophisticated functional

42:27

forms of co-pending experiences of

42:30

that and those become increasingly

42:32

internalized as new habits, new

42:35

traits of a new way to be. And

42:37

that's kind of the broad trajectory, I think,

42:40

of a lot of effective therapy

42:42

and it's a trajectory that people

42:44

in therapy or in different

42:46

kinds of personal growth in general can

42:48

really help themselves move through with

42:50

a lot of sympathy for themselves and support

42:53

during that kind of nasty second stage

42:57

in which, gosh, you're aware

43:00

of your stuff and you just can't stop

43:02

doing it. If you're listening to

43:05

a podcast like ours, you probably care about

43:07

your long-term health and well-being. And

43:09

most people know that what they eat today affects

43:11

how they feel tomorrow. But what if

43:13

I told you that it could also affect

43:15

how you feel in 10 or even 20

43:17

years? The science of nutrition is evolving rapidly

43:20

and it's easy to get a bit overwhelmed

43:22

by all the information out there. If you

43:24

want to wise up about your health, check

43:26

out the Zoe Science and Nutrition Podcast. With

43:29

the help of world-leading scientists, they

43:31

help you make smarter health choices every

43:33

week. An episode of Being While I

43:36

Still Think About was my conversation with

43:38

Dr. Tim Spector a few years ago.

43:40

He's a professor of genetic epidemiology and

43:42

the scientific co-founder at Zoe. And the

43:45

Zoe Science and Nutrition Podcast is truly

43:47

one of the best resources out there

43:49

when it comes to this stuff. But

43:51

don't just take my word for it.

43:54

Avid podcast fan Joanne's Apple review says

43:56

Zoe Science and Nutrition is always informative

43:58

and always understandable. understandable, and

44:01

that she's definitely a healthier person listening to this

44:03

and following Zoe's advice. If

44:05

you're ready to join millions of others

44:07

like Joanne transforming their health, then

44:10

search for Zoe's science and nutrition

44:12

wherever you listen to podcasts. If

44:16

you have sensitive or acne-prone skin like I

44:18

do, you know how hard it can be

44:20

to find a product that doesn't cause irritation.

44:23

But today's sponsor One Skin makes things

44:25

easy. Their topical supplements

44:27

are formulated with soothing ingredients and

44:29

natural antioxidants. Plus,

44:31

they're gentle enough to use every

44:33

day. One Skin's products are backed

44:35

by extensive lab and clinical data

44:37

to validate their efficacy and safety

44:39

on all skin types. Not

44:42

only that, they're the first and only

44:44

skin longevity company to target cellular senescence.

44:46

This is a key hallmark of aging.

45:01

OneSkin keeps your skin looking and

45:03

acting younger for longer. Get

45:05

started today with 15% off

45:07

using code BEINGWELL at oneskin.co.

45:12

That's 15% off, oneskin.co. After

45:18

you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard

45:20

about them. Please support our show and tell

45:22

them we sent you. The summer

45:25

vibes are just getting started, honeys. Shape

45:27

your life with Honey Love. honeylove.com/mindful.

45:33

That's right. Shopify is the sound

45:35

of selling everywhere online, in-store, on

45:37

social media, and beyond. Shopify

45:40

POS is your command center for

45:42

your retail store. From accepting payments

45:44

to managing inventory, Shopify

45:47

has everything you need. With Shopify,

45:49

you get a powerhouse selling partner

45:51

that effortlessly unites your in-person and

45:54

online sales into one streamlined

45:56

and integrated source of information.

45:58

Track every single one of your sales. sale across your

46:00

business in one place and know exactly

46:03

what's in stock whenever you need to.

46:06

Connect with customers in line and online.

46:09

Shopify helps you drive store traffic

46:11

with plug and play tools built

46:13

for effective marketing campaigns on TikTok,

46:15

Instagram, or wherever else you're trying

46:17

to sell. Shopify's

46:19

sleek, reliable POS hardware takes every

46:22

major payment method and looks great

46:24

while doing it. Stand up for a

46:26

$1 per month

46:28

trial period at shopify.com/BeingWell

46:31

all lowercase. Go to

46:33

shopify.com/BeingWell to take your retail

46:36

business to the next level

46:38

today. shopify.com/BeingWell.

46:43

So as we become more aware of

46:45

this material over time, and

46:48

alongside that we start to see

46:51

our behavior a little bit more

46:53

clearly, including the aspects of it that we're

46:55

not super proud of for

46:58

a whole bunch of different reasons. It's

47:00

really easy for people to

47:04

become sidelined by feelings of shame

47:06

or guilt related to their behavior,

47:09

related to those impulses that are

47:11

bubbling up inside of them. And

47:15

the reactions to that

47:18

often, but not always, fall into one

47:21

of two difficult buckets

47:23

for people. The

47:25

pain is felt, it solidifies

47:27

the defense, and it makes the defense even

47:29

harder to work with. Yeah.

47:33

Bucket one. Or the second bucket, it just

47:35

becomes totally destabilizing. Person

47:37

collapses, big emotional upheaval,

47:39

you can no

47:41

longer kind of get in there with them

47:43

either as a therapist or just as another person.

47:45

And whenever they touch the hot stove, it's just

47:47

too hot for them. Thankfully

47:50

there are responses that don't fall into those two

47:53

buckets, but those are very, very common buckets here.

47:55

And I'm wondering how you

47:57

help people work with those feelings.

50:00

are responsible for their

50:02

enactments and their effects on you

50:04

and others, and you have tremendous

50:06

agency. You may have

50:09

been helpless as a one-year-old or a

50:11

one-day-old or a 10-year-old in the acquisition

50:13

of these ways of being, but today

50:15

you're not helpless, and there's a lot

50:17

of wonderful things you can do

50:19

and we can do together, quote-unquote,

50:21

the coach or the therapist with

50:23

the client on these sorts of things. So

50:26

those, I think, are really,

50:28

really helpful. The

50:30

other thing I wanted to say about all this is

50:32

that a kind of humor

50:35

is really quite helpful. We're not laughing

50:37

at the person, we're laughing

50:39

with the person, and I'm

50:41

going to tell a story that I believe I've

50:43

told in the podcast, but it was numerous years

50:45

ago, so I'll just tell it again briefly. So

50:48

I took the S training from,

50:50

created by Werner Herrhard in 1975,

50:53

and my wife, your mother, Jan, did

50:56

it as well. And one of the

50:59

experiential processes in the S

51:01

training was, I'm going

51:04

to use a word here, the asshole

51:06

process in which you

51:08

basically, I think vaguely, would have partners

51:10

and you would tell each other what

51:12

assholes the other person was, and the

51:15

frame is we're all assholes, we're

51:17

all assholes. And there was this

51:19

moment when you're at the dinner

51:21

table, I think you might have been around nine

51:23

or so, or 10 or

51:25

11, Laurel, nearly three years younger,

51:28

and for some reason, your mom and I

51:30

were joking about this. And

51:33

I said to her, yeah, Jan, you're

51:35

an asshole. And then she said,

51:37

yeah, Rick, you're an asshole too. And I

51:39

think I might have said, yeah, of course, you

51:41

too, we're all assholes here. And there's

51:43

something about lightening up about it. We're

51:45

lightening up about it. Yeah, we're all

51:47

neurotic. We all have stuff. We're all

51:50

works in progress. We're all a

51:52

hot mess. And there's a kind of humor

51:54

that can come in here that's often furthered

51:56

by the therapist or coaches

51:59

on self-disclosure. I

52:01

think that's a really good ad, and that's

52:03

a great list and very helpful for people.

52:05

The common humanity aspect of this is, I

52:07

think, a big piece of it, that seeing

52:09

the ways in which we all have material

52:11

of some kind, that doesn't mean that all

52:13

of our material is the same. I

52:15

don't want to create a false equivalence here, but

52:17

everybody's got something. We've all got something

52:20

we're not proud of. We've all got an urge or

52:22

an impulse or a desire or a thought that appears

52:24

from time to time where they're like, whoa, that's a

52:26

lot. A lot

52:28

of being a mature person is not getting

52:30

to a point where those thoughts go to

52:33

zero. It's getting

52:35

to a place with them where we

52:37

are not burdened by them and we're

52:40

able to turn

52:43

that energy into more useful energy in

52:45

different ways in our lives. It's that

52:47

whole concept of sublimation again. I think

52:49

that there are some basic

52:51

resources that tend to support people in

52:53

doing that. I want to ask

52:55

you about one of them because it's a little fraught here. It's

52:58

this notion of distress tolerance. If

53:03

you think about defenses in general, what are they trying to do?

53:05

They're trying to shield us from discomfort. The

53:08

more comfortable that we become with

53:11

a degree of emotional discomfort, the

53:13

less necessary a sophisticated psychological

53:15

defense mechanism is because we can just

53:18

be more okay with feeling a little

53:20

not okay about whatever's going on.

53:23

Distress tolerance has a complicated history as

53:26

an idea. It's been

53:28

used in some circumstances to talk

53:30

people into feeling more okay about

53:32

circumstances that are absolutely not okay

53:34

in their lives or to go

53:37

like, hey, you just need to develop more distress tolerance

53:39

when the reality is like, no, the person needs to

53:41

get out of the situation that they're in. Emphasizing

53:44

it can be a little tricky. But

53:46

I do wonder about that as a piece

53:48

of this and as the sense of self

53:50

as a whole is able to cohere a

53:52

little bit, become a little stronger,

53:54

a little bit more tightly knit together. There

53:57

is more of a sense of underlying

53:59

self worth. self-esteem, all

54:01

of a sudden these threats to self

54:04

become smaller by comparison.

54:07

And they have

54:09

less and less of an impact on

54:11

us that requires that we move into

54:14

some kind of an elaborate psychological coping mechanism.

54:16

For starters, I'm just wondering what you think

54:18

about that. And if you

54:20

think of it's relevant here, I'm wondering

54:22

what a person could do to develop

54:24

more of that. Well,

54:27

the effort altogether

54:30

to become more

54:32

integrated, to make

54:35

more room for all of ourselves, all

54:37

the aspects of ourselves, all

54:39

of our parts using

54:42

internal family systems language or making room

54:44

for the id, making room for the

54:47

superego, making room for the

54:49

multiple ego functions, making room for all

54:51

of that, that's really,

54:53

really important. In my example

54:55

of the father, he could

54:58

not make room as a

55:00

boy, understandably, for his soft,

55:02

hurting, sad, crying parts or

55:05

aspects. But now as an

55:07

adult, he needs to make more room for them

55:09

inside himself, so he can make more room for

55:11

them and other people. And there's an important point

55:13

here that we

55:15

push away in others that which

55:18

we push away in ourselves and vice versa,

55:20

which gives us opportunities in both

55:22

domains to become more integrated, to

55:24

become more spacious and

55:26

present with and able to stay

55:29

in place with qualities

55:31

in other people, by which I do

55:33

not mean letting other people mistreat you. But

55:36

being able to be more spacious there, that

55:38

can help you be more spacious with that

55:40

material inside yourself and vice versa. So that's

55:42

a broad aspect. And it

55:45

really goes to things like getting more

55:47

in touch with our bodies, because a

55:49

lot of what we repress are just

55:51

sensations and various somatic

55:53

markers, like Damasio has talked

55:55

about. We wake down, not

55:57

just wake up, as my friend, Samuel Bonder, puts it.

55:59

But as also a kind

56:01

of metaphor that I think of is

56:03

that when we're young, who

56:06

we are is like a vast estate

56:09

with beautiful sunlit meadows and

56:11

kind of nasty smelly swamps

56:14

where some creepy things really

56:17

do live. And here we are, we enter

56:21

into life and we start

56:23

being shamed or criticized or we see

56:25

models around us in which we're not,

56:27

we're supposed to not have those aspects

56:29

where we're supposed to live entirely in

56:32

the sunny meadows. And

56:34

so gradually we withdraw

56:36

from our entire estate.

56:39

And in my imagery, we end up

56:41

in the gatekeeper's cottage, living

56:43

in a very small part of ourselves, peering

56:46

out through the windows, continually

56:48

managing and underlying anxiety

56:52

that the barbarians are gonna be at the gates.

56:56

And yet all the while they're

56:58

already in the building,

57:01

which really adds to that sense of anxiety.

57:03

And so part of the opportunity

57:05

as we grow older is

57:07

to reclaim our interior, to reclaim

57:10

all of who we are and

57:12

to both hand, both tolerate the

57:15

distress or the painful

57:17

feelings or problematic desires,

57:20

we're tolerate them, we can accept

57:22

them, we include them. As Tarabrak

57:25

puts it, this too belongs while

57:27

also regulating them and encouraging other

57:29

aspects of ourself that also may

57:31

well have been disowned. One of

57:34

the primary things I repressed in

57:36

my family system was love. So,

57:39

we repress all kinds of things, not

57:41

just let's say the desire to whack

57:44

our father in the face because he's

57:46

a jerk. So that's

57:48

very important, it's very important

57:51

to do this. So

57:53

then the how of it, certainly

57:56

being able to calm yourself, being

57:58

able to be mindful. being

58:01

able to bring compassion to these

58:03

warded off, disowned parts of yourself,

58:05

that's really important. It

58:08

can help to recognize other people who you

58:10

like or who are sort of like you

58:12

or you look up to, and

58:14

you can kind of see yourself in them. They're not

58:17

so evolved

58:19

or esteemed that you

58:21

just can't identify with them. People you

58:23

can identify with who are more integrated,

58:25

who are more able to include these

58:28

feelings and desires and manage them and

58:30

even kind of laugh about them or

58:33

make room for them without being a jerk about it.

58:36

If you can see yourself in them,

58:39

then you can imagine also being

58:41

more and more that way yourself. And

58:44

then I would just say last in terms of finding

58:47

your way here, taking

58:49

the first step of

58:51

being a little open, safely

58:54

open with someone, a therapist,

58:56

a friend, a teacher, a partner, and

58:58

say, you

59:01

know, I know that I need

59:03

to fill in the blank,

59:06

and I'll speak for myself here. Gosh,

59:10

I need to get more in touch with

59:14

my emotions categorically.

59:18

I need to be more in touch

59:20

with my own body, below

59:22

the neck. Oh, I

59:25

need to not be so, I

59:28

need to not resort to intellectualization,

59:31

one of the major defenses, as

59:33

a way to get away from my actual

59:36

feelings. I need to learn ways to feel

59:38

them while I'm saying them. And

59:41

you declare those kinds of things to people

59:43

who care about you and who can understand

59:45

what you're saying, are not gonna

59:47

run screaming out the door. Whoa, what a

59:49

whack job, you know? Then

59:51

that can be a really useful thing too. I

59:54

think that social support aspect that you're highlighting

59:56

here is really important. Because again,

59:58

offenses are... ways that we respond

1:00:01

to stress and anxiety and much of the stress

1:00:03

and anxiety that we face in life is social,

1:00:05

right? It's based on other people. So

1:00:07

if we're able to feel like we

1:00:10

can be in a relationship with more people in

1:00:12

a safe way or we can be seen in

1:00:14

some kind of way by others while also being

1:00:16

supported by them, we need

1:00:18

to rely on those defenses less because we feel

1:00:21

more stable. So building stronger and

1:00:23

more authentic relationships can be a great way into

1:00:25

this. To add a couple of other

1:00:27

things, I think that just some basic interpersonal skills

1:00:29

development can be really helpful for people. Many

1:00:32

of the problematic forms of defense that

1:00:35

people have are trying to protect

1:00:37

us from really

1:00:39

painful experiences inside of

1:00:41

our relationships and our friends, family, significant

1:00:43

others, things like that. So

1:00:45

as we develop better interpersonal skills, including

1:00:48

communication skills, the ability to express our

1:00:50

needs, ask for things for other people,

1:00:52

draw clearer boundaries, all of that stuff,

1:00:55

we gain the tools that help us

1:00:57

interact in more skillful ways. And without

1:00:59

relying on those maladaptive defenses so much.

1:01:02

And then finally, I would toss in again, finding healthy

1:01:05

outlets. So sublimation, this

1:01:07

positive coping mechanism is based on

1:01:09

the conversion of energy from one

1:01:11

thing to another. More problematic

1:01:13

forms of energy get funneled into

1:01:15

more useful pursuits. So this

1:01:18

could look like anything. This could look

1:01:20

like exercising, doing different forms of art,

1:01:22

dancing for somebody like me, pursuing a hobby

1:01:25

with intensity, dedicating yourself to one kind of

1:01:27

cause or another. Whatever it is that you're

1:01:29

engaging in that is bringing you joy along

1:01:31

the way, I think can be a great

1:01:34

way to funnel some of that energy into

1:01:36

more useful pursuits for a person. And along

1:01:38

the way, you're just going to feel better

1:01:40

about yourself. You're going to develop positive

1:01:43

aspects of self-concept that make you feel more

1:01:45

assured about who you are. And

1:01:48

I think that that'll have

1:01:50

a natural supportive effect during that integration

1:01:52

process that you were talking about, that.

1:01:56

That's really, really, really, really well said. And

1:01:59

as we kind of... wrap up here and maybe

1:02:01

could have a bird's eye view

1:02:03

perspective even on what we've been talking about.

1:02:06

Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, I think so

1:02:08

much it kind of boils down to

1:02:10

in a secular context, the

1:02:12

truth shall set us free. It's

1:02:14

really about truth. The truth

1:02:17

of what happened as you were

1:02:19

a kid and what you internalized

1:02:21

and is now out of

1:02:24

awareness that you

1:02:26

can gradually become more aware of,

1:02:28

the truth of the

1:02:31

dynamic functional operation

1:02:34

of defenses, how

1:02:36

that happens, the

1:02:39

truth of their benefits for you, the truth

1:02:41

of their functions and the truth of their

1:02:43

costs and the truth of other possibilities. So

1:02:46

there's a lot here that's just about

1:02:48

coming into truth, about

1:02:50

very normal processes that

1:02:52

can still have problematic

1:02:55

consequences. As

1:02:57

we get to the very end here, Dad, I

1:02:59

do want to ask you a little question about

1:03:01

something that we alluded to in the very beginning

1:03:04

of the episode here, which gets to our relationships

1:03:06

with other people. It is

1:03:08

often so much easier for

1:03:10

us to see this process inside of

1:03:12

others than we can see it

1:03:15

inside of ourselves. And

1:03:17

that reality is the source of an enormous

1:03:19

amount of conflict for people and their relationships

1:03:21

because they can see when their partner is

1:03:25

operating from a stance of defense or manipulating the

1:03:27

truth or twisting things a little bit while

1:03:29

also being unable to see when they're doing the

1:03:31

exact same things. And so

1:03:33

there's this inherent kind of unbalance in

1:03:35

that. And a lot of the

1:03:38

questions that we get from people, contact

1:03:40

at beingwellpodcast.com, you can send us a question

1:03:42

if you like, we might answer it during

1:03:44

the Mailbag episode, get to some version of

1:03:47

my partner does this thing or my friend

1:03:49

does this thing or my parent does this

1:03:51

thing and it's driving me crazy and it's

1:03:53

also causing them a lot of stress. How

1:03:56

can I help them with that? And

1:03:59

that's... a big question. We could probably just

1:04:01

spend a whole episode on it here, but

1:04:04

I'm just wondering if you want to leave

1:04:06

people with something toward the end of this,

1:04:08

maybe quite briefly, around helping

1:04:10

other people come

1:04:13

face-to-face with their defenses, or

1:04:15

if you even think that that's a good idea at all. AC Well,

1:04:18

it's an incredibly good topic. And

1:04:20

as a longtime couples counselor and a

1:04:22

longtime husband, I should add, it's

1:04:25

really something that I think it would be

1:04:27

of interest to many, many people. And perhaps

1:04:29

people will write in to the mailbag some

1:04:31

examples of this, and we might even do

1:04:33

a whole session, a whole podcast

1:04:36

on this, a whole episode. First

1:04:38

off, notice what it

1:04:40

feels like when someone says to you,

1:04:43

you're so defensive, right?

1:04:45

What's your first reaction? Well, to

1:04:47

get more defensive or calling me

1:04:49

offense. To get defense. AC Offense,

1:04:52

baby. So, and the

1:04:54

truth is, sometimes it's appropriate to,

1:04:56

quote unquote, defend ourselves. Like somebody

1:04:58

says, you know, you left the

1:05:00

faucet on, and you could say, no, I

1:05:03

did not leave the faucet on. It's appropriate

1:05:05

to defend yourself if you actually did not

1:05:07

leave the faucet on. So there's a place

1:05:09

for that. And sometimes

1:05:12

people attack us for having certain kinds

1:05:14

of motives or, you know,

1:05:16

inner dynamics. And to say, you know,

1:05:18

honestly, I'm aware of my own mind and

1:05:21

that thought was not present in

1:05:23

me. Or, well, yeah,

1:05:25

a little part of me does

1:05:28

want X, but most of me really

1:05:30

understands that X is a problem. What I really

1:05:33

want here is Y. You know,

1:05:35

there's a place for that. That's it. Some

1:05:38

tips, you know, from

1:05:41

my scars in

1:05:43

various kinds of relationships, you know, receiving

1:05:45

and delivering. If you think about

1:05:47

the structure of a defense, it's

1:05:49

trying to accomplish something. And

1:05:51

meanwhile, the person is often

1:05:54

unaware that they're

1:05:57

doing it or that it's

1:05:59

problematic. or that

1:06:01

there's a better way. And

1:06:04

so to come in guns blazing

1:06:06

against what they're doing, they

1:06:08

just tend to intensify it. On

1:06:11

the other hand, if you can find a way

1:06:13

to just sort of be naming

1:06:17

what's happening in

1:06:19

a minimally neutral, if not

1:06:22

kind and interested

1:06:25

supportive kind of way, you're just

1:06:27

inquiring. Don't know mind, beginner's

1:06:29

mind. That

1:06:31

then can help a person simply become

1:06:34

aware per se that they're doing that.

1:06:37

For many people, that's enough.

1:06:39

You've planted a seed that will gradually bear fruit

1:06:41

in the garden of their mind. Little

1:06:44

example here. One of the

1:06:46

defenses, which I think is, it's

1:06:48

a kind of dissociation is for

1:06:50

a person to go inert. They

1:06:54

don't really disagree, but

1:06:56

they just go inert. They

1:06:58

kind of swerve away from the topic. They

1:07:01

space out a little bit. They don't seem

1:07:03

to track what's actually happening. You can see

1:07:05

that sometimes in family systems where

1:07:09

one partner really wishes their other partner

1:07:11

would step up, frankly,

1:07:13

in certain ways. And the other

1:07:15

partner defends against the anxiety about

1:07:17

stepping up in the related, uncomfortable,

1:07:21

distressing feelings and

1:07:23

desires underneath it all by

1:07:25

not really overtly disagreeing, even

1:07:29

sometimes overtly agreeing. This is

1:07:31

sometimes what's called passive-aggressive behavior

1:07:35

in a way. But underneath it all, they

1:07:37

just swerve away. They forget

1:07:39

that they've agreed to change. They

1:07:42

get spacey and sleepy. They're

1:07:44

inattentive right there.

1:07:46

So with that as an

1:07:48

example, you might say to

1:07:50

your partner, you

1:07:53

know, hey, I just, I noticed this thing

1:07:55

that when I ask you to fill in

1:07:57

the blank, you

1:07:59

know, do more. more of your share of the housework, be

1:08:02

a more engaged parent in terms

1:08:04

of the authority functions of normal

1:08:06

parenting in reasonable ways.

1:08:08

I noticed that it seems

1:08:10

like that is maybe uncomfortable for you to

1:08:12

talk about or even faze. So I don't

1:08:15

know, what's that like for you? What's

1:08:17

that like for you? So there's, I think that's

1:08:19

a fairly neutral way into it. If

1:08:22

need be, sometimes we kind of escalate.

1:08:25

And then I think the structure of

1:08:27

nonviolent communication is just wonderful. When

1:08:30

I ask you to, let's say do

1:08:32

more of the housework or your share

1:08:34

of the parenting and you

1:08:36

kind of nod, but you

1:08:38

don't really hop on board when I'm saying and in

1:08:41

the face of multiple requests, it just

1:08:44

isn't happening here. Not

1:08:46

being critical, just describing facts.

1:08:48

When that happens, I

1:08:50

feel fill in the blank. I feel puzzled,

1:08:53

I feel sad, I feel worried.

1:08:57

I feel worried about

1:08:59

the result I'm trying to accomplish

1:09:01

here in our family. Let's say,

1:09:04

hey, I feel those things,

1:09:06

maybe loading heavily on the softer kinds of

1:09:08

feelings rather than I feel

1:09:10

like I really should call a divorce lawyer

1:09:12

or I want

1:09:15

to yell at you for a while. If

1:09:17

you have to go there, but maybe not.

1:09:19

And then you get into, so because I

1:09:22

need Z, because deep down at

1:09:24

all, I have a need to feel like

1:09:26

someone's with me in this really important endeavor of

1:09:28

raising a family. So then

1:09:30

I request from now on that, what

1:09:32

do you, I was it for you? You open

1:09:34

it up there. That's pretty

1:09:36

effective. The last thing

1:09:39

I'll say on this, and I hope we

1:09:41

do talk about it more, is

1:09:43

that self-disclosure is really helpful because

1:09:46

it immediately comes as a critique

1:09:49

and as a power move. We're trying

1:09:51

to get the other person to change. So when you're

1:09:53

on the receiving end of that critique and that power

1:09:57

move, that expression of influence, If

1:10:00

not domination, that's hard to receive.

1:10:02

So it can be really helpful

1:10:04

if a person deliberately goes one

1:10:06

down in the

1:10:08

power structure by acknowledging their own

1:10:11

lapses, their own defenses, including

1:10:14

maybe the ways that they do the same

1:10:16

thing they're talking about and are trying to

1:10:19

help both of you, both of us, be

1:10:21

different going forward. That can also really help

1:10:23

too. I think that was a

1:10:25

great list, Dad, and also we should definitely do an episode

1:10:28

on this. And what's really coming to mind here at the

1:10:30

end for me is all of

1:10:32

the other stuff that

1:10:34

we talked about as being

1:10:36

supportive of helping ourselves work

1:10:38

through our defenses is

1:10:40

equally supportive if we can

1:10:42

aid other people in that

1:10:44

process. Yeah. And that's

1:10:46

actually really where I think we have the most

1:10:49

utility. We do not have a lot of utility

1:10:51

when it comes to telling somebody, hey, you're doing

1:10:53

this defensive thing. There's just not

1:10:55

a lot of space there. It generally

1:10:57

doesn't go very well even when we think it'll go

1:11:00

well. It never goes well. It's just not

1:11:02

a lot of upside. Unless you've really

1:11:04

cultivated that kind of a psycho-educated relationship with

1:11:06

somebody else, I guess. And there's a lot

1:11:08

of trust developed in all of that. Sure,

1:11:10

maybe. But for 98 percent of people, no

1:11:13

shot. But

1:11:15

what we can do if we're really in it

1:11:17

for the long term with somebody else, if this

1:11:19

is a close friend, an intimate partner, a family

1:11:22

member, we can support them

1:11:24

in the kind of self-development that

1:11:26

might help them over time start

1:11:28

to peel back some of

1:11:31

those defenses. We can support them

1:11:33

in developing a stronger sense of self,

1:11:35

in becoming more self-aware, in

1:11:38

finding these outlets for energy, for sublimation of

1:11:40

different kinds. We can do all of that.

1:11:42

And that's actually where we have the greatest

1:11:44

lever. And I think that that's really interesting.

1:11:47

Fantastic. Yeah,

1:11:50

and maybe a good place to end this conversation

1:11:52

because we've spent a lot of material here. I

1:11:54

think this was a really interesting one. I felt

1:11:56

like I learned a lot during it. I definitely

1:11:58

learned a lot during the prep. for it. And

1:12:01

I'm just really glad we got to do this,

1:12:03

Dad. You've been wanting to have a conversation about

1:12:05

psychoanalysis in some way or another for like literally

1:12:07

years now, so I'm glad that we finally got

1:12:09

there. I think it's useful

1:12:11

as, you know, one of Freud's

1:12:14

later books was Civilization and Its

1:12:16

Discontents. We can often

1:12:18

internalize too much of civilization. There's

1:12:21

so much pressure on

1:12:23

us to not let

1:12:27

our playful, passionate,

1:12:30

juicy, wild parts

1:12:32

out. Now, obviously, we have

1:12:34

to be careful about aspects

1:12:36

of ourself that can really

1:12:38

harm others and the ways

1:12:40

in which those intensities and

1:12:42

passions can start roaring down

1:12:44

the highway initially at 60

1:12:47

miles an hour and it's okay, but if

1:12:49

you get out of the safe lane into

1:12:52

the yellow zone, if not red zone

1:12:54

lanes, you're still going with a lot

1:12:56

of momentum. You know, be careful about

1:12:58

it, but still just on the whole.

1:13:00

I would sort of like

1:13:03

to offer a plea for us to

1:13:05

be not quite so domesticated,

1:13:07

you know, at least

1:13:09

inside our own minds and

1:13:12

not so domesticated, particularly when

1:13:14

it's safe to be looser,

1:13:16

juicier, more playful, even wilder

1:13:18

in certain key relationships. This

1:13:27

was a really fascinating conversation today

1:13:29

with Rick focused on our psychological

1:13:31

defenses. We touched on

1:13:33

so much different material here

1:13:36

related to psychoanalysis, understanding ourselves,

1:13:39

and seeing the roots of our behavior. And

1:13:41

part of what was so informative for me

1:13:43

in learning about this material

1:13:46

was seeing how those

1:13:48

behaviors often flow from a desire to

1:13:50

not see certain aspects of reality clearly,

1:13:53

to not see ourselves clearly, to not

1:13:55

see the world around us clearly, and

1:13:58

even to distort how we view other the

1:18:00

1900s, it's pretty out there stuff.

1:18:03

A more kind of modern or

1:18:05

behavioral or social-emotional framework around this

1:18:07

is that our defenses exist to

1:18:10

help us solve important emotional problems,

1:18:12

to shield us from painful emotions,

1:18:14

and to help us feel more

1:18:17

good more often. And

1:18:20

this emphasizes something really important. Our

1:18:22

defenses are functional in nature. They

1:18:24

exist to solve a problem. They

1:18:26

help us maintain our sense of self, manage life,

1:18:29

cope with stress, do all of these really good

1:18:31

things. So the question is not how do we

1:18:33

get rid of our defenses and become like totally

1:18:35

undefended. The question is how do

1:18:38

we try to reach those same ends

1:18:40

through more productive means. And

1:18:43

so our goal here is to move from

1:18:45

reality denial, which is what most defenses are

1:18:47

based on, to reality acceptance,

1:18:49

and then to move from reality

1:18:51

acceptance to proactively addressing the real

1:18:54

issues that our defenses are often

1:18:56

shielding us from. To return to

1:18:58

that example that I gave earlier,

1:19:00

the student that rationalizes their failure

1:19:03

is a lot less likely to

1:19:05

pass future tests than one that

1:19:07

accepts that their study habits are an

1:19:09

issue and starts to create

1:19:12

a plan for dealing with them

1:19:14

in a more effective fashion. But

1:19:16

doing that requires a level of

1:19:18

self-confidence and self-stability that frankly, a

1:19:20

lot of people lack. It

1:19:23

also requires the ability to manage and

1:19:25

overcome various forms of difficult emotions, to

1:19:28

deal with painful experiences, to look inside

1:19:30

of ourselves and be able to face

1:19:33

aspects of who we are that feel

1:19:35

less good. And so

1:19:37

I talked with Rick for a little while about how

1:19:39

we can go through that process. When somebody comes

1:19:41

into the room, into the therapeutic office, and he starts

1:19:43

working with them around defenses, what do

1:19:46

they actually do practically? Because one

1:19:48

of the things that's so tough about

1:19:50

defenses is that just calling attention to

1:19:52

them often reinforces them rather than helping

1:19:54

somebody work with them. And

1:19:56

that's why he highlighted the idea of joining with the

1:19:59

defense, which is a...