On Defensiveness: More Straw for an Even Bigger Fire

In my last post I men­tioned the phrase “straw for the fire” as hav­ing emerged dur­ing a med­i­ta­tion. Since then I have become increas­ing­ly aware of some­thing with­in that con­tin­ues to grow around these lines. Most­ly this: that every con­cept of self, every cher­ished belief, and cer­tain­ly all absolutes are so much straw, as well. This is not much dif­fer­ent from an ear­li­er post that also men­tioned the ten ox-herd­ing pic­tures and the ques­tion (at the eighth), “How may a snowflake exist in a rag­ing fire?”

It may be enor­mous­ly chal­leng­ing — and threat­en­ing — for us to expe­ri­ence self-con­cept as just that frag­ile thing that either feeds the flames or is sim­ply swal­lowed up by them. We get to that point of chal­lenge when faced with a deep con­tra­dic­tion to our pre­cious self-con­cept — for exam­ple when receiv­ing feed­back. Some­times we are able to stand in that fire; some­times not. I recall a CEO to whom I once gave some tough infor­ma­tion about his style. The feed­back was an open and shut case, ver­i­fied by numer­ous peo­ple. He behaved accord­ing to a pat­tern that was dys­func­tion­al for his rela­tion­ships and under­mined the very things he said he want­ed from his orga­ni­za­tion. When I shared the feed­back I made the mis­take of sug­gest­ing he might not be aware of this pat­tern and that’s the part he could not hear at all. He was in com­plete denial that the dys­func­tion­al pat­tern exist­ed, of course, but what tru­ly both­ered him and result­ed in a very strong emo­tion­al reac­tion was my impli­ca­tion that he was­n’t con­scious of it. His self-con­cept might have been able to han­dle oth­er things, but the thought that he was not entire aware of his own actions — BOOM — that was way too much information. 

The point is that every self-con­cept is flawed, incom­plete, par­tial at best. We are not exact­ly who we wish to be. Our world is not exact­ly the way we wish it to be. And when we can­not hear these things, we con­tribute to our own and oth­ers suffering. 

Here’s a relat­ed exer­cise: Draw a cir­cle and fill it in with every­thing you want to believe about your­self and your world:

Do your best to fill in the blank space in the cir­cle. For exam­ple: “I’d like to see myself as high­ly com­pe­tent per­son with great judg­ment.” Or, “I want to believe that I will be treat­ed justly.” 

Now begin to imag­ine that you are pre­sent­ed with evi­dence to the con­trary. You get sub­stan­tial feed­back, for instance, that you have behaved in a way that is not “high­ly com­pe­tent,” where your judg­ment was real­ly mis­tak­en — and you did­n’t see it. Or you are treat­ed in a way that is pret­ty unfair, con­vict­ed of a crime you believe you did not com­mit. In either case, you will prob­a­bly cre­ate a blind spot around these events and you will defend your­self by what­ev­er pat­terned means you have learned. You are like­ly to become defensive pre­cise­ly because the beliefs you cher­ish about your­self and your world are stronger, more absolute in nature than your per­cep­tion of real­i­ty. That’s how defen­sive­ness works.

We are built this way from the begin­ning; in fact these pat­terns of defen­sive­ness start­ed ear­ly on for us. And they were use­ful and nec­es­sary. Peo­ple with­out any defens­es become bound­ary-less beings who find them­selves over­whelmed by their worlds and the demands of oth­ers. But as we mature, we also need to look close­ly at what we are defend­ing and how we do it to make sure that there is also a degree of per­me­abil­i­ty, less our bound­aries wall out real­i­ty or seri­ous­ly obscure the truth. And this, too, can be a chal­lenge because over time we become par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to ever more sub­tle. pos­si­ble threats to our self-con­cept, made up as we are of cher­ished beliefs about our­selves and our worlds. Mature defen­sive­ness becomes a response to any pos­si­ble inter­per­son­al attack.

When I am teach­ing about defen­sive­ness, I often describe it as a set of five micro-stages that hap­pen about as fast as a sin­gle hand-clap:

1. It begins with an obser­va­tion of some­one else’s behavior…
2. that is more or less instant­ly judged and inter­pret­ed to be an inter­per­son­al threat com­ing from the oth­er person
3. and that involves you and/or your val­ues being placed at risk.
4. The threat of attack is then felt as an emo­tion­al reaction
5. and these feel­ings result in your own self-pro­tec­tive (defen­sive) behavior. 

1. Some­one else’s behav­ior: This behav­ior may or may not be inten­tion­al. Many con­flicts come out of sit­u­a­tions where someone’s behav­ior is uncon­scious to him or her. None of us have per­fect self-knowl­edge. In eval­u­at­ing your own defen­sive­ness, try to think of behav­iors exhib­it­ed by oth­ers as if they were dis­played on video­tape. Become a neu­tral observ­er. What did you see on the video­tape dis­played by anoth­er per­son that could cause your own defen­sive reactions?

2. Judg­ments of inter­per­son­al threat: The behav­ior trig­gers a sense of threat that is expe­ri­enced as com­ing from the nature of the oth­er per­son and his/her motives. This judg­ment may be right or wrong. Some­times the judg­ment is based on past expe­ri­ence going back to one’s fam­i­ly of ori­gin. It is easy to project onto anoth­er per­son who exhibits the same behav­ior as an ear­ly care giv­er once did, sim­i­lar motives. If a par­ent ignored a child in order to pun­ish her, she could eas­i­ly inter­pret some­one else’s sim­i­lar behav­ior lat­er in life as hav­ing the same motive – and she might be right or entire­ly wrong.

3. Expe­ri­ence of risk: What is threat­ened is usu­al­ly an aspect of person’s self-con­cept and/or core val­ues, some­thing the per­son likes about him or her­self that might be wrong. This desta­bi­lizes us. Risk is often expe­ri­enced as a dis­crep­an­cy from “how I want to view myself” or “how I want to view my world.” The sen­sa­tion of a large risk to self is an instant when one “looks into the abyss.” Typ­i­cal­ly, in this cul­ture, we idol­ize peo­ple who don’t seem to expe­ri­ence this risk. 

4. Emo­tion­al reac­tion: As a result of this desta­bi­liza­tion of the per­son, emo­tions sur­face that gal­va­nize action, enabling our own defen­sive behav­ior. These are often neg­a­tive emo­tions, such as anger, embar­rass­ment, being offend­ed, hurt, anx­ious, fear­ful, guilty or oth­er feelings.

5. Defen­sive behav­ior: The prod­uct of the four pre­ced­ing “micro-stages” is the erup­tion of behav­ior used to defend one­self, includ­ing such things as angry words, blam­ing words, ver­bal indict­ments of oth­ers motives, snub­bing, ignor­ing oth­ers, or oth­er behav­iors that sig­nal con­flict and mistrust.

Here is an exam­ple of how a per­son might chart his or her defen­sive­ness accord­ing to the micro-stages. This pro­vides a clear pic­ture of the pat­terns that keep the self away from desta­bi­liz­ing experiences. 

There are some blank spaces at the bot­tom of the chart (which you can enlarge by click­ing on it). Think about your­self and your own expe­ri­ences. How would you fill it in?

Once a per­son has “unearthed” their expe­ri­ence in this way, it becomes eas­i­er to reduce the defend­ing pat­terns. If you get tru­ly curi­ous about self-con­cept and how lim­it­ing and con­trol­ling it is and are will­ing “to look into the abyss,” the reac­tions can become even more inter­est­ing and a deep­er accep­tance of who we are can come into play. Tru­ly, we are not depen­dent on these cher­ished beliefs, we only think we are, but an abyss is always an abyss. Few of us real­ly want to go there. And yet that jour­ney is pos­si­ble, even nec­es­sary to per­son­al growth and evolution.

I was amused the oth­er day see­ing the movie, Gar­den State, that per­fect­ly sets up these lines:

Andrew Large­man: Hey Albert
Albert: Yeah?
Andrew Large­man: Good luck explor­ing the infi­nite abyss.
Albert: Thank you, and Hey, you too 

I think the truth is in that dif­fi­cult mid­dle stage, that stage of risk­ing, of look­ing into the abyss. That’s where the real trou­ble is. We have to real­ly want to know real­i­ty and know the truth to go there. That’s the burn­ing part of this, the part that holds real fire. 

I try to share with my clients actions steps and for­mu­las, as I think it makes it eas­i­er, so here are ideas:

When you expe­ri­ence your own defen­sive­ness, you can….

1. Acknowl­edge the moment of desta­bi­liza­tion to your­self and open a search for what is real. This is a per­son­al inner acknowl­edge­ment that you have left sol­id ground and are oper­at­ing from with­in a posi­tion of threat. Your goal is to find out what is real­ly happening.

2. Acknowl­edge your emo­tion – what is it? This names the emo­tion or emo­tions that dri­ve your defen­sive reac­tion. Some­times, it is impor­tant to acknowl­edge this to the oth­er per­son, but most­ly it’s impor­tant to name it to your­self and begin to hold it, rather than allow it to com­pel action or expression.

3. Lis­ten to the oth­er person’s full per­spec­tive. Ask ques­tions about what you are not clear about. Probe to get all the infor­ma­tion you need. This is part of the search for the truth and for reality.

4. Sep­a­rate data from infor­ma­tion – dis­con­nect from “self” to eval­u­ate the full sit­u­a­tion. Step back and buy time in the moment. If appro­pri­ate say, “I need to think about this for a second.” Then, if you can, acknowl­edge to your­self what you are defend­ing. Talk to your­self about what’s at stake and what you get by try­ing to “win” in the moment. Is it that you are “right?” Remind your­self that no one is entire­ly con­gru­ent, that you can accept your­self in spite of what­ev­er comes for­ward, and that all self-con­cepts are ulti­mate­ly flawed, lim­it­ing, and so much “straw for the fire.” Estab­lish an inter­nal wit­ness and pos­i­tive inter­nal guide to help you eval­u­ate your reac­tions to the infor­ma­tion being shared. Sim­ply watch­ing in this way often fore­stalls addi­tion­al reactivity.

5. Check your pro­jec­tions onto the oth­er per­son. Make neu­tral or pos­i­tive assump­tions about the oth­er person’s inten­tions. Remove your­self from a posi­tion of blam­ing oth­ers, tak­ing retal­ia­to­ry action against them, or neg­a­tive­ly assess­ing their motives. Check the five micro-stages of defen­sive­ness to make sure that you are not “putting some­one else’s face” on the messenger.

6. Reflect on the expe­ri­ence lat­er for per­son­al learn­ing. Pro­vide your­self with affir­ma­tions and kudos for learn­ing as you reflect on what has hap­pened. Remind your­self of your strengths, gifts, tal­ents, capa­bil­i­ties, and your intentions.

7. Decide on what action by you, if any, needs to fol­low. This could include “rediscussion” and dia­logue, ask­ing for fur­ther feed­back, an apol­o­gy, assertive­ly mak­ing your needs known, open­ing up oth­er “undiscussables,” or count­less oth­er actions that are based on your sense of integri­ty and what is appro­pri­ate for the situation.

Beyond these steps there is…a lot. Proac­tive­ly ask­ing for feed­back from oth­ers. Learn­ing to cre­ate psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty for oth­ers. And maybe most impor­tant, fos­ter­ing with­in your­self a kind of faith in Self, as opposed to self; let­ting the fire burn away the stuff of ego that inter­feres with so much of hap­pi­ness and fulfillment. 

If you want to know the dif­fer­ence between self and Self, you know, you can always go for a walk. Because a real walk involves attend­ing to the world in a way that breaks old pat­terns. You can’t hang close to the cliff lest you fall. You can’t use a head­lamp if you real­ly want to see.

It’s been a cold win­ter so far, and we’ve had a lot of snow (rather than rain) here, near Seat­tle WA.

Technorati Tags: Listening and Self-Knowledge