Tenderoni Hotline #4: Why People Get Defensive About Your Feelings + What Emotional Outsourcing Really Means
Welcome back another heartfelt installment of the Tenderoni Hotline, your weekly infusion of somatic support, nervous system insight, and loving feminist coaching. Every Tuesday, I answer your real-life questions, the tender and brave ones, drawing from my work in Anchored, The Somatic Studio, and your beautiful messages. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, send it to podcast@beatrizalbina.com and I’ll add it to the list for a future episode. Let’s get into it.
Question 1: Why do people get defensive when I share my feelings or set a boundary?
The times I’ve worked up the courage to be honest with people about my limits or feeling hurt, I tend to be met with long explanations for their behavior or the conversation gets redirected at scrutinizing me. This leaves me feeling overwhelmed and ineffective. Please help.” - Amygdala18
Oh my love, I feel this one so deeply. You finally gather the courage to say what’s true for you. Your voice may shake, your heart might be pounding, but you show up anyway. And instead of being met with care, or curiosity, or love, you get a long monologue about their intentions or how you misunderstood them. Suddenly the spotlight has shifted, and instead of your hurt being tended to, the conversation becomes about preserving their ego. That moment is jarring. Your body remembers it. It’s that familiar pang that makes you want to shut down and never speak up again.
This is especially common when we are dealing with emotionally immature people or those who use defensiveness to avoid their own shame. What’s happening inside your body in these moments is completely understandable. Being honest about hurt or boundaries activates a sense of risk in the nervous system, especially if you’ve learned that honesty often leads to rupture or abandonment. So when you’re met with defensiveness or blame, your body immediately interprets that as danger. Your chest might tighten, your voice might crack, your mind might fog over. It’s your nervous system trying to protect you from what it recognizes as a threat.
People who get defensive often aren't trying to hurt you intentionally. They’re just trying to avoid the discomfort of feeling like they’ve done something wrong. Their defensiveness is a form of shame management, but unfortunately it comes at the cost of your experience being minimized. You can recognize the humanity in their reaction without excusing the harm it causes.
How to Stay Regulated and Clear
When you feel the flood coming, the urgency to explain yourself or the desire to get them to understand, pause. Take a breath. Feel your feet. Instead of trying to fix the moment, you might say something like, “Hey, I’m not looking for an explanation right now. I just wanted to share how that landed with me.” If they continue to defend or dismiss, it is completely okay to exit the conversation with care. You could say, “I think we’re going in circles. Let’s come back to this later.”
If these conversations consistently leave you feeling dysregulated, consider writing instead. A letter or email can give you space to express your truth without getting flooded by their tone or reaction. You can write it just for yourself, or you can share it when the timing feels more spacious. Sometimes that pause between activation and communication is what gives your body the chance to stay grounded.
Before you even begin a difficult conversation, take a moment to check your own regulation. Orient to your environment. Take a few grounding breaths. Shake out your hands. Hum. These practices tone the vagus nerve and signal to your body that you are safe with yourself. Rehearsing what you want to say out loud, not from perfectionism but from preparation, can also help lower your threat response in the moment.
Name the Pattern Later
If you notice a pattern where your vulnerability is met with defensiveness, don’t try to name it in the heat of the moment. Come back to it later when things have cooled. You might say, “When I shared how I felt earlier, I noticed the conversation shifted into explanations instead of listening. That was hard for me.” Speak from your own experience using “I” statements. Stay on your side of the street. You're not there to change them, but you can set the tone for a more conscious exchange.
You don’t need to teach anyone emotional maturity, but you can model it. That might include making a clear and gentle request, like: “Next time I share how I’m feeling, I’d appreciate it if you could just let me know you heard me.” Feel into what boundaries and requests feel true and doable for you. You’re not being overly sensitive. You’re protecting your peace.
What to Do Afterward
If you feel small, anxious, or heart-heavy after these conversations, reach out for co-regulation. Call a friend. Text someone who sees you. Let your body know that it is still safe and still loved.
You can also turn to somatic care. Wrap yourself in a blanket, pet your dog, sigh out loud, rock gently, put on music that soothes you. These are ways of telling your nervous system, “That was hard, but we are okay now.”
Later, when you’re more grounded, place your hand on your heart. Say to yourself: “You did something brave. You told the truth. You showed up for love.” That’s how self-trust is built. Over time, your body learns that honesty doesn’t always lead to rupture. Even if the conversation didn’t go well, it ended with you showing up for you. And that’s everything.
Question 2: What Emotional Outsourcing Feels Like in the Body
“I keep hearing you talk about emotional outsourcing and nervous system regulation, but I’m still not totally sure what that means in real life. How do codependent, perfectionist, people-pleasing habits live in the body? And how does somatic work help shift them?” - Nervie Nell
This is such a great question. Emotional outsourcing is when your nervous system learns that love, safety, and belonging live outside of you. That might mean you look to other people’s moods, approval, or opinions to determine whether you’re safe. It is not something you consciously choose. Your body learns it over time, usually starting in childhood.
This pattern lives in what we call implicit memory. It’s not the kind of memory you can easily recall. It’s stored in your breath, your posture, your tone of voice. It lives in your body. So when someone sighs or frowns, your stomach might drop. When someone doesn’t respond to your text, your brain might spin out trying to figure out what you did wrong. This is emotional outsourcing at play. Your body is trying to manage connection by preventing rupture before it even happens.
How the Body Responds to Emotional Outsourcing
When your nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for cues about whether or not you’re safe, your vagus nerve becomes locked in a pattern of hypervigilance. This can lead to digestive issues, disrupted sleep, muscle tension, and a numbness to your internal sensations. You might start confusing emotional discomfort with physical danger. Someone being silent might feel threatening. A short comment might make your body brace for impact.
How Somatics Helps You Reclaim Safety
Somatic work helps because it addresses the place where the pattern lives, in your body. You cannot think your way out of something your nervous system learned without words. But you can teach it a new way through experience.
This might look like feeling your feet on the ground in a hard moment. It might be relaxing your shoulders when you feel the urge to fawn or overperform. It could be taking a slow exhale or letting your eyes scan the room to remind your body that you’re not trapped. These are small practices, but they make a big difference.
Over time, your body starts to believe that safety can come from within. That you don’t have to monitor everyone else’s emotions to belong. That you don’t have to earn love by being perfect. This is the foundation of what I teach in Anchored, The Somatic Studio, and my book End Emotional Outsourcing. We explore the biology of these patterns, how to work with them, and how to gently rewire them so you can feel real safety, not just perform it.
A Loving Reminder
You are not broken. You are healing.
Patterns like codependency, people-pleasing, and perfectionism were brilliant ways your body learned to survive. But you no longer need to rely on them to receive love and care. You can speak your truth. You can set a boundary. You can let someone know they hurt you. And even if they don’t meet you with care, you can meet yourself with compassion.
This is how self-trust grows. This is how you come home to yourself.
Want to Go Deeper?
Get your copy of End Emotional Outsourcing and learn how to stop performing safety and start truly feeling it.
Tags: emotional outsourcing, nervous system healing, somatic therapy, self-trust, boundaries, codependency recovery, perfectionism, people pleasing, trauma-informed care, polyvagal theory, inner child healing, feminist wellness, nervous system regulation, self-regulation, anchored coaching, somatic coaching, implicit memory, vagus nerve, emotional resilience, relational healing