The 5 Defense Mechanisms that Can Sabotage Your Relationship

Everyone uses defense mechanisms, and if you believe Freud, everyone has to in order to avoid staring in the face of our worst anxieties. Even if you don’t believe Freud, it’s hard to argue with the position that we all occasionally rely on such common forms of managing our most difficult feelings by pushing them out of awareness. In close relationships, where your deepest emotions are often aroused, it’s even more likely that you’ll rely on your defenses to help you manage those emotions. As it turns out, some of the most common defense mechanisms may make you even more anxious by getting in the way of your relationship happiness. A new paper by Wei Zhang and Ben-yu Guo (2017), of Nanjing China’s Normal University suggests which defense mechanisms are worst, and by extension, how to turn them from maladaptive to adaptive.

According to Zhang and Guo, researchers have moved…