I guarantee that you have gotten defensive one or two times before. Have you ever tried to stop yourself from being defensive? In a ted talk, Jim Tamm had a great example of defensiveness with chickens.
A friend of his was going into how chickens can teach us about being defensive. In those chickens, there are green zone chickens and red zone chickens. Green zone ones can collaborate with each other. Red zone ones want to be the best. it will try to make other chickens produce fewer eggs by pecking them. He did this for one year. In the end, all the green zone chickens were all healthy, but what was left of the red zone ones were all featherless and didn’t produce many eggs. Half of them were murdered by the other chickens.
Red zone people can very easily get defensive. Green zone people can also go from green to red. When we get defensive, it can get the whole group to go from green to red. When we get defensive, you aren’t defending yourself, you are trying not to let some fears get to you. Some examples are your significance, your competence, and your likeability.
Some ways to not be defensive are to notice your behaviors when you get defensive. some behaviors are blaming someone else, wanting the last word, drop in IQ, or high charge of energy in your body. that could ring a bell in your head saying stop doing that. Then you could take action in what you are doing.