How avoiding conflict hurts us in the long run

It's a natural human response to avoid pain. In fact, our nervous system is designed to keep us safe from pain, like when we pull our hand away from a hot element without even thinking or when we notice someone following us on a dark path and we automatically head for the busy street. These are helpful responses that happen so quickly in our brains that we don't even recall thinking about what to do, we just do it. When it comes to mental or emotional pain, our nervous system reacts similarly, basing it's strategy on past experiences of emotional danger and then choosing from some form of fight, flight, freeze or fawn response. These strategies are employed rapidly, without conscious thought most of the time.

A potential conflict with someone in our lives can be scary enough to trigger the nervous system into action. One common strategy is people pleasing. Many of us pride ourselves on being the peacekeeper, being flexible, able to allow any criticisms or bad behavior to roll off like water on a ducks' back. While these can be useful skills to possess, when they are used in the service of avoidance and from a fear of conflict, they can keep us stuck in disconnection and can cause us to lose our sense of self. The side effects of this strategy causes our boundaries become porous which can allow others to take advantage of us, we take on others responsibilities on top of our own, and we become the dumping ground for others unwanted tasks. In our attempts to safeguard a relationship, we end up feeling burned out and very much alone. We temporarily stave off conflict but we lose ourselves in the process.

In the short term, we might people please, acquiesce, go silent or physically avoid a person in order to keep the peace. In the long run these moments of avoided confrontation pile up as small resentments that may sting a little but feel manageable. Overtime the pile of resentments can grow so big and feel so heavy that the anger becomes hard to contain and leaks out in messy ways, causing the very harm to the relationship that we had worked so hard to hold in.

Denying our true feelings, values and needs always leads to trouble, and avoiding conflict is one way that many of us do just this. Conflict can feel scary but losing ourselves costs us so much more. What we all need is to learn how to create safety for ourselves and for the other person by speaking honestly and vulnerably about the issue we are challenged by in the relationship. Honesty on it's own can feel harsh, and vulnerability on it's own can feel unsafe. When we use both we disarm the others reactiveness and we invite openness.

Here are some steps you can try for honest and vulnerable communication:

• Check in with yourself to see if you feel grounded and calm enough to have a hard conversation with someone.

• Ask if the other person is open to discussing the issue that is bothering you.

• State the facts of the situation honestly and without criticizing or assigning blame; use I statements, focus on behaviors and avoid character evaluations

  • instead of criticizing the person's character "You are such a messy person that...", try focusing on observations and behavior "When the dishes piles up in the kitchen sink..."

• Share vulnerably about how you are feeling about this situation taking accountability for your experience.

  • instead of blaming "You make me feel so angry...", try stating the iimpact it's having on you "I feel resentful and lost..."

• Ask for what you need from the other person.

  • instead of making a demand "You need to clean this up right now...", try making a request "I feel so much clearer when the kitchen is tidy. Can we look at ways to remedy this togehter..."

    
    

This sort of conversation won't go perfectly but it sets you up for a better chance at a caring and emotionally balanced discussion. The more you practice slowing down your own fear based nervous system reaction, the more you can approach conflict in a way that creates safety and openness for both of you. Sometimes our we get triggered even when we are trying our best to be calm and sometimes we think we are grounded enough for a balanced conversation only to find out that we really weren't. That is okay. What we can do from there is to take time to get ourselves centered agin, reflect on what happened, and then come back and repair with that person when they are open to talking about it. The people in our lives who care about us will give us lots of chances to try again, especially when we are working at coming from a place of honesty, vulnerability and compassion.

Maybe, with lots of practice and some successes, you might even start to look forward to the next opportunity to work through a conflict!