Disarming “self” Perception Framework

We Disarming Defense Style individuals have a particular metaphysical framework that is based upon the belief that we should work with and adapt to whoever and whatever shows up. Usually, this means that we are unreasonably optimistic about seeing the good in everything. Usually this feedback comes in terms of feelings and emotions that let us know how things are working out. Our spatial relationship orientation means that we rely on others to provide feedback in a way that reinforces our reality. This occurs because we tend to deny our personal self, leading us to “idealize” those around us. We can validate this by how lost and/or repulsed we are when others objectify us or are unwilling to confront their personality biases. It seems an insult to hold them in high regard (seeing their higher purpose) while they seem unable or unwilling to do the same for us. We also tend to project our problems on others, making them responsible for taking care of us. This, of course, polarizes us from Dynamic Defense Style individuals, even though we seek them out. We tend to over-identify our Connection Skills Identity, and therefore we perceive others only on the basis of their self-defined connection to us. This no object/no subject orientation can be viewed as transcendental or even escapist.

It is frequently viewed as impractical and idealistic from the perspective of a Dynamic Defense Style individual. Why these individuals need Disarming Defense Style individuals is because they don’t usually know how to take care of their Feelings and Emotions and validate their own spatial understanding in terms of others. The real problem is that our defense denies our in-completions regarding Individuation and Gender Identity skills. This means that we are incomplete in our understanding of where we came from and have difficulty in grounding ourselves as we are. While we do have a similar perspective to Eastern mystics, this is mostly superficial, as we commonly believe in an inner guidance that is not reflected in Eastern spiritual practices. What seems apparent to others is that we seem more motivated to avoid things, rather than to take responsibility for where we are going.

We Disarming Defense Style individuals, when evolved, can be great innovators who often become loners because there is not anyone to consciously “get” or reflect us. Usually, our gifts are in our ability to see the future, but somehow, we are unable to apply this to ourselves. At our worst, we get caught up in spiritual materialism and end up glorifying our own limitations. This is because we are comfortable with distorted ways of loving (quid pro quo and Protective Love). We are challenged to come to grips with loving as a creative experience of Self. The power we Disarming Defense Style individuals experience is that we see many of the connections beyond the outer form. The challenge is to effectively use this information in the outer world. It is this lack of ability to apply this information externally that can be so self-sabotaging. It is ironic how comfortable we are in maintaining the relationships that others want of us, while at the same time, we have difficulty loving our own relationship with our Self. We heal by accepting our Self and seeing this Self in others. We also heal by taking responsibility for our Self in the outside world, owning our needs, our skills, and our desires.

The blind spot we have as Disarming Defense Style individuals is that because of our relationship focus, we can easily be blindsided around task management issues. Because we Disarming individuals tend to define ourselves in relation to others, we tend to allow Dynamic individuals to define the terms of engagement. This means that we do not tend to organize ourselves in terms of Time, events, and outcomes. We can fear the Dynamic ‘dissentionist’ attitude that everything has to be quantified in terms of what is. This reflects our lack of confidence in our ability to manage task skills directly. We also may not be confident that our big ideas can be translated into simple, concrete steps, or, if we were to do so, we fear it would lose our spirit and passion in the translation. We Disarming Defense Style individuals evolve from being more mystical to engaging practical details, allowing for a more pragmatic and more effective engagement with others on intellectual and physical levels.

It is our intention to show how the defense styles develop into more clearly defined prisons where their Beliefs inhibit them. The more defensive we are, the more likely we are to attract complementary (opposite) Defense Style individuals which reduces our ability to grow together. Defenses then become a struggle rather than an opportunity; the way we interact with others becomes a burden, rather than a joy. Some individuals over-identify with these defensive limitations and become depressed and disillusioned with life. Still, many of us hold on to our Defenses, as if our Defenses are us. It is time to recognize that what we are holding on to is an anchor that will ultimately drown us. Only on the personality level do defenses demonstrate a sense of value or manifest as our complete reality. Most of these manifestations reflect how we can artificially, through fear, convince others to do what we want them to do. This occurs because they realize and manipulate our defensive weaknesses. Defenses provide us the justifications we need to take personally the behaviors of opposite Defense Style individuals.  Although they allow us to differentiate ourselves through our ideas, it is mostly reactive. It is through the pain and torment of not being seen by others that we realize our ideas are only outer expressions of us as personality level thinkers.

Disarming Defense Style

Disarming Defense Stylepeople need to prove innocence and flexibility. We call this a “guerrilla warfare” approach because it is all about diverting and distracting others from our true intentions. In this situation, we become extremely familiar with the weaknesses of others and know how to make suggestions that will keep them busy (distracted) so they cannot become a threat to us. We embrace chaos and mystery as a way to emphasize our intuitive and emotional nature. In this position, we like to use secrecy so we can attain the element of surprise when we do take action. We love to exploit circumstances to facilitate the occurrence of things that are not part of any plan so we can maximize our influence over others. We have discovered that our ability to predict the behaviors of others can be a strategic tool that distinguishes us from others. We call this position a “Disarming” one because of how friendly and easy-going we appear.

As Disarming defense style individuals we use relationships to build consensus about what should occur to make independent individuals unsure about their power. The collective bargaining (union) movement is an example of Disarming individuals being frustrated about the demands and structure of a Dynamic management style. Instead of head-on confrontations, Disarming individuals frequently change the framework or terminology of the discussion to gain an advantage. In this situation, we can more easily rename what we are doing in a way that helps create new results. Usually, when we are in a Disarming defense style we do not want to declare in advance what our goals are, so we will not look bad if we do not achieve them. Our power comes from our ability to convince others to join our group or activity, because typically we distrust self-centered ego power. As Disarming individuals, we usually fixate on a vision until it becomes too large to tackle or we become unable to affect the results.

We can recognize if we are a Disarming defense style individual by the degree we attempt to connect with others to get along. Our emotional and intuitive presence can put off other defensive styles who have typically not defined themselves in terms of their Primary Creative Expression. As we Disarming defense style individuals develop our inner ability to manage space and the interconnections with people, we naturally become more mysterious. Since early in our life we typically lost ourselves trying to please our parents, we are more sensitive to being blamed or criticized even though we easily accept it. As a result we hide and discount our own anger and use the fears of others to push them away. The advantage of this defense style is that we are comfortable in redefining ourselves in terms of others, particularly in romantic relationships. The down side of the Disarming defense style is that we do not feel comfortable in confronting our life work and we tend to procrastinate and doubt ourselves when it comes to making contributions to others. We do not realize that our fear of Autonomy keeps us from owning our life expression.

Regardless of our Gender Identity, intellectually we adopted the “feminine” framework for proving our value in the world. The more we used this framework to represent us, the more we became vulnerable to the blind spots of taking a purely feminine expression. As a result, we became affected by order, intellectual turbulence and the intimidation that comes from others taking unilateral action without consulting us. We use our feminine side to connect before we develop the safety to connect physically. While our feminine focus helped us bring creative opportunities to the relationships we were engaging, it kept us from wanting to take charge and implement our ideas because then we would be completely responsible for whatever occurred. We started to believe our own propaganda that independent action would only create more work for others in the group. We ended up believing that work that was not coordinated with others would naturally undermine group efforts. Until we find a way to simultaneously operate in both our masculine and feminine energies, we will not be able to understand and appreciate the Dynamic defense style population.

As a Disarming defense style individual, we tend to lose ourselves in excitement because fantasy seems preferable to the harsh reality of the world. Others would say we look at the world through idealistic, rose-colored glasses. Our excitement tends to focus us on a hedonistic pleasure seeking approach to life that other defense styles automatically distrust. This does not mean that as a Disarming defense style we abandon all sense of propriety or appropriateness, for we do not. However, we do tend to use pleasure as an ultimate objective as part of our process, which others believe gets in the way of being productive. As a Disarming defense style individual, we also tend to use Intensity to create more space for our Self by provoking conflict in a way that cannot be directed toward us. In this way, others subtly get the message that if they want to keep us around, they should take care of “our needs” and us. We also use chaos, particularly with Dynamic individuals, because we know they are at a loss when confronting situations that they cannot effectively organize.

Our undirected growth approach means that we can be spontaneous and use the circumstances in ways that are unpredictable. Usually, we use this approach because we do not want to re-invoke the patterns of our past. This is also the reason we tend to avoid in-depth planning. Because of our strength in our feelings and intuition, we trust that we can create what we want without a pre-existing structure which would make us accountable to others in a way we do not wish to be. It is safer for us to do things our own way and to create in the moment. Due to our strength in feelings and intuition, we trust that we can create what we want without a pre-existing structure which we choose to avoid because it would make us accountable to others in a way we do not wish to be responsible. Initially, as we are getting comfortable with our defense style, we seek Adoration from others. As the defense style becomes more mature, we switch to seeking the Admiration of others.

We are typically seen as other-centered because we protect ourselves by making sure others are okay around us. This means we initially develop stronger skills in being with others than in being with ourselves. In fact, we typically fall into the trap of proving to others how selfless we are by sacrificing our personal growth for them. We use our emotional and intuitive boundaries to protect our own sense of self. While we do develop a relationship with our self over time, we do not believe others will accept us as we are so we end up hiding it. As we individualize, we become more capable or interacting transpersonally, through our pre-established interest in understanding others. It takes time and practice to develop and bring out who we are equally with others. To do it, we need to establish strong intellectual and physical boundaries.

As a Disarming defense style individual, one of our biggest challenges is to love ourselves enough to engage similarities with others. Our basic issue is we fear losing ourselves, particularly in individuals who are like us. Superficially, we operate in an over-sentimental and intimate way, to cover up our core fear of not being able to establish clearly our own path. This core fear keeps us attempting to reassure our partners and take care of them on a personal level, so we do not have to be responsible for the expression of our own power. When we are overwhelmed, we tend to withdraw from others to let them stew in their own fears that we will not take care of them. We are frustrated when we cannot intuitively understand the needs of our partners. It is even more difficult when we intuitively experience our partner asking for things that we do not perceive they need because we are extremely sensitive to their being congruent between their internal and external process and expression.

As a Disarming defense style individual, our safety is environmentally defined. We like to be around people we have a pre-existing relationship with or operate in places where we have had a past experience in order to have a degree of physical confidence in our physical surroundings. It is easy for us to become resentful and envious of those who do not seem to care as much as we do about others. Our interpersonal connection with others encourages us to develop our Wisdom. This Wisdom, which focuses on what others need, permits us to create a sense of flow in groups and with others that can be misunderstood as transpersonal. We are not operating transpersonally until we accept and honor our personal self and relate to it in an autonomous way. Our creativity therefore has a tendency to be group-oriented, and we need to learn to accept and honor our personal inner creativity to balance ourselves in the world.

Disarming Defense style individuals seem innocent, easygoing, friendly, emotionally emphatic and available. We create safety by taking care of others emotionally, believing in the potential of ourselves and others and relating with a sense of spiritual possibilities. We use intimacy and interpersonal skills to cover up our fears that we are personally inadequate. We use what we imagine to build self-respect, wanting others to accept our vision of a harmonious world where we can get along without conflict.

EXAMPLES

Disarming Pioneering Defense Style

If we are a Disarming-Pioneering Defense style individual, we understand a defensive reaction within when it occurs. This empowers us to honor our defense which may not necessarily reflect the truth of the circumstances and that there may be larger more inclusive ways of engaging the process. In this case, while our defensive tendency is to wait and consider what the problem is, it may be appropriate to take immediate action by operating from our gut-knowing. Instead of avoiding the anger that makes us passive, we can embrace it and explore a course of action that makes us feel most alive. Rather than falling into a Disarming Defense of attempting to maximize the engagement of problems by sitting with them until they are fully expressed, we can examine the possibility of breaking them into manageable chunks that we can immediately address. It is also important to recognize that we are defensively resistant to taking immediate action because we do not want to make matters worse or more confused. Immediate action can minimize others’ defensive response if we are quick enough. Instead of responding to the problem by trying to wait it out, we can be with it physically, intellectually and intuitively to see if there are immediate opportunities to address it.

While it is easy for us to read the reactions of others and collect perspectives from them about what we can do, what if we turned the problem over to our active self and just did the best thing that came up in the moment. Our Aliveness can itself be the primary resource to rely on which means we can try something out and quickly shift to another possibility if it is not working. This would help us to accept our Body Wisdom and how it can respond to many problems effectively without the requirement to analyze the situation completely. Opening up opportunities in this way, encourages us to get out of our fears of being blamed and/or not considered adequate when we do not match up to others’ expectations. The more we break out of a spatially defined, context focus where relationships are everything, the more likely we will come up with solutions that immediately change our results. Our defense emphasizesour need for chaos and being safety driven, we use excitement and finally fear to procrastinate if no clear solution arises. Of course, we need to listen to all the concerns that our defense has about why we need more time to consider options. In doing so, we honor the defensive reality that relationships are critical and we would rather not preemptively or unilaterally change circumstances until we knew the reactions and/or responses of others. This enables us to avoid getting caught up in considerations that may not provide an answer. The degree to whichwe can be with our desire for a solution and not be driven by the fear that we will make a mistake, is the degree to which we have learned to be unified with our creative selves.

Our confidence grows as we see that there are always ways to address problems in the moment if we are fully engaged and committed to the process. It is our lack of commitment to being Alive and responding in the moment, which minimizes our ability to do what is best. This sense of pregnant duration where we shift our ability to create a solution in the moment helps us shake up the situation enough to allow a new possibility to emerge. This indicates we have learned to create the time necessary to focus on our actions so others experience our intent. Ironically, since others want us to be aligned and speak our Truth clearly, they are likely more than willing to support our actions and give us the benefit of the doubt about the possible consequences. This opening allows us to adjust for unanticipated reactions and apply appropriate contingencies. Some individuals visualize this as having enough space to refine the choices as we do them. Connecting our sensations and feelings, particularly so we do not amplify our excitement can also facilitate the process of deepening our intent. As sensations are a reflection of various stimuli, they help us deepen into our Body Wisdom. When we act from the Life energy of making a choice, it helps build a connection to our Inner Knowing. Connecting our feelings to our sensations is facilitated when we acknowledge that our feelings are reflections of the inner congruence we experience in our actions. We have the right to experience the differences between our sensations and feelings, particularly when they indicate it is not a time to take action. Honoring our Body Wisdom by acting in alignment with it is ultimately what we need to neutralize our defenses.

Playfulness and direct truth telling become our best resources as we learn to neutralize our personality desires. Usually the problem with desires is that we are holding onto things we wanted in the past that were not fulfilled. How we establish balance is to prioritize and focus on what is needed in the moment, rather than be overwhelmed by the vast number of options. Instead of trying to wait so we know we have covered all the bases, we need to trust what is appropriate in the moment and take action so we do not lose our future to procrastination. Practice exploring the Mastery by prioritizing actions sowe are always in motion. Assume that each action we take will naturally inform the next action and this will build confidence in our ability to respond to what is needed. Pay attention to the resistance and/or internal dissonance we feel engaging certain subjects. This provides an ongoing guide to clearing out obstructions to movement that limit our capacity to show up with others. Let yourself create clear, unambiguous statements of intention that bring out your best. See how much fun it is to not ask for the opinions of others before we have directly investigated our own experience. Consider that any reaction we experience can be an indication of a disconnection when we begin to express our ideas. Assert the possibility that our body’s immediate impulse can be an effective guide, particularly because in the past we have discounted immediate action. Since it is our consciousness that attracts problems we need to pay attention to what we are attracting and do something about it.

Disarming Defense Style individuals can best heal by addressing the following issues:

1. We need to stimulate our inner masculine connection to our Self, realizing we want to relate to our Self in a clearer, interactive but determined way. This will empower us to see the many different time orientations we have been ignoring. We will learn to ground and express our thoughts and actions more succinctly. Through this we learn to master our ability to organize ourselves to be self-sufficient and self-generating. We then create a sense of mastery that cannot be denied, compromised, or affected by others.


2. We need to stop blaming our Creative Self as a way of making us appear intellectually and physically unworthy to be with others. This creates a situation where we lose our Self while trying to take care of others in order to keep them from attacking us. Our focus on others, at the cost of our own well-being, is a protection mechanism that actually attracts attack because we make ourself appear weak. If we are able to stop blaming our Self, we will not need to shame or blame others in order to protect our limited, apparent choices.


3. We need to listen to our creative source and move more decisively into action so we are able to better appreciate how capable we are at manifesting our life expression. By assuming a passive position about our “self” and Creative Self expression, we unconsciously communicate we are okay with our current situation. Since we do not take action, others, particularly Dynamic defense style individuals, accept what we are currently doing is our limit. As we are not clearly expressing our inner discontent, for fear of appearing demanding or inappropriate, others discount our creativity because we are discounting it.





4. It would be useful to investigate our intellectual doubt and physical passivity to determine how they are related to our creative Self-denial. Healing this breach requires more passion and commitment to go beyond our personality fears. This means creating the inner space necessary to create an effective, productive environment. This way we will not be dependent upon others for our own productive expression. We need to learn to enjoy making commitments we will meet no matter what. Imagine how we can build our Self-Esteem by keeping our word – doing what we say we will do. Consider how a more active outer presentation might increase others’ ability to relate to us and to listen to what we have to contribute.


5. It is time to question and challenge how we never have things completely handled in terms of our short-term safety. Imagine that we are able to manifest our safety within our Self. Who would we be? The answer is we would be a person without defenses who now finds productive ways to express our Self without self-sabotage. Our defenses actually create our perceptions that we are not safe. Let us recognize our true safety comes from recognizing how the universe has always supported us to this point, no matter how much we have denied it. Consider setting out on adventures by ourselves where we have nothing to rely on but our own resourcefulness. Who are we? We could discover we do not need someone else to reflect us and make us real.


6. We can investigate how we do not believe relationships are real when they ???are not discussing our aspirations, our feeling/desires, and how we would like to get there. We tend to want to ignore the practical side of circumstances, hoping for the best. This is partly because we do not want to interfere with someone else’s way of engaging a process. Unfortunately, when we are with Dynamic defense style individuals, the opposite actually occurs. The true challenge is to create a sense of autonomy and mutual, harmless truth telling. We cannot accomplish this by trying to protect others, but rather by creating a secure structure with others where both of us will not be criticized or judged. For a while, practice going overboard in our commitment to be outrageously direct, as a way to neutralize past withholding.

With the help of a partner with whom we feel a sense of Unity, Trust, and Love, we can explore how to act in alignment with our masculine side by taking action with others in creative projects where we work together. In this situation, we experience Co-Creativity as a team, and we all feel a greater sense of Aliveness. This indicates that we are embodying our masculine side. When we no longer feel limited in our ability to successfully engage projects out of our own perseverance and will, it reflects our masculine is becoming more capable of working with our feminine, producing a sense of balance, wholeness, and grace.