Thoughts of a Random Nature

I have a horrible habit and I really just became aware of it recently. I rationalize and justify things I shouldn’t. For example, I’ll have a box of candy although I’m supposed to stay away from sweets because I’ll tell myself I’ve been eating well and exercising the whole week so I deserve a treat. I’ll spend a whole Saturday in bed when I should be cleaning or running errands and explain it away by thinking about the long week I had and how I just need one day of rest. It’s so easy to lie to myself but in the end what happens? I may be putting my health in jeopardy for some M&Ms and I’ve wasted a whole day, a day I could have spent being out and productive.

For some reason, it popped in my head that all of this rationalization is a defense mechanism. I don’t want to just come out and admit that I may not have the discipline I need when it comes to eating right or that I’m lazy and procrastinating so I tell myself something that makes me feel better and not like I’m a complete slacker. When I’ve sent messages to people and never got a response, I rationalized it in my head as though that person is just too busy to sit down and respond. This may have been true, I can’t say it’s not. But a part of me knows that there are very few people who don’t have five minutes to spare to sit and return an email. But it makes me feel better to believe that than to face the fact that, for whatever reason, there’s a strong chance they didn’t want to keep the conversation going.

I’m not trying to put all of the goings-on of my mind out there, but after doing some reading on defense mechanisms, I realized there are two others that I use: compartmentalization and repression. Unless you really know me, most of the time you won’t know something’s bothering me. For example, if I’m having a personal problem I don’t bring it to work and vice versa. I think of it as keeping the different foods on my plate from touching (I hate when that happens!). What’s going on outside of work stays there and work problems stay at work. It might sound weird to have parts of my life organized like a file cabinet but I do think it’s better that way. As far as repression goes, I’m not a very emotional person so it’s easy for me to squash feelings that I may have and ignore them. Unfortunately when you try to squish and push something down, eventually it comes back up so I think I need a better way.

This post is relatively personal but this blog is where I come to vent on my random thoughts so I figure this is the perfect place for this discussion.

What defense mechanisms, if any, do you use?

J