Defensiveness Does Not Protect Me
revisiting how defensiveness shows up in my life, through my Journal As Altar practice
If we want other people to be accountable, then we must practice accountability. If we want other people to “do their work with their people,” then we must do our work with our people as well. I understand all of this as a practice in loving and I am always fueled whenever I get to practice love. - Mia Mingus
Welcome, friends. As I often say, I’m so glad you’re here. For those of you following the four part series here, “When Journaling Doesn’t Feel Good or Easy,” please know I will get back to that soon with post 3 of 4, where we will explore how ideas around and experiences with time and energy can act as blocks to our creative practices. For now, I wanted to meet you in this space with what’s on my heart in this moment: the evergreen topic of defensiveness. I have written about it here before; it’s a way of being that I am still sitting with…and interested in helping it move on down the road.
Before I share more, I want to clarify what I mean and don’t mean when I say “defensiveness.” For me, defensiveness shows up when people give me direct feedback about something specific I have done or not done. I am not defensive in all situations with all feedback. It actually shows up the most prominently in work settings and in my most attached relationships. At work, I often internalize my defensiveness (without vocalizing much at all) and create whole conversations in my head and then alter my actions based on my internal defensiveness, for better or for worse - but it’s NOT always an integration of feedback in a productive or healthy way. In my most attached or close relationships, depending on the nature of the feedback, defensiveness shows up most often as: digging in my heels even when I *know* it’s not productive or important, keeping “score,” shutting down, not expressing my own needs in exchange for shutting down, and resistance to the feedback in an ungrounded manner.
I am NOT referring to the following when I say “defensiveness:”
disagreeing with someone and sharing a different perspective
protecting oneself from abuse, misuses of power, harm
choosing, with self reflection, not to integrate feedback (it’s possible to do this without a lick of defensiveness)
having boundaries or saying no
Last Friday I facilitated an all day retreat for a team that does intensive work with people impacted by violence. I was supporting them to explore how accessing creativity might also support them in building stronger community as a team, so that as the difficulty of their work and the world crashes around them, they have an increased sense of trust with one another. We focused on creative practice because dreaming of and working towards a violence free world is inherently creative, given our current circumstances. As we focused on the community building aspect of our day, accountability was paramount. I gave them all their own personalized journaling kits full of special surprises, so that they could engage in creative expression as we explored self and community accountability. I wanted them to have lovely and supportive objects in their hands, tactile, as we explored what’s not so easy for many - building trust through being intentional about how we “do” accountability together. It wasn’t easy to facilitate, and I know it wasn’t easy for them to work through. And. I just know that if we want the type of community accountability that invites people to interrupt the use of violence in their relationships…we MUST be able to navigate accountability together, even when the stakes are much, much lower. The way we do the work is the work.
So, when I pulled the card pictured above on the Monday after the heavy and inspirational lift of that all day staff retreat, I knew immediately where it was pointing me. I’ve been grappling with defensiveness in the context of a few of my most important relationships, and this card teaches how I can be more like willow, which represents movement, throwing out “squabbling footnotes of the past,” while releasing resentment and fostering tender new growth. And all of that took me right back to…accountability. I think I know where the deepest roots of my defensiveness reside: a) life experiences from my younger years that aren’t for public consumption and b) binary thinking & oppressive social norms. I’ve certainly talked about this before. This isn’t a new revelation. And, actually embodying what I know intellectually is always a work in progress. My defensiveness has had me acting in ways that are not aligned with my values, and in fact present barriers to intimacy and the type of accountability I was just teaching about. The type of accountability that I know is required if we are to break binaries to be free, together. To remain consistently defensive to certain types of information takes me farther and farther away from the love and accountability that I know is my joy. It doesn’t protect me, and anyway the feeling that I need “protecting” in this case is a trauma response that is not currently serving me. And so, I am doing a deep dive this month in my journal (my altar) around uprooting the roots of my defensiveness. Just like Mia Mingus says, this is all a practice in loving. I’ll be fumbling, practicing.
The timing of this exploration feels significant and guided, given that I am teaching Journal As Altar for Healthy Relationships this month. The focus is not specifically defensiveness, but it is about exploring who and how we want to be in relationship with others. My commitment as a teacher and thought partner is to practice what I teach. Anything less is a grift. How we do the work IS the work.
➡ ➡ I am endlessly informed and inspired by the accountability and justice work of Mia Mingus, Shira Hasson, Mariame Kaba, adrienne maree brown, Mimi Kim, Kai Cheng Thom, and Sonya Shah.
“Accountability is a fierce, amazing, radical way to choose to stay in relationship to each other.”
-Sonya Shah
For Your Practice
I am invested in relationships that are durable enough for both joy and accountability, and I do the work for both to flourish.
Defensiveness does not protect me.
Have I ever noticed defensiveness acting as a barrier to the kind of connection I seek?
How might a commitment to self accountability, rooted in my deepest values, support me to be more open to community accountability?
If defensiveness were a sound, what would it be? Explore.
write an affirmation from above in the bottom left corner of your journal page
draw rays emanating from the words, out and in to the rest of your page - they can be straight or curved lines (or anything your heart desires)
write your responses to the prompts for exploration on those lines
add doodles, stamps, ephemera along the way