What Is Defensive Pessimism In Psychology And Examples

What is defensive pessimism syndrome? In the area of ​​psychology, defensive pessimism is a deep assessment that an individual makes in the imagine the worst possible outcome and you prepare for it by thinking of all the reasons why the positive result will not occur. In other words, it is a psychological tendency to anticipate obstacles and evaluate them more negatively than they may actually occur.

In addition, defensive pessimism is also known as a strategy to regulate self-concept and is closely related to low self-esteem. People who do not have a balanced self-esteem usually face events from a very negative perspective and defeatist and they feel incapable of taking on challenges and facing adversity.

In fact, people with low self-esteem start an internal dialogue to give up before starting their battles. Sometimes they even stop trying to reach that goal, so they abandon the task in a short time On the contrary, individuals with good self-esteem take advantage of failures as a source of learning through experience.

Each person faces life situations differently. Some of them have an optimistic attitude loaded with winning thoughts. On the other hand, there are others who use defensive pessimism as a belief that they can only prepare for the worst case scenario.

The syndrome of defensive pessimism as a poorly applied strategy can create a state of permanent anxiety and frustration and a constant increase in hopelessness. In turn, when this emotional state enters the scene, people tend to make less effort to achieve their goal, since little by little they become convinced that their efforts will be of no use.

Now, there are cases in which the same individual presents both approaches, optimism and defensive pessimism, but applies them according to his interests and needs. For this reason, it is common to see that some people are very optimistic about academic studies, for example, but they imagine the worst results in sports activities.

How defensive pessimism influences us

Despite everything, the best is try to balance attitudinal positions described above, since an excess of self-confidence can cause you to fall into the error of not preparing for future situations, while poorly oriented defensive pessimism will make you not dare to take risks.

In other words, the effectiveness of defensive pessimism or positive stance will vary from person to person, so it could be said that neither method is better than the other. If you want to know more about positive and negative attitudes, you may also be interested in this article on the characteristics of optimistic and positive people.

The famous phrase “break a leg” It is one of the examples of defensive pessimism that actors and actresses repeat to wish each other good luck. Thus, They imagine the worst results before staging the play so as to be able to enjoy its success more upon completion. That is just one of many variants of this method that exist. Next, let’s look at other examples of defensive pessimism:

• study for a test: A student fears failing a university entrance exam. Later, she reflects on what areas she has the most weaknesses in and prepares for those particular contents.
• Ask for a date: a person wants to ask another person out, but is very afraid of being rejected. A dialogue is proposed with the possible negative responses that she will obtain and explores the emotions that they generate. At the moment of the declaration he feels less nervous and less anxious because he has prepared in advance.

The ideal is to use defensive pessimism to our advantage without letting it overwhelm us. In this way, taking into account the worst results, we can prepare to avoid them at all costs.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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