Exploring the Armor

Doing it wrong, learning anyway

This is a messy one, with no answers but an honest glimpse into one example of what “doing the work” means to me. It is exploring in writing, on three different days over the last couple months, my experience of and thoughts around feeling defensive. I have come to recognize defensiveness as a very consistent part of my life that makes so much sense, is not broken, and is limiting as I currently experience it. So I’m exploring to see what is there and what might shift. Welcome along. ❤️

[Image description: Close up photo of a single light pink cherry blossom held between a thumb and forefinger with a window looking out on a green yard and barren trees in the background.]

January 13

I really want to be playing Bloons right now.

For someone with very little external accountability, I spend an inordinate amount of time examining and often justifying every facet of my life and behavior in my head. I might connect it to PDA or trauma but it is a tremendous waste of time. That sounds judgmental but I mean it in a more straightforward way. It is using energy. All the time. And I need that energy elsewhere. I need the cognitive bandwidth.

But it is also protective. I get that. It is giving the brush-off to any expectations that trigger as implicating the very problematic expectations and norms of the systems that I am living within. It does not comply first and question second, you know, when I have extra time to think. It starts with no and asks for further justification. It demands accommodations for minimal compliance. It does not assume any expectation as benign.

But even recognizing its value and wisdom, I am here questioning, resisting, my resistance. I am writing these words instead of playing an entertaining game or making dinner for my family. I am assuming that what I want to do is “wrong” and pushing ahead to do a more “productive” thing. Pretending that there won’t be a cost to it. Wondering how that cost will compare to the opposite of choosing the game and arguing with the arising guilt. The conditioning creating drag in either case.

What if my resistance is just telling me to slow the fuck down and not to miss what is important about that moment in my life. Not telling me what to do, but alerting me when I’m doing it unconsciously, in my head, out of my body. Not because whatever I am doing is “wrong” but because it hasn’t been intentionally chosen. It isn’t carrying the fullness of my experience. Coherence at risk.

It is confusing because it often seems to be steering me toward things that are not long-term nourishing but maybe is actually saying, don’t forget the animal! It is here, too, and matters! Pause. Go slower. Give yourself time to be here. Even if it is uncomfortable.

I’m making “bad” decisions. And cannot help but feel that there is something here for me. That I am called to push in this way. Can I let this belong, too?

January 14

I Am Doing It Wrong

And I think that may be the point?

With more access to my sensory experience, there are more often times where I get a clear bodily “no” to an expectation that is entirely reasonable, even desirable in a big picture kind of way.

—

I am noticing a significant stream of defensive dialogue in my head lately. It is not new, it feels familiar and comforting to a certain extent, but, lately, it is catching my attention more often.

As someone wired to relate to the world differently than the cultural norm, my defensive inner voice has always been robust. For most of my life, I looked outside myself to justify my “rightness”—meeting others’ expectations or the culturally esteemed practice as often as possible, without questioning the expectations or what compliance cost me, and assuming that others should be doing the same.

A few years ago, in burnout, I realized that my daily to-do list had almost fully eclipsed my sense of self. I didn’t know what I cared about or what made me feel alive, only what my roles were and the things I was supposed to be doing to fulfill them. Since then, I have been giving myself permission to question expectations and do less, surprised again and again when life just keeps on going as my list of things I “have to do” gets shorter and shorter.

My defensive inner voices no longer point outward, attempting to show how I’m “doing it right” according to others’ expectations, but the voices are no less active.

One confident voice persistently insists that doing it “right” is not the goal and that any thoughts I have of doing anything “right” are most likely leading me away from myself. DO NOT GO.

At the same time, I often find myself mentally accumulating and scrutinizing evidence that “our way” is ok. That it is “working,” according to our individual intentions and values, yes, but also according to the professed cultural values (even if not those borne out through policy and action).

I recognize both of these thought patterns as protective, responsive to real world threats—places where we, in our human bodies in this human world, are vulnerable.

And yet, day-to-day, we are safe. We have even reorganized our lives to more often have access to a felt sense of safety.

And yet, the internal defense continues.

It is exhausting. It consumes already limited bandwidth.

I sometimes catch this mental pattern and wonder against whom I am defending myself.

As much as it has been clarifying to point outside to those who seem to be invested in misunderstanding and oblivious to harm, I suspect I am also trying to convince the scared parts of me. The parts that kept me safe by disappearing into the crowd. The parts that blocked access to my sensory and emotional experience at a threshold intensity level so that others would not be able to perceive my vulnerability.

These scared parts do not speak, even to me. My verbal thoughts are one-sided. Rather, I feel their existence in energy and nervous system activation. In thought patterns that do not quite seem responsive to my current daily experience.

When I get really still, I understand that they are young, terrified, and clinging to their limited means of accessing safety. It makes sense that they are not swayed by my defenders’ confident assertions or lengthy analysis. They do not use words or logic, nor do they respond to them.

Thankfully, I have learned, they do respond to care—patient attention, compassionate presence, soothing tone and touch. Like any vulnerable being, they want to know that they are heard, validated that the vulnerability they feel so acutely is understood, and soothed by the loving embrace of a more powerful being.

It is not too much to ask. We all deserve it. Where might we be in our world if it was ok to say “I’m scared. Will you stay with me until we can find a way forward together?”

This is about my inner child, but also my children. Can I hold their vulnerability with enough love to allow all of our fears to be heard? Can I remember that I do not hold anything alone?

Maybe that is where the hard “no” fits in? Indirect enforcer reminding me to slow down, yes, even further, because that is where the hard healing necessary work is to be done. There is no shortcut to felt safety. I don’t get to cognitively understand and thereby avoid experiencing the vulnerability.

March 16

Back to the defensiveness! Feeling the barrier that it creates and also why it is there!

Wondering about accepting that part of my experience for now. I can’t do this thing in this way because when I try I get triggered and am then acting with defensive energy that prevents connection. And the answer cannot be to not get triggered, though I can work toward that more globally, but to figure out how I can do the thing that I want in a way that will avoid the trigger.

Go in sideways.

Or let the thing go for now.

Maybe let the thing go for now and go in sideways?

Do the things that feel possible and know they probably won’t result in “the thing” but may make something else possible. I am allowed to do it my way even if that is roundabout and annoying and embarrassing. Can I just be? Who is capable of holding space for that? Isn’t that what I am trying to learn anyway?

Let myself be difficult. Let myself be judgy. Let myself not finish and get in the way and ask for help even if I could do it myself. Let myself be negative. Let myself be pouty. Let none of it reflect the truth of anything other than my humanity.

I have given myself permission not to perform “success.” Can I also allow myself to stop performing emotional “stability” when that is not what I am feeling? Not stability, but the facade of calm or reasonability or cheerfulness or patience?

My house is a lab, we are experimenting here, not with scientific precision but an inventor’s curiosity. What else might be possible?