Defense Mechanism Quotes

“I'm sorry. I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain.”
― Cassandra Clare

“Perfectionism is the unparalleled defense for emotionally abandoned children. The existential unattainability of perfection saves the child from giving up, unless or until, scant success forces him to retreat into the depression of a dissociative disorder, or launches him hyperactively into an incipient conduct disorder. Perfectionism also provides a sense of meaning and direction for the powerless and unsupported child. In the guise of self-control, striving to be perfect offers a simulacrum of a sense of control. Self-control is also safer to pursue because abandoning parents typically reserve their severest punishment for children who are vocal about their negligence.”
― Pete Walker

“...repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“I knew her well enough to understand that when Delia pushed you away, it was her way of making sure she didn't get shoved first.”
― jodi picoult

“Like a lot of people with mental illness, I spend a lot of time fronting. It’s really important to me to not appear crazy, to fit in, to seem normal, to do the things “normal people” do, to blend in.
As a defense mechanism, fronting makes a lot of sense, and you hone that mechanism after years of being crazy. Fronting is what allows you to hold down a job and maintain relationships with people, it’s the thing that sometimes keeps you from falling apart. It’s the thing that allows you to have a burst of tears in the shower or behind the front seat of your car and then coolly collect yourself and stroll into a social engagement…

We are rewarded for hiding ourselves. We become the poster children for “productive” mentally ill people, because we are so organized and together. The fact that we can function, at great cost to ourselves, is used to beat up the people who cannot function.

Because unlike the people who cannot front, or who fronted too hard and fell off the cliff, we are able to “keep it together,” whatever it takes.”
― S.E. Smith

“She's terrified that all these sensations and images are coming out of her — but I think she's even more terrified to find out why." Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing.”
― David L. Calof

“The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arguably, the genuine ego is more of a circumstantial defense mechanism rather than a steady arrogance in need of starvation.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“Being in a state of denial is a
universally human response to
situations which threaten to
overwhelm. People who were abused
as children sometimes carry their
denial like precious cargo without a
port of destination. It enabled us to
survive our childhood experiences, and often we still live in survival mode decades beyond the actual abuse. We protect ourselves to excess because we learned abruptly and painfully that no one else would.”
― Sarah E. Olson, Becoming One: A Story of Triumph Over Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Denial of one's need for others is the most common type of defense against bonding. If people come from a situation, whether growing up or later in life, where good, safe relationships were not available to them, they learn to deny that they even want them. Why want what you can't have? They slowly get rid of their awareness of the need.”
― Henry Cloud, Changes That Heal: How to Understand the Past to Ensure a Healthier Future

“I wondered if he was simply tired, if life had beaten him into permanent slouch, folded him over himself so no one could get at that soft center-”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Personal growth commences with an ego death. Self-pride blunts personal growth because the ego resists change. The ego wants to maintain the status quo by holding onto false notions of the self. The ego desires me to see all of my failures as someone else’s fault.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“She wasn’t soft or pretty; she was hard-edged and cold, like one of those cold bronze statues surrounded by high fences and crowned in razor wire. Don’t touch me, such defenses said, but it wasn’t enough to halt a breach, no. She had thought people only picked the soft-petaled, sweet-smelling flowers, but some people took thorns as a challenge.”
― Nenia Campbell, Escape

“I loved that vulnerable excitement when he first caught sight of something that made him feel before he could cover it up.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“In life, we have so much shit and we constantly collect new shit on top of the old shit and we mostly don't even remember the shit we already have... Isn't it funny how we house so much crap that we aren't even consciously aware of? We do the same thing inside our bodies. So much pain piled on top of pain and memories on top of memories that we just shut the door to our minds and pretend there is nothing in there. That we are fine.”
― Jennifer Pastiloff, On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard

“Attending a funeral would leave the average person insane, if they truly believed that sooner or later they are also going to die.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“And so escape and love became intertwined, and from this grew a sense of not knowing, ignoring, pretending not to know... Anything I felt--grief, depression, shock, anger--I simply starved it away or exercised or drank too much wine or slept. I simply would not know. It was something I learned as a child that had somehow carried me into adulthood. Until it would no longer carry me. Until I learned to look deep into the face of whatever it was, and what I found was this: it didn't kill me.”
― Jennifer Pastiloff, On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard

“She never would admit it, but she felt utterly exposed at El Redentor, all those pale eyes gnawing at her duskiness like locusts––and she didn't know how to handle such vulnerability. Did what had always saved her in the past. Was defensive and aggressive and mad overreactive. You said something slightly off-color about her shoes and she brought up the fact that you had a slow eye and danced like a goat with a rock stuck in its ass. Ouch. You would just be playing and homegirl would be coming down on you off the top rope.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“You see, long ago I built a wall,
a defense mechanism as I recall.”
― Adiela Akoo, Lost in a Quatrain

“We deny the fact that people get into or remain in our lives mainly for selfish reasons mainly for a selfish reason, namely, to protect our cherished belief that we are special.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The hatred of money is generally a subconscious attempt to alleviate the pain of being broke or poor.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The hatred of money is almost always a defense mechanism.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The avatar she’d designed to conquer the game of life wouldn’t stop to hug her nemesis. Badass Simone would pulverize the competition. Find his biggest weakness and exploit it in a tactical strike.”
― Chandra Blumberg, Stirring Up Love

“Consciously experiencing one's own victimisation instead of trying to ward it off provides protection against sadism; i.e., the compulsion to torment and humiliate others.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“La Vera em va dir:
—Com és que sents que tot ho has de transformar en una història?
Així que li vaig dir per què:
Perquè si explico la història, en controlo la versió.
Perquè si explico la història, us puc fer riure, i m'estimo més que us en rigueu de mi que no pas que sentiu pena.
Perquè si explico la història, no fa tant de mal.
Perquè si explico la història, puc tirar endavant.”
― Nora Ephron, Heartburn

“[He] bowed his head, crossing himself, and so fervently

did he pray that he almost missed the sound of the footsteps crossing the courtyard. But a man who has watched through many a long night waiting for that slight intake of breath that in the assassin makes before he sticks the dagger your back or slices his knife across your throat, can never again give himself over to prayer or sleep or even love-making without his sixth sense remaining ever watchful.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Those who persecute others are warding of knowledge of their own fate as victims.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“So if people would describe you as an exceptionally nice person who never gets upset or angry, that description would likely tell us something about your characteristic defense mechanisms. If you’re an assertive person who tends to dominate a situation, shouting down other people or badgering them until they agree with you – that would suggest an entirely different set of defenses. Your habitual ways of interacting with the important people in your life tell us a great deal about the defense mechanisms you typically use.”
― Joseph Burgo

“When someone has endured organized or ritualized abuse, dissociation may be their only defense; sometimes even this is used against them.”
― Lindsay Schofield, Our House: Making Sense of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Making Sense of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Their defense mechanism has made them easy prey to humans - rather than offering protection, it renders them neatly and readily portable.”
― Katherine Rundell, Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures

“Most of your healing journey
will be about unlearning
the patterns of self-protection
that once kept you safe.”
― Vironika Wilde, Love and Gaslight