Flipping through a House Beautiful magazine at the library (trying to get ideas for my new office) while waiting for my daughter to check out some CDs, a photo that caught my eye.
Carson Kressley, was showing off his bedroom. I love Carson. He's the cleverist of the Fab 5 on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, inspirational guru on How to Look Good Naked and apparently he was on Dancing With the Stars (which I missed). His lightening quick, hilarious wit is liberating and he is so sweet!
Then I looked more closely at the photo. Double take! His stylish bedroom was filled with horses! Drawings, paintings, figurines, prints, tchotchkes!
You, dear reader, probably already knew this. Carson Kressley is a passionate horse lover and an accomplished equestrian from way back! When he was five years old he had a pony named Sparky! Awww!
Now he shows American Saddlebreds, riding, driving and loving them. Somehow this all makes sense! Of course Carson is a rider! Of course he loves horses! Why? For the same reason we all do. Because they keep us sane!
When The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense was first published in German in 1936 it was at once recognized as a major contribution to psychoanalytic psychology, and its translation into English quickly followed. More than half a century later it enjoys the status of a classic. Written by a pioneer of child analysis, and illustrated by fascinating clinical pictures drawn from childhood and adolescence, it discusses those adaptive measures by which painful and unwanted feeling-states are kept at bay or made more bearable.
Anna Freud's arguments have a clarity and cogency reminiscent of her father's and the work is remarkably undated. Nothing stands still, but The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense has unmistakably passed the test of time.
The take away message from this book that stuck with me is that ego defenses such as denial, repression, identification and rationalization work to protect ourselves from painful anxiety. The defenses themselves are a gift from nature, just as anxiety is when we need it to warn us there is something in our environment that could harm us. It's just that both anxiety and the accompanying defenses can get stuck in overdrive, causing us to over-react, over-compensate and generally over-mess up our lives.
So how can we tell when our defenses are good and when are they getting in the way? That's a tough one. My first answer is the fall back, "I don't know how to define it but I know it when I see it." That's lame and not as helpful as I'd like it to be. Sorry.
What I can say with confidence is that most of the people I work with, people with thin skins, (and most people with depression or anxiety have thin skins) need to boost their ego defenses, not lower them. They need permission to put up that force field so that the nasty people or the difficult situations can't hit them so hard.
This video was shot in the Spring of 2011. (I have no idea why it took so long for me to publish it.) I compare the gear I put on to protect myself when I ride Annie to allowing myself to have good protection for my self-esteem.
By the way, I mention half chaps and forget to show you what they are in the video. You can click here to see a photo. Half chaps are these cool gator-like leg coverings that slip over your paddock boots. They protect your lower legs which work hard applying aides to your horse. The times I rode hard, like during a lesson, without half chaps or full riding boots, my inner legs felt bruised and tender. Ouch!
Please let me know what you think in the comments! Your input is very much appreciated.
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