How To Defend Yourself

My advice to a friend

Image Source: USFWS Mountain-Prairie Flickr

Dear Friend,

I hope this is Helpful to you.

In my experience, the feeling of being unjustly accused is perhaps the most difficult type of Upset to conquer. It simply isn’t fair. When something Simply Isn’t Fair, it can feel like all standards of conduct become irrelevant because the End is to defend ourselves and so the Means will be whatever they must.

(Forgive my haphazard capitalization. I’ve recently been reading some Winne-the-Pooh based literature.)

It very well may be the case that, in the larger public court, Means are not minded, no matter what they are, so long as the Ends are justifiable. This being the case, I’ve taken to not being so concerned with what is good and bad, or right and wrong, as these are very subjective. Rather, I always try to focus on what is Helpful and what is Not Helpful. Presuming we can agree the desired ends involve some type of Peace and Justice, then Helpful and Not Helpful seem to be something more measurable and more easily agreed upon.

When we hear something that offends our sense of ourselves as Good and Honest People, our instinct is to huff and puff out our indignant chests, thinking “How dare they say such a thing! Why would they ever say something that suggests I am something other than a perfectly consistent Good and Honest Person?”

Our instinct is to become Upset.

Let’s remind ourselves now of the Ends. I am going to assume we all desire some semblance of Peace and Justice. Let us put Justice aside a moment, as it is more complicated. Peace, on the other hand, is actually remarkably simple. To be clear, I don’t mean to say it is easy, but I assure you it is far from complicated. So long as we are not in immediate physical danger, or otherwise under chemical attack from our brains, feeling at peace is as simple as deciding to do so. Again, not easy, but simple.

In working towards both inner peace and social peace, the first thing that stands in our way is our instinct to become Upset. So, we can label this instinct Not Helpful.

Once we understand that our Upsetness is Unhelpful, we too can understand that anything Upsetness would have us do - whether that be sending off a counterattack, stalking the ‘enemy,’ or thinking over and over about how justified we are in being Upset - is also understandably Not Helpful.

So, then, without relying on the instincts inspired by Upset, how do we defend ourselves?

Let’s revisit that first instinctual thought: “How dare they say such a thing! Why would they ever say something that suggests I am something other than a perfectly consistent Good and Honest Person?”

Taking the first part (“How dare they…”), we acknowledge that whatever was said took a bit of courage. Now it may not have been well-placed courage, but it was courage nonetheless, and things done with courage tend to deserve a bit of focus.

The second part (“Why would they ever…?”) is actually a Very Helpful Question. In order to defend ourselves from something, it is only Helpful to understand what it is we are defending ourselves from. The tricky part is asking the Very Helpful Question with genuine and gentle curiosity. The even trickier part is honestly wanting to hear the answer.

Of course, when we genuinely ask someone “Why would you say something that suggests I am something other than a perfectly consistent Good and Honest Person?” we may be forced to acknowledge that we are not, in fact, a Perfectly Consistent Good and Honest Person. This, again, brings up the instinct of Upset, so we avoid it as much as we can. But it is Helpful to remember that there is nothing wrong with being an Imperfect and Inconsistent Good and Honest Person. Having faults and making mistakes is an unavoidable aspect of human life. Being particularly Upset about this is quite Unhelpful indeed, especially when it causes self-indulgence in the form of becoming overly defensive or overly apologetic. Anything Overly is generally not ideal.

But when we are Upset, nothing we do feels Overly. It feels Justified. Unfortunately, this is where we are usually wrong. Understanding when we are being Overly and when we are being Justified is an incredibly difficult balance. It takes an immense amount of self-control to sit down and think about whether or not we are being Overly during a conflict. Thankfully, if we can manage to stop and think about it in the moment of action, we are likely to realize that we have a better idea of what is Overly than we thought, and we can manage instead to act Reasonably, which involves not being guided primarily by our instinct of Upset. Upsetness really only makes the life of the Upset Person more uncomfortable and more difficult to navigate, so whenever possible we should politely ask Upset to step outside while Reason deals with uncomfortable situations. Later, we can let Upset back in and sing a lullaby to help it go to sleep.

When we need to defend ourselves, which on occasion we certainly may have to, the Helpful Thing To Do is first to ask genuine questions with gentle curiosity, and - putting Ego aside and giving them the benefit of the doubt - try to honestly understand the other person’s point of view.

Once we do this, it puts the other person in the position to have to explain themselves. If they are able to match our genuineness and gentility and they present a logical case for how we may have done something Unhelpful, it becomes our duty to honestly wonder if they may be at all right and adjust our behavior in accordance with what - given our recent interaction - we now understand may be More Helpful.

If, instead, while explaining themselves, the person resorts to crude personal insults, self-indulgent lamentations, falsehoods, or other irrelevances, we can rest assured that we did our best and, in all likelihood, they never had any substantive argument against us and there is thus nothing to bother defending ourselves from. We can then put the issue respectfully behind us and move on with our day.

If the situation is somewhat more in the middle and muddy, we can always calmly and compassionately elaborate on our perspective in hopes that this will change the other person’s mind. If it does not, and they respond again with a similar gentility and composure, we then enter an Honest Discussion in which we can hope to come to some sort of Understanding.

In any case, Peace is likely to be achieved. Additionally, through a collaboration of wills, the Honest Truth is likely to be brought to light and respected, and that is quite Helpful for Justice.

When we decide that Peace is our goal, our instinct to become Upset is rather exposed as a bit of a nuisance. Thankfully, there are Not So Upset methods of handling situations. I think we’ll all be much happier once we start using them.

My peace to you,

Addam H. Ledamyen