The Healthy Way to Avoid Conflict

Let's face it. No one likes conflict. Yes, I know that some personality styles are energized by debate, confrontation, and argument, but most of us aren't like this. We thrive in peace, safety, stability, and predictability. We enjoy joy. We crave connection.

And yet, conflict finds us.

Inevitably, we will encounter a moment in which we misunderstand one another, make erroneous assumptions, take things too personally, make a mistake, misread another, and perhaps become too harsh, loud, or aggressive. We replace a desire to connect with an ego-driven need to win. Disagreements become painful, and a fight ensues.

So, it makes sense that we would void it all together.

In order to do this, we have to hone some very important skills:

1. We have to dull or completely ignore our feelings. Feelings are what make disagreements conflicts. Think about it... We disagree with one another all the time. I like mint chocolate chip ice cream; someone else likes vanilla. I love Fall; someone else loves Spring. These are disagreements, so why don't we typically fight about them? Because there are no emotions involved. They are simply preferences. But if we bring up religion or politics, we have fertile soil for interpersonal war. Why? Because fear is introduced. We don't realize it, but we have big emotions tied to our politics and religion. Emotions like fear, shame, hope, and sorrow. And once emotions get involved, conflict is knocking at the door. So to avoid conflict, we have to suppress those troublesome emotions. The best conflict avoiders I know are relatively stoic.

   
   

2. We have to ignore or distract ourselves from our needs. Let's build this out a little. Unpleasant emotions (anger, fear, shame, sadness, etc.) are tied to unmet needs. Conversely, pleasant emotions (joy, peace, hope, etc.) are what we experience when our needs are met. Humans are needs-based creatures. What does that mean? It means we act to fulfill our needs, so if we experience emotions and those emotions point to unmet needs, again, this is ripe for conflict. We might rub someone the wrong way in how we try to meet our needs. So we have to ignore, not only the emotions we feel, but the needs connected to those emotions.

   
   

3. We have to become somewhat invisible. Visibility increases the chance that someone will engage with us in a way that might become uncomfortable, and discomfort might bring on unpleasant feelings in someone else, and we all know the danger of feelings. For the successful conflict avoider, feelings = conflict. Better to remain a wallflower or fly under the radar. Better to be seen and not heard.

   
   

4. We must become masters of minimization. If something bothers us, gets under our skin, we have to become masterful at telling ourselves, "It's nothing." We reduce unpleasant experiences to mere trifles in our minds, and we convince others of the same. If we've been honing our conflict avoidance skills since childhood, there is a very good chance we don't even know what is important to us anymore. We've become so advanced in our ability to negate ourselves, that we are unsure of who we are or what we actually want. .

For those who have done these things, may I congratulate you? You've successfully avoided all conflict! Your life must be so easy, simple, peaceful, and carefree...

But it's not. You know it and I know it. The skills I've outlined above, and they are skills of survival, are a recipe for crippling relationships and crashing mental health. Why?

Because you are nowhere to be found.

Sure, you don't fight with people, but you don't actually engage with them either. They don't really know you. Why? Because you will not let yourself be known. You've suppressed anything and everything about yourself that might cause a difficult moment between yourself and another. You've reduced your cares and concerns down to nothing, and your life isn't reflective of who you are. It reflects who you're supposed to be.

You traded authenticity for a false peace. You people-pleased instead of doing the hard work of intimacy. You robbed yourself of the experience of unconditional love that only comes from being truly seen, as you are, and loved in that honest revelation.

All of that sacrifice to avoid conflict...

Is it worth it? If you're being honest, you know it isn't.

So what are we to do? We don't want to fight with others, but we also want the things I just mentioned: authenticity, intimacy, and unconditional love.

Let's travel back to childhood for a moment. If you are proficient at conflict avoidance, you likely experienced conflict in a poor way. You witnessed ugly fights, angry words, relational distress, the silent treatment, and ruined relationships. You heard people screaming at one another. You watched someone, likely a parent, break down in defeat and your heart broke with them. You watched someone, likely a parent, manipulate and control a family situation with their anger, tone, emotions, or silence. And you decided... nope. Not me. I'm not getting involved in any of that.

Folks, I don't blame you. These things are worth avoiding.

But what if I showed you a different way of addressing wrongs, hurts, and misunderstandings? What if you could actually avoid conflict but not lose yourself in the process? What if you could successfully avoid everything I just mentioned (distress, fights, etc.) without having to sacrifice your emotions, needs, wants, and presence?

We simply need to replace one word with another word. We need to replace conflict with conversation.

In a conflict, we are polarized. We are focused on our own agenda. We generally want to win, that is to say we want the other person with whom we are in conflict to come around to our way of seeing things, agree with us, apologize to us for the outrageous sin of disagreement, and get on board with what we want to do. Conflict can bring out a side of us that is supremely egotisical, even narcissistic. I tell the couples with whom I do therapy, "100% of the conflicts you have with your partner are because they are simply not you." We don't want to see ourselves this way, but it is the case. When we are in conflict, we are fighting with the part of a person that is different than us. Or, we simply give up and give in.

In conversation, there is an equal exchange of ideas. There are two people taking turns sharing what is important to them.

What if, instead of a fight, we could have a talk? (I wrote about this in Chapter 10 of my book, The Toolbox: The Tools We Need to Build Relationships and Repair Them When They Break. You can order it here.) We avoid conflict because we don't want to fight, but who says we have to fight? We can do a few things instead:

1. We can state what we think, feel, and need and ask the other person what they think, feel and need. This is a conversation between two human beings. The prerequisties are kindness and respect. If we can dialogue about what we think, feel, and need without disintegrating into a conflict, we've successfully avoided it in a healthy way. Why healthy? Because we are showing up.

   
   

2. We can wait until emotions settle to talk. When the limbic system (the emotional part) of the brain is activated, the prefrontal cortex (the logical, rational part) goes offline. Simply put: you cannot be rational while you're heavily emotionally activated. This is the primary reason conflicts spiral out of control. When emotions are given time to pass, we can be reasonable about our position and others'. This gives us a better chance at connecting with one another. Remember that the fear of conflict is the fear of emotions and the hurtful behaviors they can cause. We can choose when we talk about difficult things so that we give ourselves the best chance at connection. A good phrase to use: dialogue when dialed down.

   
   

3. We can choose to walk away if someone's behavior becomes harmful or disrespectful. When we were children, we didn't have the option or agency to remove ourselves from conflict-laden environments. We would have had to run away! (Some of us did.) But as adults, we have both options and agency. We can choose to end a conversation that isn't productive by not participating in it, and we can even choose to end a relationship when conversation isn't possible. This requires us to feel again, to need again, and to have standards again. Sometimes, relationship isn't possible if we are authentic. This is a sad reality, but no one is worth your mental health!

We have a choice:

We can keep suppressing who we are, ignoring the elephant in the room, and suffering the emotional consequences of our fear of conflict until they grow so significant, it effects our physical health.

OR

We can start having conversations...

"You said something the other day that got me thinking. When you said ____, I heard ____. Is that what you meant?"

"It seems to me that you said _____ but you did ______. I'm a little confused. Can we talk about it? I'd love to hear your thoughts."

"I was surprised when you _____. It seems out of character for you. What was going on for you?"

Folks, avoiding conflict isn't a bad idea, but avoiding issues in relationship is. When we avoid our feelings and needs, we don't grow and our relationships don't grow. Let's replace "conflict" with "conversation," start talking and reconnect.