The tricky thing about defensiveness is that it “feels protective in the moment,” licensed marriage and family therapist Linda Carroll told Nice News. “But over time, it quietly erodes connection.” Working with families and couples, Carroll has seen how common it is for this issue to arise in relationships — and how detrimental it can be.
We all do it: Perhaps your partner called you “too sensitive,” a parent judged your career choice, or a friend criticized your outfit, and you reacted by shooting down their comment or justifying yourself before they could hurt your feelings further.
Although pushing back defensively may seem like the appropriate response (and might feel good), it can wind up hurting all parties involved. “The very thing we do to protect ourselves ends up creating more distance,” Carroll said.
Why Do We Get Defensive?
It hurts to be criticized, and when it happens, we often throw our guard up. According to Carroll, this can be partially explained by the biological basis for defensive behavior, which renders curiosity impossible to access.
“When we feel criticized or at risk, the body moves into fight-or-flight,” she said. “In that state, curiosity is biologically unavailable. The system is organized around defending, explaining, or proving — not understanding.”
And to a certain extent, those of us born with higher sensitivity may naturally have stronger negative reactions. “Some people are simply wired to feel things more quickly and intensely. We often call that ‘thin-skinned,’ but it’s really a more sensitive nervous system,” Carroll noted. “Many personality frameworks, including the Enneagram, suggest we come into the world with certain strong proclivities. That’s the nature side.”
But there’s also a nurture element. Research from Australia’s Flinders University suggests that negative social reactions can make someone feel like an outcast and strengthen their future defensiveness. And certain situations or life experiences — like being bullied as a kid or observing defensive parents — can cause us to put our guard up too. While humans aren’t the only animals to activate the aforementioned fight-or-flight response when sensing a threat, we may be the only ones that may continue to feel triggered by perceived danger after the original threat has passed.
Carroll underscored the idea that your childhood can impact your defense mechanisms. “If you’re raised in an environment where you’re often blamed, criticized, or not fully seen, you learn to defend first. Over time, that outer defensiveness is often paired with something more private: a very harsh inner critic,” she said, adding, “In fact, many defensive people aren’t just protecting themselves from others. They’re already living with the toughest critic there is: themselves.”
How to Let Your Walls Down
Simple curiosity, Carroll explained, is the “antidote to defensiveness and the doorway to intimacy.” When we seek to understand someone else and allow ourselves to be vulnerable to constructive criticism, we create space to build bridges, not burn them. This doesn’t require you to agree with the other person’s assessment — it just means you’re open to learning more about where they’re coming from.
The complex part, though, is how to shift out of fight-or-flight mode to enter this state of curiosity, which can only happen when our bodies feel safe enough. Per Carroll, “the work isn’t to push for curiosity. It’s to create the conditions where curiosity can return.”
So how can we accomplish this? “That often starts very simply: slowing things down,” she said. “Naming what’s happening (‘I’m getting defensive right now’) can already begin to shift the nervous system. Tone matters enormously. Even something as small as ‘I’m not against you’ or ‘Let’s slow this down’ can soften the edge.”
Here’s how this can play out between partners, she explained: If Jen says, “Why are you always criticizing what I buy when I do the shopping? Nothing I do seems to satisfy you,” Matt could respond defensively by saying, “It’s not always. ‘Always’ is what you do, pointing out how my clothes look baggy and uncared for.”
Instead, he could slow down, regulate his emotions, and choose curiosity by saying, “Jen, that sounds hard, feeling like I’m always criticizing you. Can you tell me more about what I said that landed that way?” Once the door to a calm conversation has been opened, it opens a path toward solution-oriented actions like taking responsibility, apologizing for any wrongdoing, or even just repeating back what the other person is saying, the latter of which can help resolve any miscommunications.
If both parties are worked up, however, try introducing structure to the conversation. “One person speaks. The other reflects back what they heard — without interrupting, correcting, or defending,” Caroll advised. “It’s not natural at first, but it rebuilds the bridge to curiosity.”
Even when you’re not actively participating in an interaction that triggers defensiveness, you can take steps to become a less reactive person. Practice exercises that boost your self-awareness, such as writing down scenarios in which you’re likely to become guarded and alternative things you can say or do. You can also jot down signs of your own defensiveness to pay attention to, such as tensing up or uttering certain phrases.
In an essay for Greater Good Magazine, psychologist Daryl R. Van Tongeren also recommended journaling about your values and where you find meaning in your life, which can increase your self-esteem and make you feel more secure the next time you feel criticized. And if there are specific topics that leave you feeling insecure, building confidence in these areas could help others’ opinions matter less.
Because once we’ve learned to master our reactivity, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. “As with so many of our resistances to life, what we frantically defend against turns out to be far lesser than what becomes available to us once we stop manning the barricades,” author Gregg Levoy wrote for Psychology Today. “In fact, the degree of our defensiveness is probably proportionate to the amount of love waiting to be unleashed once we get out of our own way.”
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