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Acquired defences
When a person has been wounded, he/she will often build defences to help him/her stop being hurt again. Defences we might have acquired as a result of being abused as a child include:
 Constructing walls to prevent further rejection - (Survivors who are accustomed to being rejected will often unconsciously reject another person before it happens to them again, in turn ensuring further rejection.)
Constructing walls to prevent repeated abandonment - (To prove their unworthiness, survivors will sometimes do whatever they can to ensure that another person will abandon them, before they are abandoned. In working at pushing another person away, survivors subconsciously are attempting to prove to that person that their negative feelings about themselves, are true.)
Playing the 'blame game' - (Although being abused is always the perpetrator’s fault, survivors often do not take responsibility for their reactions to being abused. Part of the process of dealing with abuse includes learning to deal with the associated anger, fear and grief.)
Using anger to push another person away.
Changing the subject to stop another getting too close to us and our pain.
Withdrawing into silence.
Developing addictions - (Using alcohol, drugs, food, work, and sex etc. to numb pain.)
Avoiding getting help by using the excuse that whatever happens is someone else’s fault.
Using absolutes - (eg. have to, must, should and always. These often lie at the basis of many irrational statements.)
Taking things personally.
Thinking that everything in the world should be FAIR or JUST, which it isn’t.
Thinking that the world should be perfect and that nothing should ever go wrong.
Having an absolute sense of entitlement.
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