Border Defense — Do Our Psychic Bastions Even Exist?
The root cause why our defense system doesn’t activate as it should
Many times, I’ve been in situations where someone overstepped my boundaries. Yet, I didn’t activate my defenses. Usually, I would just endure the situation, trying to put on a brave face, hoping to avoid conflict. The conflict which wasn’t my doing but caused by the other person’s insensitivity or malice. For a long time, I felt there was nothing wrong with this. After a few days, I’d move on. I never considered how much trouble and tension I caused myself during those days. I never thought about how I perpetuated situations that were already miserable to experience. As for why I couldn’t defend myself, I had no answer.
Then, after reading many books about assertiveness, I began to realize I have every right to defend myself. The only question was, how? Because in those tense moments, even with a gun to my head, I couldn’t be persuaded to stand up for myself against insults, the tone, or to say, “excuse me, but it’s none of your business how much the home renovation cost.” Self-defense remained a theory, which I learned well from self-help books but couldn’t put into practice. Every time I tried, I hit a wall. A wall I built inside myself long ago, so long that I no longer recognized the bricks I once laid.
Much reading and different introspection techniques were required before I realized who the mason was and the intention behind building that wall. Once I figured it out, a massive weight lifted from my heart. I realized that when defending my boundaries, I was, in fact, fearing for my life. Not in the moment when the neighbor asked about the renovation costs, but much earlier, in my infancy. The problem was that a baby interprets the world differently than an adult.