Classic Defenses
This defense means refusing to believe what is obvious in order to avoid painful realities.
Denial
Changing the subject to avoid a threatening topic is known as this defense.
Diversion
This distortion involves expecting disaster and asking “What if something terrible happens?”
Catastrophizing
You attribute your own feelings, thoughts, or traits to someone else instead of acknowledging them in yourself.
Projecting
Feeling like others must change for you to be happy describes this fallacy.
Fallacy of Change
This defense involves unconsciously blocking out painful thoughts or memories.
Repression
Quietly pulling back, avoiding others, and becoming passive describes this defense.
Withdrawal
Believing that what you feel must be true (e.g., “I feel stupid, so I am stupid”) is this defense.
Emotional Reasoning
Misdirecting pent-up feelings toward a safer target describes this defense.
Displacement
Believing that the world should be fair and feeling resentful when it isn’t is this fallacy.
Fallacy of Fairness
This defense involves admitting part of a problem, but making it sound less serious.
Minimizing
This defense involves analysis or theorizing to avoid emotional awareness.
Intellectualizing
This distortion involves assuming you know what others are thinking or feeling without evidence.
Mind Reading
Adopting someone else’s values and standards without checking if they fit you is this defense.
Introjection
Holding rigid rules about how people “should” act describes this defense.
"Shoulds"
When someone magnifies negative details or blows things out of proportion, they are using this defense.
Maximizing
This defense means agreeing with someone just to get them off your back, even if you don’t actually agree.
Complying
This thinking pattern frames things as all good or all bad, with no middle ground.
Polarized/Black and White/All or Nothing Thinking
This defense involves acting in a way that is the extreme opposite of how you actually feel.
Reaction Formation
Trying to overachieve in one area to make up for weakness in another is this defense.
Compensation
This defense involves placing responsibility for one’s behavior on someone or something else.
Blaming
Going back to child-like behaviors under stress describes this defense.
Regression
This distortion generalizes one or two qualities into a negative global judgment.
Global Labeling
Trying to feel important by associating with something/someone highly valued is this defense.
Identification
Believing you must be the best at everything and always right describes this defense.
Grandiosity