Defensive Response

What is your first response to information or situations involving you?

Is it a knee-jerk habit, a defensive one?

No judgment here, my friend. I have been a master at defensive responses.

What I’d like to propose is a different approach. Changing perspective is something I have been learning to do, thanks in part to my therapist as well as my journey toward unearthing Who I Am. The key word here is unearthing. In truth, at times, I still have the knee-jerk response, which is why this is my blog topic today.

First, I want to emphasize the importance of gifting yourself time and grace.

The second is to make you aware, if you aren’t already, that your defensive first response is a protective one. It’s a response to feeling unsafe, typically not a physical safety issue but an emotional one. You’re trying to protect yourself from criticism, judgment, misinformation, or verbal attack.

I’d like to point out, as compassionately as possible, that your initial reaction may be due to the criticism, judgment, misinformation, or verbal attack from within yourself. Hence, it is important to gift yourself grace and time to process – ideally before you respond, but, well, likely, it will be afterward until you’ve unearthed yourself more.

I can give you numerous examples. As I said, I have been a master of defensive responses. But I will go with the one that happened recently. I have been struggling with pain in my hip. I finally got an MRI and met with the orthopedist for the results. One of the culprits is one of the muscles in my glute (butt). What the radiologist wrote and the Dr. explained were slightly different, but each created a flood of emotions. Within the interpretation of the imaging is the base fact that one of my glute muscles has atrophied (lost muscle) and a few other things that aren’t important for this message.

My reaction upon reading the report with the statement about muscle atrophy was to become defensive and defend my fitness and health regimen. How could there be atrophy of this muscle since I am very active?! I walk or hike daily. Most weeks, I work with my Pilates instructor/personal trainer, and I have almost daily workouts on my own! I’ve been working my butt!

That defensive knee-jerk habit was in response to internal self-criticism and interpretation of the results – I had done something wrong.

After giving myself grace and time to process, I reread the report and paired it with recalling key components of the doctor’s evaluation.

I stepped back and looked from a different, open-minded perspective.

My muscle has atrophied. The muscle loss was not caused by inattentiveness or inactivity, nor by doing anything wrong, but because my hip is not functioning properly due to injury.

So, my friend, the next time you find yourself wanting to respond defensively, pause and take a little time. Gift yourself with grace – especially when it is your own inner critic.

Seek to look from a different perspective.

Let the issue be the problem, not your reaction, allowing you to take the next step forward. 💙