Health and Science Questions - Essay Example

In this kind of defence mechanism, the person tries to repress any such undesirable feeling or thought or memory which causes any kind of mental turmoil to the person or that he wished not to have occurred ever. In this situation, the person just wants to cut that portion of life away or just forget the situation. Hysterical amnesia is an example of this mechanism where a person performs or observes a certain disturbing incident and then just forgets the incident and its surroundings. Repression is used negatively when the person indulges in any harmful act and then forgets it. For example, the person hurts or kills others at a certain state of mind or when finds others in a certain situation and then as soon as s/he is taken away from the situation or that particular state of mind s/he completely forgets the incident.

Reaction formation is the kind of defence mechanism related to the fixation in the consciousness of an idea or desire which is opposite to any unconscious fear. In this situation, the person experiencing any conflict becomes obsessed with the situation positively or negatively. The person unconsciously tries to prove that s/he has completely accepted the situation which is opposite to her/his desire and in doing so s/he becomes overprotective or solicitous to the situation. This may be an expression of her/his internal guilt of not accepting the condition, e.g. an overprotective mother for her unwanted child. The negative reaction can be seen when this obsession affects the life of the child or others dangerously. Here the mother interferes too much in the life of the child and even hurts the child or anybody else who is trying to behave opposite to her obsession or notion. When a mother hurts the boyfriend of a girl child to keep him away from her daughter, it can serve as a negative reaction.

Denial is the situation when a person consciously refuses to accept any painful incident. In this case, the person tries to escape any intolerable thoughts, feelings or events. An example of a negative way of expressing denial is when a mother denies the death of her child and hurts people who try to convince her of the truth (“Defense mechanism”, n.p.).

Thus the above discussion shows how people behave using three different types of defence mechanisms under a situation of conflict and the negative expressions of such defence mechanisms. The negative expression not only interferes with the life of the people showing them but also affects the people surrounding them.

The refusal skills of a person help him handle an undesirable situation which he wants to do away with. The use of proper refusal skills in a potentially dangerous situation can help a person to be safe and makes him more confident. Some of the very common refusal skills are delay, questioning the situation, citing unwillingness, giving reasons for refusal, explaining the consequences of the action, suggesting alternatives, ignoring the request, direct refusal, refusing several times and changing company (“Decision making…”, n.p.; “Teach your child…”, n.p.).

An example can be cited in this regard to explain each of the refusal skills to respond to the situation. In this case, a group of young boys force a friend of them to go for a drive with them but the problem here is that all of them are under age and the friend is not comfortable with the idea. In this situation, he can use any or all of the above skills one by one to convince his friends not to indulge in such behaviour. He can just delay the entire situation by citing some other engagement and suggest some other day and this way just continue to refuse them with the hope that someday they will understand his unwillingness.