There are 3 kinds of anxiety. Reality, moral & neurotic anxiety. When EGO, the executive of our personality, can't control anxiety by rational or direct methods, it relies on indirect one which is called Ego - Defense behavior. Ego - defense mechanism help the individual cope with anxiety & prevent the ego from being overwhelmed. Rather than being pathological, ego defenses are normal behaviors that can have adaptive value provided they don't become a style of life that enables the individual ro avoid facing reality. The defenses employed depend on the individual's level of development & degree of anxiety. Some one liners for mechanisms are as follows.
1. Depression - Threatening or painful thoughts & feelings are excluded from awareness.
2. Displacement - A shift of feelings & attitudes from one object to another, more acceptable substitute.
3. Intellectualization - Dealing with problems as interesting events that can be explained rationally.
4. Reaction formation - Expressing an unacceptable impulse by transforming it into its opposite.
5. Denial - "Closing one's eyes" to the existence of a threatening aspect of reality.
6. Identification - Identify with successful causes, organizations or people in the hope that you'll be perceived as worthwhile.1
7. Projection - Attributing to other one's own unacceptable desires and impulses.
8. Regression - Going back to an earlier phase of development when there were fewer demands.
9. Sublimation - Diverting sexual or aggressive energy into other channels.
10. Undoing - Engaging in behavior designed to symbolically make amends for or negative previous thoughts, feelings or actions, expressing a wish & then denying it.
11. Rationalization - A self serving explanation & justification of behavior, serving as an excuse for doing something the person believes to be socially unacceptable.
