What Makes Us Defensive & How to Stop Being Defensive
In this article you will learn the following
- What makes us defensive — 26 causes
-40 tips How to Stop Being Defensive
-19 tips How to Stop Making Other People Defensive
-34 Behaviors people display when they get defensive
-8 negative impact of your defensiveness on your life
How strong is your self-awareness — Do you know who makes you defensive and with whom you are comfortable.
Most of us can get defensive with some people and in certain situations.
When we feel defensive — we react in very disempowering manner and acquire a very un-resourceful emotional-mental state.
Our defensiveness can get triggered — when we are facing — a difficult or an arrogant, or a toxic person — whom we find difficult, challenging and uncomfortable to deal-with dealing with.
We can also become defensive when we are criticized, rejected and ridiculed by others OR when we are feeling ashamed, hurt, embarrassed, guilty and scared.
If you get Defensiveness often — then it would have a big negative impact on the quality of your life, on the quality of your relationships, on your growth as well as on your success.
What is defensiveness — it is our automatic subconscious emotional response and our default mechanism — it comes into action — when we feel bad about our self, we feel ashamed, we feel insecure, we feel powerless and we feel powerless to cope with a person or a specific situation.
In the beginning we used these Defensive behaviors to deal with our highly uncomfortable feelings — later it manifest without any efforts on our part.
Defensiveness has a very strong link with our deep rooted emotional insecurities as well as pat abuses and traumas.
Defensive behaviors may make you feel better temporarily — BUT — it will make you feel worse — sooner eventually.
You can also identify others who get defensive by recognizing the signs and behaviors people display when they feel threatened.
What makes us defensive — 26 causes
1. If you were bullied in your childhood — you may yourself turn into a bully as a result of your defensive behavior — to avoid feeling powerless
2. Similarly childhood abuse as well as a trauma can make your defense mechanism choose a negative behaviors to feel powerful and comfortable — albeit — temporarily only
Your deep rooted fear can create defensiveness — when you face similar situations
3. If you are not assertive by nature — you may use — passive-aggression as a coping technique
4. Defensiveness can happen — when you are feeling ashamed, embarrassed and guilty
5. Defensiveness can be your reaction to feeling anxious
6. When you are hiding something — this makes you react defensively
7. When someone is attacking your values, your character or your persona — you may become defensive
8. When you are feeling helpless, powerless and lost — can bring defensive behaviors
9. Defensiveness can also be a sign or symptom of a serious underlying mental health disorders
10. Your being belittled, demeaned, disrespected and insulted
11. When your authority is challenged
12. Your being close-minded to criticism
13. When you face Real and Imagined Dangers
14. When you perceive a negative outcome
15. When you are anticipating Conflict and drama element — so your subconscious goes for a shut-down emotionally to avoid the situation or may match fire with fire by your lashing out
16. When you feel that your reputation and self-Image taking beating
17. When you feel Embarrassed, ashamed or guilty
18. When you get caught off guard or surprised by someone
19. When you have huge EGO
20. When you Are not receptive to feedback
21. When you are feeling socially anxious
22. You might react defensively because your family or friends do
23. When FEELING MANIPULATED or being taken advantage or being used
24. When you find it difficult to admit that you are wrong
25. Some personality disorders can trigger defensiveness. Disorders like Paranoid Personality Disorder Narcissistic
26. Personality Disorder and Avoidant Personality Disorder may cause people to feel like they are constantly under threat of attack or mistreatment
40 tips How to Stop Being Defensive
1. Become Aware of Your Defensiveness
2. Identify triggers — of people, situation and events that makes you defensive
3. Anticipate When You Are Likely to Become Defensive — in near future event or meet with a person
4. Acknowledging Your Feelings of hurt, worry, stress, shame, guilt, insecurity, fear, embarrassment and anxiety
5. Practice to delay Acting on Your Feelings on impulse
6. Identify and revisit your values and Align Yourself with Your Values
7. Identify and revisit your long-term goals
8. Tell the other person how their comments make you feel and why you feel hurt — using I statements
9. Assertively request respect when they are crossing the line of decency and respect
10. Avoid getting sidetracked — Stay on topic and focus on finding solutions
11. Boost Your Self-Esteem, Self-pride, Self-awareness
12. Take Responsibility for whatever actions you need and choose to take
13. Improve Your Communication Skills
14. Learn learn learn — upskill, enhance knowledge, be aware about what is happening in the world
15. Become a great problem-solver
16. Identify and master through practice — effective stress, anger, anxiety
17. Practice suitable and effective relaxation and stress-management tools
18. Practice to enhance your emotional and social intelligence — create flexible methods of coping with different people and situations
19. Enhances your emotional self-regulation
20. Develops supportive social and personal networks
21. Learn to Walk away from relationships, people and situations if it is not worth
22. Don’t compete to satisfy your EGO
23. Learn to Accommodate other’s needs within reason
24. Compromise when you are dealing with your loved ones
25. Find ways to Collaborate -Decide if you need to address the conflict and WHY -Prepare for the conversation -Focus on the relationship -Understand your position -Consider why the other person is behaving this way
26. Learn graceful ways to cope with feeling defensive.
27. Learn to buy time and postpone crucial decisions-making as well as discussions
28. Listen -Seek clarifications -Ask how you can help -Fix the problem
29. Set and enforce heathy boundaries
30. Respect others boundaries
31. Use the CBT technique of STOPP — Stop! Take a breath Observe yourself and the situation Pull Some Perspective Practice what Works
32. Practice Active Listening -Seek first to understand, then to be understood
33. Don’t go for countercriticizing
34. Don’t bring the past — this is not the time
35. Acknowledge your partner’s perspective -Even in the midst of an argument, it is important to show your partner that what they told you is understood by you
36. Take the time you need in order to truly process and evaluate what they told you -Know your limits and express them If you can’t have such a conversation right now, it is preferable and more respectful to directly say so
37. Avoid using BUT statements
38. Don’t try to resolve all the issues — identify the most critical ones
39. Be open to new ideas -Acknowledge and thank your partner for talking with you about the issues
40. Practice not get drawn into becoming Defensive — especially When You are Being Attacked, provoked or Criticized
19 tips How to Stop Making Other People Defensive
1. Make Requests — Don’t Criticize
2. Suggest through asking question — so as to give credit to them
3. Stop your urge of Trying to Control people and situations
4. Know and Acknowledge Your Own Mistakes, Blunders and failures
5. Instead of passing judgement or complaining — suggest solutions and resolutions
6. Show Concern and Empathy
7. Ignore the other person’s defensiveness and focus on problem solving
8. Find something that you can agree on before trying to problem solve so that you start on common ground.
9. Being honest is not the same as being defensive -Defensiveness is an impulse
10. Learn to deal with criticism
11. Know how to bounce back from rejection
12. Understand that Resentment can’t do you any good
13. While taking action pause and review what impact is there of your response in real-time
14. If you are being criticized — Look for the grain of truth in what they are saying -Put the feedback in context
15. Bottom of Form
16. Stand up for yourself assertively YET respectfully
17. Learn to express yourself without getting defensive — by Not being overly emotional
18. Have a sense of clarity about what you are saying plus accepting of the fact the other person may not agree with what you are saying
19. Don’t take it personally — what others say and do
34 Behaviors people display when they get defensive
1. Feel compelled to take action immediately
2. Blame others for all the wrongs
3. Make excuses
4. Explain too much why they did something — without there being the need
5. Give too much information — without any need
6. Give secrets of others — which was shared with them on confidentiality
7. Shrug-off taking responsibility and ownership and accountability
8. Disengaged with people and from the situation — Stop listening
9. Justify their actions and behaviors
10. Bring up past things that the other person did wrong or talk out other’s past mistakes — which does not have any relation to the current situation or conflict
11. Avoid talking about the current issue
12. Attack the other person to discredit them
13. Projection -Shifting the blame to the other person for whatever you are being criticized about AND Attributing your thoughts and feelings to another person like I am not angry — it is you who is angry
14. Give others silent treatment
15. Give Narcissist gas-lighting
16. Use Dominating, aggressive and controlling behaviors
17. Show outrage on being questioned or challenged
18. Play Innocent victim
19. Blame yourself in such a way to make the other person feel guilty and to elicit sympathy
20. Break and throw things
21. Yell and shout to intimidate
22. Throw tantrums
23. Bend the truth to justify their irrational behaviors
24. Take out their frustration from another problem on someone not involved or responsible for their emotional-frame
25. Respond dramatically
26. Make false promises
27. Exaggerate and twist facts and figures and lying
28. Disregard others healthy boundaries
29. Manipulating, Superiority Critical behavior
30. Withholding information/ secretive behavior
31. Having No accountability
32. Lack of eye contact, turning away, not speaking up
33. Avoiding others
34. Resistant to what others are saying
8 negative impact of your defensiveness on your life
1. You may make other people feel bad unintentionally — which will also make you feel miserable
2. You may make situations and people more tense and hostile than warranted
3. You discussions escalates into an argument or a fight
4. You may find that the Problems are never resolved — instead the same issues gets repeated again and again
5. Your goodwill takes a beating
6. You may feel like an outcast and unable to fit-in any where
7. You may find yourself focusing more on negativities than in positives
8. You may find other people refuse to help you or stonewall you — because of your defensivenessThis article was originally published as “40 Tips How to Stop Being Defensive Why We Become Defensive “ in https://successunlimited-mantra.com/index.php/blog [1st]for more than 3000+ blogs, articles and answers on creating metamorphosis in every aspect of your life — personal, professional, business, mental, emotional, social, relationships — please visit all three links http://relationshipandhappiness.com/ [2nd] and https://www.quora.com/profile/Subhashis-Banerji [3rd]
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