Let’s Talk About the Traits You Hate In Yourself
- Bethany Blaine
- Dec 15, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 5
Let’s be real for a second.
We’ve all had moments where we snap faster than we meant to.
When we dig our heels in.
Get sharp with someone we actually care about.
Sometimes it looks like impatience.
Sometimes defensiveness.
Sometimes that familiar line of criticism you promised yourself you’d outgrown.
Here’s the part most people don’t hear often enough:
Those moments don’t mean you’re a bad person.
They mean your system reacted before your awareness caught up.
That’s not a moral issue.
That’s a pattern issue.
The Reaction Shows Up First
Most people notice the reaction after it happens.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why did I get so defensive?”
“That’s not who I want to be.”
But reactions don’t come out of nowhere, they come from a system that felt threatened — even if the threat wasn’t logical, intentional, or happening in the present moment.
That’s the key distinction.
Your body responds to perceived threat, not objective reality.
What Those Traits Are Actually Doing
The behaviors we judge the hardest in ourselves are almost always protective strategies.
They didn’t form to ruin your relationships.
They formed to keep you intact when something felt unsafe.
Let’s translate a few.
Arrogance often shows up when there’s a fear of not being enough.
Staying “above” protects against being dismissed.
Defensiveness usually protects against being misunderstood or hurt.
Pushing back creates distance before vulnerability does.
Criticism is often an inner critic looking for somewhere to go.
Turning it outward avoids turning it inward.
Stubbornness tends to come from a need for control or stability.
If nothing moves, nothing can shake you.
These traits aren’t random, they are common.
They’re rooted more in fear than in intention.
They made sense once.
They just haven’t updated to current conditions.
When Protection Starts Working Against You
Here’s the part you’ve probably already experienced.
When these patterns go unchecked, they stop protecting you and start narrowing your world.
Arrogance hardens into isolation.
Defensiveness builds walls no one can cross.
Criticism erodes trust — yours and theirs.
Stubbornness locks you into positions that no longer support you.
What once kept you steady starts constricting connection.
The Brain Side of This (Because This Isn’t Just Emotional)
Your brain isn’t trying to work against you, it's just working from memory.
Neural pathways strengthen through repetition, so the responses you’ve used most become the fastest ones available.
So, if impatience, defensiveness, or criticism have been repeated often enough,
your brain will reach for them automatically.
Not because they’re ideal.
Because they’re familiar.
That’s how patterns form.
And here’s the important part:
Patterns don’t disappear through insight alone.
They shift through new experiences repeated over time.
Not force.
Not shame.
New Experience.
Where Awareness Actually Changes Things
Change doesn’t happen after the reaction; it happens inside it.
Right when you feel:
the tightening
the heat
the urge to defend, control, or correct
That’s the moment that matters.
Not to suppress it.
Not to justify it.
But to get curious through sensation.
“What is this reaction trying to protect me from?”
That question interrupts the automatic loop you're accustomed to.
Reaction without awareness runs the system.
Reaction with awareness introduces choice.
Translating the Pattern Instead of Fighting It
You don’t need a big breakthrough for this.
You need a pause.
After a behavioral reaction shows up, try this:
When I feel _____, I usually react by _____.
That reaction is protecting me from _____.
What I actually needed was _____.
That’s pattern translation.
Translation creates space.
Space creates options.
Options create change.
For calming self-judgement and reactivity so awareness doesn't turn into shame.
Read This Slowly
If you catch yourself being impatient, defensive, critical, or even stubborn, you have permission to pause and question if that line of thinking is productive in the ways you want.
Get curious.
Start feeling.
“What is this pattern trying to protect?”
Most people aren’t difficult for no reason.
They’re responding from strategies that once kept them safe.
Patterns evolve when they’re met with understanding, repetition, and safety —
not when they’re fought.
You’re patterned.
And patterns can shift
when they’re acknowledged instead of judged.
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