Defense Mechanisms Paper

Defense Mechanisms Paper

26 October 2016

By: Kathleen Sullivan

Mental Health

Ms. Fenlon

A defense mechanism is a coping skill learned to help deal with stress. Defense mechanisms can be beneficial and harmful to people. When defense mechanisms are used constantly to deal with stress the stress is not being evaluated by a person and can actually make a stressful situation worse. Facing stress head on and using defense mechanisms consciously can sometimes alleviate a stressful situation. Two defense mechanisms I find myself using sometimes are projection and conversion reaction.

The defense mechanism of projection is when a person has a feeling or impulse and gives those feelings to another person. When this happens the person
Without the stress present in a person’s life, then the physical symptoms they experience probably wouldn’t exist. Some symptoms a person can experience are nausea, headaches, heartburn, exhaustion, or bowel irritability. Usually the symptoms disappear after the stressful situation is over. An example of conversion reaction could be when a person gets sick to their stomach the night before a presentation which leads to them missing work and the
Each week we have at least four exams with some weeks being seven and two papers due. There is also just so much information that is required for us to learn in such a short amount of time. I might use projection when talking to my family about an upcoming week with a lot of exams scheduled by telling them that one of my friends in class is nervous about the material on the exam because the teacher didn’t spend a lot of time going over the topic in class. I am actually the one that is concerned about the material and hope that I know what I need to know when it comes time for the exam. When I get overwhelmed in this situation I also use conversion reaction in this scenario because the stress of learning all of the material will cause me to have a harder time focusing on studying. The result of this might be that I wasn’t able to learn the material that I needed to learn for the exam because I just couldn’t focus. I also might use defense mechanisms when I have anxiety which a great example of having anxiety is sitting in anatomy and physiology. Mrs. Keough uses sticks to call on people that are all different colors. My name is on a blue stick so whenever she pulls out a blue stick my heart rate increases and I get really nervous that she will call on me and I won’t know the answer. I also know all of the other students names in class that have a blue