Our dog Penny is a Basset-corgi mix who has the constitution of an Old World aristocrat and the body of a Squishmallow. She is affectionate, vocal, and extremely stubborn, famous in our neighborhood for the way she will decide, mid-walk, that she’s finished exercising: She simply melts all 60 lbs of her into whatever patch of yard, sidewalk, or asphalt she happens to be standing on in true Victorian fashion, as if to say, “I simply cannot go on.” Then she waits for my husband (whom we refer to as Jeeves in these moments) to pick her up and carry her the rest of the way, where she surveys our neighbors as though she is at the center of a cavalcade.  

Penny is not our first Basset-mix — our first baby was William, a gorgeous, loving, perfect “bassador” that looked exactly as if you’d taken a full-grown yellow lab and swapped out his limbs for the paws and ankles of a sturdy lion. Both dogs’ dominant trait is friendliness, but they also share a distinct wariness about the world around them that causes the occasional problem.

They are always watching, seemingly on the lookout for danger, even from their safe and comfortable domain on the living room couch. In fact, they are the most prone to panic when they are lying down — which is, like, all the time. When prone, it’s easy for them to get stuck. This puts them constantly on the defensive, wary of the moment when a cozy, loving cuddle with their people makes them feel suddenly trapped and vulnerable to attack.

Let me show you them, so you can get the idea.

A tan and white dog with a red collar sits on a wooden floor, facing the camera with its mouth open indoors near a chair and rug.
A man in a plaid shirt carries a brown dog on his shoulder while standing on a suburban street lined with green trees and houses.
William (L), our basset-lab mix who preferred most interactions to happen from a standing or sitting position; Penny (R), our basset-corgi mix who prefers to be promenaded like the queen she is.

“These defensive behaviors are instincts designed to keep them safe from whatever perceived danger triggered their fear.”

In both cases, we learned about this the hard way: William nipped my husband on the forehead during a snuggle when Aaron got too close to his face. Penny tried to bite my boot off when I held out a leg to keep her from getting hit by the front door. In both cases, the dogs were lying down — a position that takes them, on a good day, half a minute to ease out of into standing (picture a fat seal trying to take off in a sprint and you get the idea). We never learned William’s backstory, but we knew that Penny’s back leg had been crushed in a door by young children years back, an accident that was bad enough to warrant surgery. It is no wonder that she’s particularly skittish around doors, especially when she’s lying down. 

When dogs are threatened, they display clear defensive behaviors: vocalizations (barking, growling, whining); body language signals (freezing, hackles raising, baring teeth); even full flight or avoidance. These defensive behaviors are instincts designed to keep them safe from whatever perceived danger triggered their fear. 

As it turns out, humans are not so different.

Why we get defensive (and the many forms it takes)

Like animals, our brains are wired for survival. As we go about our lives, our brains are coding our experiences and triggering a hormonal response that might, for example, reward us with a sense of accomplishment or trigger us into self-preservation. Every time it repeats, the grooves of these neural pathways deepen, all in the hopes of keeping us safe and prolonging our survival.

When our brains code an event as a threat, it happens like this: The amygdala signals our hypothalamus to flood our systems with adrenaline and cortisol, preparing the body to confront or flee from danger — aka, fight-or-flight. This is called the stress response, and it’s an automatic survival mechanism that can happen well before conscious thought. 

“Defensiveness is also automatic, but unlike the stress response — a physiological phenomenon — defensiveness is a psychological and behavioral response.”

It is also a somewhat faulty and obsolete system for our contemporary lives, where the perceived “dangers” are often not dangerous in the least. Like when we get a flurry of emails all at once and our bodies respond as though we were just confronted by a grizzly bear. 

Defensiveness is also automatic, but unlike the stress response — a physiological phenomenon — defensiveness is a psychological and behavioral response. 

In other words, defensiveness is a learned reaction to the stress response, for instances when we feel threatened or unsafe. Not grizzly-bear-confrontation-type threats, remember, but something more along the lines of criticism. 

Defensive behavior in humans doesn’t look all too different from how we see it in dogs: vocalizations like denial, arguing, accusing, and making excuses; body language that looks aggressive and charged, possibly even escalating to violence; fleeing the situation by refusing to verbally engage or even with physical avoidance. 

Like most behaviors that are driven by fear, the intent (to protect the self) and the impact (psychological or emotional harm) don’t always add up here. 

So often, we receive criticism — whether at home, in our social circles, or at work —  as an attack. Maybe we feel misunderstood, or like our actions were unfairly interpreted. Maybe feeling like we disappointed someone or didn’t meet their expectations triggers a bone-deep fear about our self-worth. Or maybe we simply weren’t prepared to hear something hard, and our defensiveness is a reaction to being uncomfortable.

Defensiveness in the face of criticism and feedback about our behaviors, performance, or actions might feel like a natural response, but it almost always does more harm than good — both to our relationships and also to ourselves. After all, we are responsible for our behaviors, words, and actions. It is appropriate to be held accountable to them, and we should want to improve in these areas, right? 

“Defensiveness in the face of criticism and feedback about our behaviors, performance, or actions might feel like a natural response, but it almost always does more harm than good.”

Here’s the truth: We will all do and say things in every area of our lives that will require redirection. It is unreasonable to expect that we — or anyone else — will always do the exact right thing at the exact right time in the exact right way. If indeed we want to do, say, and be “perfect” in every scenario, the irony is that we have to expect that we won’t be, while continuing to try anyway. 

And then we have to actively invite the feedback we need to help us improve. 

Learn to be self-aware, not self-conscious

Self-awareness and self-consciousness might sound similar, but they are crucially distinct. Understanding the difference between them is the first step in developing a healthy relationship with our personal growth and curbing the defensive mechanisms that can keep us stuck. 

Self-awareness is the ability to observe and identify your emotions, characteristics (like perceived strengths and weaknesses), and motivations — without judgment. 

Self-consciousness is observing and identifying your emotions, characteristics, and motivations with a critical eye, through the lens of external perception. 

When we assess ourselves, we can take the role of a curious observer, or we can be the mean girl from every high school movie in the early aughts (raise your hand if you’ve felt personally victimized by the Regina George living in your head). Curiosity invites questions and helps us to think more deeply beyond our first or even second reactions to situations. Judgment stokes doubt, fear, and a preoccupation with negative outcomes. 

Self-awareness is a practice that brings clarity and helps us to truly know ourselves; self-consciousness brings anxiety, making us stuck in a loop of worrying about ourselves. 

“Self-awareness is a practice that brings clarity and helps us to truly know ourselves; self-consciousness brings anxiety, making us stuck in a loop of worrying about ourselves.”

Sometimes, we can redirect our self-talk in the moment, taking a self-conscious thought like “I can’t wear this dress to work, everyone will think I’m looking for attention,” and turning it into a moment for introspection: “The idea of wearing this dress to work is making me feel nervous, I wonder why?” Other times, we might need to take the time to engage more deeply. 

Mental practices like mindfulness and meditation can help build up the skills that will slow down the knee-jerk defensive responses and habits that we might need to rewire. Redirecting our attention to the present moment, identifying the observable facts of a situation, and focusing on our breathing can help us learn to be with our thoughts and feelings without having to act on them right away. Dialing back the urgency will make it all the easier to let ourselves be for long enough to observe what’s happening, and to identify what we’re seeing with calm, unbiased curiosity. 

Keeping a journal, talking to a therapist, or developing an interpretation practice like Tarot can help hone the ability to dive even deeper into understanding the roots of our emotions. Understanding our triggers, patterns, and tendencies with an open mind and compassion can help us build better habits for preparation, support, and reflection. 

Make friends with failure 

One of the greatest disservices we have done to ourselves as a culture is stigmatizing failure. Any perceived failure in our lives can feel like a badge of shame, something heavy and cumbersome we’re trying to keep hidden. If someone happens to see it, we do whatever we can to protect ourselves, grasping the first defense mechanism we can reach.

Would we still behave this way if failure weren’t considered so bad?

It’s all too easy to think of success as a zero-sum game, as if success happens instead of failure, rather than as a result of many failed attempts. But as any artist or scientist or athlete can attest, every major masterpiece, breakthrough, or triumph is built on a pile of failed efforts they made to get there. 

Failure is not intrinsically negative, but we have coded it that way. Sure, failing on some levels is harder to handle than others, but even the worst-case scenarios can take on a more generative meaning with the right framework. Getting fired, for example, feels terrible — but so does staying at a job that’s a bad fit.  

“Failure is not intrinsically negative, but we have coded it that way.”

If we can reframe our relationship to failure from the ground up, how might this help us grow? 

Imagine if we included an expectation for failure, and how our relationship with failing might shift? What would it mean to fail if the associated shame and embarrassment never came? 

The writer Sonia Feldman reframed her relationship with failure by flipping the goal of getting published in a literary magazine on its head: Instead of focusing on trying to get an acceptance, she focused on getting 100 rejections. By doing this, she reduced the emotional toll of the inevitable rejection that’s part of the process of submitting work for publication, and prevented the demoralization that could stop her from continuing to try. In other words, she incorporated the certainty of failure into her process. 

Her debut novel, by the way, comes out this summer. 

Own your “weaknesses” and work on them, publicly

I struggle with a desire to appear competent to others. I want to be taken seriously, and I want to be given credit for my skills and talents in a way that has been described as “showoffy” or “attention-seeking” at various times in my life. 

I could deny these tendencies, or try to rationalize them — in fact, I tried that approach for most of my adult life. But that defensiveness, which in theory was supposed to protect me from harm, had the effect of making me distinctly vulnerable to it.

Seeking the praise and admiration I craved, I’d become a bulldozer in projects, ignoring everyone else so I could secure the center of attention. If this backfired, I’d become sulky and taciturn, drawing the sort of attention that only compounded my embarrassment and shame. If I couldn’t look at myself honestly, it was absolutely unbearable when other people did. 

“If I couldn’t look at myself honestly, it was absolutely unbearable when other people did.”

When I tried owning these characteristics and stopped treating them like fatal flaws and more like the silly little quirks that they are, everything changed. 

It was easier to shift course when these behaviors showed up. I could call myself out and redirect, and it became easier for others to do so as well. I noticed that by facing these “weaknesses” head-on and owning them out loud, I didn’t make myself more vulnerable at all, but less — in fact, I became impervious to the usual maelstrom of feelings that would accompany any associated feedback completely.

“Stephanie, I think you’re dominating the project a bit in these areas — why don’t we give someone else some airtime?” was the kind of comment I could have lost months ruminating about. Now, all I had to do was make a little more room in the spotlight for someone else, no drama required. Because it wasn’t a surprise to hear that I was taking over the project, nor that other people had noticed. I knew this about myself, and I had owned it to others. All I had to do was go “Whoops!” and then shift back into my own lane. Then we could all move on.

Working on this transparently also had the consequence of building trust in my teams, making it more likely for them to offer positive feedback and affirmation to me organically. I was getting everything I wanted so badly without wasting a moment despairing about it — and all I had to do was be brave enough to face the possibility of being a little uncomfortable.

Get a house gnome

TikTok is a real grab bag of content, and I’m in no way advocating that we mine social media for our life advice. Every once in a while, however, the algorithm delivers something worth trying out. Of the thousands of videos I’ve seen on the app, there is one that has actually reshaped the way my husband and I manage the inevitable friction that builds up between anyone sharing a home together: Allow me to introduce you to The house gnome.

The house gnome is an invisible, mischievous creature who’s always up to minor hijinks and creating little inconveniences at our home. The house gnome might leave the milk out on the counter all day, for example, or set a pair of muddy boots in the middle of the entryway. I would never do that, and neither would my husband, so it must have been the gnome. He also turns the back porch light back on after I distinctly remember turning it off, and sometimes he takes my husband’s empty seltzer cans and leaves them on my clean dresser. He’s always trying to get us in trouble with each other, but we’re on to him!

“The house gnome is an invisible, mischievous creature who’s always up to minor hijinks and creating little inconveniences at our home.”

The house gnome has saved us an untold amount of unnecessary grief over things that are ultimately just not that important. But when you’re stressed and tired, sometimes the most innocuous “friendly reminder” can send you straight to the armory, ready to launch every defensive tactic you’ve got. “Hey honey, I thought you said you’d turn out the porch light?” might as well be an invitation to a duel. 

But the house gnome takes the brunt of it instead. Because we know we’re all trying our best here, and it’s hard to be perfect all the time, and even harder to laugh it off when you’re depleted and exhausted already. Especially when you have a house gnome coming along and causing trouble. 

In other words: Find whatever silly ways you can to take yourself less seriously. It’s much easier to remember what’s more important than defensiveness. 

Why we should invite and embrace feedback

As an artist and writer, I am no stranger to criticism. Critiques where peers and mentors offer (mostly) constructive feedback on work we have carefully and obsessively poured ourselves into might be familiar to me, but it’s an experience that never really gets any easier. It’s hard to hear what others think about you — even when you have explicitly invited them to tell you. 

“Just because I’m uncomfortable, doesn’t mean I don’t need to know what they’re telling me.”

But here’s what I’ve learned in more than 20 years of subjecting myself to formal circles of critiques: Just because it’s hard to hear in the moment doesn’t mean it’s not useful, important, or relevant. Just because I’m uncomfortable doesn’t mean I don’t need to know what they’re telling me. 

A person hugs a relaxed light brown dog closely, with the dog's face resting against the person's arm and the person's glasses partially visible.
Practice makes perfect. Years of building trust and trying again and again made it possible for William to feel safe and secure enough to let me snuggle him right in his face. And the long road was worth it!

The other thing I’ve learned? I can take it. 

I might feel those urges rise up — a desire to defend myself, or to explain what I really meant, or argue the point until I can change their mind — but giving in to those urges not only prevents me from learning something that might help me grow, they also usually become unbearable sources of embarrassment in the aftermath.

I can be held accountable for my actions, behaviors, art, and words. I can handle being uncomfortable. I can survive listening to something that’s hard to hear. 

We all can. Because we are more than any one thing we said or did. We’re still learning, still growing, still getting to be better bit by bit, with experience, time, and new information. Even my first basset-mix William, who lived with us for six years, learned to relax if I put my face in his ruff while he was lying down. By the end, I was even able to kiss his regal, wrinkly brow without him even batting an eye.

We’re still working on Penny and her concern about the door, but we have time. We’ll just keep showing up and talking it through until one day she might see that she is okay, and there’s no danger here.

Stephanie H. Fallon is a Contributing Editor at The Good Trade. She is a writer originally from Houston, Texas and holds an MFA from the Jackson Center of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She lives with her family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and she is the author of Finishing Lines, where she writes about her fear of finishing, living a creative life, and (medical) motherhood. Since 2022, she has been reviewing sustainable home and lifestyle brands, fact-checking sustainability claims, and bringing her sharp editorial skills to every product review. Say hi on Instagram or on her website.