You Cannot Defend Yourself Without Being Defensive — So Here’s What To Do Instead

Learning to step away from the need to defend yourself in any given interaction is one of the most powerful relational skills you can develop. There are very few scenarios in which we truly need to defend our point of view. Rather, we are mostly driven to do so by the desire to be right. In these moments, we are held within the grips of the ego, which acts as a barrier to authentic communication and connection.

Getting caught up in explaining why one person's perspective is right and the other person is wrong is one of the most unhealthy communication dynamics that people can enter into in relationships. In his research on marriage and divorce, relationship psychologist John Gottman, Ph.D., found defensiveness to be one of the so-called “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” a list of four communication behaviors that signal the end of a relationship. Whether you use it in your romantic partnerships, with friends, family, or at work, it is incredibly detrimental to relationships.

The use of defensiveness maintains a criticize/defend pattern in which the other person feels unheard and will likely amp up their point or turn to louder and more hurtful forms of criticism. This then creates the very scenario that the defensive person was trying to exit—more criticism—and leads to a loop of more defensiveness.

Gottman shares that breaking out of this loop requires taking responsibility or expressing validation. Neither of these things mean you have to agree; it just means you can see from their perspective why they would think or feel the way they do or you can agree you do have even the slightest responsibility within the problem.

While it's healthy to learn how to sit with the discomfort of being misunderstood, there are moments when the other person is misunderstanding you so deeply or the misunderstanding is dangerous or harmful to you. In those moments, you must set boundaries.

Boundaries do not enter into the defensiveness patterning. They are not about proving that you are right and they are wrong. Rather, they let the person know that you have reached your limit with what they are saying to you or how they are saying it to you.