Listening Without Defensiveness

All behavior has meaning. Defensiveness is a behavior that indicates a lack of a sense of safety. Prior learning of unsafeness in relationships (verbal or physical aggression, or feeling invalidated) can cause people to default to being defensive.

Defensiveness is a type of aggression (My thoughts and feelings matter. Yours do not)

Creating Safety to Reduce Defensiveness

• Enhance self esteem
• Recognize the difference between criticism of you vs. your behaviors
• Take what is useful and leave the rest
• Be realistic…Nobody is liked by everybody, and nobody’s behaviors are liked by everybody all the time
• Nurture multiple sources of support
• Set and maintain boundaries: Physical, Affective & Cognitive, Environmental, Relational
• Give the respect you expect to get.
• Creating Safety
• Try to be empathetic and curious
• If you passionately disagree about something, what is informing their decisions? Yours? (politics, religion, healthcare, quality time…)
• Explore alternate explanations why someone might be critical or short with you
• Consider where it came from (well meaning constructive feedback vs. destructive feedback)
• Evaluate your beliefs about what it means to be wrong, make a mistake or not be liked

Think back and try to identify at least 10 times you have gotten defensive.

• What was it about?
• Why did you feel threatened?
• Were you actually threatened in the present or were you projecting (Mom/Dad/Ex) or mind reading?
• Are there any themes?

Strategies: Listening and Hearing

• Set ground rules
• Stop mind reading
• Stop projecting
• One person and one thing at a time
• Use objective language
• Have a safe-word and de-escalation plan if you feel like you are getting defensive or being attacked
• Listen to hear and understand
• Take a moment to breathe and reflect if you feel your stress level rising.
• Validate their experience as theirs
• When you are grounded, summarize and ask if what you heard was accurate
• If the person says yes, then formulate a response using I statements

Engage the Executive Control Network

When the amygdala is triggered by a threat it frequently strengthens the connections with the default mode network and results in default (habitual) responding

The ECN helps you focus on the present situation in the current context and choose a response that is more in line with what you want

The ECN can help you learn new skills and alter schema so you feel safer and more empowered thereby reducing the strength of the amygdala and reducing HPA-Axis dysregulation.

• Rehearsal / empty chair
• Identifying and modifying schema (You sound just like my Dad/Mom/Ex) using BETA testing (Breathe, Evaluate, Think/Talk, Act)

Summary

Defensiveness is a way we protect ourselves from hurt or rejection

Defensiveness is an aggressive strategy which makes the other person also feel unsafe (and attacked)

Creating safety is essential to reduce defensiveness

Cognitive rehearsal of new skills is essential to enhance feelings of safety and efficacy and alter the self-schema of the default mode network.