Ready to learn about the maladaptive tendencies of your most difficult relational partners? When we don’t believe we’re “entitled” to a need or emotion, we vent it into (unwise) action. Let’s discuss the immature cognitive patterns we/others may still be utilizing to keep our brains “safe.” We’ll cover the lowest level self-defense mechanisms: Acting Out, Help-Rejecting Complaining, and Passive Aggression.

Note: videos and transcripts are ordinarily available at the Advanced subscriber level — for this public episode I am making them available to all.

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Transcript:

Well, hey there, fucker. And good to see ya.

If you are viewing this through the free membership on Patreon or through the correct free platform that is released everywhere, but I would recommend viewing it on Spotify, then this might be the first time that we are having a face-to-face conversation as we run through what we have learned this month over at the Traumatized Motherfucker private podcast stream available on Patreon. com/TraumatizedMotherfuckers.

That’s right, I’m saying I have started putting out video versions of this podcast featuring me and my dirtball face and mess of hair, as well as my trusty handy dandy whiteboard so you can follow along with some of my notes while I speak and gesture behind me. Check those things out.

Like I said, pretty much a video version of every podcast lately, Patreon. com/TraumatizedMotherfuckers, or that handy dandy Patreon stream, which is under this same title, Complex Trauma Recovery We Are Traumatized Motherfuckers.

But you can subscribe right there and get all of the recent releases straight in your Spotify app for listening or viewing ease. Up to you.

Now I also want to tell you about another big change that has been taking place over in the private stream, which is that I’ve kind of split the topics this past month so that we have been discussing a more advanced topic, which we’re here to talk about today, while we’ve also been going back to basics and having more casual conversation about what has been learned throughout this trauma recovery journey so far, starting at the beginning and really working our way towards these more high level topics that we tend to go through these days. So if a lot of the things that I’ve said have been way too far ahead for your trauma recovery status, you might want to hit up those back to basics episodes, which I have been putting out also for free.

If you go to Patreon. com/TraumatizedMotherfuckers and click join for free, you will find them there.

No strings attached. They also have been over on that other aforementioned free public platform, which you can find on Spotify.

So check that out. Just want to make sure that all of this recovery information is getting to the right ears at the right time, if I can help it.

And on that note, let’s talk about how these brains of ours get so confusingly programmed into ways where we’re obviously doing completely baffling self-fucking things for long periods of time without realizing what effect we’re really having on ourselves with our brains automatic acrobatic shenanigans. That’s right.

We’re here today to talk about self-defense mechanisms once more, but this time we’re starting with more of a structured approach. Last month, we spoke about intellectualization and rationalization because I feel that they’re just huge issues across the human population.

They also are closely intertwined with narcissists and narcissistic abuse, which we were talking about earlier this year. But now instead, we’re starting with the ways that we learn to defend ourselves throughout the developmental stages of life.

Theoretically, as in, as a child, we have certain ways that we protect ourselves from the world, from other people, and from our own self-awarenesses. And hopefully, ideally, those mechanisms mature as we gain experience on earth so that we’re not using such kind of rudimentary, crass, inarticulate self-defense mechanisms as we go.

Hopefully, they are getting more adaptable so that we are better able to deal with reality and make adjustments as we move along versus the ways that our brains kind of, again, crudely protect us in our beginning years. But is that what happens in actuality?

Well, for most of us, we can look at our family members and confidently say, “Nope, they’re still doing the same shit as toddlers do. ” Therefore, we’re starting at the very bottom, the immature self-defenses, and moving our way up.

So we have started in June talking about what is called the immature action-taking self-defenses. So again, these are going to be very youthful, low developmental mechanisms that we use so our brains can comprehend what’s happening outside of us and inside of us somehow, even though they are not necessarily getting any of it correct, are really benefiting us in the long term.

And some people get stuck repeating these same mental processes forever, thus having relationships with them feels like trying to relate to very small children. Right?

Cool. So as we talk about these immature action-taking defenses, what you need to know is they serve the function of venting or discharging or somehow releasing emotion, which is considered not allowed.

Somehow these emotions are dangerous to have. We have gotten the message that we will be punished or even survivally threatened if we were to reveal or express them.

And therefore, these are the self-defense mechanisms that we put into play so that in a way, we are expressing those unallowed emotions, wants, needs, motivations, but not really. We’re not necessarily speaking to them or processing them or having any of those things fulfilled or met.

We’re just finding a way to kind of mentally and emotionally release them within our environments. So at least there’s a little bit of kind of back ass words relief for us.

Make sense? Okay.

So the first self-defense mechanism that we spoke about individually this month was the acting out self-defense mechanism, which is pretty simple to understand. There is not too, too much to say about it.

Essentially it’s akin to having reactive behaviors, just automatically responding to your environment and your internal environment, venting out whatever emotion you might be having in response to something happening outside or inside of you without any forethought. So this probably sounds a lot like the type one and type two processing discussion that we were just recently having in which we learned that narcissists tend to live through type one processing and behaving.

In other words, they’re just reactive. Something happens, the first thing that their brain or body responds with internally is how they then react externally.

There’s no stopping and reconsidering. Is this my best thought?

Is this emotion really appropriate for this situation? Is this the best long term consequence that I’m setting up for myself?

None of that kind of higher minded processing or rethinking or recalibrating takes place. And instead there’s just immediate action that is taken.

So acting out can sound like someone’s throwing a tantrum or pitching a fit or doing something to cause problems. But in reality, it’s just not having the higher consciousness to recognize that the way that your strongest thoughts and emotions are popping up might not be the healthiest or most beneficial ones.

Instead, emotion, thoughts, impulses are immediately translated into doing. So a lot of us probably know these people, right?

They’re the people who immediately start screaming or throwing things, punching walls, storming out, just often doing kind of self sabotaging behaviors that if they could have paused for half a second, literally half a second, they probably would have been able to tamp down that immediate impulsive action and come up with a better plan that would suit everyone in a more positive way in the long term. Right?

So again, this is like what babies and toddlers do. They don’t have that mental or emotional or behavioral control yet.

And so if something happens that upsets them, boom, you’re gonna know about it. Yeah, a lot of people are still functioning at this level.

Great. The next self-defense mechanism that we spoke about, which is getting a lot more interesting, is called help rejecting complaining.

It sounds like a strange combination of words, right? Help rejecting complaining.

So that’s help dash rejecting bitching. In other words, I’ve been calling this victimized cake having and eating.

So the help rejecting complainers want to vent out the emotion or the thoughts that they are having, the concerns that they have, or the fears that they have, perhaps a sense of being out of control in their environment. But they don’t actually want to do anything about it.

They don’t want you to provide them with advice or potential solutions, or even to provide direct help to resolve their problem. They just want to express the problem, perhaps in a very exaggerated manner.

And they want you to sit back and listen and sympathize, perhaps even pity them or offer to take care of them in some way. But then they do not want any follow through.

Now, I’m calling this cake having and eating because their actual goal is to feel seen or heard. They have parts of them that are hurting, feeling out of control, feeling maybe frightened, and they want acknowledgement within those parts.

But then they also want to maintain the story about all of that pain and out of control-ness so that they can remain a victim within their own narrative so that they can continue this process. This is how they know how to relate to people.

This is how they know how to quote, deal with things. It’s to make it into a social us problem that never gets resolved so that they don’t feel alone in it, rather than actually solving the problem and moving forward with both people progressing in their lives.

You know what I mean? So a lot of times people do this when they don’t feel as though they are permitted to have certain degrees of control in their life or to escape their victimized narrative.

They feel very trapped in it. They also often are requesting help for one problem when in fact their real issue is a completely different problem.

They’re not sure how to get their needs met or make those requests. Go back to nonviolent communication for a lot of reminders on that topic.

And therefore, they just want to kind of maintain the attention of their social comrades and again, kind of use it as a way of connecting and having some semblance of emotional support or need fulfillment without really having the emotional support or need fulfillment that they truly are looking for. Does that make sense?

If not, we talk about this one for a good hour long discussion over on the Patreon, including going into the functions of the behavior as outlined in a particularly helpful paper and the diagnostic criteria to decide if someone is a help or rejecting complainer. It is a pretty fascinating self-defense mechanism as you start breaking it down and recognizing how common it is in the general population, in the people around you, and maybe in you as well.

It’s okay. There are reasons why we do it.

Every behavior has a function. You will find some self-compassion in learning more about it as well.

And lastly, this month, we covered the self-defense mechanism of passive aggression towards the self and toward others. Because we’re not only passive aggressive towards people outside of us, we do also engage with it unto ourselves, which we can call kind of covert self-sabotage, or very active self-sabotage as well.

So passive aggression, we can see as being veiled venting of resentment and expected disappointment. In other words, resentment is the experience of believing, feeling, knowing that you are do something from another person, but they will not give it to you.

And then this ongoing expectation of disappointment is birthed from the experience of having been disappointed time and time again, as a wee little fucker, and therefore having this patterning in your mind that you will always be disappointed because it has always been that way so far. So in both instances, with the resentment or the expectation of disappointment, it’s pointing towards what we can probably guess is some neglect of emotions and needs and human connection from early in life that is still driving behaviors to this day.

If you do not believe that you can outright describe your emotions, your wants, your needs to your social comrades, and have positive results, you will not find any fulfillment or help or connection from revealing these things to someone else. You flip into patterns of using passive aggressive behavior instead, in which you are not forthrightly describing what’s going on for you or what you need, but instead, discharging or venting the displeasure of the expected disappointment and pains through covert veiled actions that at face value are very agreeable.

They are very inert. They are easy to deny having any aggressive tendencies behind them.

And in this way, you are expressing your displeasure and pain towards another person, which really is probably displeasure and pain that you collected from your family of origin or other early relational experiences, but now you expect it from everyone. And in doing so, you’re just progressing this pattern of never directly stating what you need in order to get fulfillment of what you need.

And thus passive aggression is all that you can use. So passive aggression, as defined in the literature, often appears through a lot of ironically inaction taking.

So although we’re talking about the immature action taking defenses, passive aggression commonly is being very obstinate and kind of refusing to do a thing, a thing that you’ve probably agreed to do. Right?

So passive aggression is smiling and nodding and saying, “You fucking got it, boss. ” While behind the scenes, you might be procrastinating, purposely dropping the ball, choosing a path of ineptitude, or somehow just not actually following through with what you agreed to do.

That is how passive aggression at least is most commonly discussed in the psychological literature. And you can see how this would also transmit over to passive aggression onto yourself.

You can fuck yourself over by just not doing a thing that you know you should probably do. Right?

And in this way, you keep yourself trapped in that state of mind where you believe you will be disappointed. You do not have control.

Nothing is ever going to change. And maybe you have a persistent sense of resentment against the whole world, which is never delivering you what you know or believe you deserve.

So in this way, you keep yourself locked in, again, a victimized narrative, similar to the help, rejecting, and life never progresses. You never progress.

If you could simply directly state what it is that you want or need, you might find that people are willing to work with you and you would have more beneficial positive results in the long and short terms. But some of us have not been raised to believe that those are powers that we have, or there will ever be positive outcomes from sticking our necks out and expressing what it is that’s going on for us internally or externally.

So that is where passive aggressive little fucking shitholes come into our lives and drive us absolutely bananas with their inaction taking. Alternatively, we do also discuss more active passive aggression, which is going to be things like tone usage, concealed insults, discharges of emotion in a physical way or a verbal way that can then be denied.

No, that’s not what I was saying. I was saying, sounds like a great fucking idea.

I meant it. What do you mean I wasn’t being passive aggressive.

There are also plenty of examples of that form of P aggressiveness. So these are the topics we have been going over all month.

Each one has its own at least hour long episode, as I said, where we talk about the definition of the self defense mechanism, the function of the mechanism, why people get stuck in these patterns, what they are really trying to accomplish, and that includes us ourselves, and the diagnostic items that help pinpoint if these are behaviors that we might be accidentally still attempting to utilize, when in fact, they’re not helping us to improve our lives. They are keeping us trapped in a very immature level of social and personal functioning.

Self defense mechanisms, they’re interesting. This is just a lot of backflips around really recognizing our place in reality and how much power we could have if we were to develop the self esteem and the practices to tap into it and prove it to ourselves.

All right, y’all, I think that’s a pretty fair rundown of what we’ve discussed this month. I do highly recommend tapping into it over on the Patreon, patreon.

com/traumatizedmotherfuckers, or at least subscribe for free so that you get the extra videos and episodes that I’ve been dropping over there fairly regularly lately, and you don’t miss out on a goddamn thing. Lastly, I wanted to thank alcoholfree.

com for the very nice write up and resource share that they created for Traumatized Motherfuckers. If you go to alcoholfree.

com, they have a number of very helpful resources to tap into that they recommend and CPTSD recovery. Real Talk on Trauma and Healing is the title that they have given to the little blurb that they wrote about this very show.

And many thanks to them and whoever passed this show on to them for the kindness of sharing this non-advertised, you just gotta fucking stumble across it, podcast of mine. All right, that’s it, everybody.

I hope you’ve been having an excellent summer, at least escaping the heatwave as much as possible. And I will see you next time as we discuss more self-defense mechanisms and get back to the basics of CPTSD recovery at the same time.

Okay, talk to you soon. Take care of your goddamn self out there.

Hail you. Hail more mature self-defense mechanisms.

At least we can grow within our brains past the patterns that our families have settled into. I call that a real success.

And until we speak again next time, maybe even see you again next time. Cheers, y’all.

I’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.