Strategies and Mechanisms are different. A strategy is a response that has been considered or thought out prior to the response given. A mechanism is an automatic response. Both strategies and mechanisms can be either positive or negative depending on our own experiences of life and what we've been taught by our environment specifically in childhood.
The formation of a coping strategy or defense mechanism is linked to our capacity for resilience. With firmly grounded resilience, healthier strategies and mechanisms are more likely to unfold. Such as, the ability to stand up for yourself when need be.
An example of an unhealthy mechanism would be responding with aggression to a perceived attack. There are also unhealthy coping strategies such as turning to addiction in times of stress or even self-sabotage.
I will admit I am a very defensive person. I always have been and not in a healthy way. I have learned the hard way that you do not react with violence...ever. Not in response to being hurt, not even in response to violence. It's no secret I had a turbulent childhood and it certainly taught me to keep my walls up. I had a father who wouldn't listen unless I was visibly in a rage. Even then, he would shut down and zone out. I reacted for years to his violence with my own violence. It's the only way he would pay attention to me. Obviously, this is not a good thing to have learned.
I didn't have coping strategies when I was little. There was no one to tell me what to do when my parents were fighting and I felt unsafe. There was no adult left to shield me from the horror that was perceived by my tiny brain. My body took over for me then and I would get migraines. It perplexed the doctors when I was younger because they rarely if ever had cases of migraines in children so young. I learned years later that it was my nervous system going into overload. It was me being too stressed out to handle reality and my brain would go bonkers and split my head open.
So, not coping, and not having healthy defense mechanisms can lead to physical illness. I can tell you firsthand.
And I've mentioned this before in another post about the heart hardening due to emotional blocks walling it up. It happens!
A good way to figure out your learned strategies and mechanisms is to reflect back on times when your emotions were high or when you felt triggered. How did you handle those emotions? How were high emotions handled in your childhood? Could you express them safely and without judgement? Or were you taught to not be a bother?
Making a list of past experiences and your reactions to them will help you to identify the healthy strategies and mechanisms against the not so healthy ones. The next step to take is to rewrite the story in a way that is healthy. Imagine you had handled that situation differently, how would you do that in a healthy way? Write it out! Make yourself the hero! Read it back and notice how you feel. It will inspire you to choose healthier strategies and mechanisms moving forward.
I once had an adult in my youth belligerently raging at me. They decided to take a swing at my face. I dodged it expertly being that I was a very athletic child and then? I laughed.
I was in shock. I thought it would be better to play it off as a joke instead of actually acknowledging that an adult I trusted just tried to physically harm me in a drunken rage. I think about this moment a lot. How a child put consideration on the adult first in order to smooth things over into a scene that was acceptable. I belittled my fear and betrayal in that moment to make my abuser more comfortable. They do not even remember this happening. But I do.
I continued to do this for much longer than I'd like to admit; people pleasing to the extent of pardoning my abusers. All in the name of keeping the peace.
I learned very young that not everyone has good intentions. Not even family. I was wary of people. I kept my walls up and any time someone tried to breech the gate, I'd lash out. It was uncomfortable for me and I would respond. I had to go through the process of identifying my defense mechanisms and coping strategies and rewire them.
I'm still not perfect, and anytime someone says something negative about me to my face, I shut down. I used to get in serious trouble for things when I was young. The belt, dish soap in the mouth, etc. So, when I hear I've done something wrong, I panic and defend myself. The only person defending me when I was little was me. And I took it way too seriously for a while.
I was able to identify why I was such a defensive person and eventually I let it go.
A healthy coping strategy I have now is to remove myself from the situation when I feel a loss of control over my emotions. Sometimes it's an emergency and I'll just sprint away like a lunatic. Mostly, I just take a walk to calm down and think things through. Breathing techniques work for me as well when I need to calm down and think rationally. Mindfulness helps me to ground myself as well.
A lot of the time when we hurt, we want others to feel our hurt. Deny this all you want but we all wish to be understood in our pain. Our egos peep up and decide that we're hurt and need to inflict pain back in order to get it out of our system. This never works. It never feels better to throw it back. Process it and let it go.
Easier said than done!
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