The Defensive Pattern
- When someone brings up a concern,
do you automatically defend yourself without thinking?
- Do you get into lots of arguments that don’t get resolved?
- Do people tell you that you don’t listen to them?
- Do people get frustrated with you?
This is the Defensive Pattern. Click here for more information.XWhen a person challenges you, if you have a Defensive Pattern, you tend to defend yourself against their accusation instead of listening to what is important to them. Of course, if the person accuses you of something that isn't true, it does make sense to straighten them out. However, if you come from a Defensive Pattern, you tend to assume that any accusation isn't true or look for ways that it isn't true rather than considering ways that it might be accurate.
Even more importantly, you don't really take the person's concerns seriously. It is most helpful to really hear the person and validate their feelings so they feel understood. Then, if necessary, you can explain the way they have misunderstood you and the way their accusation may be untrue. Because you have validated them first, they are much more likely to respond well to what you have to say.
If you have a Defensive Pattern, it may be very hard for you to admit your part in a problem that the person brings up. You may avoid looking at yourself and instead focus on defending yourself from criticism.
If the person is angry or harshly judgmental toward you, it does make sense for you to protect yourself from being treated this way. However, this is best done by setting limits on the person's anger and judgment rather than by arguing that you haven't done anything wrong. In addition, you may perceive them as being very judgmental when they really aren't because of your sensitivity to being criticized.
You can transform your Defensive Pattern
and improve how you relate to people.
Self-Therapy Journey is an interactive online tool
for resolving psychological issues such as the Defensive Pattern. |
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With Self-Therapy Journey, you can transform your Defensive Pattern into the Good Communication Capacity, which means you can...
- Be open to what other people have to say.
- Communicate in a way that people will listen to you.
- Have congenial working relationships.
- Relate in a way that people trust you.
Click here for more information on the Good Communication Capacity.
You can create a personalized practice
for activating the Good Communication Capacity in your life. |
Learn How Self-Therapy Journey Works with the Defensive Pattern
 Self-Therapy Journey is a powerful tool
for transforming your Defensive Pattern
and cultivating your Good Communication Capacity.
But that's not all!
It works with many other psychological issues as well. It will help you work through a wide variety of patterns and develop many different capacities.
You Can...
- Take command of your personal growth
- Work at your own pace in your own time
- Heal your emotional wounds
- Gain self-confidence and courage
- Open to intimacy and love
- Feel hope and optimism about your life
- each and every day
Discover how the powerful inner process of Self-Therapy Journey can change your life. It is an interactive web application that includes...
- Check lists for understanding behavior, feelings, and motivations
- Stories
- Guided meditations for healing emotional wounds
- Journaling
- Customized reports
- Personalized homework practices for behavior change
- An online community for support
- Systematic tracking of your progress
- And much more
You can have the life you have always dreamed of,
at a tiny fraction of the cost of therapy.
Learn How Self-Therapy Journey Works with the Defensive Pattern
Self-Therapy Journey is brilliant. It's been an absolutely great experience to use it. Every time I had a thought like, "What about this?" there was something in the online system to handle it.
-- Athena Murphy |
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I think Self-Therapy Journey is immensely helpful. You can go as deep as you want.
-- Elizabeth Moulton,
Clinical Psychologist |
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It is impressive that this tool was so helpful to me considering that I have done ample self-work for over 25 years.
-- Faith Curtin, MA
Clinical Psychology |
Working with Self-Therapy Journey will help you:
- Dramatically increase your self-awareness
- Understand your partner's behavior (and that of other people close to you)
- Recognize when you are caught in self-defeating patterns - and change them to positive actions - right in the moment
- Significantly lower your level of stress and reactivity
- Be free of the constricting hold of old emotional wounds
- Work through your fears so you can live authentically and courageously
- Become emotionally stable and healthy, leading to peace and satisfaction
- Enhance your ability for love, creativity, personal power, and living a life of purpose
Hi,
I have been a psychotherapist for 40 years. I have helped hundreds of therapy clients to resolve troubling psychological issues and find love, success, and peace. And hundreds more people have used Self-Therapy Journey to make similar changes. My self-published book Self-Therapy has sold nearly 20,000 copies, and I constantly get emails from readers telling me how much the book has changed their lives.
I created Self-Therapy Journey as a place for you to do your own inner work. I want to make psychological healing available to a wide range of people. When you enroll, I will be personally available to support you in using it. I hold free teleseminars and webinars regularly on Self-Therapy Journey. Please join me.
Try Self-Therapy Journey so you can experience how powerful it is and how easy it is to use.
Jay Earley, PHD
Introductory Video with Jay Earley
Learn How Self-Therapy Journey Works with the Defensive Pattern
Self-Therapy Journey is based on
two comprehensive and powerful systems!

Click here to see a larger version of this chart.
1. The Pattern System®
The Pattern System is a breakthrough in understanding personality, a Periodic Table for psychology, created by Jay Earley, PhD.
It is a systematic approach to understanding your personality oriented toward psychological healing and personal growth, Self-Therapy Journey contains about 25 patterns, which are ways of behaving and feeling that you might want to change, such as people-pleasing, perfectionism, self-criticism, or avoiding intimacy.
Self-Therapy Journey helps you transform each pattern into a healthy capacity, such as assertiveness, ease, self-esteem, or cooperation. It also allows you to heal 14 different emotional wounds from childhood, such as being deprived or judged or feeling unlovable.
Everyone is unique! And the Pattern System recognizes this. You aren't put into a box. You get to understand the details of your particular personality.
The Pattern System provides the psychological content and IFS provides the therapy process.
Click here to learn more about the Pattern System.
2. Internal Family Systems Therapy

Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) is on the cutting edge of psychotherapy. It allows you to understand your psyche in a new way and create deep, powerful healing of old emotional wounds and trauma. IFS is a recognized, proven method for individual psychotherapy with a robust training program and thousands of certified therapists.
IFS enables you to understand each of the parts of your psyche, sometimes called sub-personalities. You can think of them as little people inside you. Each has its own perspective, feelings, memories, goals, and motivations. For example, one part of you might be trying to lose weight, and another part might want to eat whatever you want.
We all have many different parts, and we each have a spiritual center, the Self, which is compassionate, understanding, and grounded. Through IFS you can learn to stay in Self, develop a relationship with each of your parts, and heal them.
The key is that the your healing comes from you! This means that you can do IFS on your own, without a therapist, which is what makes Self-Therapy Journey possible.
Click here to watch an interview of Jay Earley on IFS by Tami Simon of Sounds True.

Support and Witnessing
You can work on Self-Therapy Journey completely on your own, or you can find a buddy or mentor from our online community to witness your work and support you in making changes in your life. You can also find a therapist guide from our list of professionals who will guide you in using Self-Therapy Journey and provide additional therapy if you want it.
In our online community, you can join a group of people who are dealing with the same issue. You can share with them your progress in your Self-Therapy Journey work and get answers to questions.
Learn How Self-Therapy Journey Works with the Defensive Pattern
I was amazed with the ease of use of STJ and how quickly it helped to identify areas in which I was having difficulty. The guided mediations helped me understand the underlying intention behind my pattern. The homework practice turned out beautifully, allowing me to be more cooperative with others. I learned to re-state confusing feelings in an accepting and loving way. I can now let go of those parts that are no longer serving me.
-- Colleen A. |
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The greatest benefit of Self-Therapy Journey is its ability to reveal the hidden motivations behind our limiting patterns. I recommend it highly.
-- Nick Lal,
Personal Development
Practitioner |
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The problems that I worked on using Self-Therapy Journey have been resolved. The Pattern System has jump-started a lot of my clients in understanding their issues at the beginning of their work.
-- Cathy Duke
Licensed Counselor |
Have other issues you need help with?
Wondering if Self-Therapy Journey deals with them?
Click here to find out
Learn How Self-Therapy Journey Works with the Defensive Pattern
XGood Communication involves bringing up your concerns in a way that maximizes the chances that the other person will listen to you and take your concerns seriously. This involves owning your feeling reaction rather than blaming the other person for it. Instead of judging the other person, you describe their behavior and your feeling reaction to it. For example, instead of saying, "You are such an uncaring person because you forgot my birthday," you might say, "When you forgot my birthday, I felt hurt."
It also means being open to hearing other people's concerns and considering your part in the problem, even if they express their concerns in a judgmental way. You are willing to take the other person seriously and really listen to what they are going through. Then you feed it back to them so they feel understood by you. This will help them to calm down and be much more receptive to what you have to say, including when you explain how you see things differently. You are willing to recognize when you need to change your behavior and to acknowledge this.
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