Defence Mechanism: Escapism

This is another of the defence mechanism that all of the others could be said to come under. Any one of the myriad of Defence mechanism comes under the purpose of escaping our current sense of dissonance, with the aim of removing the uncertainty and into a more familiar (safer) place, regardless of how functional to us this is.

With the main two aims of the ego mind said to be, in order of importance, the need to be right and to keep us safe. My perspective is that the need to be right comes down to us needing to trust ourselves, as if we are wrong that could lead to our own death. However, it is easy to see how the need to be right can also have different consequences when it comes to day to day life. Through are living conditions being extremely different to how they once were, these old ways of acting can lead to inappropriate actions in today’s world.

When unpleasant consequences occur in our life we believe that via the use of escapism we can leave our stressors behind. And this is usually done by allowing our attention to be consumed by other stimulus, with the objective being for us to forget what is actually going on. If we reflect on this understanding for a moment we can see how important this is for functioning in the world.

What leads to dysfunctional consequences is the accumulation of these events and through that, the build up of inner conflict and tension. And this then creates external consequences that make us feel powerless. And then we can create a life that is just our history repeating itself, over and over again.

My perspective is that our effort is put into these escapes, not only as a way to avoid pain, but what is also going on, is that we are also looking to somehow find a way of claiming our natural state of aliveness.

The parts of ourselves that we are trying to escape from could be described as our shadow, as no matter where we go or how fast we go, it is also there until we face ourselves.

The use of alcohol, drugs, overeating, and other things, are a way for us to feel this sense of aliveness again, and as much as these things are label as the ‘problem’, ultimately they are neutral. With what really needs to be asked is ‘why’ these things are being consumed in such high amounts in the first place. As my outlook is, as long as we judge these things as bad or wrong, we are missing and ignoring the real issues that need to be looked at.

My perspective is that although the use of these can be prohibited, another problem will appear unless we look at what’s really going on.

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Oliver J R Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk/