Defensiveness is one of the biggest problems we face in close relationships. It’s really hard for many of us to hear anything negative about ourselves, something we said or did, or a way we behaved that hurt, angered, upset, disappointed, or failed someone else. We’re really bad at being told that we did something “wrong.” It’s staggering, really, the degree to which we humans will battle to the death to prove that we’ve done nothing wrong and someone else’s experience is not true.
Often, when someone close to us tells us we’ve upset them in some way, almost immediately, we brace ourselves and go into an internal state of code red. We stop listening, disconnect from what they’re saying, and switch into a kind of fight-or-flight response. We’re not able to hear their words or empathize with their experience because, consciously or unconsciously, we’ve determined that we’re in grave danger and our self-esteem is at risk. It’s at this point that our survival instinct kicks in and kidnaps the more evolved and wiser part of our mind.
For every situation we encounter in life, we may write a narrative, a story that answers three important questions: what is actually happening, why is it happening, and what it means. And specifically, what it means about (and for) ourselves. We experience everything through the lens of our personal “self,” a “me” that we’ve constructed and that must be continually maintained, shored up, and protected.
It’s not, however, because we’re all raging narcissists that we look at every moment from a self-centered perspective, to gauge whether it will serve or harm us, validate our self-image or destroy it. This ever-present question by which we live, “Does this moment feel good, does it make me feel good about myself?” is really all about survival. Our survival instinct is constantly waging a battle with life—vigilantly trying to ensure that our self-image, our story of “me,” doesn’t get harmed or destroyed. The problem, however, is that we imagine that the narrative we’ve constructed about ourselves, our “I’m somebody who” story, is who we fundamentally are. Anything, therefore, that goes against it holds the power to annihilate us at an existential level.
How this plays out in everyday life is that if someone tells me I’ve hurt them, whether intentionally or not, I can’t listen, try to understand, or feel openhearted towards them. All I know is that I’ve done something wrong, which means that I am wrong and hurtful at my core, which, through the lens of my survival instinct, means that I will be cast out of the herd and left behind to die. All I can hear in that moment are deafening alarm bells; all I can feel is danger. Their experience puts my “me” story, namely, that I am a kind person, in jeopardy. As a result, their experience must be invalidated; their perception of me proven wrong. Because my “me” story doesn’t feel like just a story but feels like my very existence, I must get them to agree that I am not who they think I am, not the hurtful person they’re portraying me to be. Once I can get this confirmation, then (and only then) can I return safely to my story of “me.” With the other’s narrative proven wrong, I can relax, knowing that I am once again a kind person. Still, even with this current threat deactivated, I must remain hyper-vigilant and on watch for anyone’s experience that might threaten my “me.”
Our sense of who we are is the sum of every experience we’ve ever lived, every compliment, judgment, and perception of us that’s ever been levied for or against us. Our self-image is therefore highly unsafe, transitory, and fragile: if we say or do something “wrong” (in our eyes—or someone else’s eyes), then who we are is fundamentally “wrong.” Our self feels dependent on and collapsed into the perceptions of our actions. This puts us in a terribly vulnerable position when it comes to other people’s experience, as well as all the other uncontrollable parts of life. After all, other people experience the world — and us — through the lens of their own stories, not ours. The value, meaning, and intention assigned to our behavior vary infinitely depending on the lens through which it’s being viewed. And yet, we award their perceptions with the power to confirm or deny who we are and can be.
Other people and life in general consistently force us to confront parts of ourselves and face perceptions of us that don’t align with our curated narrative on “who we are.” The way other people experience and perceive us, through their conditioning, beliefs, wounds, and everything else, is often inconsistent with the story of “me” we’ve constructed in our mind. And so we fight with this fundamental reality: the person we’re perceived as, how we’re experienced from the outside, is different from how we experience ourselves from the inside. Different and perhaps—also valid.
In part two of this series, I’ll address the ways we can start to heal defensiveness and shift our relationship with other people and their experience. Then, we don’t have to be so defensive, self-protective and self-focused; we can truly meet other people, be curious, and empathize with other people’s experience. We can stop feeling like everyone on earth is a potential threat to who we are. Ultimately, we build a sense of self that can tolerate the full range of realities we encounter in the world. Stay tuned.
