The 12 Most Common Defense Mechanisms

Undoing

There are times where we can’t really control our emotion and the actions that come with it. People tend to act out things that they might regret in the future. The negative emotion is out, but then guilt settles in, with the possibility of triggering the already passed negative emotion. With undoing, in basically deals with the primary feeling of guilt, instead of the usual tension that is dealt with in the past defense mechanisms discussed previously. But notice that how the negativity works in this model is by cycle, if the grief is woken up, other negative emotions might be aroused as well. This is characterized by the person ‘making up’ for his supposed bad behavior, actively putting on a stop to the guilt he or she might be nursing.