There are thirteen ways to lessen one's mental pressures: (1) Repression helps one to forget about unpleasant matters temporarily, but when unpleasant memories are accumulated in one's mind over a long period of time and reached its saturation point, once it explodes, this person will react violently. So we must dig out his past mental states, but not mistaken his violent reaction as a result of being possessed by demons, because it would be very unscientific and too superstitious. (2) Denial occurs when people deceive themselves that certain event did not actually happen. (3) Isolation occurs when people consciously isolate unpleasant events from their thoughts or try hard not to think about them in order to avoid unnecessary recalling of the events. For instance, if a man is impotent he tries not to think about his impotency and always use subterfuge to avoid having sex with a woman, like he is too busy or he is practicing a certain school of martial arts etc. Or when talking a person who has just died, people would try to avoid using the word "death"; instead they would say this person had returned to Nature or he is now living in Heaven with God etc. (4) Displacement happens when we blame other people or the environment we live in for our own misfortunes. (5) Projection takes place when we think other people must think the same way as we do, or believe all people must think this way and this is why I think this way too. To criticize a person for things he did not do or things he did not say is the worst accusation we can give to innocent people. There are many people who love to project their own thoughts on others nowadays, and it is very unfortunate that Taiwan's society seems to have this inclination. (6) Rationalization happens when one's real motivation to perform certain act is different from what he claimed to be. People always use elegant and stately reasons to explain his behaviors, while at the same time hide away his real motivations. For instance, when we accidentally hit a pedestrian on the road, sometimes we not only deny our own faults but also blame this pedestrian for violating traffic laws. Or if our children were not very good at studying, we would reason that it is because our children are talented in other fields. (7) Neutralization is when we use positive means to neutralize negative events. During Chinese New Year, for example, if someone drops a bowl and breaks it into pieces, it means something unfortunate will happen, so people would immediately respond to this embarrassing situation by saying "May the broken pieces bring about peace," which has the same pronunciation as "May your every year be a peaceful year." Or when we hear something we don't want to know about, as soon as we got home we go cleansing our ears straight away, as if to neutralize the bad news we heard with our ears washed clean. Whether or not negative events can be neutralized by our positive reactions, at least we are mentally consoled for the time being. (8) Reaction Formation is when a violent, malevolent person pretends to be a virtuous, kind, loving man, like going to an orphanage to visit orphans. This is a typical example of Reaction formation. (9) Identification is when we imitate people whom we admire in order to feel identified with them. If we imitate well, then that is wonderful, but if not, then it is really pathetic. (10) Regression is when one fails to deal with the outside world beautifully when he is already an adult, and his behaviors even regressed to the time period when he was a baby and acting like a baby. If an old man acts like a child, talks like a child and expresses his emotions like a child, he is definitely regressing. Some men act as if they are the "big guys."

When they are hacked and being rushed to an emergency room, they have to pretend the stitching of wounds does not hurt at all, even without the injection of anesthetics! But in the end burst out crying ""Mom, it hurts!" This is also regression at work. (11) Fantasy is when one departs from reality and enters into an imagined realm; girls imagine their Prince Charming will come to rescue them, and boys imagine their girlfriends to be an enchanting female celebrity. There are numerous cases of this kind of "grandeur delusion"; living under various kinds of pressures in the mundane world, people sometimes return back to his fantasized world. In this fantasized world, reality becomes very far away and beyond reach, when in fact it is all empty, unreal in nature. There are people who wish to be able to perform spiritual mediating through their religious cultivation and hence leave behind the practical reality. When we begin to give our thoughts a free rein, it signals our inclination to become psychotic, which sooner or later will devolve into schizophrenia! In fact, it seems very unbelievable to me that there are so many people would admire nuts who claim themselves to be accomplished cultivators. (12) Compensation occurs when one uses various means to compensate his psychological or physical defects. Some of those who suffer from physical defects compensate his defects with good grades in school. Those who are physically healthy, but never get good grades in school would sometimes choose to take advantages of girls to compensate for their psychological imbalance. This is a typical example of negative compensation at work. (13) Sublimation says if we act out our primitive, impulsive desires without thinking, we will be rejected by the society. But if we modify our primitive desires into something very helpful to the society, they will be allowed. For example, a born killer can change his occupation to a surgeon or a butcher, and those who love to play with fire can be a firefighter!

Sometimes "substitution" is applied to modify one's impulse to kill or set fire to an innocent victim into the act of hitting the victim; victims in these cases are unfortunately always his family members. If the above thirteen modulations prove to be useless to one, then very possibly this person is beginning to enter into the stage of psychosis. If it is not so serious yet, then he is suffering from neurosis.