You may be familiar with the term defense mechanisms. But did you know the important role they play for someone suffering from addiction? Read on to learn more about what they are and how substance users may use them to cope and in recovery.
What Are Defense Mechanisms in Addiction?
Defense mechanisms are fundamental in the formation and function of personality. They are unconscious ego functions whose goal is to reduce anxiety [1]. They modify the conscious experience of thought, feeling, and emotion.
In addiction they can play both a positive and a negative role. We most often think of the negative role they play with substance users who rationalize (making logical excuses), deny (avoid the truth directly) or project (blame others for their situation). However, skilled therapists can help someone in recovery by recognizing the defense mechanisms they use and gradually turning these into a supporting role in the substance abusers’ process of growth and recovery.
Common Defense Mechanisms Used in Addiction
There are many defense mechanisms used by people with Substance Use Disorders (SUD). They include [1] [2] [3]:
Primitive Defense Mechanisms
- Acting Out: Detrimental behaviors that distract attention and energy away from other stressors. Using drugs can be a form of acting out to avoid dealing with real issues in a person’s life.
- Avoidance: Dismissing thoughts or feelings that are uncomfortable or keeping away from people, places or situations associated with uncomfortable thoughts or feelings. An alcoholic may find all manner of ways to avoid dealing with the facts of their addiction and its negative impact.
- Denial: Pretending that a threatening situation does not exist because the situation is too distressing to cope with. Dismissing external reality and instead focusing on internal explanations or fallacies and thereby avoiding the uncomfortable reality of a situation. A person may refuse to accept the impact of their drinking or drug use on loved ones and instead feel they are doing so well.
- Introjection or Identification: The internalization or reproduction of behaviors observed in others, without conscious realization. The individual “takes inside” himself what is threatening. For example an alcoholic feels strong anxiety when her husband gets angry about her drinking. To cope with the anxiety she tells herself “you are a bad person”.
- Projection: This is the opposite of introjection, in which an intolerable idea or feeling is pinned on someone else. A person who is using drugs may project their unacceptable feelings of self-hatred or contempt onto someone thinking the other person hates them sinstead. Or they may shift focus away from themselves by blaming others for their addiction and thereby justify their continued drug use.
- Regression: A retreat to an earlier form of behavior and psychic organization because of anxiety in the present. For example if a drug user is fearful, they may regress to a younger state, refuse to go out, curl up and hold a blanket for comfort.
- Repression: An attempt to exclude from awareness feelings and thoughts that evoke anxiety. An alcoholic may suppress earlier traumatic experiences such as bullying, domestic abuse or parental neglect.
Other Defense Mechanisms
- Displacement: Feelings and thoughts directed towards one person or object are directed towards another person. A heroin addict is upset that they can’t get their drug supply immediately before they go into withdrawal. They come home and lash out abusively at their partner and then punch a wall.
- Grandiosity: Although not one of the originally identified analytics defenses, grandiosity is frequently employed by substance abusers. It defends against unconscious low self-esteem by using self-deceptive, overly positive opinions about oneself. For example, a person insists he can maintain control of alcohol or drug use despite the fact they are consuming an increasingly large amount with increasing frequency and are compulsively using and out of control. This can also be seen as denial because they denied or minimized the consequences of their addiction.
- Isolation: Painful ideas are separated from feelings associated with them. To face the full impact of sexual or aggressive thought and feelings, the ideas and affects are kept apart. As a defense against harmful thoughts, isolation prevents the self from allowing these thoughts to become recurrent and possibly damaging to the self-concept.
- Rationalization: The use of rational logic to explain away unpleasant or unacceptable feelings. An alcoholic may say “I’m okay having a single drink. It won’t hurt me”. By countering the attempts by others to help, they avoid the truth of their addiction and its impact.
- Sublimation: Channeling offensive emotions into productive and socially acceptable behaviors. A drug user in recovery may choose to direct their aggressive or unhappy feelings into art, music, sports or dance.
- Undoing: Trying to remove an offensive act, either by pretending it was not done or by atoning for it. An alcoholic in recovery may go to great lengths with friends they have alienated to make amends for their past behavior.
What Causes Defense Mechanisms to Exist?
Defense mechanisms arise in childhood as a way of decreasing conflict within ourselves.
Anna Freud defined them as “unconscious resources used by the ego” to decrease internal stress. As we grow from childhood to adolescence and then adulthood, defense mechanisms can persist from one phase to the next, regress to earlier phases in response to stressors, or can evolve over time.[1].
Defense mechanisms are not bad per se. They can allow substance abusers to navigate painful experiences or channel their energy into more productive pursuits. They are often used to cope with trauma, high stress, painful emotions and uncomfortable thoughts. The problem lies when they become rigid aspects of someone’s personality and are used too often or for too long to justify continued substance abuse.
How Do Defense Mechanisms Affect Recovery?
Defense mechanisms can be employed by substance users to cope with a whole range of emotional and psychological issues. As well, they may use them to cope with an often overwhelming set of practical and financial issues. However, there is a variable time limit to when these defenses will no longer be of service for reaching their goals of recovery. That is when the defenses can hinder self-awareness, emotional healing and personal growth.
Of the many defense mechanisms, avoidance, denial, rationalization and projection are particularly detrimental to recovery from a substance use disorder. If those in recovery are rigid in their resistance to change and embrace their defense mechanisms, then recovery can be very challenging, if not impossible.
Some of the challenges of prolonged use of defense mechanisms include:
- Being stuck: Relying on defense mechanisms can create a situation of stagnation. Emotional growth and self-awareness are prevented and recovery is at risk
- Stressed relationships: Defense mechanisms can be difficult for loved ones and friends to tolerate as they are subjected to the various ploys of a substance user who is not ready to follow through with recovery.
- Risk of relapse: Emotions and stressors that can trigger substance use may be masked by defense mechanisms
How to Overcome Defense Mechanisms in Recovery
The two most critical factors in helping substance users overcome their defense mechanisms are the motivation and readiness of the user and the skill of the therapeutic resources helping them. The following techniques can be used:
- Mindfulness: Staying in the present moment to be aware of your thoughts and emotions without judgment and then let them pass, can help you be more aware of your defense mechanisms.
- Developing Self Awareness: Learning to recognize your preferred defense mechanisms, naming them and understanding how and why you use them is an important step at recognizing defenses and deciding if they are still helpful or not.
- Support Groups: Sharing honestly with others in recovery can be very helpful for recognizing how you use defense mechanisms with other group members
- Emotion Regulation: Understanding different ways to manage emotions, such as anxiety and stress, using meditation, deep breathing and exercise can be very powerful
- Journaling: Expressing yourself by writing down your thoughts and emotions can lead you to helpful insights about your defense mechanisms.
Bring Professional Help to Your Recovery Path
You may enter a residential treatment center such as we have at The Encino Recovery & Detox Center. Trained staff are equipped to provide the support necessary for you to reach your treatment goals. Participating in residential care greatly enhances your success rate at avoiding relapses.
Typical therapy approaches include:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
- Trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- 12-Step Program
- Somatic Experiencing and Body Work
- Mindfulness Meditation
- Exposure therapy
Recovery in Los Angeles, California
At the Encino Recovery and Detox Center in Los Angeles we don’t just treat addiction. We nurture the spirit, heal the mind and help you to regain your life. If you or a loved one is seeking a way out of substance abuse, private, confidential help is just a call away. Reach out to our Admissions team now.
Sources
[1] Bailey R, Pico J. Defense Mechanisms. [Updated 2023 May 22]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024
[2] Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); 1999. Chapter 7—Brief Psychodynamic Therapy. Brief Interventions and Brief Therapies for Substance Abuse.. Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 34.
[3] Felton A. 2022. What Are Defense Mechanisms? WebMD.com
Taurino A, Antonucci LA, Taurisano P, Laera D. Investigating defensive functioning and alexithymia in substance use disorder patients. BMC Psychiatry. 2021 Jul 6;21(1):337
Wallace, J. nd. Tactical and Strategic Use of the PREFERRED DEFENSE. STRUCTURE Of The Recovering Alcoholic. chestnut.org
