Being defensive is toxic to you and your partner as a whole because it causes arguments, fights, and tension among you both. In addition, when people are being defensive, they may be mean or rude and not express their feelings about an issue or situation.
Defensive individuals don't like to “work through” emotional issues in the collaborative way adults are expected to. They can be highly impulsive and quick in their emotional reactions, without pausing to think things through in a balanced way. Finally, they tend to avoid too much emotional closeness with others.
Rather than preventing you from aggression or attack, defensive behaviors can create animosity or distrust towards you that may not have been there before. This can lead to a vicious cycle of defending, frustrating, guarding against future frustration, and causing more bad feelings.
Research from 2020 suggested that people use defensiveness to give themselves a break when they do something wrong. A person may become defensive because they're: misrepresenting or forgetting what occurred. deflecting blame onto others.
In almost all cases, defensiveness is the result of emotional insecurity and fear. And when we feel insecure and don't know how to manage our fears—especially in the relationships where there's a lot at stake—we tend to fall back on primitive coping strategies like defensiveness to feel better.
Summary: Research has shown that defensiveness in response to wrongdoing is exacerbated by making the wrong doer feel like they're an outcast. Defensive behaviours are common responses when people feel personally attacked but can undermine our ability to identify problems and find solutions.
Narcissists are extremely sensitive individuals with very low self-esteem. When their shortcomings are pointed out, they become defensive and frustrated. Their delusions of grandeur are put on display and their inadequacies are highlighted.
Defensiveness is most often a response to criticism. It's when a person tries to defend themselves from feeling angry, hurt, or ashamed when they perceive the other person as critical. Criticism may make the other partner feel anxious or worried that the other partner does not care for them.
If someone points out a part of you that you want to change but feel helpless about, then you may respond in a defensive manner. A symptom of a mental health disorder. Sometimes, defensiveness is part of a larger mental health problem such as a personality disorder, eating disorder, etc.
Defensiveness may just be criticisms evil twin, and just as deadly for a relationship over time. Much like criticism, defensiveness is often in present in many relationships, even healthy ones. However, a defensive response over time can create serious wear and tear on a relationship.
Alternatively, a person who is sensitive in a temperamental way is usually defensive regarding threats to his or her ego. Hypervigilant about protecting his or her self-esteem, this person often, unconsciously, deflects accountability, and unfairly projects blame onto others to escape internal discomfort.
Defensiveness is a coping mechanism that involves attacking others to divert attention away from one's faults and insecurities. It can also take the form of defensive driving when one person speeds up to prevent another from passing them on the road.
Defensiveness can protect emotional wounds left by trauma and abuse. At the same time, it blocks out the rest of the world. In conversations, defensiveness prevents connection and communication. While we quickly notice defensiveness in others, we are slower to notice and acknowledge it in ourselves.
Defensive behaviors are a group of evolved responses to threat. They include flight, freezing, defensive threat, defensive attack, and risk assessment. The type of defensive behavior elicited in a particular situation depends on features of both the threat and the situation.
Tactile defensiveness (TD) is a disturbance in sensory processing and is observed in some children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Being defensive blocks connection, compassion, and isolates you from your partner. Instead of focusing on we-ness, a defensive person focuses on me-ness. Defensiveness is one of the most dangerous signs of toxic fighting because it creates never-ending cycles of negativity.
Most husbands or wives who are defensive do so in response to a threat (whether there is an actual one or it's something based on their perception alone). The threat is in what you say or do towards him or her. This perception informs their reaction and how they behave towards you.
Deep-Seated Fear of Rejection / Being Unimportant – This is the core of narcissistic rage. Many narcissists are constantly hounded by the insecurity that people may not see them as the privileged, powerful, popular, or “special” individuals they make themselves to be, and react intensely when their fears are confirmed.
Feeling defensive "is a natural self-protection mechanism that we have inside us", says Dr Kate Renshall, a clinical psychologist based in Sydney. "I think we all get defensive when somebody pushes on something that feels too close to home, or touches on something we already might doubt about ourselves."
But people with NPD may react with narcissistic rage when they aren't given the attention that they feel they deserve. This rage may take the form of screaming and yelling. Selective silence and passive-aggressive avoidance can also happen with narcissistic rage.
Individuals with BPD traits develop maladaptive behaviors that can be difficult for friends and families to understand, often resulting in chaotic relationships. People with personality disorders often use “defense mechanisms”, or coping strategies, that allow them to deny responsibility for their feelings and actions.