By Ari Sotiriou MA PGDip psychodynamic psychotherapist
“Why does every difficult conversation end in an argument?”
It is one of the questions we hear most often in both individual psychotherapy and couples therapy.
A partner raises a concern. Perhaps she says she feels lonely in the relationship. Perhaps he says he feels overlooked or emotionally unimportant. The conversation begins calmly enough, with one person trying to describe an experience.
Yet within moments, something changes.
Instead of exploring what has been said, one partner starts explaining. They justify their actions, point out what the other person has done wrong, or insist they have been misunderstood. Before long, both people feel hurt, frustrated and unheard.
The original issue has disappeared.
The conversation has become about defending oneself rather than understanding one another.
From the outside, defensiveness can look like stubbornness, selfishness or an unwillingness to listen. It is easy to assume that the defensive partner simply refuses to accept responsibility.
In therapy, however, we often discover something far more complex.
Defensiveness is rarely just about the present conversation. More often, it is an attempt to protect ourselves from emotional experiences that feel surprisingly painful. The tragedy is that the very strategy designed to keep us emotionally safe gradually creates the distance we most fear.
This article explores why defensiveness develops, why it is particularly common in intimate relationships, and how both Psychodynamic Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can help people respond differently.
Alongside this article, we have created an interactive reflection worksheet to help you recognise your own defensive patterns, identify the emotions that lie beneath them, and begin developing healthier ways of communicating. Many readers find that completing the worksheet while reading the article makes the ideas easier to recognise in their own relationships.
What Is Defensiveness?
Defensiveness is a psychological response to feeling emotionally threatened.
When someone feels criticised, disappointed, rejected or misunderstood, their attention often shifts away from their partner’s experience and towards protecting themselves.
Instead of hearing:
“I felt hurt when that happened.”
they may hear something entirely different:
“You are a bad partner.”
Those are not the same message.
The first is an invitation to understand another person’s experience.
The second feels like an attack on identity.
Once that shift has taken place, genuine listening becomes extremely difficult.
Defensive reactions take many forms. Some people explain themselves in great detail. Others argue, change the subject or begin listing their partner’s faults. Some minimise the other person’s feelings, while others withdraw emotionally and become silent.
Although these behaviours appear very different, they often serve the same psychological purpose: protecting the self from emotional pain.
Ironically, the partner raising the concern usually experiences the opposite effect.
Rather than feeling understood, they feel dismissed.
Rather than feeling closer, they feel more alone.
Over time, repeated experiences like these gradually erode trust and emotional intimacy. Couples often assume they have a communication problem, when in reality they are caught in a cycle of emotional protection that neither partner fully understands.
One of the first goals of therapy is helping people recognise this pattern. Once it becomes visible, it can begin to change
The Child Inside the Adult
One of the central ideas in psychodynamic psychotherapy is that our earliest relationships continue to influence how we experience ourselves and other people long after childhood has ended.
We do not enter adult relationships as blank slates. We bring with us countless emotional experiences, many of which we are barely aware of. These experiences shape what we expect from other people, how safe we feel when we become emotionally close, and how we respond when relationships become difficult.
This does not mean that our childhood determines our future. Rather, it means that the ways we learned to protect ourselves as children often remain with us into adulthood, even when they are no longer helpful.
Imagine a boy growing up in a family where mistakes are met with harsh criticism.
He learns that getting something wrong carries an emotional cost.
Perhaps he is laughed at when he cries. Perhaps affection is withdrawn when he disappoints a parent. Perhaps love feels conditional on achievement, obedience or emotional self-control.
Over time, he develops an internal expectation:
“If I make a mistake, I will be criticised.”
Years later, his partner gently says:
“I felt hurt when you cancelled our plans.”
Objectively, the situations are very different.
Emotionally, however, they may feel remarkably similar.
Without realising it, he is no longer responding only to his partner. He is also responding to old emotional memories that have been quietly waiting beneath the surface.
His body prepares for danger before his mind has had time to understand what is actually being said.
This is why defensiveness often feels so automatic.
It is less a conscious decision than an emotional reflex.
When the Present Becomes Mixed with the Past
One of the most valuable insights that therapy can offer is helping people distinguish between what belongs to the present and what belongs to the past.
When we become emotionally overwhelmed, those boundaries can become blurred.
A simple disagreement may feel like rejection.
Disappointment may feel like abandonment.
Constructive feedback may feel like humiliation.
The emotional intensity of the reaction often seems disproportionate to what has actually happened.
For the partner witnessing it, this can be confusing.
They may think:
“I only wanted to explain how I felt.”
Meanwhile, the defensive partner feels as though something much more serious has occurred.
Neither person is deliberately misunderstanding the other.
They are experiencing entirely different emotional realities.
Psychodynamic therapy helps people become curious about these moments rather than simply reacting to them. Instead of asking, “Who’s right?”, therapy encourages a different question:
“Why did this particular conversation feel so threatening?”
That shift in perspective often opens the door to understanding patterns that have been repeated for many years.
Shame: The Emotion That Hides Beneath Defensiveness
Although fear often plays a part in defensive reactions, shame is frequently the emotion doing the hidden work.
Shame is one of the most painful emotions we experience because it affects not only what we have done, but who we believe ourselves to be.
There is an important difference between guilt and shame.
Guilt says:
“I made a mistake.”
Shame says:
“I am the mistake.”
When shame becomes activated, the mind stops exploring and starts defending.
Curiosity disappears.
Listening becomes difficult.
The immediate priority becomes escaping the painful feeling.
Different people do this in different ways.
Some become argumentative.
Some explain themselves endlessly.
Some shut down emotionally.
Some become angry.
Others withdraw into silence, hoping the conversation will simply end.
Although these reactions look very different, they often share the same purpose.
They reduce contact with the painful experience of shame.
The difficulty is that while shame turns our attention inward, healthy relationships require us to remain emotionally available to another person’s experience.
That is why shame can quietly undermine intimacy without either partner fully understanding what is happening.
Learning That Relationships Can Be Safe
The British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote about the importance of growing up in an environment where a child feels emotionally held rather than constantly judged or overwhelmed.
When children repeatedly experience relationships as emotionally safe, they gradually develop confidence that difficult feelings can be tolerated without losing the relationship.
They discover that disappointment does not necessarily lead to rejection, and that conflict does not automatically destroy love.
Many adults who become highly defensive never had enough experiences like this.
Instead, emotional discomfort became associated with danger.
As a result, criticism—even when offered gently by a loving partner—can trigger an urgent need for self-protection.
Therapy offers something different.
Rather than judging or correcting, the therapist creates a relationship in which difficult feelings can be thought about instead of immediately acted upon.
Over time, many people begin to notice something remarkable.
The feelings that once seemed unbearable become easier to tolerate.
They no longer need to defend themselves quite so quickly.
This growing capacity to remain emotionally present is one of the foundations of healthier relationships.
It is also one of the reasons we encourage readers to work through the accompanying reflection worksheet. Several of the exercises invite you to explore not only the situations that trigger defensiveness today, but also the earlier experiences that may have shaped these reactions. Recognising these connections is often the first step towards responding differently.
How Defensiveness Gradually Damages Intimacy
Most couples do not drift apart because of one major argument.
More often, emotional distance develops through hundreds of small conversations that never quite reach understanding.
One partner tries to express disappointment, loneliness or frustration.
The other becomes defensive.
Neither person feels understood.
The pattern repeats.
Over time, both partners begin to anticipate the outcome before the conversation has even started.
One hesitates to raise concerns because they expect an argument.
The other braces themselves for criticism before anything has been said.
Eventually, both begin protecting themselves rather than reaching towards one another.
This is how emotional intimacy slowly erodes.
One of the saddest moments we encounter in couples therapy is when a partner says:
“I’ve stopped trying.”
This does not necessarily mean they have stopped loving their partner.
Often, it means they have stopped believing that their feelings will be heard.
Repeated defensiveness can leave a person feeling emotionally invisible. They begin to question whether their needs matter at all. Some withdraw into silence. Others become increasingly critical in an effort to break through. Ironically, this stronger criticism often triggers even greater defensiveness, reinforcing the very cycle both partners want to escape.
The relationship becomes trapped in a pattern where neither person feels emotionally safe enough to be vulnerable.
Seeing the Cycle Rather Than the Blame
One of the most helpful shifts in therapy is moving away from asking, “Who started this?” and towards asking, “What keeps this cycle going?”
Imagine a familiar exchange.
One partner says:
“I miss spending time together.”
The other immediately replies:
“I’ve been working hard all week. Nothing I do is ever enough for you.”
The first partner now feels dismissed.
They respond with greater frustration:
“You’re not listening to me.”
The second partner hears even more criticism and becomes increasingly defensive.
Within minutes, both people are arguing about the argument rather than discussing the original feeling of loneliness.
Neither partner set out to create conflict.
Each is responding to the other’s distress in ways that unintentionally intensify it.
When couples begin to recognise the cycle itself as the problem, something important changes.
Instead of viewing one another as the enemy, they begin working together against a shared pattern.
That shift often marks the beginning of real progress.
The CBT Perspective: What Happens Between the Event and the Reaction
While psychodynamic therapy helps us understand where defensive patterns originate, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy helps explain why they continue.
CBT proposes that it is not events themselves that determine our emotional reactions, but the meanings we attach to them.
Between what happens and how we respond lies an interpretation.
Consider this example.
Event:
“My partner says she feels disconnected from me.”
Automatic thought:
“She’s saying I’m failing as a partner.”
Emotion:
Shame, anxiety or fear.
Behaviour:
Defending, explaining, arguing or withdrawing.
The defensive reaction makes perfect sense once we understand the thought that came before it.
The difficulty is that automatic thoughts happen so quickly that we often experience them as facts rather than interpretations.
Many people never pause to ask themselves whether there might be another way of understanding the situation.
The Core Beliefs That Keep Defensiveness Alive
Automatic thoughts are usually rooted in deeper assumptions about ourselves and our relationships.
These are often called core beliefs.
They develop gradually through life and can become so familiar that we no longer notice them.
Some common beliefs associated with defensiveness include:
- If someone is unhappy, I must have failed.
- Mistakes make me unlovable.
- Conflict means the relationship is in danger.
- I must always be strong and in control.
- If I admit I was wrong, I will lose respect.
- Being criticised means being rejected.
Once these beliefs are activated, even gentle feedback can feel overwhelming.
The person is not only responding to their partner’s words.
They are responding to an entire internal belief system that has been built over many years.
One of the exercises in the accompanying worksheet invites you to identify these deeper assumptions. Many people are surprised to discover that the beliefs driving their reactions have remained largely unchanged since adolescence or even earlier.
Learning to Stay Present
Understanding our patterns is important.
Learning to respond differently is where change begins.
One of the most valuable skills developed in therapy is the ability to remain emotionally present when uncomfortable feelings arise.
This does not mean suppressing emotions or pretending not to feel hurt.
It means creating enough psychological space to remain curious before reacting.
Instead of immediately defending ourselves, we learn to pause.
We notice the rush of emotion.
We recognise the familiar urge to explain, argue or withdraw.
Then we ask ourselves a different question:
“What is my partner actually trying to tell me?”
Sometimes a simple response such as:
“Can you help me understand what that was like for you?”
changes the entire direction of a conversation.
It communicates that the relationship matters more than winning the argument.
Listening in this way does not mean agreeing with everything that is said.
Nor does it require accepting unfair criticism.
It simply means allowing another person’s emotional experience to exist before deciding how we wish to respond.
Many couples describe this as one of the most significant changes they make in therapy.
For the first time, both partners feel genuinely heard.
And feeling heard is often the beginning of feeling connected again.
A Different Understanding of Strength
Many men grow up receiving powerful messages about what it means to be strong.
Strength is often associated with independence, certainty, emotional control and solving problems without relying on anyone else.
These qualities can be valuable in many areas of life. They may help someone succeed professionally, remain calm under pressure or cope with practical difficulties.
Yet intimate relationships ask something rather different of us.
A partner rarely wants us to solve their feelings.
More often, they want us to understand them.
That can feel surprisingly difficult for someone who has learned that emotional discomfort should be eliminated as quickly as possible.
When a loved one expresses disappointment, the instinct may be to defend, explain or fix the situation immediately.
While well intentioned, these responses often prevent genuine emotional connection.
Therapy offers a broader understanding of strength.
Psychological strength is not measured by how effectively we avoid vulnerability, but by our ability to remain emotionally present when vulnerability arises.
Real strength may involve:
- Tolerating emotional discomfort without immediately reacting.
- Listening without becoming overwhelmed.
- Accepting imperfection without collapsing into shame.
- Taking responsibility without believing that we are fundamentally flawed.
- Remaining connected even when conversations become emotionally challenging.
These capacities are rarely developed overnight.
They grow gradually through reflection, experience and practice.
They also become stronger each time we choose curiosity over defensiveness.
Thinking Before Reacting
The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion suggested that emotional growth depends upon our ability to think about difficult feelings rather than being driven by them.
When emotions become overwhelming, thinking can temporarily disappear.
Instead of reflecting, we react.
Instead of understanding, we defend.
In many defensive conversations, both partners lose the ability to think clearly because the emotional temperature has risen too high.
One person feels criticised.
The other feels unheard.
Both become increasingly preoccupied with their own distress.
One of the aims of therapy is to help people recover the capacity to think even when emotions are intense.
That might mean noticing:
“I’m feeling attacked right now.”
without immediately assuming that an attack is actually taking place.
Or recognising:
“I’m becoming defensive.”
before speaking.
That brief moment of reflection can completely change the direction of a conversation.
It creates space for choice.
Instead of reacting automatically, we begin responding deliberately.
What Happens in Couples Therapy?
Many couples arrive believing they have a communication problem.
Sometimes they do.
But communication is often only the visible part of a much deeper process.
Beneath repeated arguments we frequently find fear.
Shame.
Disappointment.
Longing.
Old attachment wounds.
Unspoken expectations.
Defensiveness is rarely the core problem.
It is usually an attempt to protect against something more painful.
In couples therapy, the aim is not to decide who is right or wrong.
It is to understand what each partner is trying to protect.
When those hidden emotional realities begin to emerge, conversations often become less adversarial and more compassionate.
Partners discover that the argument they have repeated dozens of times was never really about washing up, spending enough time together or replying to messages quickly.
Those issues mattered.
But beneath them lay a deeper need to feel valued, understood, accepted or emotionally secure.
Once those needs can be recognised and expressed more directly, the defensive cycle often begins to lose its grip.
A Clinical Reflection
One of the paradoxes of defensiveness is that it feels entirely reasonable from the inside.
The defensive person believes they are protecting themselves, their intentions or the relationship.
Their partner experiences something very different.
Imagine trying to tell someone that you feel lonely, disappointed or hurt.
Before you have finished speaking, the conversation shifts towards reassuring them that they are not a bad person.
Your own feelings quietly disappear from view.
If this happens repeatedly, you may begin to wonder whether your emotional experience matters at all.
Many people eventually stop bringing up difficult subjects, not because they no longer care, but because they have lost hope that the conversation will lead anywhere different.
This quiet withdrawal is often far more damaging than open conflict.
Arguments at least suggest that both people are still trying to reach one another.
Silence can signal that one partner has begun to give up.
Helping couples recognise this process before it becomes entrenched is one of the most important aspects of therapy.
Final Thoughts
Defensiveness may feel like protection, but over time it often becomes one of the greatest obstacles to emotional intimacy.
When every difficult conversation becomes an effort to protect ourselves, we lose the opportunity to understand the person sitting in front of us.
The encouraging news is that defensive patterns are not fixed.
They are learned.
And what has been learned can also be unlearned.
Psychodynamic therapy helps us understand the emotional experiences that shaped these patterns.
CBT helps us recognise the thoughts and beliefs that keep them alive.
Together, these approaches offer both insight and practical tools for change.
The goal is not to become perfect.
Every relationship contains misunderstandings, disappointments and moments of conflict.
The goal is something far more realistic.
To remain emotionally present long enough to hear what another person is really trying to say.
To tolerate the discomfort that sometimes accompanies closeness.
To discover that listening is not the same as agreeing, and that accepting responsibility does not mean losing our worth.
Healthy relationships are built not on the absence of conflict, but on the ability to repair it.
When we become less concerned with defending ourselves and more willing to understand one another, genuine intimacy has an opportunity to grow.
And sometimes, that single shift changes everything.
Continue Your Reflection with the Interactive Worksheet
Reading about defensiveness is one thing. Recognising it in ourselves, especially in the middle of an emotionally charged conversation, is another.
To accompany this article, we have created an interactive reflection worksheet that brings together ideas from both Psychodynamic Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). It is designed to help you move beyond simply understanding defensiveness and begin noticing how it operates in your own relationships.
Working through the exercises may help you to:
- Identify the situations that most often trigger defensive reactions.
- Recognise the emotions that lie beneath defensiveness, such as shame, fear or insecurity.
- Explore how earlier life experiences may still influence the way you respond today.
- Notice the automatic thoughts and assumptions that can fuel conflict.
- Practise more thoughtful and emotionally connected ways of responding during difficult conversations.
- Reflect on how defensiveness affects trust, closeness and communication within your relationships.
You can complete the worksheet on your own, work through it together with your partner, or bring your reflections into therapy as a starting point for deeper exploration.
Sometimes a few moments of honest reflection reveal patterns that have quietly shaped our relationships for many years.
Request the Worksheet
If you would like a copy of From Defensiveness to Understanding: A Relationship Reflection Worksheet, simply complete the worksheet request form below with your name and email address.
Once we receive your request, we will send you a link to access the interactive worksheet.
If you wish, you can also include a brief note about what prompted your interest or any particular challenges you are experiencing in your relationship. This is entirely optional, but it helps us understand the topics that readers find most valuable and informs the development of future articles and worksheets.
Considering Therapy?
If you recognised yourself in this article, you are certainly not alone.
Many people seek therapy because they find themselves repeating the same patterns despite genuinely wanting something different. Others come because a partner has described them as defensive, emotionally distant or difficult to reach during conflict. Couples often contact us because they have become trapped in the same argument, repeated so many times that neither person remembers how it began.
Therapy provides an opportunity to slow these interactions down and understand what is happening beneath the surface.
Rather than focusing solely on the arguments themselves, therapy explores the emotions, beliefs and relationship experiences that keep these patterns alive. As understanding grows, new ways of responding gradually become possible.
At Online Therapy Clinic, we offer online therapy for individuals and couples using both Psychodynamic Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
Together, we can help you to:
- Understand the emotional roots of defensive reactions.
- Develop healthier ways of communicating during conflict.
- Reduce shame and excessive self-criticism.
- Build greater emotional resilience.
- Strengthen trust, intimacy and emotional connection.
- Break repetitive relationship patterns.
- Learn practical CBT strategies alongside deeper psychological understanding.
Whether you are navigating a new relationship, trying to repair a long-term partnership or simply hoping to understand yourself more fully, therapy offers a safe and confidential space in which meaningful change can take place.
If you would like to explore these issues further, we would be pleased to arrange an initial online consultation.
Subscribe to Our Clinical Blog
If you found this article helpful, you may wish to subscribe to the Online Therapy Clinic Clinical Blog using the subscription form at the bottom of this page.
Subscribers receive notifications whenever we publish new clinical articles, interactive reflection worksheets and practical resources exploring relationships, emotional wellbeing, Psychodynamic Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
Our aim is to provide thoughtful, evidence-informed content that helps people understand themselves and their relationships more deeply, whether they are considering therapy, already engaged in therapy or simply interested in personal growth.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
We hope it has encouraged you to think about defensiveness not as a personal failing, but as a pattern that can be understood with compassion and changed through reflection, practice and supportive relationships.
Could you kindly let me know how you found me/us?
Photo credit: TMS Sam / Pexels
Audio narration produced using ElevenLabs voice technology.