This is the jocko underground podcast number 117 sitting with echo Charles EC Echo Charlie. Yeah. How you doing today? Good jocko. Thanks for us Let's be honest, it's kind of a bit of, this is getting a little rough in here prior to the pressing of record. - No, I think you're in one of your moods, which is cool. And you know, I'm glad that you're happy and you're being you, but that's it. I don't think I don't I wouldn't call it rough. No was I right about what about the fact that sometimes sometimes Spend a lot of time isolated. You spend a lot of time isolated or you're just... With your kids, which look, your kids are great. - Yep. - Kids are great. But let's face it, interacting with your kids is not the same as interacting with an adult.

Spend a lot of time on your computer because your computer doing your computer stuff, right? editing whatever so then you get Here you feel like maybe you have a lot to say you got a lot of a lot of stuff Built up. Right? I use this correct. You're not a hundred percent correct but there is some truth to that yes I would say to the part that you might be slightly misguided is yes I'm around the same group of people very often, very often and what and there's stuff. And you all understand this, where there's only, there's stuff that I can talk with you about that. For a bunch of reasons. I can't really talk to the the fam about I mean I can but they're either gonna be like by why even? Talking to me about this, or might not be appropriate, or just for a bunch of reasons. - So the end state is--

- I'm spot on. - Yes sir, you are. - Nevermind what'd you say, misguided about? The end state, there's no misguiding whatsoever. - Yes, you're correct. - Accurate. - Yeah. Look at it is hey, look I come to you for a lot, you know a handful of things, you know that I can't go to other people for no matter who they are right and look I got you here hey we're here see I'm saying we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna get full full credit full - No, of the scenario, yes. So in that way, yeah, you're correct. - Okay. Well that being said, yeah, I wanted to talk to you today About defense mechanisms good thing to discover not discover a good thing to explore Yes, because people have defense mechanisms that they use and I have talked about these defense mechanisms before

Echelon front like talking to clients talking to people talking about leadership but and we're gonna get into some of those I think but in the idea of defense mechanisms, which is what everybody has kind of heard of. We have these and they... What a defense mechanism is, psychological defense mechanism is unconscious psychological operation. That a person conducts to protect themselves from anxiety, from stress. And from those feelings from developing so I would there's a website very well mind calm and I just grabbed some some of these defense mechanisms One of them is displacement Which is when you take your feelings out on someone else and the example this is being angry at your boss But taking it out on your spouse instead

sense now what a defense mechanism is? You've heard this term before, right? - What, defense mechanism? - Yeah. - Oh yeah, big time. - Of course, yeah, okay. I'm wondering and I'm kind of looking at these I guess it's just real in general because you know defense mechanism is like They're viewed as like a bad thing like misappropriated like you you don't have to use this what you are We'll get into that. Okay, there's different levels - there's different Levels of different types there's some of them that are extremely bad yeah so we'll get to them okay but I think first just going through some of them, denial clearly, the... Denying that something exists. That's a that's a defense mechanism Violent crime happens to you and you deny that even happened repression Justly keeping unpleasant information from your conscious mind. Get abused as a kid and you repress that memory. Or suppression.

Consciously keeping unpleasant information from your conscious mind. Who's to push it out of your mind? Sublimation. Converting unacceptable impulses into more acceptable outlets. What does this mean? you get into a fight with your spouse or you get into an argument with your spouse and you start to get angry, but. Instead of getting in a fight, yelling and screaming, you go for a walk or you go hit the heavy bag or something like that. That's sublimation. Projection. You hear this one a lot, right? You're projecting. - Yeah. - Do you ever see the movie Wedding Crashers? - Yeah. - Good use of the word projecting in there. You're projecting, you're projecting. - Which, I don't remember that part. - I can't remember the context of it, I just remember it being funny. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Assigning your own unacceptable feelings or qualities to others. So if you're feeling the example that they give you. You're feeling attracted to someone other than your spouse, but then you get. Mad at your spouse thinking that they're cheating on you. So you're projecting your own inadequacies onto someone else intellectual ization butchered that one intellectualization this is thinking about a Stressful thing in a super clinical way kind of an interesting one right and the The example here is losing a close family member and staying busy with making necessary arrangements instead of feeling sad. Rationalization justifying an unacceptable feeling or behavior with logic then they give a good example for this one

Being denied a loan for your dream house then saying it's a good thing because the house is too big anyways Just rational as a rationalizing Regression reverting to earlier behaviors hugging a teddy bear when you're feeling stressed like you didn't hear a child I'll Reaction formation replacing an unwanted impulse with its opposite so Being sad about a recent breakup, but acting happy about it. So Well, those are just some examples and there's a lot more. But to your point earlier. Your suspicion was these can have a negative connotation. You are correct. So there's the I think these were level one Pathologies these these are pathological Defense mechanisms. So these are as These are bad, these are as bad as it gets. One is delusional projection. Hmm.

These are where you are projecting on someone a complete delusion. - Mm. Um. Total denial like this did not happen as opposed like no, I don't think it was that bad But no that didn't happen total denial and then And then one is distortion. This is a gross reshaping of reality. So these things are pathological like these are going to be extremely problematic for the person that is experiencing these things And then the next level they have is it's it's it's not going to be a pathology that's gonna cause you significant duress or issues, but it's definitely problem these they just call But immature, so acting out, hypochondria,

passive aggressive, projection, and then they had one term which I hadn't actually You never heard before, which was splitting, which was seeing everything as black and white. Off the handle and like you can't You can't have a rational conversation with them because everything is black and white to them. Yeah, that's that and it's It's kind of immature. It's like when your kids are. I don't even wanna go then. - Yeah. - You know what I mean? - Yeah. - They're taking like, we could have gone to the birthday party, but you didn't wanna clean your room. I don't even wanna go then. It's like black or white. - Yeah, okay. - You know, like that type of thing. At least that's the way I understood it, my very novice way of reading through these things. - Yep, it seems like a... Like that splitting has like similar to false dichotomy. I know it's like a different way of conceptualizing but false dichotomy.

All psychotomy is the kind where you do it as a joke to me sometimes when I was like, Oh, you're a pain. We were talking about the taste of certain things. So I was like, Oh, it's not very hardcore, making it taste all delicious. And you're like, Well, yeah, what else am I going to do? Make it taste like complete crap? I'm like, Brah, that's false tech. There's a bunch of different steps that you could have took besides the extreme kind of a thing. But in a way splitting kind of follows that same rule book in a way where it's like big Stream in the other direction. Yeah, and I may have to deal when I was reading about splitting is kind of There's more to it. There's more to it. We'll probably dive into these things more But the general idea that I got from it was it's like hey, this is either black or white and you end up Sort of doing that in an immature way Yeah, like you know the idea of you either with me or against me kind of a thing, you know Like that seems like real black in the face Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Then the next level towards a hell of

Which is kind of weird because the to me immature sounds worse than or sounds better than neurotic but the next Level which is less bad bad. So the worst is pathological, the next one is immature, the next one is neurotic, which was, the first one is displacement. Shifting impulses or emotions to a safer outlet, which means, and it's sort of like. It's very similar to the first one I said like oh you're in a fight with your wife. So you You're you're mad at your boss. So you take it out on your wife. That's displacement, but the This one is a little bit more positive where you're taking an emotion that you have that's bad and you're gonna put it onto something that is a little bit more acceptable. Yeah. So. You know and they they actually in the definition well they were talking about like having a

Like a sexual urge and instead putting it towards something that's a little bit more acceptable working out. Yeah. Yeah Like working out or yeah something along those lines Dissociation this walk in This one sounded pretty bad where you have a drastic change of your personal identity. Like you start acting like a different person. This is the one we covered already Intellectualization excessive analytical thought so well as you pointed out look I've given people this advice before. Hey, something really bad happens, give people tasks to do where they can kind of get distracted, for lack of a better word, on-- For example, planning for the funeral. Like that to me is not a horrible thing. and that brings us to the last of these levels, which is just mature, which is using.

These defense mechanisms, but as a almost in a positive way. It's like yeah, it's just a defense mechanism For instance, one of them is altruism. So what can I do that's positive that will kind of make me? Feel better about something that went wrong. Oh, you had to... Uh, you had to take your kid to the doctor and they were mad about it. You know what? We're gonna take you to the ice cream store too. You know I'm saying like doing something nice and on a bit like I guess in a more extreme way let's say you owned a company and you were You did something went bad with your product. And so you donated a bunch of money kind of altruistically right humor is a good little defense mechanism that we use sometimes somebody picks on you you kind of make fun of yourself well self-deprecation I think that's cool we are

Talked about sublimation like you mentioned oh we're gonna work out instead of getting mad we're gonna work out instead of getting angry and frustrated and maybe lashing out at a person. In a violent way you go train jiu-jitsu instead yeah and then Suppression in a positive way what suppression means is Not I'm suppressing the fact that I was abused as a child. No, it's hey, you know what? I'm gonna Consciously decide that I'm not gonna get emotional right now because I've got a Deal with the situation at hand. So that's That's actually a mature thing to do. Hey, I can't freak out right now. I'm mad, but I have to deal with the scenario that I'm presently in. So... These defense mechanisms are present and just if you take them to an extreme they can be really really bad

If you use them correctly, then they're not necessarily bad But if you can understand them and understand that other people might be doing these things it can help you get through some sticky situations now I when I think about defense mechanisms Think about them and I'm not sure I don't I need to study them more but there's some defense mechanisms that people have that they utilize from a leadership perspective. I'll give you an example. Brow beating, you heard the term brow beating? I think you've heard me talk about it. But is that a normal term for people to hear brow beating? No, I only heard it from you Okay, so brow beating is for me a defense mechanism that... Echo when you question me about, you know, hey, what can we record at? 11 instead of 10 and you kind of question my authority. So what do I do?

Broadway - you don't even understand why we got to be there at 10 because all you have to do is go in there and press record This is ridiculous. You be there at 10. Like I said, so you see I'm saying I'm it - Makes you like throws you off. You don't even wanna, you don't wanna question me anymore. So I use as a defense mechanism, I use this brow beating. I kind of use this high... Hyper-aggression, not overly aggressive where... So that is a little... Excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen Go to underground calm and subscribe and we're doing this we're doing this to mitigate our Reliance on external platforms so we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that We can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way.

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