Why am I so defensive? Unfortunately, this is a problem that many people, including aspiring leaders, face today. Being defensive can lead to a breakdown of relationships, general unhappiness or even a lack of progress in your career. Being defensive could look like: getting angry when somebody criticises you, ignoring your partner because you didn’t do something or lashing out at somebody for something you did. Notice a pattern? Being defensive is all about you, nobody else, but you. However, acceptance is not the only solution, but the first part. I’m going to break this question down in two parts:
- Self-awareness
- The solution
Self-awareness
If you ask others, you may get a lot of feedback saying this like “don’t take things so personally” or “just keep your opinions to yourself”, but in reality, statements like that don’t help. You need strategic steps to overcome an issue. To be honest with you I was exactly like this and got over my issue, so I know you can too.
The first step to any sort of personal growth or development is to understand why the area of improvement occurs. For example, in your situation, if another person says or does something, whether it be directly or indirectly to you, you become defensive. When you do, you tend to respond through verbal or physical actions which is an emotionally reaction. In order to spark a change you need to understand what exactly the emotional trigger is. This is self-awareness.
Self-awareness is the ability to objectively look at the situation and evaluate why something is happening, whether it be good or bad. In this situation, your defensiveness in considered bad. As explained, you become defensive because of an emotional reaction.
It is important to understand that this is ok. Emotional reactions are natural because this is the way you millennia old brain tries to protect you. You cannot immediately control the fact that an event triggers an emotional reaction (picture the “triggered” meme). However, self-awareness kicks in here by understand why the event triggers an emotional reaction.
For example, an event could trigger an emotional reaction for many reasons, such as:
- Bruised ego
- Lack of confidence
- Lack of purpose
- Lack of understanding/ empathy
- Different belief system through parenting and past experiences
The solution
As I mentioned above, self-awareness is the first step in any growth and also is the first part of the solution. Once you understand why the event/ comment/ action triggers an emotional reaction, you can then start to move forward through the practice of Emotional Mastery.
Emotional Mastery is the act of consciously being self-aware about your thoughts/ feelings/ emotions/ triggers so that you can consciously control them. This is done through the following steps:
- Self-awareness
- Understanding
- Conscious decision making
I understand exactly how you feel as I went through the same process a few years back and by practising Emotional Mastery I was able to:
- Take control of my actions no matter the situation
- Reduce the number of things which caused emotional triggers
- Increased my general level of happiness and care for others
I know this may sound like a sale, but I have an incredibly affordable course on Udemy where I share three Life Mastery Tools. One part of the course is teaching you the exact steps to be able to Master you Emotions so that you reduce, and one day eliminate, getting offended and so defensive. The course is called, The Authentic Leader: Tools to Master Life.
Thank you for reading, JT.