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Full hypnosis download Stop being defensive
When we have put effort into something, be it a painting or an essay or anything else that we have really worked hard at, it can be hard to take constructive feedback or ‘positive criticism’ from another person about it. It’s all too easy to feel that we are under personal attack, and should leap on to the defensive to protect our self-esteem.
But the fact is that putting all your energy into preserving self-esteem means you actually have less energy available to focus on really improving your tennis game, your IT knowledge, your skill in Spanish, your sculpturing technique or whatever it is that you want to improve. Sure, we all like to be applauded and recognised for good work, but unless we can also take less than perfect feedback about our performance, our further development in the field is likely to be limited!
Defensiveness is emotional
When we respond to criticism by becoming highly defensive, we are really responding with anger and/or upset – a state of emotional arousal which reduces our ability to access logical thought processes in these times. So by staying calm you improve your capacity to determine whether someone is really criticising you or is trying to help you constructively.
If they are, in fact, trying to undermine you (i.e. their remarks are overly personal and attacking), then becoming emotional will only get you stumbling blindly into their trap – so it’s better to remain calm anyway. That way they can’t really get at you. If, on the other hand, you recognise that actually they’ve got a point and their comments can help you improve, then you have got something potentially highly valuable for free! Having this kind of detachment about yourself – especially in the areas of life you’d like to improve in – means you become more of a ‘learning machine’ and less of a ‘self-esteem maintaining mechanism’.
Interestingly, marriage expert John Gottman found that defensiveness in a relationship (one or both partners displaying extreme over-sensitivity to any less than perfect feedback about themselves) was a major predictor of future marriage breakdown.
When someone is emotionally defensive, others tend to feel uncomfortable around them, as if they have to ‘tread on egg shells’ all the time.
In the new download I’ve just produced for hypnosisdonwloads.com Stop Being Defensive, I focus on using hypnosis as a way to develop calm emotional detachment when listening to feedback about oneself. When we can relax and detach, we don’t need to take anything too personally, especially when it’s not even meant to be taken personally.
Mark
I completely agree with Mark’s article on defensiveness. I couldn’t help but think about Dr. Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy when reading this article. Our irrational beliefs can get in the way and we may believe that our work is not “perfect” and we are “failures” because someone is giving us “helpful criticism.” This audio can really enhance our ability to calm ourselves so that we don’t allow ourselves to become depressed or become enraged. And this audio can help us to think more rationally and put our energy to good use by changing our thinking (I’m not perfect and that’s okay. I can practice and improve my work if I choose to but I’m not a failure if my work is not perfect) so we can focus on improving our work. I’m looking forward to downloading this audio and giving it a try! Mark’s work is amazing and I find that hypnosis has helped me significantly with my own mental health. I also enjoyed his reference to Dr. Gottman’s research, who I’ve also studied. I’m a prelicensed mental health professional and I haven’t attempted to utilize hypnosis in my practice, but I believe that hypnosis can be utilized with other theoretical perspectives and significantly enhance treatment.