Let’s be sincere—we have all been defensive earlier than. We hear a criticism from a associate, we really feel they’re calling our character into query, and so the knee-jerk response is usually to leap to our personal protection and clarify why we did not say, do, or imply what we’re being “accused” of.
“To be defensive is to react with an overprotective mentality to a scenario that maybe would not warrant it,” marriage therapist Linda Carroll, LMFT, writes at mbg. “Reasonably than listening with an open coronary heart, we reply with our metaphorical shields up and weapons drawn.”
Defensiveness is an issue as a result of not solely are we not listening with the intent to grasp, however as {couples} therapist Elizabeth Earnshaw, LMFT, beforehand advised mbg, “In these moments, we’re held inside the grips of the ego, which acts as a barrier to genuine communication and connection.”
Earnshaw provides there are literally only a few eventualities through which we really must defend our standpoint. “A number of realities exist,” she notes. “[When people get defensive], they battle to see that listening and validating don’t imply agreeing, and that giving area to the opposite particular person doesn’t imply you’ll by no means get area to share when the time is correct.”
