Psychological defenses.

Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological responses that protect people from feelings of anxiety, threats to self-esteem, and things that they don't want to think about or deal with.

Some of the best-known defense mechanisms have become a common part of everyday language. For example, you might describe someone as being "in denial" of a problem they face. When someone falls back into old ways of doing things, you might term them as "regressing" into an earlier point of development.

Defense mechanisms were first described by Sigmund Freud in his psychoanalytic theory. 

According to Freud, these mechanisms protect the conscious mind from contradictions between the id and the idealistic superego, ultimately contributing to "mental homeostasis."

Some of the examples of psychological defense mechanisms are as follows:-

1.Projection

People project when they attribute their negative emotions, beliefs, or traits to someone else. This protects them from anxiety and inner conflict, but can also interfere with relationships.

2.Denial

A psychological self-defense mechanism that helps people feel numb when they are experiencing loss. Denial can help people confront only as much pain as they can handle.

3.Repression

A psychological defense that causes people to lose memory of events that were too traumatic for their conscious mind.

For example, one loses memories of getting hanged himself when survived as these memories are so stressful and disturbing to cope up with the daily living. 

4.Rationalization

A defense mechanism that helps people maintain their sense of well-being and self-esteem against internal conflicts. 

For example, stating that you failed a test because teacher doesn't like you, when the real reason was you didn't study.

5.Intellectualization

A defense mechanism where people use reasoning to avoid feeling and emotionally remove themselves from a stressful event.

6. Regression

A defense mechanism where the ego reverts to an earlier stage of development in response to stressful situations.

7.Sublimation 

Converting unacceptable impulses into more acceptable outlets.

When an individual faced with certain thoughts, feeling which are conflicting with societal norms it generates lots of anxiety, stress and guilt in the system. Since all of this against moral values, our mind generates subtle and safer way to execute these feelings. 

For example, hating his dad a wrestler might hit an opponent very hard whom he hates too.

8.Displacement 

A defense mechanism where people redirect negative emotions from their original source to a less threatening target(Taking feelings out on others). For example, someone might displace anger at their child or spouse onto them if they had a bad day at work.

9.Avoidance

When a perceived situation creates anxiety, one convenient option is sometimes to avoid it. Although avoidance can provide an escape from a particular event, it neglects to deal with the cause of the anxiety. 

For example, a person might know that they are due to given a stressful presentations to colleagues at work, and take a sick day in order to avoid giving it.

10. Altruism

An act of goodwill towards another person, known as altruistic behavior, can be used as a way of diffusing a potentially anxious situation. Altruism may be used as a defense mechanism.

For example, by being particularly helpful to a person who we feel might dislike us or neutralizing an argument with kind words and positivity.