Defense mechanisms used by narcissists

in today's video we're going to talk about defense mechanisms and which ones in particular are used by narcissists stay tuned to find out more hi everyone I'm Athena from Courage coaching thank you so much for stopping by today if you are new to my channel then please feel free to click on the Subscribe button in order to receive notifications for any new videos and please please feel free to like and share my content to anybody at all that you think will find it useful now what are defense mechanisms now defense mechanisms are a form of self-deception that we all use at one time or another and they mostly happen unconsciously which means that we aren't aware of them now defense mechanisms were defined in great detail by Sigman Freud's daughter Anna Freud they are used as way of protection from feeling anxiety or other unacceptable thoughts and impulses now there are many defense mechanisms but in this video we're going to explore the four different kinds that somebody with MPD or BPD uses commonly the first one we're going to explore is projection now when projection happens a person projects their negative feelings onto somebody else because they are finding it really really hard accepting these negative feelings now because narcissists very much struggle to experience any uncomfortable negative feelings they are Masters at projecting onto others they project onto others and they also blame others for any distress that they feel now people that don't have narcissistic personality also use projection now a good example of projection in a relationship ship is when a partner who feels insecure in this relationship starts accusing their other partner of being unfaithful or of not being committed but in reality what they are doing is they're projecting their own fears onto their partner projection is something that we see mostly with people that have MPD now it might be that the other person triggers something in them and this will be enough for them to reject their uncomfortable feelings that come up in this trigger um onto the other person now the second defense mechanism I want to talk about is splitting also known as black and white thinking now splitting refers to the tendency to split people things beliefs or situations into one of two extreme categories either good or bad sorting everything into one of two buckets unfortunately leaves no room for nuance now being able to acknowledge the different layered complexities of people and situations will generally allow people to have more stable relationships and a richer life experience overall this doesn't happen in splitting however splitting is usually something that you see in young children maybe teenagers but also this is very common in people that have MPD or BPD it develops usually in response to trauma and also due to the fact that some people just cannot handle conflicting emotions that cause emotional distress so the brain tries to simplify it by thinking in the extremes of it's all good or it's all bad splitting causes unstable relationships because it isn't actually realistic to think in extremes underlying the concept of splitting is a cycle of idealization and devaluation which is mainly seen in relationships with individuals who have MPD or BPD with idealization the person focuses on overly positive qualities that they see in the other person and with devaluation a person or situ situation is viewed as completely flawed and negative now you can see how destructive this is because actually in reality people have both good and bad in them and just because they do something bad it doesn't discount all the good so it isn't a realistic way of looking at people and relationships and that is why people that think in this way find it very hard to keep stable relationship sh in their life now the next defense mechanism I want to explore today is denial denial is a type of defense mechanism that involves ignoring the reality of a situation to avoid anxiety now denial is something that we probably have all done at one point in our lives because it may have been that we had to deal with an extremely overwhelming situation and we weren't able to deal with that in the moment so we went into denial and this this gave us a little bit more time to be able to process the bad news that we may have heard denial can also protect us when we've had to deal with some shocking news or with the death of a loved one or something that's really distressing now Denial in terms of a narcissist using it means that this individual doesn't have to acknowledge a problem immediately it also means that a narcissist can minimize the potential consequences associated with a problem denying a problem exists means the person can continue engaging in destructive Behavior without actually addressing the problem narcissists are very good at denying negative things that they have done or said so denial is a defense mechanism that is commonly seen in relationships with those who have narcissism the last defense mechanism I want to talk about in this video is regression now again this is something that we all have probably done at some point in our lives regression means that a person's mind may need to bury a memory in the subconscious and by doing this this prevents any painful or disturbing thoughts from entering awareness now narcissists repress anything that makes them feel anxious inferior insecure or uncom comtable repression just like other defense mechanisms is unconscious and narcissists use this to their advantage by building a series of false selves narcissists can spend a lifetime repressing things by blaming others for their cruelty and their shortcomings narcissists find repression a very convenient defense mechanism because they use it to forget and to block emotions facts or memories and thoughts there are un favorable so whenever somebody confronts a narcissist about the things that they have done or said they will have already repressed these things they will have conveniently put them to one side and they don't remember that these things were said or done it could also be that they do remember things that they have said that may have been negative but they choose to lie and instead they choose to gas light their victim and make their victim feel confused by telling their victim that they don't actually remember what really happened so these are the four main defense mechanisms that narcissists use if you can think of any other ones at all that you may have witnessed in the narcissist in your life then please feel free to share below the video in the comments thank you so much for watching and for listening and if you have any questions at all then please feel free to email me at courage all you need at gmail.com take care everybody and I will see you very soon in my next video bye-bye