Defense mechanisms protect us from anxiety, and thus from internal or external dangers. They are activated to regulate conflicts. Conflicts exist between desires, needs, and drive impulses on the one hand, and closely associated feelings of shame, guilt, fear, disgust, sadness, hurt, powerlessness, internal prohibitions, or ego ideals on the other. Defense mechanisms lead to unconscious compromises between both sides, so that wishes are partially and in a distorted way fulfilled, while feelings of shame or guilt do not become overwhelming. For this reason, they oppose processes of awareness, insight, and change, and thus present themselves in therapy as resistances to therapeutic progress.