In almost all cases, defensiveness is the result of emotional insecurity and fear. And when we feel insecure and don't know how to manage our fears—especially in the relationships where there's a lot at stake—we tend to fall back on primitive coping strategies like defensiveness to feel better.
They may have low self-esteem or depression. They may experience self-blame, guilt, or shame about what they are perceiving as criticism. These feelings and experiences may lead the person to defend themselves and try to stop feeling this way. This can lead them to become defensive.
Truly insecure people are defensive. This is because they cannot stand to lose an argument or admit they're wrong about anything. This defensiveness shows much of the time in anger.
This first common type of mental defense mechanism occurs when a person attributes their feelings of shame or insecurity to another person. This also occurs when any thoughts or feelings they may have about someone make them uncomfortable.
Insecurity may stem from a traumatic event, crisis such as divorce or bankruptcy, or a loss. It can also result from one's environment, as unpredictability or upset in daily life can cause anxiety and insecurity about ordinary, routine events.
Insecure people feel a constant need to validate their worth through others' opinions. They try to seek others' approval over their personality or work. They look for likes, comments and compliments from people and only feel happy when others acknowledge them.
Insecure people often use criticism of others as a way to feel better about themselves. See, people who are insecure consistently feel bad about themselves. And often, they don't know how to feel better in a healthy or productive way. So they often resort to criticizing others.
A Defender (ISFJ) is someone with the Introverted, Observant, Feeling, and Judging personality traits. These people tend to be warm and unassuming in their own steady way. They're efficient and responsible, giving careful attention to practical details in their daily lives.
A defensive person can be someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It can also be someone that is a regular victim of emotional abuse that is constantly criticized. A defensive person can also be someone that has low self-esteem or that has a difficult time listening to criticisms about themself.
Research from 2020 suggested that people use defensiveness to give themselves a break when they do something wrong. A person may become defensive because they're: misrepresenting or forgetting what occurred. deflecting blame onto others.
As you've learned, being defensive is a result of feeling ashamed, hurt, guilty, attacked, etc. If a person is feeling this way, responding with further criticism is likely to end only in stonewalling or an argument. Instead, show empathy and concern for the situation that the other person is experiencing.
You have a tendency to be defensive: if you have low self-esteem, your behavior is likely to be fussy and belligerent. Believing that you are not worth much, you will feel at war with the world and your reactions will be negative. At the slightest chance that something happens, you will create conflict.
Defensiveness is a harmful and unhealthy emotional coping strategy that leads to personal and relationship dissatisfaction over time by avoiding bad feelings in the short term and not actually solving the problem.
“Some of the most common insecurities and relationships include emotional insecurity, attachment insecurity, physical insecurity, financial insecurity, professional insecurity, and social insecurity,” explains LaTonya P.
Why do those people who suffer from being insecure, additionally, are usually angry? People who are insecure experience a lot of fear of being abandoned or disliked because they are unsure of themselves. There has been a trigger for anger. This behavior is usually a way to protect themselves.
Signs of Insecurity in Relationships
Incessantly checking up on your partner if you're not with them to determine their whereabouts. Not trusting your partner to stay faithful to you and constantly worrying that they're cheating on you.
Abstract. Immature psychological defense mechanisms are psychological processes that play an important role in suppressing emotional awareness and contribute to psychopathology.
Deflection happens when we redirect the focus, blame, or criticism away from ourselves in an attempt to preserve our self-image and avoid dealing with negative consequences. It can be used as a reactive coping mechanism to avoid feelings of guilt and shame, or as a narcissistic abuse tactic to avoid accountability.
Freudian defense mechanisms and empirical findings in modern social psychology: Reaction formation, projection, displacement, undoing, isolation, sublimation, and denial.