relationship issues Archives

Recognizing Your Self-Protection Mechanism

Listen to the full podcast episode to learn how to identify the coping strategies and self-protection mechanisms you employ when someone triggers you. By the end, you’ll know how to respond with vulnerability versus reacting with vigilance to end the self-sabotage and self-betrayal you may or may not realize you’re a part of in your relationships.

Today, I’m talking about the coping patterns and self-protection mechanisms we resort to when we feel triggered. Today, I’m going to show you how to comfort that conditioned part of yourself that for so long has behaved in a certain way as a means to self-preserve.

What is a self-protection mechanism?

A self-protection mechanism is a behavior or coping tool that we employ when a part of us doesn’t feel that it can manage or navigate a solution.

We may feel unsafe, that something’s out of control, or that we’re going to get hurt. So, we rely on certain behavior we’ve become conditioned to using to escape from the feelings we don’t want to feel.

Since we’ve repeated it for so long, it has become a pattern and the roots often stem from an experience in our childhood where we felt unsafe, hurt, afraid, angry, or resentful.

There are a lot of different self-protection mechanisms that we employ. They’re very unique and specific to each of us and we’ve created them to help us cope with feelings we don’t believe we can handle feeling again. So, these mechanisms become our automatic reactions, becoming habits and often causing us to sabotage our relationships – including the one with yourself.

How do we change our self-protection mechanisms and coping tools?

There are 3 steps that will help you move from reacting to responding and with vulnerability instead of vigilance:

Recognize your protection mechanism by looking at your patterns of behavior in relationships.

Becoming aware is an essential first step in experiencing the greatest version of yourself. Let’s do an exercise to get you started.

Think of one way you protect yourself in relationships. When someone says or does something that triggers you, what behavior are you most likely to respond with? One way to do this is to look at your last disagreement or a recent time you were triggered by someone. How did you handle it?

Do you pretend you’re laid back not showing that you care to avoid getting hurt?
Do you defer to filling others’ needs or wants and remain silent when it comes to yours?
Do you resort to using sarcasm to protect yourself from being seen authentically?
Do you keep people at a distance by becoming argumentative?
When someone says or does something you don’t like, do you betray yourself, by not stopping a person if they’re coming against you?
Do you refrain from asking for what you want?
Do you allow others’ needs to supersede your own?
Do you raise your voice as a means to shut someone down?

Witness yourself at the moment.

When you witness the moment, take a deep breath in and relax. Don’t run from it or numb yourself from feeling it. Just notice it. It’s key to see and name this mechanism for what it really is — a part of you that’s trying to protect you. So, instead of self-identifying or justifying it, just notice it.

Comfort yourself. Become friends with your protection mechanism and the part of you that’s protecting you.

Think of this mechanism as a good friend who has had your best interest at heart and has been looking out for you for a long time. Thank it for being there when you needed it to survive.

Begin to reparent yourself. Reparenting is the practice of relearning how to meet physical and emotional needs that your inner child or younger self may have not been able to take care of. Since these mechanisms developed during past times in our lives, you’ll most likely be having conversations with your younger self, giving your younger self what you needed at that very moment. Through reparenting, we are able to guide ourselves and really transform our subconscious where this protection mechanism is housed.

It can be hard to change our patterns of behavior because we’ve been using them without even realizing it for so long. For me, it took years after I began my self-protection mechanism to bravely speak up for myself and to do so from a place of clarity and love.

But when you get to know your specific protection mechanisms that show up when you’re triggered, your relationships will dramatically improve in every category of life.

You will speak with love, with clarity, and with boundaries. You will feel better because you’ll be responding from your healed and secure self.

By being aware of how you self-protect using the coping mechanisms specific to your needs, you stop leading your life from your past conditioning.

Your Call to Action for this week is to identify the self-protection mechanism that you use when you feel triggered. Become aware and witness it when you see it. Instead of running from the feelings you’ve tried not feeling for so long, breathe into the moment and relax. Then, take some time to become friends with that part of yourself that has protected you for so long, and thank it. Let it know it no longer needs to react as it always has because you no longer need to resist or run from those feelings.

In this episode I share:

3 steps to stave off the self-sabotage and self-betrayal that’s often associated with your conditioned protection pattern of choice
The long-held patterns you resort to when you feel triggered and how you become conditioned to use these coping mechanisms
A practice to befriend the part of you that is seeking to protect you but often costs you your happiness and success

Resources and related episodes:

Tune into the previous episode, The Simple Step-by-Step Candid Conversation Formula

Episode 104. Improve Your Connections By Employing the Art and Neuroscience Of Engagement

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Learn more about the Inside Out Method

Connect with Rita on LinkedIn.

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About Rita Hyland

With over 20 years of experience as an executive and leadership coach, Rita helps leaders — emerging and established — excel in corporate and entrepreneurial environments.

Rita believes if leaders were more clear about how transformation really works and more intentional about creating what they want, their impact, success, and influence in the world would be unstoppable.

Through her coaching programs, private coaching, and masterminds, Rita shows leaders how to win consistently and create the impact and legacy they desire.

Central to Rita’s work is the understanding that you will never outperform your current programming, no matter how strong your willpower.

When you learn to use Rita’s proprietary Neuroleadership Growth Code, a technology that uses the best of neuroscience and transformational psychology to hit the brain’s buttons for change, YOU become both the solution and the strategy.

Her mission is to end talented, hard-working, and self-aware leaders spending another day stuck in self-doubt or confusion and not contributing their brilliant work and talent the world so desperately needs.

simple step by step candid conversation formula for addressing conflict

The Simple Step-by-Step Candid Conversation Formula

Listen to the full podcast episode to learn a simple 7-part formula to address and resolve conflict in any relationship (whether in the boardroom or bedroom) so that you can clear your issues, resolve conflict and actually improve your relationships by addressing the unspoken and uncomfortable.

What percentage of people do you think have been taught a simple process for conflict resolution, considering that conflict is inevitable in every relationship both personal and professional? The answer is so low that researchers have likely never thought it worthy enough to measure.

When it comes to conflict, it’s not if it will happen, but when. While we do not want it, it’s key for the sake of our relationships and leadership that we get good at addressing and resolving it.

That’s why today I’m going to walk you through a reliable 7-step formula that you can use any time you’re having an issue that needs to be cleared. Using this approach you will feel more confident leaning into even your most difficult or charged conversation. It will also ensure that you are heard, that you care, and that you resolve issues healthily and quickly.

Before we step into this process, it’s important to establish a strong foundation for the candid conversation. Here are 3 steps you can take before you begin:

Set the intention.
- It’s important to approach any candid conversation with the intention to support, to love, and to provide what needs to be said. While engaging in a conversation to clear your issues, don’t come to it unprepared or in a less than positive state. Know what it is you want by the end of the conversation.

Be sure to mention what is working.
- You can do this by saying, “This is the 90% that is working really well. Now let’s talk today about the 10% that will take us to the next level.”

Honor the other person by being vulnerable.
- Vulnerability shows the other person that you care, that you see each other as equals, and that you value the other in the experience. You can do this by saying, “I am committed to your success and being in this conversation until we get to a good place for both of us.”

Let the other person know that you want the real deal.
- You can do this by saying, “I’m going to be transparent with you. I want you to be transparent with me. If you don’t understand or agree with something, I want you to tell me that.”

One of the biggest problems when we attempt to engage in healthy conflict, is that we tend to come to the conversation with facts, interpretations, stories, judgments, feelings, and wants that get entangled. As a result, often little is heard, issues go unresolved, and things are left even messier than they were before.

One of the key elements of this 7-step formula to candid conversations is to discern and identify each part for what it is. The steps include:

Affirm the importance of the relationship. Set the stage and affirm that the other person is important to you. For example: “Our relationship is important to me and I want to discuss something that’s affecting it.”
Set the intention. This is just a little bit different than our foundational step above. Here you want to articulate your intention making sure to be clear so if the conversation gets off track, you can use your intention to get back on track. For example: “My intention for this conversation is that our relationship is stronger as a result of us talking.” Or “My intention for this conversation is to be clear about what is expected of you when you come to our leadership meeting.”
State the facts. This is where things can begin to get messy. In this part of the conversation it is important to state only the facts. Be very clear about what happened without any added judgments or stories. For example: “Less than 50% of the team came prepared with the answers to the questions that were laid out 2 to 4 weeks ago.” Or “You came in 15 minutes past curfew.”
Offer your interpretations. This is where you can begin to share your interpretations and what you are concerned about. For example: “I interpret the facts to mean…”, “I’m concerned because to me this means…”, or “The story I tell myself when this happens is…” and then fill in the rest. That may sound like: “You’ve been gone for three out of the last four weekends. I interpret that to mean that you’re not concerned with investing time in our marriage.”
Clarify your feelings. This may sound like: “When I believe this, I feel disrespected, I feel unheard, I feel unseen.”
Own your level of responsibility. I am a big believer that each of us is 100% responsible for 50% of the relationship, and we have to own our half. For example: “My role in this is…” or “My part in allowing or enabling this issue is…” If we’re speaking to a child that’s missed curfew, it could sound like this: “My part in this is that I have allowed you to be late before and not held you accountable. That may be confusing.”
Articulate what you want and ask for it. Be clear and specific in your request focusing on the positive. This is a part where it can be very easy to focus on what you don’t want, like “I don’t want you coming in late,” or “I don’t want you coming to team meetings unprepared.” It’s much more important and effective to speak to what you do want because the subconscious brain doesn’t hear words like “don’t” and “no.” Paint a vivid picture of the ultimate ideal future as it pertains to this issue. For example: “I’d like you to arrive at the meetings 10 minutes early. At that time, we can address each other, enjoy each other, and proceed with our intended agenda.”

If you want to effectively address and resolve issues in your relationships, it’s essential to communicate in a way that your concerns are heard, that is not overridden with judgment, that sees others as equal, and expresses your feelings and interpretations of the situation.

Once you’ve effectively and clearly communicated, you can move forward by listening and hearing the other person with responses like, “Tell me what it is you’re hearing,” or “Tell me what it is you’re taking from this conversation.” You will also want to get the other person’s commitment to take the steps you identified along with other ideas they might have.

Having a method to resolve issues allows you to feel more confident heading into an issues clearing conversation and more likely to lean in instead of step over it.

Remember that being transparent is kind. When you use this formula to have a candid conversation with the purpose of clearing issues, you will see your productivity, peace of mind, and quality of relationships dramatically improve.

Your call to action is to challenge yourself this week to step over nothing. Instead, address what isn’t being said. Talk about issues before they get so large that they can’t be disarmed or dispelled. First, lay your foundation and then use the simple step-by-step formula.

As reassurance, know that if these issues are on your mind, they’re probably on the other person’s mind too. You’ll both be served by clearing the air and acknowledging the elephant in the room.