Why Do We Get Defensive?

by Lester Rennard

There are some individuals who unfortunately live most of their lives seemingly always on the defensive. They seem to believe that they are constantly under attack and therefore need to be always defending themselves and justifying their positions, actions and their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They tend to be suspicious of others and are quick to question motives while searching for hidden agendas even behind the most benign of encounters with others.

A manager may ask such an employee to meet in the office for a talk and the first question that might come to mind is, 'what have I done wrong now!?' The next moments before the meeting are then spent thinking about all the negative personal performance issues that the manager could possibly want to address and rehearsing a point by point defense and justification for why the decision was made to work on a project or do a task in a certain way and why it would be unfair for the manager to consider terminating his or her employment. The meeting with the manager is entered into with obvious tension, dread and apprehension.

A parent may ask their sixteen year-old daughter what time she got home last night from an evening out with her friends. Instead of giving a direct answer to the question, she starts giving a long explanation and justification as to why she was late in coming home, what she hopes the parent is not thinking she was out doing and why it is unfair to punish her for violating the curfew since it was not her fault. She lashes out at the parent that she is tired of not being trusted and dashes off to her room in tears. The simple question for verification from the parent is met with resentment and an 'attitude'.

A spouse finds a piece of paper with an unfamiliar name and telephone number left behind on the sofa in the den. It obviously was left there by the other and the name on it is someone of the oppositive sex. Without any preamble, the one spouse asks the other if they happen to know someone by the name of '____'. The spouse being questioned becomes tense and instead of answering the question, demands, "what is this about! why are you asking me that question! are you trying to accuse of something! what is your problem!? I don't need to be having this discussion with you", and then walks off in anger. The question was not answered and a seemingly innocent question turns into an acrimonious affair (no pun intended).

Why did these individuals get so defensive? Why did they jump to conclusions that they were under attack and must defend themselves? Individuals who habitually and easily become defensive are usually reacting to their own perceptions of self. They may be people with unresolved insecurities who have poor self-esteem and struggle with feelings of inadequacies and little self-worth. Others react defensively out of guilt, shame, threat or fear of disgrace. They believe that those with whom they are relating may be aware of their issues or might be on a path to discovering their hidden skeletons to use against them. They are driven to projecting images of how they would like others to perceive them - images that are opposite of how they are thinking about themselves, and so get defensive when it appears that that desired persona may be under attack.

In the examples above, the manager's reason for wanting to talk with the employee might be to share some positive words of commendation, to make an offer for a promotion or for a salary increase. Because the employee might be struggling with feelings of inadequacies, the conclusion is that the boss might have discovered those inadequacies and about to confront the issue.

The teen might not always be living up to the expectations of her parents when she goes out with her friends and therefore struggles with feelings of untrustworthiness. She wants her parents to trust her. When she is asked the simple question, she gets defensive because the question triggers her own untrustworthy feelings as she thinks that her parent is about to discover the truth about her away-from-home behaviors. The parent might just have been wanting to find out the time she got home in order to determine if she might have witnessed some particular event.

The spouse who became defensive when asked about their acquaintance with the individual whose name was found on a piece of paper might have reacted that way out of feelings of guilt. They might have just met the individual who passed on their name and number in a fleeting moment. There might not have been any intention of following through with anything inappropriate but the fear that the other spouse could discover about the meeting with someone of the opposite sex and the pressure to give an unplanned explanation, and being confronted, triggers the defensive reaction. The spouse who discovered the name might not in the least have considered anything inappropriate about the situation when deciding to inquire about the person.

The bottomline is that people generally react defensively as a result of their own unresolved internal conflicts that are triggered by feelings of external pressures that create a threat to how they would want to be perceived. When they are confronted with any situation that they interpret as a threat to their persona, they feel a need to get battle ready to defend and protect that image. There are also some individuals who may react defensively, outside of their normal character, as a result of some transient emotional, psychological or physical issues such as stress, hormones, health concerns and other life circumstances.

When a person has a healthy self-worth and esteem, has resolved any issues of inadequacies or insecurities, has nothing to hide and lives a life of transparency, under normal life circumstances, he or she has no reason to react defensively. To such individuals, the truth is its own best defense.

Copyright (c)2006 by Lester Rennard, All Rights Reserved.