Barriers to Psychological Health

• Most people receive conditions of worth; that is, they perceive that their parents, peers, or partners love and accept them only if they meet those people’s expectations and approval.
• Preoccupation on other people’s view of oneself (external evaluations)
• Incongruence - psychological disequilibrium begins when we do not accurately symbolize organismic experiences into awareness because they appear to be inconsistent with our emerging self-concept
• Real self is different from the ideal self, or vice versa.
• Vulnerability - exists when we have no awareness of the incongruence within our self
• Anxiety and threat - re experienced as we gain awareness of such an incongruence; signal to us that our organismic experience is inconsistent with our self-concept
• Defensiveness - protection of the self-concept against anxiety and threat by the denial or distortion of experiences inconsistent with it
• 1. With distortion, we misinterpret an experience in order to fit it into some aspect of our self-concept.
  2. With denial, we refuse to perceive an experience in awareness, or at least we keep some aspect of it from reaching symbolization.
• Disorganization - behavior can become disorganized or even psychotic when one’s defenses fail to operate properly.