Protective attitudes negatively impact your performance, self-expression and happiness. When they’re deconstructed it creates space for you to express your best self. Photo by Carlos Caetano.
The purpose of my transformational coaching work is to enable people to become free from fixed ways of being and thinking that are stopping them expressing their best self. One of the major areas I focus on is what I call ‘protective attitudes’.
What are protective attitudes?
Protective attitudes are psychological responses that we unconsciously use to avoid experiencing things that evoke fear or anxiety or that are traumatic, unpleasant or difficult to handle.
In psychology they’re known as defence mechanisms. In my transformational coaching work I see them as structures and patterns that exist in a person’s consciousness, like programs that run automatically and dictate the person’s way of being in the world. These unconscious programs limit our performance, effectiveness, self-expression and ability to live a fulfilled life.
Where protective attitudes come from
When we experience situations that we find traumatic, unpleasant or difficult to handle, we unconsciously construct protective attitudes as a way to deal with the situation and to defend against similar situations that might arise in the future.
We mentally log the unpleasant situation and our solution to it. In effect, we write a program into our consciousness that says ‘Whenever anything like X happens, initiate attitude Y to avoid it’.
Thus, our protective attitudes become automatic knee-jerk reactions, triggered by any situation that resembles what they were originally intended to protect against. The programs running in our consciousness are always ready to spring into action and close the door on situations that feel unsafe for us.
How protective attitudes operate
Protective attitudes operate like a shield. They’re a way of resisting or avoiding things that we want no part of. They enable us to keep those things at a distance, to ‘sweep them under the carpet’ and not have to deal with them.
Protective attitudes act like a shield that we automatically put up to block out things that we don’t want to face. Photo by Nejron Photo.
When the shield goes up it’s like we say to ourselves and to the world: ‘I won’t go there’, ‘I don’t want to know’, ‘I refuse to face this’, ‘I’ve already made up my mind about this and that’s final’. It’s a very strong, often stubborn, refusal to face a particular subject or situation.
When a protective attitude is triggered, we’re taken out of the present moment. The protective attitude is deployed as a substitute for being fully present and experiencing all there is to experience in the moment. We become unconscious, go onto autopilot, and we’re unable to deal effectively with what’s actually happening in the here and now. We have only a partial, incomplete experience rather than a full, authentic experience.
When we’re not fully present we can’t function as our best self or have full and free self-expression. We put up a substitute self that is less than our best self. We’re limited to perceiving the situation through the filter of the fixed ideas, viewpoints and attitudes of that substitute lesser self. This leads to performance and results that are less than optimal, or even harmful for ourselves or another.
Effects of protective attitudes
Protective attitudes are a major feature of the human condition and we each have many of them.
They can manifest in lots of different ways, such as: addictions, compulsive or repetitive behaviour, persistent or recurring problems in life, uncontrollable emotional reactions, low energy, anxiety, depression, self-harm, eating disorders, being overweight or underweight, unexplained illnesses, isolation, fixed ideas, lack of empathy with others, difficulty in relationships, communication problems, playing it small in life, being stuck in unsatisfying circumstances, avoiding challenging situations, missing opportunities for growth.
If you look at any area of your life that you find difficult or problematic or where you feel stuck, unhappy or unfulfilled, it’s highly likely that a protective attitude lies at the root of it.
How protective attitudes limit us
Protective attitudes are fixed, default ways of being. They contain limiting, self-sabotaging and irrational beliefs and viewpoints about ourselves, others and the world. They provide the script according to which we ‘do’ life. As long as they operate unconsciously we’re unable to deviate from that script and our life, performance and happiness are limited.
Our protective attitudes originally served a purpose but over time they become restrictive, like a self-made prison. Photo by Jimmy Chan.
Although they originally served a purpose in protecting us from something, over time our protective attitudes become restrictive. They block us from accessing our full abilities and they limit the expression of our true self.
Protective attitudes may appear to be useful in the short term but in the long term they’re ineffective as they simply avoid the underlying problem rather than resolving it. They may help us to win a battle but we lose the war.
The better, more conscious, approach is to deal with the thing that the protective attitude is designed to avoid or resist. However, this isn’t easy to do alone because our protective attitudes exist in our ‘blind spot’, they operate unconsciously and they’re often very rigidly held in place and deeply ingrained.
How coaching can help you to release protective attitudes
Behind the shield of a protective attitude is an anxiety, fear or confusion about something that instinctively feels dangerous, threatening or potentially overwhelming. The shield was put in place for a seemingly good reason, and it’s the energy of a previous experience of overwhelming pain or fear that keeps it there, so it can be difficult to let down the shield unless that underlying reason is properly and skilfully resolved.
In my transformational coaching work I take you through a process that enables you to effortlessly let go of the shield and free yourself from its restrictions by gently, safely and compassionately processing the energy of the feelings it was set up to protect you from. I then guide you to create a better, positive attitude that will optimise your performance and leave you free to express yourself more fully and authentically.
When protective attitudes are released you have the freedom to be your authentic, best self and create the life you really want. Photo by Pixabay.
When protective attitudes are released, it frees up space for you to create the life you really want, rather than your life being predetermined by an unconscious script written many years ago.
It frees up energy too, as it takes mental effort to maintain our protective attitudes, so when they’re released we can use that energy for life-affirming purposes instead of for keeping emotions, thoughts and memories suppressed.
Life becomes easier, lighter and more joyful when you’re unburdened from the weight and rigidity of protective attitudes.
Please get in touch to find out what I can do for you. I offer a low-cost introductory consultation, which you can book by clicking below.