Blame It On Your Hair-Trigger Automatic Defense System

By Steven Stosny

Except in the case of abuse or battering, the real barrier to a satisfying intimate relationship is not the personality, selfishness, ill-will, poor behavior choices, or the communication skills of you or your partner. The real enemy of your relationship is the hypersensitive Automatic Defense System (ADS) that has evolved between you.

Activated almost entirely without words, the ADS gets triggered unconsciously by body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. By the time you're aware of any feelings, it's usually in an advanced stage.

It's the feeling you get when your partner doesn't look at you or sighs at you, or when you hear the door close before he/she enters the room, or when he or she starts with that "tone." Suddenly you find yourself in a defensive posture, prepared for the worst.

Of course, when you are both defensive, the worst is likely to happen. You can just as suddenly find yourself in a battle of cold shoulders or curt exchanges or hot arguments - the missiles seem to start flying on their own, with no one giving the order. You both feel powerless. You get irritable, impatient, resentful, or angry and want to stonewall, ignore, avoid, shut down, criticize, yell, or devalue yourself or your partner.

Hypersensitivity

The sensitivity level of the ADS varies throughout the day. In its hypersensitive stage, anything - serious or trivial - can set off your ADS. There are certain times when it is likely to become hair-trigger:

· When your physical resources are low - you're, tired, thirsty, hungry, sick

· During transitions - stopping one thing and starting another, such as coming, going, waking, driving, starting dinner, finishing dinner, etc.

· Under stress

· When anxious or depressed

· Within a year or two of attachment losses - loved ones moving away or passing away.

But even when your physical and mental resources are high, certain incendiary triggers are so powerful that anything remotely close to them will set off your ADS. These usually invoke the memories of some form of past betrayal, such as:

· Infidelity

· Abuse

· Financial secrets

· Deception

· Threats of abandonment

· Having intimately-revealed vulnerabilities thrown up to you (childhood wounds, fears, past failures, etc.).

Over time, the ADS tends to stay in a hypersensitive state more or less continuously, as you come to expect that your partner will let you down in some way.

Preemptive Strikes

Like all defensive systems, the hypersensitive ADS has preemptive strike capacity that is also mostly unconscious. Without intending to, you have an urge to get your partner with some kind of critical remark before he or she gets you. It may seem like you are always defensive, but many times you are striking first in anticipation that you partner is about to do the same.

Tomorrow: How To Turn Off Your Hair-Trigger Automatic Defense System

Published on January 14, 2009 by Steven Stosny