It is a part of us that we must have in order to function. Medical assistants play an important role when dealing with patients. Knowing the different defense mechanisms will help the caregiver differentiate how to talk to that patient and how to handle it. Defense mechanisms can be helpful or harmful to us too. We must be able to control our actions as well as our feelings. Some are hard, some are easy. We just need to know when and how to use them. We cannot let them reach our limits. Taking the time to evaluate ourselves is a step in combating bad defense mechanisms and ensuring that the good ones prevail over the good ones.