Three Keys for Dissolving Defensiveness
You think you’re asking a simple question and the other person snaps back at you, "Do you have to question everything I do?!" With an exasperated sigh, you answer, "I was just asking. Don't get so defensive." Even though you're exasperated with how defensive this person gets, you also find yourself reacting with defensiveness more often than you would like.
Defensiveness in any relationship is often a sign of depletion regarding needs to be seen and heard, respect, consideration, appreciation, and acceptance. When you trust that someone sees you and your good intentions, respects your unique way of engaging in life, and regularly expresses appreciation, the impulse to defend rarely comes up.
Unfortunately these needs are chronically depleted for many. If this is true for you, you will notice the impulse to prove yourself or justify what and how you do things. From the idea of having to prove and justify, you begin to listen for any hint of criticism and defensiveness lives on a hair trigger.
Shifting out of the habit of defending means tending to relevant needs, noticing exactly how they are neglected or hindered. Let's look at three major ways the needs for being seen and heard, respect, consideration, appreciation, and acceptance go chronically unmet.
Loss of perspective: When you lose perspective, you imagine the details of life are more important than the quality of life. You might believe that if only you “get things done or handled” you will be more grounded, happy, or relaxed. Your conversations with yourself and others revolve around problem-solving, complaining, or managing logistics. With this loss of perspective, you miss the little moments in which you could greet a stranger with a smile, find a kind tone of voice, or listen from the heart.
Differences become threats: With low emotional resources, you are more likely to perceive differences as threats. From this fear of differences you can easily find yourself in a swirl of judgment, teasing, criticizing, dismissing, or minimizing. Reactive patterns like these block your ability to receive care from others.
Lack of repair: When there are already strong emotional resources present, repair of any major hurt or disconnect requires incredible skill and focus. When emotional resources are low even the smallest disconnect can be a challenge to repair. A lack of repair over little and big hurts adds up over time degrading a sense of emotional security.
Regardless of how you or a particular relationship became depleted, you can build resources quickly with the following interventions.
Invest in becoming grounded in the expansive perspective everyday. The momentum of daily life and the external focus it asks of you is a slippery slope to a loss of perspective. Invest in a daily practice that reliably reminds you to focus on the quality of heart and presence you bring to each moment. Common daily strategies for maintaining an expansive perspective include:
A walk in nature (without headphones) in which you focus on scent, sounds, colors, light, touch, and beauty.
A spiritual reading that reminds you of your true nature as a being made from love and your desire to live from your deepest values.
A meditation practice
Yoga, Qigong, or another mindful movement practice.
Laying on the floor or ground feeling the support of the earth holding you.
Care for animals.
A simple act of generosity like picking up trash on your morning walk or making a cup of coffee for your partner each day.
Engaging in a ritual of sharing gratitudes at the dinner table each day.
Immersing yourself in creative expression
Greet differences with curiosity. Use judgment, teasing, criticizing, dismissing, or minimizing as your cue to pause, engage an anchor, and ask a question either internally or aloud. Here are some simple questions that can help decrease a sense of threat and open a sense of curiosity.
What does this person know that I don’t know?
What is this person feeling?
What need are they trying to meet with the behavior or decision that I am judging?
How has this person’s life been different than mine?
What’s precious to this person?
What has this person overcome in their life?
What do I admire about this person?
Cultivate empathy: Set up a specific time each week with yourself, a close friend, family member, or a partner in which you focus on listening to each other with empathy to the exclusion of all other types of interaction (e.g., analyzing, problem solving, planning, evaluating, etc.). Set an amount of time with which you know you can stay focused exclusively on empathy. Use the empathy / Not empathy handout or the self-empathy handout as a guide.
Practice
Take a moment now to reflect on the last time someone close to you got defensive. How might you bring more acceptance and listening to your interactions with this person? In what situations would it be most helpful to tend to the needs most often underneath defensiveness, which include: being seen and heard, respect, consideration, appreciation, and acceptance.
