The 12 Most Common Defense Mechanisms

Reaction Formation

Don’t you always have someone you dislike strongly and yet you still treat this person with the utmost care? That is a perfect example of reaction formation. It is characterized by a person doing the opposite of the things he or she would want to do. Another great example for this is when a person is really in love with someone and it’s stressing her out, she would opt to just ignore or avoid the object of her affections to avoid the stress that is causing her. This type of reaction formation is technically a form of avoidance, but recognition of the presence of the stressor is there.