How to stop being defensive

Learn how to stop being defensive so you can avoid unnecessary pain caused by patterns of defensiveness. Get the 7 tips here!

Defensiveness - it's the gut reaction to defend yourself when you feel someone has said or done something unfairly or negatively to you. This is

Defensiveness is a gut reaction to feeling alone or criticized. However, having this be a default state tells your partner their feelings don’t matter.

When someone comes to you with an issue about a choice you made or an action you took, do you feel like you immediately have to justify your reasoning or defend yourself? Do you start listing all the reasons for why you did what you did? That is being defensive. (This was a painful newsflash […]

The next time the opportunity to know another's experience presents itself, try out what it feels like to listen without strategizing to keep yourself positively positioned -- without defending the story of who you are and what you have or have not done.

By Christian Jarrett

You cannot defend yourself without being defensive. Instead, you need to remove the defense framework completely. A marriage therapist explains.

How to stop being angry: Avoid jumping to conclusions. Stop being defensive. Stop living up to other people's expectations.

Recently I found myself getting rather defensive at something my husband commented on. I wondered why I was feeling so defensive when I knew it really wasn't a big deal. Why was I feeling the need to justify something I'd done, even when I knew he was correct. He was not criticising or pointing out…