Have you ever asked yourself why you are getting so defensive? ME? DEFENSIVE? I’m not defensive!

See! You are getting defensive.

I’ll share with you the key reasons why you get defensive and how you can leverage your defensiveness to accelerate your own personal growth.

When you get defensive and feel the need to justify yourself, you should know that you are in fact reacting to your ego. Being defensive means that you believe you have something to protect. Often what you are trying to protect is an idea of yourself - you want control over your image.

There are five reasons why you get defensive:

1. You fail to separate peoples’ opinions from facts

Fortunately, for most of us, we live in a world where people are free to say whatever they want. However in no way are you obligated to engage them or react to what they say. Neither should you try to control what they are saying.

Remember that they don’t know you nearly as well as you know yourself. Their judgment of you is based on their personal and subjective interpretation of what they have observed in their limited time spent with you. So some – if not many - assumptions they have about you are bound to be wrong.

Analyze how much truth there is in what they are saying but don’t get defensive. Repeat to yourself: “What that person is saying is their opinion. It is not a fact.”

2. You don’t clearly separate your identity from your beliefs or ideas

Remember that becoming defensive means that you believe consciously or unconsciously that you have something to protect. It means that you likely identify yourself strongly with some ideas or beliefs. For this reason when your friend, sibling or co-worker starts shaking these beliefs, you feel attacked and take things personally. However you are not your beliefs!

Ask yourself: “What belief or idea of mine am I trying to protect here?” Try to understand why you’re emotionally having trouble accepting the fact that somebody is challenging this belief or idea. Use this as an opportunity to get better at accepting the opinions of others and separating your identity from that belief or idea. Remember that nobody can hurt you without your consent!

3. There is some truth in what is said and that triggers your defensiveness

In most cases, you get defensive simply because there is an ounce of truth in what was said and, well, hearing it hurts. You might even be perfectly aware of the fact yourself and sincerely believe that you are ok with it and even joke about it with your friends. However, the fact that you get defensive still when someone brings it up means that, in reality, you have not yet fully accepted it.

Ask yourself: “Why do I feel hurt now? Why is it that I still get defensive when somebody tells me something that I already know to be true about myself?

This is a great opportunity for you to reflect and build some more self-acceptance. Notice that in many cases even though there is only a sliver of truth in what was said it still triggers your defenses to kick in. Once you’ve located the trigger, further analyze why it bothers you still.

4. You believe there is some truth in what is said and that triggers your defensiveness.

Sometimes there is simply no truth in what your friend or spouse says but you believe, often unconsciously, that what they are saying is true and this triggers your missile defense system.

This often occurs in people with limiting beliefs about themselves, for example I tend to believe that I am generally not good enough at stuff and so I feel somewhat guilty if I spend an entire day without working or studying. I believe I should work harder.

Because of this belief, if someone tells me that I’m lazy I might get defensive even though I am not objectively lazy. It is simply because I unconsciously believe that what I am doing is not good enough and that I should work harder. I act as if this belief were true.

Ask yourself: “Is there any truth in what I’ve been told?” If not, try to see if there is any underlying belief about yourself that triggered the defensiveness.

5. You want people to see you the way you see yourself

Whether you like it or not, people constantly judge you and have an image of you that might be greatly removed from the image you have of yourself. I realized that when I feel the need to justify myself, it is often because I want people to see me the way I see myself. I feel that they don’t really know who I am.

However, I also realized that trying to justify myself is largely meaningless and unlikely to change the perception people have of me anyway. In fact doing so will only make me look insecure and overly sensitive. People can only perceive me through their own model of reality anyway so there is not much I can really do about it.

So the only thing we can do is to show who we are through our actions and allow people to form their own judgments. As the old saying goes “actions speak louder than words.”

I’ve stopped trying to justify myself and, instead, I simply let people see me the way they want for better or for worse. I know who I am, if other people perceive me in a different way well that’s really their problem more than mine. Remember that the opinions of others are not always – in fact they often are not – factual.

To conclude, getting defensive often means that there are some things about yourself that you haven’t yet been able to fully accept. It also shows that you have a desire to control others and that you tend to base your self-worth on the way other people perceive you.

The only person you can control is yourself so why not use these situations where you get defensive as positive feedback to accelerate your own self-discovery and personal growth?

Defensiveness shows us areas of ourselves that need some work so use it as a compass for growth!