Tag Archives: freedom

How does your Defensiveness hurt you?

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There is a side of you who defends his actions against the consideration of doing differently. “But, that’s not all of me!” you might say (defensively), and you’re right. But what does that part of you do to you?

Defensiveness, protecting the wrong things

Well, one thing it can do is act like a shield against the wrong things, things that can actually help you. It holds back the desire to learn and grow, become better and more free inside. It’s that voice inside your head (or out loud) that talks like this “Just shut up! You don’t know me! Go away!” and causes you to push away from people. Always insistent and alarmed by a suggestion that you might be doing the wrong thing.

But learning is the process of discovering that you were wrong, again and again. You didn’t know it all, there was more to it than you thought. That wall of defensiveness, then, will stop you from learning. And learning renders you more capable to move freely and intelligently in a new area of life. If you push away from the idea that you could be wrong, then you also push yourself down too, you limit your capabilities. Rather than feeling like you can try new things, learn about yourself, or consider where your actions have caused harm freely, you learn resentment, denial of your feelings, and living a life where you try to avoid the things that push your buttons.

“But I don’t want my buttons pushed!” you might say. I hear you. But you can also dismantle the buttons. And defensiveness is one of those buttons.

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The Irresponsible Self

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The part of myself who coaxed me to procrastinate. He carries around a lot of pain.

Ever been trying to get things done, and, whenever you think of an item on the list, you say to yourself, “eh I’ll just do that later.”? I bet you have. Procrastination runs rampant in the world and this little voice seems to be the one responsible for putting things off. Today I decided to see where the thought was coming from, and I found something intriguing.

On the surface, this irresponsible guy just says things to get you to put off doing what you really want to get done. He comes up with all kinds of excuses as to why you don’t really need to be doing what you wanted to get done. But the real question is, why is he saying these things to begin with? Why make excuses?

After talking with this part of myself for a little while, I could tell that he was carrying around a lot of pain. He got defensive, bitter, resentful, and told me straight out that he didn’t want to do some of the things I wanted to get done because they would be “too painful”. Now sure, any given task has its challenges, but this part of yourself uses the pain it’s already carrying around as an excuse for avoiding more pain, even if it’s relatively small.

I had to be very patient with this part of myself to avoid an all out fight. Understand that it can get so bad for this side of yourself that it would rather bury the pain deep within the subconscious than even talk about it. However, doing this reduces the chance of healing that pain by A LOT, because you have to go dig around inside with the express purpose of finding the pain. And who really enjoys doing that?

However, what my encounter today showed me is that it is an absolute priority, if we want to live without carrying around a burden of intense emotional pain, that we must find a way to get to the pain and let it out despite what this irresponsible side of ourselves says.

Now, that being said, it’s not easy to find that pain right off the bat, and that part of you may not even remember where the pain is stored anymore. So instead of stigmatizing this part of yourself, it’s OK to let it continue doing things that it enjoys doing to avoid the pain, as long as another part of you searches for it. However, this pain-ridden, irresponsible self might resort to harmful activities, in which case, it needs to be confronted.

So what’s the take away? If you want to live more freely, seek out your pain to let it out. Otherwise you’ll get caught in a routine of life that doesn’t satisfy your true needs, and doesn’t bring you fulfillment.

Total Self-kindness

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Had another self-conversation. This time I found that there’s a part of me who is distressed and looking for guidance, and opts to listen to others (or myself) who, authoritatively, tell him what he “should” do. I challenged this, asking “well, what if you DON’T?” – obviously, he would be punished by my inner authority figure, or others. I told him that I thought that this kind of treatment was unfair, that instead of giving authority to some demanding voice within, I believed that everything inside me, every single force, was a living being, who did not deserve abuse or mistreatment.

Therefore, if challenge your “shoulds”, and that voice inside you that tells you what to do, you’ll be more free. The alternative? When you want to do something, do it – examining things rationally. Listen to yourself, stand outside your inner judgments and conflicts. If you fail to do something you wanted to do, question the whole thing if you start beating yourself up afterwards. The inner person telling you what you should and should not do needs to be questioned, or else the parts of you whose voices long to be heard, and who are constantly attacked for wanting things that aren’t deemed “correct” or “right”, will continue to be abused, and you’ll suffer for it. And that will be 🙁