How to Stop Being So Defensive During Arguments

Sometimes, you become defensive precisely because being a good partner—or friend or employee—matters so much to you. “It’s a sign that they care so much that they’re terrified of getting it wrong,” Harrison says.

Defensiveness has a way of making you feel absolutely certain: You’re right, they’re wrong, and if you could just explain yourself clearly enough, they would finally see it. But the harder you work to prove your point, the less attention you’re paying to theirs.

Katzman, who has spent decades in improvisational theater alongside his clinical work, suggests doing the opposite. “The way out is not to think faster,” he says. “It’s really to become curious sooner.”

Improv offers a surprisingly useful model. Onstage, “blocking” means rejecting the premise your scene partner has introduced. If they announce that it’s raining and you insist that it isn’t, the scene has nowhere to go. “When we block each other, that’s what defensiveness really does,” Katzman says. “I’m negating your reality, you’re negating mine.”