9 Ego Defense Mechanisms That Kill Self-Growth

 

September 14th, 2020

By Mateo Sol

Guest writer for Wake Up World

You’re hopeless, useless, burdensome. Nothing will ever go well, everyone is always better than you, you’ll never be perfect. You want to be liked, but you’re unlovable, and a failure at life. Sound familiar?

To the majority of people this language does. Mental traps – or ego defense mechanisms – serve as the rusty cogs that continue the mechanic cycles of pain, toxic shame, and hopelessness within us. In many instances, they are so deeply ingrained in the mind, that we are completely oblivious of their existence.

The most important thing to realize about these cognitive errors is that they’re maladaptive ways of dealing with the world and the self. In fact, living in the world of mental distortions is like living a lie. Your perception is constantly tainted with melancholic negativity that brings forth unrealistic and untruthful thoughts.

But it’s not your fault and there is a way of moving through this feeling of stuckness.

In this article, my goal is to help you identify, reframe, and deprogram these ego defense mechanisms. Doing so will allow you to experience more inner peace, self-love, groundedness, trust, and spiritual connectedness with life.

What Are Ego Defense Mechanisms?

Ego defense mechanisms (or mental traps) are psychological strategies that help us deal with the uncertainty and ambiguity of existence. When a painful truth or reality is too much for us to bear, you can be sure that an ego defense mechanism will jump in to save you. Think of it like a knight in shining armor that protects your sanity. The only difficulty is that, often, this inner knight is unwilling to let go of its desire to protect us due to fear and trauma. When this happens, we are left with old, outdated, and dysfunctional inner programming that runs on repeat, wreaking havoc in our lives.

17 Signs Your Ego Defenses Are Harming You

Pay attention to the following signs:

• You suffer from low self-esteem and self-worth
• You constantly get into fights with people
• You feel on-edge around others for no apparent reason
• You often feel like an innocent victim
• You feel like the world is against you
• You see the world in black and white (“good or bad,” “right or wrong,” “friend or enemy,” “us or them,” etc.)
• You tend to jump to extremes in relationships, i.e., one day you love your partner, the next you hate them
• You tend to be critical and sarcastic
• You rarely accept blame (because you “haven’t done anything wrong”)
• You are a cynic but at the same time an idealist
• You have high expectations for yourself and others
• You feel dissatisfied with yourself/life a lot of the time
• You have an addictive personality
• You tend to be obsessive
• You overthink everything
• You often feel like a phony/fake
• You feel disconnected from your true self and life

How many signs can you relate to?

9 Basic Ego Defense Mechanisms

The nine basic ego defense mechanisms are:

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“STOP the Manipulation, Masks, Lies, Fear…”- international collective of healthcare professionals

September 1, 2020 TLB Staff COMMENTARY, GOVERNMENT, HEALTH, Spotlight

COVIDINFOS.NET

A collective of healthcare professionals today (ER: August 28) launched an “International Alert Message” addressed to governments and citizens around the world.

Among the signatories are physicians from many countries and several medical professors, including microbiologist Martin Haditsh.

The collective discusses the real danger of the virus, the manipulation of numbers, the role of the WHO, the consequences of confinement or wearing masks, and calls on governments to “lift all restrictions and obligations on citizens”. You can download the full letter here in French, or here in English.

Healthcare professionals who wish to do so are invited to join the “United Health Professionals” collective at:

join.unitedhealthprofessionals@gmail.com.

****

We, healthcare professionals, across several countries in the world:

1. We say: STOP to all the crazy and disproportionate measures that have been taken since the beginning to fight SARS-CoV-2 (containment, blocking the economy and education, social distancing, masks for all, etc.) because they are totally unjustified, they are not based on any scientific evidence and they violate the basic principles of evidence-based medicine. On the other hand, of course, we support reasonable measures such as recommendations for hand washing, sneezing or coughing into one’s elbow, use of a single-use handkerchief, etc.

This is not the first time that mankind has faced a new virus: it was H2N2 in 1957, H3N2 in 1968, SARS-CoV in 2003, H5N1 in 2004, H1N1 in 2009, MERS-CoV in 2012 and faces the seasonal flu virus every year. However, none of the measures taken for SARS-CoV-2 have been taken for these viruses.

We are told :

“But, SARS-CoV-2 is highly contagious” and we say: This is FALSE, a statement that is rejected by internationally renowned experts. A simple comparison with other viruses shows that the contagiousness of SARS-CoV-2 is moderate. Diseases such as measles can be described as highly contagious. For example, a person infected with measles can infect up to 20 people, whereas a person infected with this coronavirus only infects 2 or 3, which is 10 times less than measles.

– “But, it’s a new virus” and we reply: H1N1 and the other viruses that were mentioned were also new viruses. Yet: we did not confine countries, we did not block the world economy, we did not paralyze the education system, we did not make social distancing and we did not tell healthy people to wear masks. Moreover, some experts say that it is possible that this virus was already circulating before, but that we did not realize it.

– “But, we don’t have a vaccine” and we answer: at the beginning of H1N1 we didn’t have a vaccine either, like in the time of SARS-CoV. Yet: we didn’t confine countries, we didn’t block the world economy, we didn’t paralyze the education system, we didn’t make social distancing and we didn’t tell healthy people to wear masks.

– But, this virus is much more deadly” and we answer: FALSE, because just compared to the flu and if we take into account the period between November 1 and March 31, there have been worldwide -when these measures were taken: 860,000 cases and 40,000 deaths, while the flu in the same period of 5 months infects, on average, 420 million people and kills 270,000. Moreover, the case-fatality rate announced by the WHO (3.4%) was largely overestimated and was rejected from the outset by eminent experts in epidemiology. However, even taking this case-fatality rate, we can see that this coronavirus is three times less lethal than the 2003 rate (10%) and 10 times less lethal than the 2012 rate (35%).

– “But, COVID-19 is a serious disease” and we say, “That’s not true. The SARS-CoV-2 is a benign virus for the general population because it gives 85% of benign forms, 99% of infected subjects recover, it is not a danger for pregnant women and children (unlike influenza), it spreads less rapidly than influenza and 90% of those who die are elderly (who must, of course, be protected like other populations at risk). This is why experts have called the claim that it is a serious disease “delusional” and stated, on August 19th, that “it is no worse than the flu”.

– “But, there are asymptomatic people” and we answer: in the flu too, 77% of infected people are asymptomatic and they can also transmit the virus. Yet: healthy people are not told to wear masks every year and there is no social distancing despite the fact that the flu infects 1 billion people and kills 650,000.

– “But, this virus causes saturation of hospitals” and we answer: It’s FALSE. The saturation only concerns a few hospitals but people are made to believe that the whole hospital system is saturated or that saturation is imminent, whereas there are thousands of hospitals in some countries. Is it reasonable and true to attribute, for example, to 1,000 or 2,000 hospitals a situation that concerns only 4 or 5 hospitals? It is also not surprising that some hospitals are saturated because they were epidemic outbreaks (such as Lombardy in Italy or New York in the USA). It should not be forgotten that hospitals in many countries have been overwhelmed (including intensive care units) during previous flu epidemics and that at that time there was even talk of : “tsunami” of patients in hospitals, “saturated hospitals”, tents erected outside hospitals, “war zones”, “collapsed hospitals” and a “state of emergency”. […]

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THE SHAMANIC VIEW OF MENTAL HEALTH

By Jonathon Davis on Wednesday October 9th, 2019

UPLIFT CONNECT

A Holistic Approach

In November 2014, the peak psychology body in the UK, the British Psychological Association, released its new flagship report Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia. It was a watershed moment in the mainstream treatment of mental illness, containing statements such as:

“Hearing voices or feeling paranoia are common experiences which can often be a reaction to trauma, abuse, or deprivation. Calling them symptoms of mental illness, psychosis, or schizophrenia is only one way of thinking about them, with advantages and disadvantages.” 

- The British Psychological Association: Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia.

With mental health problems reaching epidemic proportions in the UK and throughout the western world, this document reads as no less than an admission that the current model of mental health treatment gap has failed, and is a cry for help to anyone with an approach that may be useful. There are indeed a great many cultures who have, and still carry, a deeper understanding of mental illness. While these perspectives don’t fit within the boundaries of rational reductionism, this has little relevance to their efficacy.

“From American Indian shamanism* to esoteric Judaism, this concept has dominated for millennia. As it has now become clear, western civilization Is unique in history in it’s failure to recognize each human being as a subtle energy system in constant relationship to a vast sea of energies in the surrounding cosmos.”  
 - Dr. Edward Mann, Sociologist

Ancient indigenous Shamanic practice

What is the Shamanic View of Mental Health?

Broadly speaking, any form of awareness around mental health that includes spiritual, mystic and/or mythic considerations could be included in a shamanic view of mental health. This ranges from ancient indigenous shamanic practices to yogic methods involving kundalini awakening, through to Jungian and transpersonal psychology (which draw heavily from ancient cultures). Jung, for example, characterised schizophrenia and psychosis as a natural healing process.

“When conscious life is characterised by one-sidedness and false attitudes, primordial healing images are activated – one might say instinctively – and come to light in the dreams of individuals and the visions of artists… Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place of reality.”    
 – Carl Jung

Another foundation stone of this perspective is the phrase made famous by Joseph Campbell, “The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight” (an idea borrowed from Jungian psychiatrist RD Laing). There has been a long history throughout human culture of people having mystical experiences, and then becoming “weller than well” as Dr. John Weir Perry put it. The key here is that in these instances the person completed a process that western medicine would have labelled as sickness and then medicated. They instead passed through it and went on to lead lives without relapse into ‘psychosis’, living a more fulfilled existence than if they had never gone through their temporary break with consensus reality. Throughout history there have been examples of people who have gone on to use their visionary insights, newly found drive and focus to create great social reform for the benefit of all.

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