| Defense Mechanism | Example |
|---|
| Denial – Refuses to accept a painful reality, pretending as if it doesn’t exist. | A man who snorts cocaine daily is fired for attendance problems, yet insists he doesn’t have a problem. |
| Displacement – Directing anger toward someone or onto another, less threatening (safer) substitute. | An older employee is publicly embarrassed by a younger boss at work and angrily cuts a driver off on the way home. |
| Identification – Taking on attributes and characteristics of someone admired. | A young man joins the police academy to become a policeman like his father, whom he respects. |
| Intellectualization – Excessive focus on logic and reason to avoid the feelings associated with a situation. | An executive who has cancer requests all studies and blood work and discusses in detail with her doctor, as if she were speaking about someone else. |
| Projection – Attributing to others feelings unacceptable to self. | A group therapy client strongly dislikes another member but claims that it is the member who “dislikes her.” |
| Reaction Formation – Expressing an opposite feeling from what is actually felt and is considered undesirable. | John, who despises Jeremy, greets him warmly and offers him food and beverages and special attention. |
| Sublimation – Redirecting unacceptable feelings or drives into an acceptable channel. | A mother of a child killed in a drive-by shooting becomes involved in legislative change for gun laws and gun violence. |
| Undoing – Ritualistically negating or undoing intolerable feelings/thoughts. | A man who has thoughts that his father will die must step on sidewalk cracks to prevent this and cannot miss a crack. |