In a few regions of psychology (especially in psychodynamic theory), psychiatrists discuss "defense

As with any personality type, defense mechanisms play a major role in how we handle situations. The ego has many techniques at its disposal to deal with unwanted thoughts and desires. These are known collectively as defense mechanisms. (Burger 2015 p. 46) Defense mechanisms are automatic psychological responses to internal and external stressors and conflict. (APA, 1994: Perry et al., 1998)

That is how adults handle interactions, and to react defensively, I feel, is mostly a reaction based in fear.

Defence mechanisms are created by the ego to help manage the Id and super ego, the ego being reality, Id the seeking of pleasure and avoidance of pain, and super ego our morals and values.

We’ve all experienced the feeling that we’ve moved into a different life, dissociation from reality, just mild like when we daydream, delve into a good book or become engrossed with a project. But then after that, we do still come back to reality. However, some people are diagnosed with a dissociative identity disorder or the popular multiple personality disorder (MPD). This differ from mild dissociation that all of us commonly experience. People who have this live a fairly complicated life. Sadly, people who have this experience traumatic physical, sexual or emotional abuse during their childhood.

A dissociative disorder is the breakdown of one's perception of his/her surroundings, memory, identity, or consciousness.

Depression. A common feeling connected with feeling like a stranger to self. Signs of dissociation are hidden and often cause much deeper inner pain.

Dissociation can be incredibly damaging when it occurs due to non- traumatic events. Most people have experienced dissociation to a certain extent,

Some people who suffer from dissociation and its negative experiences do so due to a history of childhood abuse, like Julia, one of the author’s patients, which most often leads them to believe they can hide away their selves: “Because children dissociate readily…they easily split their consciousness into pieces. The self is put aside and hidden....This coping strategy becomes dysfunctional only later, after the child is grown and away from the original trauma...But through the years of intensive use, the self-protective strategy has developed a hair trigger…” (Pg. 391) Probably the worst consequences people can experience from dissociation are when their dissociation becomes chronic and horrifically persistent, which is another reason why it becomes such a detrimental experience in their lives. During this level of dissociation, the patient begins to behave self-injurious and habituates addictive behaviors in order to gain a temporary relief. At this stage, dissociation becomes so continual that it begins to limit the patient’s perceptions. This is evidently displayed by Julia when she poses one of the best questions the author has ever heard: “Well, do you think I dissociate from my body, too? Because if that’s what I’m doing, then it’s the illusion from hell…And even if it doesn’t kill me, what’s the use

Signs and symptoms of someone having this dissociative disorder may include memory loss of events or people, sometimes complete amnesia. They may experience depression, anxiety, have suicidal thoughts or tendencies. They feel detached from themselves, a blurred sense of identity. People around them appear distorted and unreal. All of this may build up significant stress and problems affecting relationships, work, and other important areas of a functional life.

According to the Mayo Clinic (Dissociation Disorders) or multiple personality disorders are categorized as instabilities or disconnection of reality, self-awareness, and character of an individual. According to the Mayo Clinic indicators of dissociation disorders could vary and depends on the type of disorders. Some of these symptoms that could identify the disorder are partial amnesia, lack of emotions, disconnection with reality, issues in maintaining relationships, inability to deal with life stressors factors or emotions, and sense of out of body experiences. Also, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (Dissociation Disorders) there are three main dissociation disorders recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. These disorders are classified as dissociation amnesia, depersonalization/deserialization, and dissociation identity disorder. The National

Dissociation, according to Barlow & Durand (2012) is detachment or loss of integration between identity or reality and consciousness.

Temporary and drastically modifying one 's character or one’s sense of personal identity to avoid emotional distress. The use of dissociation as a defense mechanism tends to involve temporary loss of a person 's connection to the world surrounding them. People experiencing disassociation often describe feeling separated from the outside world, as though they exist in a different realm. Dissociation often helps people to cope with very uncomfortable situations

An impression of invulnerability: Members ignore danger, take dangerous risk and are overly confident.(Carlson, 2014)

Denial is another good example of defense mechanism; this is when a person refuses thoughts, wishes, or exterior realities that they wouldn’t be able to cope with if they got into the sentient mind. An example is when I tell my friend that smoking a lot of cigarettes is bad for his health and that it can lead to cancer which graduates into death, he tells me we all have to die someday and why not live in the moment. He enters a stage of denial because the situation is too much for him to handle

Regression is one of the defence mechanisms identified by Freud. According to Freud there are times when people are faced with circumstances that make them feel at such unease and threatened, that they cannot deal with it and they protect themselves, by retreating to an earlier stage of development. Many children who use regression as a defence mechanism, may begin to suck their thumb again.