Causes of Defensiveness Feeling like others don't care enough about you. Being afraid of rejection. Having low self-esteem. Lacking confidence.
A defensive person can be someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It can also be someone that is a regular victim of emotional abuse that is constantly criticized. A defensive person can also be someone that has low self-esteem or that has a difficult time listening to criticisms about themself.
An example of defensive behavior stemming from trauma is when someone has been through abuse in the past and has a hard time trusting other people because of it. So when their partner questions them about something, they lash out with defensive actions to keep others away so that nothing bad happens again.
Paranoid personality disorder (PPD) is a mental health condition marked by a pattern of distrust and suspicion of others without adequate reason to be suspicious. People with PPD are always on guard, believing that others are constantly trying to demean, harm or threaten them.
A brief personality profile of the individual who gets easily defensive. Defensive individuals often have control and power issues, and perceive anyone confronting them or holding them accountable as a threat. They are uncomfortable with feelings in general and managing their own.
Causes of Defensiveness
Feeling like others don't care enough about you. Being afraid of rejection. Having low self-esteem. Lacking confidence.
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. A learned behavior.
There are two main types of narcissism: “grandiose” and “vulnerable”. Vulnerable narcissists are likely to be more defensive and view the behaviour of others as hostile, whereas grandiose narcissists usually have an over inflated sense of importance and a preoccupation with status and power.
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 a coping skill — a response to a perceived attack or criticism. In general, there are two ways to respond: You can deny it, act out, attack, blame someone else, or. You can intellectually rationalize the perceived attack or criticism.
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.
Psychological defensiveness is an evolved self-protective response, and in some mild forms may have some benefits such as helping us to bounce back after failures and helping us to maintain optimism and self-esteem- but defensiveness also has costs. "Defensiveness creates blind spots in decision-making.
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.
Tactile defensiveness (TD) is a disturbance in sensory processing and is observed in some children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
ADHD makes us more sensitive to criticism. Often, our first instinct is to respond defensively or angrily to outside comments that feel like disapproval.
Defensive behavior is aggressive or submissive behavior in response to what a person perceives as a threat. This type of reaction to a problem may be easy to spot. Your instinct tells you that your conversation has turned to where the person appears threatened for a reason, whether readily apparent or not.
At its core, defensiveness is a way to protect our ego and a fragile self-esteem. Our research team member Ellen Alley explains that our self-esteem is considered fragile when our failures, mistakes, and imperfections decrease our self-worth.
They are sensitive but, often, their reactions to your comments are a defence mechanism. The two may feel the same to the person experiencing these feelings but, in reality, they are worlds apart.
Excessive defensive behaviors in people with PTSD lead to the inability to communicate appropriately, severely affecting their social lives and causing high suicide rates (3).
The antidote to defensiveness is to accept responsibility for your role in the situation, even if only for part of the conflict. In healthy relationships, partners don't get defensive when discussing an area of conflict.
Often having felt afraid, upset, unsupported or invalidated. Family difficulties or instability, such as living with a parent or carer who experienced an addiction. Sexual, physical or emotional abuse or neglect. Losing a parent.
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.
Defensiveness is a behavior wherein one of the spouses is anxious about facing criticism or they tend to be overly protective of themselves. 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 Causes of Defensiveness
Defensive behavior can be a complex and murky issue. For many people, their behavioral patterns stem from emotional, mental, or personality issues/tendencies developed over the course of their lifetimes (feelings of abandonment, inferiority, low self-esteem, narcissism, etc.).