Many times in life, we come across people in our lives who seem to be
super quick to take offense when you thought you were offering help,
advice or constructive feedback. Worse, some of you might have someone
like this in your life who asks you for feedback. Your heart sinks as
you know that no matter what you say or how you say it, they’ll likely
be devastated. People like this can be found in every family, workplace
or group of friends. Dealing with them requires a special set of skills.
The Dark Side of Sensitivity
People like this often describe themselves as being sensitive and they
are. But often their reactions to your comments are a defense mechanism.
The two may feel the same to the person experiencing them but in
reality, they are worlds apart. Sensitivity is born of careful
attention, it involves looking closely, understanding deeply and
therefore not causing harm. Defensiveness is the bastard child of shame.
For people who have survived harshly judgmental environments, shame
dominates the psychological landscape.
Knowing that highly sensitive people’s destructive behaviour comes from
shame doesn’t excuse it, but it does help you understand why. From the
outside, defensive behaviour is disproportionate, bizarre, often
appalling. But from the perspective of the highly sensitive person,
these actions are justifiable self-protection.
How to Have a Functional, Trusting, Relaxed, Mutually Satisfying Human Relationship with a Highly Defensive Person
In short, you can’t. The long answer is you can’t, don’t bother trying.
The reason you can’t look to defensive people for satisfying
relationships is that it requires two human beings.
I’m not being flip, defensive people genuinely think more with their
ancient, reptilian brain and process in the parts of the brain that
control social interaction and which evolved much, much later less.
Beneath our elaborate neural structures that mediate our subtle social
interactions we all possess what neuroscientists call the reptilian
brain. It’s the most ancient part of the brain which evolved in reptiles
and isn’t capable of nuanced emotion or logical thought. It’s primary
driving force is fear. Two fears to be exact.
The first worry of the lizard brain (yours, mine, everyone’s!) is “I
don’t have enough!” – enough food, money, love, glory. Insert your own
noun here but the theme “not enough” pounds away constantly. The only
other major concern for the lizard brain is “someone’s out to get me!”. A
highly sensitive person perceives threat coming from lots of sources;
one day the enemy could be a colleague, a relative the next, that mean
women in the check-out at Tesco’s two minutes later. But to the lizard
brain, someone somewhere is always about to attack.
Evolutionarily this makes sense. Lizards live longer if they obsessively
acquire more food, shelter and mates, and if they expect predators to
jump out at them at any moment. Sadly, reptiles are blind to
non-defensive emotions; to the glow of love, the joyful giggle. The only
thing playing on their mental movie screens all day, every day is The
Lack and Attack Show. The same is true of highly sensitive/defensive
people.
When humans are gripped by primal fear, they get completely in touch
with their ancient lizard brains and highly defensive people are
virtually always gripped by primal fear.
So the best relationship you can hope to sustain with a highly defensive
people is the sort you might have with a reptile. Listen out the lyrics
to the song The Snake by Al Wilson to get a better idea. You can treat a
highly defensive person as tenderly as the woman in this song but
you’re still highly likely to get bitten. Handle with care, step back
and maintain some distance is your relationship with a highly defensive
person.
source : http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counselloradvice10218.html#respond
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
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