Defensive Behaviors

Hey, hey, it's steve again. Hope you're well. Thank you so much for joining me for this week's podcast. I hope you're doing well as we head into Memorial Day weekend. I wish you a very safe one and a blessed one as we celebrate the weekend and in honor those that have contributed so much to our country again, it's good to be with you all. Like many of you, I'm fighting some allergies this week. It's that time of the year as we head into the summer months. So I might have to pause here a couple of times in this podcast. Um, just because the coughing occurs. So anyways, what I want to talk about today, we've talked about boundaries, the last few podcasts and this ties into it and these are defensive behaviors. I'm gonna focus on a few today in particular. There are many that I believe alienate us from others. When we get defensive, we turn we're coming from a place of fear versus love. We get defensive, we become angry. It limits our ability to connect with others. And when we do that, my tendency was to isolate get frustrated and I suffered. So it blocks our ability to connect and find that emotional intimacy that we all need connection for me and this intimacy is my lifeline in my recovery. So we're gonna talk about a few today. The first one is projecting projection. I believe many of us have done this before. I'm gonna talk about a few examples in particular. Not easy ones to admit this is challenging stuff for many of us. It took me a long time to really come clean about, you know, things that were getting in my way, they caused me to continue to drink. So projecting a lot of times people talk and write about this. I've studied about it a little bit. We do this when something's been identified in us that we perceive as a flaw, a character defect. So I've seen people in the past take that and say, well, I've been kind of labeled as this. So I'm gonna look for that and other people and pointing out to them that's kind of deflecting in my opinion, to keep the heat off of ourselves. So that's one form of it. And I think this leads to a couple of things that I have. I've done before in my lifetime, I work on a daily and when I work to not do this, I suffer a lot less and passing judgment many times when we passed judgment on others, we gossip. It's hurtful, negative gossip, which is so much in our society today. You can just look at social media, for example, politics. Another example, whether it's true or false, it's hurt. I participated in the past. Looking again for the similarities, not the difference today. If I'm around that I'm gonna politely move away from that energy. Many of us are okay with doing this and and being around it until of course it happens to us. It's kind of like giving the advice to someone don't take it personally. Very easy advice to give. But when it happens to us, it's very difficult to accept it. It's about us now. Someone has said something negative and hurtful about us. We could feel it damages our reputation. Nobody likes to be judged, but I've done it. I've signed up for it in the past. An example would be if I went out and everybody that I saw drinking to excess, I labeled them as an alcoholic. The only person I've labeled as an alcoholic is me a recovering grateful alcoholic. That's up to somebody else to decide. So again, negative gossip passing judgment is hurtful. It's negative energy we we assume which is the next one I'm going to talk about. It's one thing that I've worked on again very diligently is to not assume so easy to assume something based off of a past interaction, a past experience, especially when it's negative. Why not look at the positive, Why not do a pros and cons and and net things out and say, you know what? Most of my interaction with this person has been positive, What's coming up for me to think it's going to be negative. For me? It's usually something in my past which I'll get to towards the end of this podcast, as I'm going to suggest a few things that I've been working on diligently. So we assume things I've read stuff where people don't respond right away to a text message or an email that they're not interested that they don't like us. If you send me a text message, I'm pretty good about getting back to you. But hey, I have a life, I go to the gym, I have hobbies, I interact with my friends, I get some rest. I do things I participate. I'm an active participant in life, so I don't get back to you right away. It's truly nothing personal. And if it is, I will let you know if you ask me, so we assume this happened before, so it will happen again. And what I found is most of the time when I find myself in this position and it's coming up for me where I want to make an assumption it's something from the past that has absolutely nothing to do with this person. Now, if it does have to do with this person, okay, that's a different story that goes back to previous podcast about advocating for ourselves, putting boundaries in place and standing by them. Even when it's met with heavy resistance, the next one is blaming the blaming game the blame game in my mind. This is simply a function of us not taking responsibility for our own actions and what comes out of our mouth and instead again, we get defensive, we strike first, we lash out our thinking becomes very generalized over generalized. You always do this to me, everybody feels this way about you or everybody feels this way about me. Everybody always blames me. So what do we do? We blame the other person? We lash out, we size them up, we judge them. So we think because we've seen this and other people in the past, I'm going to assume that you're the same way everybody's this way. That's like saying everybody thinks the way I do. Everybody thinks processes, feels interacts, acts responds the same way steve does ha ha that's not true. That's not even close to being true. So projecting, assuming blaming we're coming from a place of fear. I work to identify what that fear is. We become less compassionate. We're in that mode attack mode. It's gonna be difficult to have compassion and empathy when we're coming from a place of fear instead of love. So I've touched on a few broad strokes here, there are other things and we'll continue this discussion in the future. Now I want to talk about a few things that I've put into practice on a daily basis and I've talked about this before And I mentioned this just a few moments ago. No one, press pause. If you practice this stuff and it requires practice just like gratitude for me. Gratitude is a verb. I just don't show up and all of a sudden I'm grateful for everything in my life. I make a conscious effort to point things out in my prayer meditation that I'm grateful for its okay to practice stuff. It's just not gonna suddenly appear, especially if we're operating and vibrating in a low energy level. And we've struggled with boundaries, We've struggled to regulate the emotions and we shame ourselves for those things as I've talked about before. So I work on pausing. There's nothing wrong with that, you know, is this true about this person or is it something that's coming out from my past? So I fact check, I check in with myself, is there something that I'm feeling right now? Is it something physically, am I starting to tighten up in my stomach, to bloat, to tremble a little bit, to start to itch from anxiety. Listen to that. It could be something that you're sensing all the more reason to pause and say, you know what I'm gonna call it a day. I need a break. We'll see if we can carry on this discussion at another time. I work on that because if I don't, again, I'm gonna get defensive and I'm gonna get accusatory and I'm gonna lash out remember contempt before investigation is not fact checking. So this gives me an opportunity to check in, put a boundary in place, re establish a boundary to identify which I'm going to talk about next year, be aware of the impact that we're having in an exchange our words, our actions again. That's part of Step 12 pause. Hey, what am I contributing to this or when you take the time out to reflect a great way for me is to look for the similarities and what other people say and do versus the differences. It's easy to point out the differences. Looking for the similarity takes some work, but it also takes the pressure off. It gives me an opportunity to identify, to have empathy, to be more compassionate and at any time with this stuff, if you need help reach out to someone that you can go to That you can trust asking for help is a strength, not asking for help and struggling and therefore others can struggle around this is not a strength. So let's be aware of our impact and our contribution this leads to number three will be less inclined to become to come from a place of fear and that fear can make us angry. There's a few definitions of fear out there that I like frustration, ego, anxiety, resentment, forget everything and run or my favorite face everything and rise and we do that together. Now we're talking now we have an opportunity to really connect at a deeper level and and and find some emotional intimacy. Defense mechanisms start to go down the walls start to go down, we have empathy and compassion now because we've worked to identify that becomes our go to, we're dealing from a position of strength, believe it or not for ourselves and for others and sometimes we have to walk this gives us ourselves a chance to set a boundary and I've realized with this stuff, I suffer so much less, I get caught up in this cycle and I overreact and I don't think it through. It's like you've heard the saying think before you respond, hold off before you press send on that text or that email or that post on social media, there's a lot of power in the ability to pause, identify what's coming up to fact check. We're putting ourselves in a position to connect and if it's not there with a person, a group that's okay, we're practicing, we're practicing this stuff. The last thing that I would offer up and I've heard this before in life and in business, we do these things here and practice these things will be in a position to offer up a solution to a perceived issue, a problem versus again, coming from fear and we criticize and if you realize this and you can reflect on this, no good ever comes from that. We never go wrong in taking the high road, but no good comes from coming from a place of fear where we get angry frustration, ego, anxiety, resentment, and I've been there and I've suffered and my go to became alcohol thankfully I decided that these kind of thought processes and mechanisms weren't useful for me and it helps to keep me sober today. I'll leave you with this a positive affirmation for the week and wish you a happy Memorial Day weekend. If you can say to yourself, just give this a try. What you want and need is here. We got to take action. This stuff requires action. It's not gonna come to us, we've got to go to it, choose it and accept it, what you want is here and now choose it and accept it. And you know what, it will be okay. And sometimes it's okay to just be okay. That's a lot better than suffering. Sometimes it's gonna be really good, and sometimes it's gonna be amazing. Thank you so much for joining me and following me at www dot believe in big change dot com and have a great weekend, a safe one. And I look forward to catching up with you next week, Be well and God bless you.