Defenses were certainly not the first things that I worked through. I've been working on myself for over 20 years (the last 15 without a therapist). I worked on boundaries, self worth, meeting my needs, living in the present, becoming empowered, learning how to express my feelings and unloading the backlog, social skills and triggers, etc. I worked on whatever was bothering me at the time. Defenses just came to the top recently.

I worked on the defenses by being aware of myself and how I was using the defenses. The defenses that I was using were 2 of the mature ones - the altruism and introjection (Identifying with some idea or object so deeply that it becomes a part of that person) (I was introjecting my values) . I had absolutely no awareness of these until I read this exact article. After I became aware that I was using these defenses it was making the subconscious conscious and my need for the defenses left me, most likely because they were just habit and i really didn't need them anymore because of all of the other work that I had done to fix so much. When these defenses left me the anxiety that went with them left me also.

Mcl, can you identify which defenses that you are using? Are you aware of yourself most of the time? (This is the learning to live in the moment stuff I talked about above).