Turn Off Your Defense System

I think this can be based around friendship, business and anything else where you are in contact with people. In some cases you have to be and I'm from jerz so i know. But it feels better when you don't have to have your guard up


When you are defensive, the worst is likely to happen.

by Steven Stosny, PhD, author of How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It and Psychology Today's Anger in the Age of Entitlement blog.

Except in the case of abuse or battering, the real barrier to a satisfying intimate relationship is not the personality, selfishness, ill will, poor behavior choices, or communication skills of you or your partner. The real enemy of your relationship is the hypersensitive automatic defense system that has evolved between you.

Activated almost entirely without words, the defense system is triggered unconsciously by body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. By the time you're aware of any feelings, it's usually in an advanced stage. It's the feeling you get when your partner doesn't look at you, or sighs as you enter the room, or when he starts with that "tone." Suddenly you find yourself in a defensive posture, prepared for the worst.

Of course, when you are both defensive, the worst is likely to happen. You can just as suddenly find yourself in a battle of cold shoulders or curt exchanges or hot arguments- the missiles start flying on their own, with no one giving the order. You both feel powerless. You get irritable, impatient, resentful, or angry and want to stonewall, ignore, avoid, shut down, criticize, yell, or devalue yourself or your partner.

Disarming Your Defenses
See it as a pattern between you rather than something your partner does to you.

Make a core value decision of what is more important to you-giving in to your defense system or disarming it.

Maintain the will to disarm it, even when it feels awkward or scary to do so.

Appreciate times of hypersensitivity and the enormous power of incendiary triggers.

Be compassionate to yourself and your partner.

Be allies against it-it's bigger than either one of you but not bigger than both of you.

Be able to say, "Oh, we're triggered again; let's set it right. You're important to me; I want us to be close."