S. Freud saw anxiety as a warning (of sorts) for the ego, that something bad was about to happen. People seek to avoid that discomfort of anxiety.

Types of Anxiety

• Reality anxiety is a type of anxiety that arises from a threat in the world. For example, realizing that you did not perform well on an exam.

• Neurotic anxiety is a type of anxiety that describes the unconscious fear of the Id’s impulses will get out of control and that you will be punished for it. Its source is the unconscious.

• Moral anxiety is a type of anxiety that describes the fear of being about to invade your moral code or have just done so. Its source is internal as well… from our conscious is the part of our superego that incorporates as the “don’ts” or the “thou shall nots” from parents and society). The stronger one’s superego is, the stronger their moral anxiety.

Reality anxiety is a type of anxiety that describes how one can attempt to escape the reality they are in and sometimes people can successfully do so.

Discussing Defense Mechanisms

• Ego defenses or defense mechanisms are specific unconscious structures that enable an individual to avoid awareness or unpleasant, anxiety-arousing issues.

• There are two general patterns on how the ego responses to anxiety. First, the ego increases rational problem-oriented coping efforts which generally works for reality anxiety. For example, you rationalize that the exam, though serious, is one out of a few and that your class grade can recover. Second, the ego uses defense mechanisms. Such defense mechanisms can include repression, projection, intellectualization, denial, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, identification, sublimation, and compartmentalization. (The source used to find these defense mechanisms is located here.) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/defense-mechanisms

• All defense mechanisms have two characteristics; they operate unconsciously, and all distort or transform one’s reality.

• Repression is a defense mechanism that describes how people push their negative feelings outside and focus on the task at hand and s usually unconscious. It can form an Anti-cathexis with one’s id impulses. Repression helps the ego to avoid painful and upsetting information. For example, thinking of a memory in one’s life that makes someone feel embarrassed. It threatens the superego by thinking about something you wish you had done differently, and it weighs on you unconsciously.

• To get rid of unwanted thoughts, we need to let them run their course and let ourselves think about them. For example, singing a song that’s been stuck in your head.

• Denial is a defense mechanism that describe how people can refuse to believe that an event took place. Denial gets harder as we age but can be prevalent. The first step of recovery is admitting that there is a problem. Self-report can be tricky, one reason being that we tend to deny the aspects of our lives that are not going well.

• Projection is a defense mechanism describes how someone reduces their anxiety by ascribing their own unacceptable qualities, impulses, desires, fears, etc. to someone else. For example, perceiving that people are out to get you.

• Projection can have one of two purposes which are to get the id’s desires out and into the open, which relieves energy required to suppress them, and that a desire emerges in a way that the ego and superego do not recognize this urge being one’s own.