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Is Your Defensiveness a Coping Strategy?

Is Your Defensiveness a Coping Strategy?

Discover the roots of defensiveness & transform your reactions

Sol TV
May 04, 2023

This Newsletter at a Glance:

🤔 Why Are We So Defensive?

📝 TL/DR: Common Types of Defensive Behavior

🍽️ Sol Bites: 6 Steps to Give Up Defensiveness

🎞️ Video Bites: Tara Nicholle Nelson on How to Mute Your Inner Critic

🦉 Words of Wisdom

Protecting yourself from being hurt is a good idea, but have you ever thought about defensiveness? Most of us use it as a coping strategy to distract ourselves from feeling bad when another person calls us out for doing something wrong. We often criticize the other person and move focus away from our insecurities and onto theirs.

The problem? The relief is transient. It’s just a quick way to feel better about ourselves.

A defensive reaction can stem from many places:

🌱 For some people, it comes from feeling discouraged or overly criticized in one area of life, which leads to them being sensitive to criticism in other areas.
🌧️ Habitually defensive people may have experienced early childhood abuse or trauma.
😰 At times, it comes from anxiety and poor assertiveness.
🔦 It can arise out of hidden guilt or shame.

🙅 TL/DR: Common Types of Defensiveness

When we feel insecure and don’t know how to manage our fears—especially in relationships with a lot at stake—we tend to fall back on primitive coping strategies like defensiveness which gives us the illusion of confidence and self-worth.

🎞️ Video Bite

Meet Sol TV Creator, Master Self-Actualization Coach, and Spiritual Strategist, Tara Nicholle Nelson! Tara, a three-time author and Metaphysician, specializes in guiding smart, successful people to reach their full potential and achieve their biggest dreams before it's too late.

In this video, Tara will help you break free from your defenses, heal your Inner Critic, and recalibrate those trance-like negative thought habits that dim your light and hold you back.

💪 Sol Bites: 6 steps to help you deal with your defensiveness

🧠 Increase your self-awareness when faced with challenging situations.

If you practice being honest about being defensive in low-stakes situations, you’ll get better at noticing the behavior pop up when the stakes are higher.

😨 Validate your fears and insecurities.

Remember that even though acting defensive isn’t an ideal coping strategy, it makes sense that you would try to make yourself feel better. Defensiveness helps you tolerate the feeling and then move forward in a better way.

💗 Apply a little self-compassion.

Be kind and understanding, remind yourself that everyone gets defensive, recognize that you’re working on it, and have the wisdom to separate your feelings from your behavior.

📝 Clarify your values.

Write clear notes about how you want to act when you’re hurt—and make sure that defensive reactions aren’t part of that. Clarifying your values can help you start to make a real, positive change in how you relate to the people around you.

For example: When my roommate makes a snide remark about what I’m wearing, I want to tell her that it makes me feel bad when she says that instead of counter-attacking with a sarcastic rebuttal.

🔮 Anticipate your defensiveness.

When we feel caught off guard or ambushed by criticism, it intensifies our defensiveness. On the other hand, when we know it’s coming, our overall intensity is far lower. Think about the most frequent situations where you tend to get defensive, so you’ll be prepared to handle them with a more productive reaction.

💪 Boost your self-esteem—the right way.

The more things you can do to increase your confidence, the less susceptible you’ll be to defensiveness. The right way to build self-esteem is by consistently doing something you can be proud of. So, pick an area of your life where you aren’t feeling great—maybe it’s your career, your relationship, or your body—and work on building habits that will help you improve your self-esteem.

This won’t be a quick fix for defensiveness— building self-esteem takes time—but if you make an effort, it will pay off. Genuinely confident and emotionally secure people rarely get defensive.

Words of Wisdom💡

❝

The best defense is not to be defensive.

Zig Ziglar, Author of Secrets of Closing the Sale