Our invisible armor

You're wearing armor. It works great. It protects you from harm.

It's not steel, and it's not a cutting-edge weapon fending off enemies. Your armor is much more impenetrable than those, but it's also less visible. Yours is psychological. Yours is one that defends you from pain and anguish. It fends off loss, abandonment, and rejection.

Seems to me that these are what humans fear most. In my personal life, and in my clinical life, these themes dominate. Even when the issue appears to be something else...we come back to loss. We come back to how you protect yourself, ever so subtly, from this kind of pain.

How do you do it? I know how I do it, and it's difficult to stop, or curtail, or modify. Is it difficult for you, too? Does knowing how and why you do to help you at all? I wonder why or why not.

Try this: Pay attention to your your thoughts and tension in your body. What are your thoughts right now, and where do you feel the tension? Set the phone down and do this for 5 minutes. Now, take this skill and apply it to your next interpersonal interaction. Your thoughts and your tension will tell you how you're arming yourself, and how you defend yourself from pain. Others' facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language will elicit in you reactions in the form of thoughts (e.g., "oh, they're pissed" or "she thinks what I just said is stupid") and tension (e.g., tightness in the chest, clenching of your fist, fidgeting around). Much of this happens out of our consciousness, so try this exercise to bring to the surface the ways that you arm yourself against pain, loss, abandonment, and rejection.