Quotes About Defensiveness

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

The most striking aspect of Jane's adult letters is their defensiveness. They lack tenderness towards herself as much as towards others ... They are the letters of someone who does not open her heart'. They are also, perhaps, the letters of someone who doesn't dare open her heart, for fear of what she might find there.

Take away the clothes of the greatest living man, his father once told him, and you behold a very embarrassed, naked and defenseless animal.

You're terrible at this whole 'tell me whatever I want to know' thing." My hand goes to the crossbow, but I don't pick it up. He sighs. "Just ask me something. Ask about my tail. Don't you want to see it?" He raises his brows.

I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn't have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing.

You're in a prickly mood,' he tells me. As though I am not all-over briars at all times.

Their carefully relaxed demeanors hid a fragile defensiveness, as if they expected to be criticized at any moment and they weren't going to stand for it. They both seemed to cling so hard to their chosen personalities. I am this sort of person and therefore I believe this, I think this, I do this and I am right, I'm right, I'm sure I'm right!

Marriage to Perry meant she was always ready to justify her actions, constantly monitoring what she'd just said or done, while simultaneously feeling defensive about the defensiveness, her thoughts and feelings twisting into impenetrable knots, so that sometimes, like right now, sitting in a room with normal people, all the things she couldn't say rose in her throat and for a moment she couldn't breathe.

always ready to justify her actions, constantly monitoring what she'd just said or done, while simultaneously feeling defensive about the defensiveness, her thoughts and feelings twisting into impenetrable knots, so that sometimes, like right now, sitting in a room with normal people, all the things she couldn't say rose in her throat and for a moment she couldn't breathe.

I stand by the stuff I say, even the really stupid stuff. I'll find a way to justify it.

We humans are prone to err, and to err systematically, outrageously, and with utter confidence. We are also prone to hold our mistaken notions dear, protecting and nourishing them like our own children. We defend them at great cost. We surround ourselves with safe people, people who will appreciate our cherished views. We avoid those who suggest that our exalted ideas, our little emperors, have no clothes.

Men who aren't enough like human beings even to hate—what one feels when they loom into view is just an overwhelming lack of interest, the sort of deep disengagement that is often a defense against pain.

Is pride really the loftiest of human emotions? The very fact that it is characterized by defensiveness proves otherwise. When we have pride in our possessions or in some organizations with which we identify, we feel obligated to defend them. Pride in our ideas and opinions leads to endless arguments, conflict, and woe.

as partners become better able to self-confront and self-soothe, they have less need to control each other. They can maintain their own emotional stability and worry less about what their partner is doing. They stop expecting their partner to understand them and focus more on understanding themselves, which, in turn, reduces defensiveness and combativeness, and encourages good will and growth rather than resistance and stagnation.

His self-involvement, defensiveness, demeaning treatment of others, need to dominate the conversation, and sense of entitlement—basically, his being an asshole—all fall under the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder.

Fundamentalism is essentially a revolt against modernity. It is a reaction usually based on profound fear and defensiveness against "losing the faith.

Defensiveness shuts down honesty and keeps truth from being expressed.

Everyone has his or her Frrance, his or her Paris, just as everyone has his or her London or New York. This stubborn habit strikes me as self-protection, an old tribal instinct for never showing one's back. Not knowing, not having gotten there first (and pocketing the goods), seem to implicate us as fools or rubes.

There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the courage to admit one's errors. It not only clears up the air of guilt and defensiveness, but often helps solve the problem created by the error

You are attached to what you attack.

?uvajte se ugroženih ljudi i ljudi koji misle da su ugroženi. Oni ose?aju potrebu da se štite i brane, i zbog toga ?esto i neo?ekivano i podmuklo napadaju

Mutual defensiveness moves parents and children away from intersubjective experience and joint influence and into a desire to gain control of the situation. To

Intimacy requires vulnerability and a lack of defensiveness. Intimacy requires healthy shame.

A toxically shamed person is divided within himself and must create a false-self cover-up to hide his sense of being flawed and defective. You cannot offer yourself to another person if you do not know who you really are.