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.

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.

Find out how to stop being defensive in a relationship before there's no relationship left to defend.

Becca Heiden, Ph.D. on Instagram: “The TIPP skill comes from DBT and it helps us deal with very intense emotions. Think 75+ on a scale of 100. When our emotions are that big,…”

Projection is a form of defense mechanism in which we transfer unwanted feelings, qualities, or impulses into another person. In other...