By Kelly Hearn
The work of psychotherapy feels more important than ever right now. Not only is this virus lingering longer than most of us expected a year ago, there is also the economic fallout to contend with, adding financial anxiety to our physical and mental health challenges. Beyond covid-19, there are long-standing social ‘pandemics’ in focus: economic inequality, racial tensions, the viral spread of misleading information, a dangerous polarisation and divisiveness leading to, in the words of newly-elected President Biden, an ‘uncivil war’ in the US. Similar sentiments can be felt here in the UK, and beyond. When not attended to, this assault on our nervous systems can lead to assault more broadly; intense feelings of frustration and fear prompting desperate action. The public, political and personal become inextricably linked, and reinforcing of each other.
Taking the events of the last year together, it is hardly surprising that anger, sadness and disconnection are pervasive. The enormity of the issues can feel daunting. A sense of helplessness sets in. As these emotions can feel almost unbearable, a number of psychological defence mechanisms come to the ‘rescue’ in an attempt to ease our distress. While this is understandable – even expected – these tactics can keep us alienated from ourselves and each other if unchecked.
The Manic Defence
Despite being house-bound and deprived of many of our usual pastimes, there is a flurry of activity happening behind closed doors. Some of this is externally imposed– most of us didn’t ask to home school our children, for example. For many, the demands of work have also escalated. But I am talking about more than this. Often when speaking with clients, they report waking in the wee hours and carrying on non-stop until falling into bed exhausted. So many Zoom appointments! Webinars! Activities to keep the kids happy enough! Home and self-improvement projects! When the quest for purposeful activity develops an obsessive quality, we need to recognise it for what it is: a manic defence, the tendency to distract ourselves from uncomfortable feelings with a frenzy of activity or thought. Anything that separates us from the feelings is welcomed, any spare moments eradicated. We have collectively been in a form of manic defence for the last year, maybe longer. While understandable, this avoidance of painful emotions doesn’t get rid of them. They are merely reduced to a buzz of anxious energy; a low hum we ignore by staying in motion; a source of intrusions in our sleep; a driver of inexplicable physical ailments; a building tension that can erupt unexpectedly…
Intellectualisation
When everything feels uncertain and groundless, we scramble to assemble information. We crave facts, all of them. We need to understand what is happening so we can reason and plan our way out of it. Our search for the truth will liberate us! Or so the thinking goes, offering the illusion of control. We hoard news and commentary, become armchair experts and dinner table debaters. Outwardly, our goals are admirable. We are seeking ‘intellectual honesty’ – hard to argue with that. However, often an insatiable appetite for information also highlights the defence of intellectualisation. Simply put, we use thinking to avoid our uncomfortable feelings.
We have long been a culture than overvalues thinking and undervalues feeling. We are apprehensive – even distrustful – of emotions. I’m all for intellectual honesty but question its primacy over emotional honesty. If anything, the former necessitates the latter. To quote neuroscientist and author of Descartes’ Error Antonio Damasio, ‘We are not thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.’ Emotions are not an option, they show up whether we like it or not, and they give us incredibly valuable information if we are open to it/them. We need to tap into the feelings beneath our intellects, not just for our own mental hygiene, but also to improve our understanding of and relationships with others.
Splitting/Projection
When we are stressed, we over-simplify. We become unable to hold the tension of opposites, paradoxes and ‘grey areas’ in ourselves, and in others. In basic terms, splitting is viewing everything in black/white, right/wrong, all/nothing terms. Sometimes clients are sheepish in admitting this extremist thinking to me and I have to assure them that we all do it, now more than ever. Why? Splitting is an unconscious defence that attempts to protect us from painful negative emotions. We avoid these by grouping them together and psychologically splitting them off, effectively banishing unwanted qualities, impulses and emotions.
To distance ourselves even further from these unsavoury characteristics, our psyche employs another tactic: projecting them onto others. A person may be unwilling or unable to sit with her own fear but see it in others as ‘scare mongering.’ Or someone may rail against ‘liars’ on the other side of divisive issue, without looking at his own capacity for dishonesty, even hypocrisy. In this way, the ‘evil other’ becomes the magical recipient of all of our unwanted attributes. Clever psyche – problem solved! Except that it’s not. We may be managing uncomfortable feelings, but in a kind of fantasy, Star Wars way. We spend enormous energy fighting the dark side ‘out there’ – cue righteous outrage whether directed at our spouse or a political party – while leaving some of these ‘darker’ qualities in ourselves unexamined. As tempting as it is, this type of psychological scapegoating keeps us from developing the self-awareness and skills we need to navigate our way in the real world.
Psychotherapy offers the opportunity to get beneath some of these common defence mechanisms, allowing time and space for our emotional reality to surface. It recognises that our desire for resilience means accepting sadness, fear, and anger too so that we can move through these natural reactions to both the everyday and once-a-century challenges. Far from being ‘navel gazing,’ this process allows us to own our emotions so that we don’t act them out on others. In this way, therapy empowers us to live just a little bit more at ease in uneasy times, and to show up more constructively in the outside world so in need of our thoughtful engagement.
