Increase your self-esteem by these 6 somewhat mature ways for managing difficult thoughts and feelings (1 minute read)

Here the post “Increase your self-esteem by these 6 somewhat mature ways for managing diffuicult thoughts and feelings” continues with how you can increase your self-esteem by managing your thoughts and feelings.

Increase your self-esteem by these 6 somewhat mature ways for managing difficult thoughts and feelings:

The psychiatrist Vaillant divided the defense mechanisms into 4 levels of maturity mirroring increasingly constructive ways of dealing with difficult thoughts and feelings.

This post summarizes Level III, the intermediate, neurotic defense mechanisms common in anxiety problems. They cause the user more discomfort than the observer. Some do not involve effective problem solving. Some of them are more adaptive:

Repression is pushing difficult thoughts into the unconscious thereby hiding them from us. They can return through symptoms and actions that we are unaware of but others notice.

Displacement is redirecting thoughts, feelings and impulses aimed at one person on another person.

Reaction formation is adaptively converting unwanted thoughts, feelings or impulses into their opposites.

Intellectualization is adaptively avoiding uncomfortable emotions by focusing on facts and logic. This neutralizes anxiety, but the emotional responses might have to be resolved to be able to move on.

The two defense mechanisms isolation – separating ideas and thoughts and undoing – doing the opposite are connected to intellectualization.

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