Not Being Defensive Quotes & Sayings

The agony of this chronic stage of being cannot be endured for long. At the deepest level, toxic shame triggers our basic automatic defensive cover-ups. Freud called these automatic cover-ups our primary ego defenses. Once these defenses are in place they function automatically and unconsciously, sending our true and authentic selves into hiding. We develop a false identity out of this basic core. We become master impersonators. We avoid our core agony and pain and over a period of years, we avoid our avoidance. — John Bradshaw

You should always be defensive, but never be offensive. This will help you to preserve your reputation as a human being. — Saaif Alam

What distinguishes the various kinds of fears is the combination and amount of the raw materials involved. What ties together all instances of fear is the awareness that a threat to well-being is present or is soon very likely to occur. In short, in order to be felt as fear, components of a nonconscious defensive motivational state have to invade and become a presence98 in conscious awareness. This can only happen in organisms that have the capacity to both be aware of brain representations of internal and external events and to know in a personal, autobiographical sense that the event is happening to them - someone has to be home in the brain in order to feel fear when the defensive state knocks on the door.99 — Joseph E. Ledoux

Once we remember that all that takes place during the first days of life on the emotional level shapes the patterns of all future reactions , we cannot but wonder why such a torture has been inflicted on the child. How could a being who has been aggressed in this way, while totally helpless, develop into a relaxed, loving, trusting person? Indeed, he will always never be able to trust anyone in life. He will always be on the defensive, unable to open up to others and to life. — Frederick Leboyer

I really had to create my own style, because it's kind of hard being a 6-1 defensive end. I'm really like 6-4 - really. — Hugh Douglas

I really like to play inside. I really like being able to go one-on-one with an offensive lineman every play. At defensive end, you're more running up the field and containing more than you are just against an offensive lineman. — Darrion Scott

I come out here every day, and my job is important when it comes to being there
every day and being there for my pitchers. I really want to be known more as a
defensive guy, and take my pitchers to the next level. Every time I go out on
the field, I take a lot of pride in what I do at the plate, but I take a lot
more pride in what I do behind the plate. — Jorge Posada

Some hugs were awkward. One person's arm headed over the other's shoulder just as that person was mirroring the action. So it would almost look like a defensive karate move in slow motion.
Sometimes, a guy liked to hug around the waist and if the girl was shorter, he'd straighten a little and she'd end up on tip toe. This had always made her feel like a melon being weighed for juiciness. From the wrong man, from any man really, it was a creepy hug.
Other hugs were comfortable, a perfect synchronization of arms crisscrossing around one another's backs, a full, warm, brief embrace that said "I care about you" but didn't cross any weird lines. — Victoria Kahler

I only really fake it anymore with sommeliers who are being really snotty to me and I don't want to take their grief and so I try to do something to kind of throw them off or put them on the defensive, even if I don't know what I'm talking about. — Alton Brown

I was always being creative. I could never have played a defensive role because I would have been forced to destroy the other player's creativity. — Eric Cantona

The positions I played in football, being a quarterback and a defensive back, you had to kind of have a little independent thinking. — Hale Irwin

I need to work on defensive play and being consistent. — Sidney Crosby

The accent in the counter attack style of play lays on the defensive team
function, with the emphasis being on the defender's own half of the field
and letting the opponents keep the initiative of the game. This is to take
advantage of the space behind their defense for the buildup and the attack. — Rinus Michels

Acknowledging the lucky breaks are paramount to enjoying life. Not being defensive about our successes/failures. So, in short. — Dan Mangan

We often hear of someone saying, 'So you don't trust me' or 'Are you questioning my integrity?' or 'You don't believe me.' They get defensive and angry because someone questions their actions, and they think they are above being questioned or having to prove their trustworthiness. But none of us is above questioning. — Henry Cloud

Westbrook: 10 triple-doubles and carrying that team, injury-prone, into the playoffs. LeBron being the best player in the world. But I think right now I would go with James Harden because of what he's done. He's stepped up his game defensively. He's not a great defender but he's competing on the defensive end. — Mark Jackson

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we're really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don't have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in. — Brian Eno

I'm not being defensive, I'm just defending myself. — Michael Chipman

It is important you understand how fear affects you and how it drives human behavior so you can start to see situations and people accurately and respond more appropriately. When someone is behaving badly, attacking you, or being defensive, critical, or judgmental, it is not really about you. Fear is the real reason people behave badly. Their fears make them selfish, defensive, mean, and grouchy. Every time someone is behaving badly, step back and ask yourself, "What is this person afraid of? What fear inside me is driving my reaction to their attack? What am I afraid of?"
When you can accurately see the fear behind their behavior, and yours, you will see the situation for what it really is. — Kimberly Giles

We must go beyond being reactive and defensive. As Europeans we must regain our self-confidence and realize our own strengths. — Donald Tusk

You [President Kennedy] have made some pretty strong statements about their being defensive and that we would take action against offensive weapons. I think that a blockade and political talk would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response to this [the Cuban missile crisis]. And I'm sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way too. In other words, you're in a pretty bad fix at the present time. — Curtis LeMay

I'm thirty-six years old and I've been married once and he left and I don't want to feel this way anymore. Like I can't be vulnerable. Can't relax. It's exhausting, always being on the defensive, keeping my guard up. I feel like Cuba. — Noah Hawley

Men and the pursuit of them are strongly intertwined with my mental health. I would say, in my defensive defense, that the problem with being a serial monogamist is, there isn't anybody random or unimportant: everybody you sleep with really means something, which is to say each of them is on your public record. At some point I wake up thinking, Fuck this! I don't want another man in my bed ever again. What I really want is a cat. — Emma Forrest

Being an American journalist can put people on the defensive. In countries where people assume the press is partisan, like in Lebanon, or where it had essentially become an extension of the government, like in Iraq, people tend to see a journalist as an agent of his or her government. That can be dangerous if the United States military is occupying their country, or aligned with their enemies. — Annia Ciezadlo

And I know I'm sarcastic and defensive and I make a joke out of everything and am highly resistant to anything that reeks of sentimental corniness, but I'm giving you my heart anyway because being with you feels like home, and I know you won't break it. — Shauna Cross

Given what the stigmatized individual may well face upon entering a mixed social situation, he may anticipatorily respond by defensive cowering. This may be illustrated from an early study of some German unemployed during the Depression, the words being those of a 43-year-old mason: How hard and humiliating it is to bear the name of an unemployed man. When I go out, I cast down my eyes because I feel myself wholly inferior. When I go along the street, it seems to me that I can't be compared with an average citizen, that everybody is pointing at me with his finger. I instinctively avoid meeting anyone. Former acquaintances and friends of better times are no longer so cordial. They greet me indifferently when we meet. They no longer offer me a cigarette and their eyes seem to say, "You are not worth it, you don't work."37 — Erving Goffman

When actors are being defensive and defending their position, that is when you get less than good acting. — John Boorman

To be a great offensive rebounder, you have to think like a defensive rebounder and battle for position while also being in the flow of your offense. And then it's just being determined. — Moses Malone

If you can sustain your interest in what you're doing, you're an extremely fortunate person. What you see very frequently in people's professional lives, and perhaps in their emotional life as well, is that they lose interest in the third act. You sort of get tired, and indifferent, and, sometimes, defensive. And you kind of lose your capacity for astonishment - and that's a great loss, because the world is a very astonishing place.
What I feel fortunate about is that I'm still astonished, that things still amaze me. And I think that that's the great benefit of being in the arts, where the possibility for learning never disappears, where you basically have to admit you never learn it. — Milton Glaser

People say that one of the most important things about being an actor is to have thick skin, but I don't think that's it. Because you can't just walk around being tough, you have to be able to be vulnerable to do this. So really, it's about not being defensive. — Jess Weixler

Defensive players kind of have that two-faced kind of way of being able to be very aggressive on the football field and going out there and getting there job done. At the same time, from my own incidents and my own personality, I'm much a person that's very likable and lovable. — Ndamukong Suh

We need empathy to give empathy. When we sense ourselves being defensive or unable to empathize, we need to (a) stop, breathe, give ourselves empathy, (b) scream nonviolently, or (c) take time out. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

I stopped hating and started just being. My whole life, I had been the most defensive person you'd meet, unable to tolerate any criticism. But now I started listening and being. — Anthony Kiedis

Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous. — Paulo Coelho

I think that it definitely makes the transition easier being able to know linebacker and having also played on the defensive line. You can kind of know what they're expecting on the back end and what you are kind of expecting from them. — Justin Cole

Our ancestors, when about to build a town or an army post, sacrificed some of the cattle that were wont to feed on the site proposed and examined their livers. If the livers of the first victims were dark-coloured or abnormal, they sacrificed others, to see whether the fault was due to disease or their food. They never began to build defensive works in a place until after they had made many such trials and satisfied themselves that good water and food had made the liver sound and firm ... healthfulness being their chief object. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

There are settling girls, and there are unsettling girls. The ones who seem to have it in them to be flyers are the ones who want to snuggle into settling. The ones who look as settled as old housedogs want to twist their way into flying. Necessarily, you must be defensive about being a settling sort of girl. — Amruta Patil

Rule Number One is this: If you're open to learning, you get your life-lessons delivered as gently as the tickle of a feather. But if you're defensive, if you stubbornly persist in being right instead of learning the lesson at hand, if you stop paying attention to the tickles, the nudges, the clues - boom! Sledgehammer. — Gay Hendricks

Living in fear is what every hater, negative person, and the devil wants. Live a righteous life with God and nothing but positivity. You must forgive anyone who has done you dirty, and move on. Your personal life, career, and love life will be that much more amazing after. Life is too short to live it being empty inside, sad, angry, and defensive just to hide your pain. Let it all go and let love and happiness in. Put yourself out there all the way and don't be fearful of losing love. If you don't live life by fully enjoying it and opening your heart, your just not living. — Behdad Sami

Tanks being deployed far forward is an indication of offensive action; tanks in depth is an indication of defensive action. — Norman Schwarzkopf

We all know why [the generals] are so critical of the defense secretary. They're being defensive because they weren't able to implement his brilliant plan [on screen: Operation 'Greet Us As Liberators']. It was so simple: Go in with 100,000 troops, topple the regime, everybody loves us, and we leave by Easter 2003. These ex-military men have their right to their opinions, that's fine. They just shouldn't voice them during a war [on screen: 'Loose Lips Sink Approval Ratings'] — Stephen Colbert

Fort Leavenworth is in fact no fort, being without defensive works, except two block-houses. — Francis Parkman

It was fun, having speed and being able to jump. Especially playing football. I played wide receiver and defensive back. — Jacoby Ellsbury

He had never asked anything from them; it was they who wished to hold him, they who pressed a claim on him- and the claim seemed to have the form of affection, but it was a form which he found harder to endure than any sort of hatred. He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved. he wondered what response they could hope to obtain from him in such manner- if his response was what they wanted. And it was, he thought; else why those constant complaints, those unceasing accusations about his indifference? Why that chronic air of suspicion, as if they were waiting to be hurt? He had never had a desire to hurt them, but he had always felt their defensive, reproachful expectation; they seemed wounded by anything he said, it was not a matter of his words or actions, it was almost ... almost as if they wounded by the mere fact of his being. — Ayn Rand

Damon opened his mouth to snarl, "And now you're going to judge how much I love Elena?" when suddenly he stopped, frozen. He saw quite clearly the picture that Stefan was projecting of wide brown eyes in a heart-shaped face and tumbled strawberry curls, and he felt all the defensive fury of being trapped in the wrong. — L.J.Smith

I grinned at him. 'Jealous?'
He grinned right back. 'That's a trick question. If I say yes you'll accuse me of being paranoid and unreasonable, and if I say no you'll make some defensive crack about how I don't think you're worth getting jealous over.'
This is what I got for hooking up with a lawyer. — Carrie Vaughn

Tom Stafford was an odd character, you know - a brilliant guy. He looked weird and I think he took a really defensive attitude about being a hunchback. You know how people can be, giving him a hard time. So he turned that into a defensive mechanism. He would strike first, a lot of times. But he was a great guy, and really those talks we had when I was about 15, out of all of that came the studio over the drugstore and everything else. I'm not saying - I'm no big deal, but I was a part of the birth of the music there. — Donnie Fritts

The president should stop apologizing, stop being defensive. The reality is the NSA has saved thousands of lives not just in the United States but in France, Germany and throughout Europe. — Peter King

The most jealous and insecure are the ones who are guilty of betrayal. The ones who are the angriest are those who are pulling cons themselves, only to find out they're being conned as well. A thief hates to be robbed, and a cheater always wants you to be loyal while they are being unfaithful. When suspicions arise and the questions start, they are always defensive, always volatile. A thief takes being robbed personally, the same way a player falls apart when he finds out he is being played. — Eric Jerome Dickey

I have my meals delivered ... you know what I like? Chicken and rice ... But the problem with being a defensive lineman is, if we get out of hand with our eating, we balloon up to, like, 300-some pounds. So I really got to watch what I eat. — Hugh Douglas