Pretending To Be Okay is a Defense Mechanism of the Mind. A Person’s Way of Attempting to Remain Strong

When we live in a world where the most common lie is I’m fine and when most of the time you are ousted for showing any type of weakness, a certain narrative prevails among us: that we should always show a brave face to the cruel world who always try to bring us down. When we do this, when we pretend we’re fine is actually one of the ways the mind deals with things that makes us distressed. It’s an attempt for us to deal with whatever that troubles us.

Freud explains to us that these things will be the trigger to what Freud refers to as a threat to our Egos – anxiety. He described anxiety as an objectless fear. And he adds that anxiety alerts the individual that the ego is being threatened and that unless action is taken, the ego might be overthrown.

He postulated several defense mechanisms that cope with anxiety and noted that we rarely use just one; we typically defend ourselves by using several at the same time. Also, some overlap exists among the mechanisms. And although defense mechanisms vary in their specifics, they share two characteristics: one being that they are distortions of reality, and two being that they operate in our unconscious mind – a large factor in Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory of Psychology.

Pretending that you’re fine in situations that you’re not is one of the defense mechanisms that our mind does. As stated above, it overlaps a few functions and it could be under more than one Ego Defense Mechanism. Today, we’ll talk about three and how it fits in each.

• Reaction formation involves expressing an ID impulse that is opposite of one that is truly driving the person.
o We have to keep in mind that the ID is the pleasure center and that it will gravitate more onto something that is pleasurable to the individual. Oftentimes, we might find ourselves wanting to cry in the middle of the line in a bank or on a cab ride but we refuse ourselves of that luxury because of reasons such as social norms and a fear of social punishment such as criticism.

• Self deception is trying to deny the real nature of the threat
o In this scenario, the threat that is referred here is the thing that causes us the distress, and by saying that this doesn’t upset me or I’m okay with this is your mind’s attempt to trying to downplay the threat and allow you to cope.

• Rationalization involves reinterpreting our behavior to make it more acceptable and less threatening to us.
o This is where we see how some of the ego defense mechanisms overlap. Much like self-deception, this is us telling ourselves that this doesn’t upset me with a clipped because after it because we’re trying to give reasons as to why something upsetting happened. Like for example, a friend failed to call you when you really needed said friend, you tend to tell yourself “on maybe she’s just busy” or something as extreme as “I don’t really matter to him anyway, so this shouldn’t upset me”.

What do you think? Are there any questions regarding this topic? I’d love to hear from you!

Reference:

Kawi, C. (2005). Psych 24: Theories of Personality. Baguio City: Saint Louis University.