This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “People tell me I’m being defensive, when I’m really only explaining the literal facts that happened. How do I do that without being called defensive?”

Examine your motives.

Why do you feel a need to explain facts to people?

Has someone asked you for those details?

If they haven’t, they will interpret your input as motivated by a personal agenda, often defensiveness.

Your facts may be necessary to defend an action or correct a misinterpretation, in which case, your perspective may be critical to ensuring that the clarity and accuracy of events are maintained so as not to negatively affect someone unfairly due to a misjudgment or biased conclusion.

What also often happens is that when someone does offer clarifying information that an abuser doesn’t want to be made known, they will attempt to gaslight the messenger with accusations like they’re being defensive.

If you’re constantly explaining facts and that’s causing many people to accuse you of being defensive, then that could be a compulsion you developed from an abusive environment where you were constantly disbelieved and have overcompensated for that accusation by feeling compelled to explain facts, whether they’re relevant or not to resolving whatever dynamic you’ve been caught up in.

What people tell you is a clue either to the behaviour of yours you’re not entirely clear on or a clue to their attitudes. There is no universal answer as to which it would be, but your best bet is to be mindfully clear about your actions and why you chose them.

Other people will always say something; often, that thing they say has less to do with you than it does about them.

Your environment may be one where you feel compelled to offer explanations to defend yourself while being told that you’re being defensive. If that’s the case, then it’s most likely an abusive environment, and some abuser is deliberately gaslighting you to make you feel insecure about yourself.

Only you can know what the truth would be in this case.

Good luck.