Psychology Reflective Essay

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A psychological concept that I learned about in this course that helps me understand human behavior is attachment styles. The way that a mother raises a child has a significant role in how they act and develop socially. I learned that mothers parenting styles can influence the adult characteristics that a child will have when they grow up. This helped me understand human behavior a little bit more because it helped me understand why some people may act the way that they act, it may be due to their mother's parenting style. This concept helps me to further realize that no one person is just a result of themselves but a result of the way they were raised and nurtured as well. I will personally apply what I have learned about parental attachment …show more content…

Defense mechanisms are how people handle situations to avoid experiencing anxiety. This helped me understand how and why people do what they do in times of stress, and the diverse ways that people may handle stressful situations. I learned that there are 11 defense mechanisms, repression, suppression, regression, reaction formation, projection, rationalization, displacement, denial, intellectualization, sublimation, compensation. For example, if a person is depressed then they might act extremely happy so that no one knows they are depressed and they won't have to deal with the anxiety of talking about their feelings, I found out that this is known as reaction formation. Or that a person may accuse another person of having certain feelings because they have it themselves, this is projection. Now that I know what defense mechanisms are I now realize how much the people around me use them and that I sometimes use a few myself. In my life, I plan on applying this concept by looking at the things that other people around me do and realizing that this might just be their way of handling stress, and since I understand this I can better deal with