Are you aware of your defensiveness?
Ohhhhh healing. We are all trying our best, but man, without learning the skills we need to become better, life can stay quite challenging within our relationships. We all have healing to do. It takes willingness, honesty, vulnerability, practice and patience (with ourselves and others).
Here’s my stab at summarizing a talk I watched between therapists Terry Real and Alex Howard, on Healing Trauma for Deeper Connection.
Our emotional trauma (baggage) created wounds (big or small) that we had to protect for our own safety. We adapt to belong or to stay safe. Learned at a young age, these protective behaviors become our adaptive selves (what you learned to do as a child to get by). We adapt, not yet able to uncover the truth of who we really are. Because we are scared to find out if our actual needs will be met.
This is good for survival, but you don’t have to live there anymore. The best time to be aware is at the moment of the trigger. For example: You can be aware that you are being defensive (self protection). And in that moment you can make a choice of a new behavior.
It takes time to get to that kind of awareness and to change in the moment though. A softer first step would be to look back at the protective behavior, own and admit to your person how a different behavior may have returned a better outcome.
So according to Alex, when it comes to being aware of our defensiveness, here are the 4 stages:
Know that this is something that happens
You can look back (hindsight) and see you were defensive
See it as it’s happening in the moment
See it with enough clarity so that you can make a change in the pattern while it's happening
Our nervous system is quite hijacked in this situation. To calm this you can reset with meditation and breathing practices. You also need to use present moment awareness to realize what is going on here.
“Feelings won’t hurt you. They may be painful, but they won’t hurt you. Running from feelings can kill you.” Terry Real.
There. I just saved you an hour! Man, I love to learn. And the best part of learning, is to take it into your own life and test it out!
Take care and be aware 😜
All my love,
K
