(Apologies for the lack of image quality)
How does psychoanalysis in psychology apply to how I've become who I am today?
I think that my use of denial as a mental defense mechanism applies to how psychoanalysis has shaped me. I had been friends with her for 4 years and she had cut me off so I fell into an intense depression. To cope I used denial to keep myself stable through the pain. It didn't work particularly well and I found that I just couldn't believe that she would leave me completely. I constantly thought that she would come back, that she was still my friend that I was just imagining whatever had happened or that she just needed a break from me. The pain lead me to believe the world would end instead (because somehow the start of the apocalypse was more believable to me) which gave me many horrible dreams (my brain trying to force me to process that she was gone and she was the cause of my pain) and resulted in many panic attacks that would wake me from my sleep. I was in denial for 8 months, falling apart constantly, feeling physically heavy, focusing on school because I wanted to be as smart as her for when she came back, focusing on things she liked so I'd be ready to talk to her about them when she came back, focusing on how to try and improve myself so that I could be a better person when she came back. She didn't, she stayed apart from me.
I used this image of my friend and I on Halloween to show us together in the past before the memories of us became tainted and suppressed as I fell into denial. The link of defense mechanisms is that I will (in extreme cases) use denial to help myself cope with the excess of pain that I feel. The use of denial is to protect my ego, which is a part of Freud's psyche model that includes the id, ego and superego.
I used this image of my friend and I on Halloween to show us together in the past before the memories of us became tainted and suppressed as I fell into denial. The link of defense mechanisms is that I will (in extreme cases) use denial to help myself cope with the excess of pain that I feel. The use of denial is to protect my ego, which is a part of Freud's psyche model that includes the id, ego and superego.