Defensiveness and Feedback

How do You Respond to Feedback?

Many of of us can feel uncomfortable with feedback and this is so normal. But today, let's unpack "feedback" and understand your relationship with it.

Let me ask you this: What makes the words that someone says, good or bad? By now you know logically that what makes someone's words good or bad is what you think.This is extremely empowering - though it can be challenging: You can choose how closely you hold the words that people say. You can choose the meaning that you assign to feedback you receive.

Common Responses to Feedback Include: Blame, Shame, or Defensiveness.

Lets start with Shame and Blame.

(Adapted from the Work of Kara Loewentheil, Life Coach)

If you have found yourself ruminating over an event, conversation, conflict, or interaction, you know that your brain will go over and over what happened without coming to any new conclusions. This is because we are stuck in the Shame/Blame trap. When we are experiencing a negative emotion, we subconsciously believe that we have only two options. Either:

1.     They were wrong (blame)

OR

2.     We were wrong (shame).

Blame

When we're caught up in blame, we think that the person or circumstance is to blame for how we feel. This sometimes feels like a better experience than shame - most of us HATE the feeling of shame and so we want to protect ourselves, and will do so by blaming. When we blame the other person or system or structure, we feel relief at first, and then angry and then disempowered. Blame can feel powerful in the beginning but ultimately will leave your feeling powerless. We think this other person, system, organization, or structure has the power to ruin our lives.

Shame

As women, many of us have been socialized to to blame and doubt ourselves. So staying in blame doesn't always feel congruent. When we land on shame, we blame ourselves. We make ourselves wrong. We engage in self criticism, we question our own perception of reality, we gas light how we feel. We might find ourselves compensating for what we think we did wrong, or engaging in people pleasing, or trying to seek validation. In shame, there is no growth.

This is the Shame Blame Game. Most people ping pong between these two options, never deciding intentionally how to feel. We stay stuck, and never grow. This is not empowering. Blame without empowerment will keep you stuck.

Luckily, there is a third option. And that is, of course, using thought work to intentionally decide how you want to think about what is going on. Thought work is not to gaslight ourselves about something that we are not ok with. It is not to dismiss our beliefs that something is unfair, unjust, or unbalanced. These things may be true - sometimes we know, and sometimes we can’t be so sure. The power of coaching is to say to ourselves, I get to choose how to respond to whatever this situation is. I may not fully understand it, or agree. But I do not have to blame myself or blame them. I am not going to use my mental energy to cycle between blame and shame. I am instead going to focus on my ability to decide what I make this mean, and my response.

I get to decide, from a self supportive stance, How do I want to respond?