Defensiveness
Defensive can at times be an automatic reaction when we are feeling attacked, criticized, or misunderstood in our relationships. While defensiveness in the moment means to protect us utilizing past patterns, it also creates divides in our current relationships. Defensiveness will ultimately lead to misunderstanding and lack of connection. Defensiveness creates a “me vs. them” mentality. This divide can create enemies within our relationships with our partners, our friends, and our colleagues. What is meant to protect us can lead to isolation if not in check.
Defensiveness can look like:
Thinking about your responses instead of what your partner is saying
Focusing on the delivery of the message versus what the message means
Interrupting
Pointing the finger
Creating excuses
The Gottman Institute (2014) marks defensives as one of their “four horsemen of the apocalypse” in terms of relationship-ending predictors. How do we manage defensiveness when it arises next?
The first step is bringing awareness to yourself by noticing what this looks like for you and when it is showing up in conversations with those you’re close to. The next piece of this feels tricky. The antidote to defensiveness is accountability. Taking accountability in difficult conversations is just that… difficult. Acknowledging other’s feelings and experiences when you are also feeling hurt and misunderstood is a skill. It’s difficult to let this go as it can feel like an internal war. We can live with this belief that if we acknowledge their perspective and take accountability there will be no room for us. This war and lie lives in many of us and in me!
I am here to dispel the myth. You can acknowledge and validate someone else’s experience without it taking away from your own. You can take accountability without also losing your perspective. Acknowledging you are wrong does not mean you are the only one that is wrong.
Letting go of our desire to win arguments will allow us to live more freely in our relationships and move more quickly through difficult conversations.You don’t have to navigate these conversations alone. Feel free to reach out for a free consultation if you’d like to explore more of how defensiveness may be keeping you stuck in your relationships!
The Gottman Institute. (2014, February 28). Accepting responsibility. https://www.gottman.com/blog/weekend-homework-assignment-accepting-responsibility/