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For all of us, it seems far better to compartmentalize our work, family, friends, home, town, country, universe, etc., than to admit what we're really choosing to believe in our mind. Coping with the anxiety becomes paramount. We will do this until we admit there must be a better way. Reaction Formation Reaction formation is a psychoanalytic theory regarding the ego that is a defense process in the mind used to manage anxiety-producing emotions in our life. While difficult to understand, it's one of the basic rules of a split mind which means we all do it in some form or another.
It works like this: When an anxiety-producing belief rises to the surface in the ego mind, we will react with the opposite on the outside so we can deny or shove the belief back into the ego mind thereby defending Telephone Number List or protecting it. We're too afraid to allow the anxiety belief to come up; however, correction of fear is our responsibility because we made it. Let's use a simplified example straight from Wikipedia to further the discussion.
Where reaction formation takes place, it is usually assumed that the original, rejected impulse does not vanish, but persists, unconscious, in its original infantile form. Thus, where love is experienced as a reaction formation against hate, we cannot say that love is substituted for hate, because the original aggressive feelings still exist underneath the affectionate exterior that merely masks the hate to hide it from awareness.