How to have Tough Conversations even if you are Conflict Avoidant
I had been carrying around a $20 bill in my wallet for weeks; it was “treat yourself” money for the month, saved for the perfect delight. I decided to spend it while out with a friend. After ordering a pastry totaling roughly $5, I handed the bill to cashier. She grabbed my order, handed it over and we both paused, entrained in an awkward, blank-stare show down.
It was the post covid world, where touchless credit cards eclipsed cash payments. “Um, I paid with a $20 bill, I was planning on tipping, just not quite that much” I said with an uncomfortable giggle. “Oh gosh, sorry.” She fumbled through the drawer and saw a $5 bill on top. “Ma’am, there’s no $20 here, you paid with a $5.” I felt a hot flush rush over my face. Self-doubt started to swirl- Did I pay with a $5?
I shuffled away from the counter, semi-stunned, and told my friend what had happened. She suggested that I go back and talk with the manager. But what if I’m wrong?
I pushed through the hesitation. The manager asked us to hold while he went to check the cash drawer. A few minutes later he and a tearful waitress brought over $15 change with a profuse apology. She had slid the $20 under the cash drawer by mistake. I thanked them for the opportunity to practice standing up for myself and dive into the sweaty armpits, flushed face, discomfort of appropriate conflict.
We want action to be motivated by truth, rather than fear. If I was afraid to cause distress to the waitress by naming a mistake, that would not have been right action, even if I was doing it out of seemingly positive intentions. “I’ll just take the $15 hit; I don’t want to embarrass her.”
Avoiding outer conflict is a recipe for inner conflict and resentment in the long run. Leveraging our own integrity or inner knowing to manage someone else’s emotions is not sustainable and erodes away trust. Conflict exists either way; even when we try to avoid it in the moment, it eventually catches up.
Principles of Pressure in Practice
In equine assisted psychotherapy, we practice making conversations and requests by communicating with the horses. Sometimes we see people coming out to the farm because they struggle to amplify their energy in relationship, others struggle to soften and quiet their energy, and a whole lot of people are working on titrating and calibrating to find the flow in between.
Pressure is a part of life, and we want to appropriately use it in conversations, including conflict. When we make a request of another human or horse, we are applying pressure; however, this is not talking about abusive situations or unfair requests. I am talking about a congruent and connected relationship, not a controlling or manipulative one. We are exploring a mutual and symbiotic dynamic where two individuals are both allowed to have needs and desires and to make requests of each other. If only one person, or horse, is allowed to make the requests, at some point that becomes dissatisfying and we are likely to want to disconnect or stop pursuing a relationship.
In these requests, consider two separate dials. There is an internal dial (our ability to be regulated) and an external dial (the volume with which we present to other people). There is what we are saying, the lyrics, and how we are saying it, the music. We want requests of each other to be attuned, predictable, and rhythmic. In congruent communication of a fair request, it is helpful to start with the least amount of pressure and build from there, even if there is conflict. When met with ignoring, lift pressure, when met with resistance, maintain. The reward is in the release.
In trying to be consistently quiet and nice, we aren’t always being true to ourselves, and the pressure can build internally, not externally, often looking like resentment. Passive aggressive energy can look like inconsistent and confusing asks: starting with a request, then backing off, then starting again.
When we think we are being kind, tender and gentle by staying at a level 1/10 persistently in a quiet voice, that inner build up often serves as a pressure cooker, when finally opened, it shows up in a dysregulated explosion like a jack in the box/volcano of anger, spewing everywhere. That aggressive energy can also show up like a quick and constant loud volume.
Ask for What you Want, and Don’t Move the Finish Line
When making a request, it can be helpful to think of different levels as being suggest, ask, tell, insist. It’s important to make the request from a clear and congruent state of mind. For example, when I ask my horse to back up a step, then move the target to move back 8 steps, this is a recipe for disaster. We both end up frustrated, neither of us feeling the release on the initial request. It would be fair to ask for one step. Feel the release, then ask for the next few in a different request. When we move the target, we never get the validation and the reward of the release.
Mindreading can also be a barrier for congruent communication. Social media and pop culture often sell the hypnotic narrative of the fairy tale, that our partner should be able to read our minds, anticipate our every need, and should just know what to do. We ought to pop that mesmerizing bubble. The expectation of mindreading is often an avoidance of sitting in the discomfort of vulnerability and the story we are telling ourselves is “what if I ask for what I want then don’t get it, it will hurt more.” Asking for our desires to be met in relationships is hard, yet vulnerability is the currency for true connection.
We alone carry the manual for how to love us well and it’s helpful to share that with those around us to be able to help them love us better and to get our needs met. If we ask our partner to get the groceries this week, then are mad that they didn’t pick up our favorite yogurt (even though we didn’t explicitly ask for it or put it on a list) that is moving the target.
The Reward is in the Release
When the waitress questioned whether I had paid with the $20, I appropriately increased the pressure to elevate it to the manager. Afterwards, I was not tapping my foot, arms crossed, resentful and fuming that I had to lift the pressure by asking multiple times. I simply received the appropriate response and let it go.
There was no need for further lecture or a probing conversation on why it didn’t happen in the first place. Most of us were culturally conditioned to have the lecture afterwards, however in keeping the pressure on, there is no motivation to do the right thing. The growth happens in that silence after a release.
Learning happens in safety; programming happens in fear. When we are afraid that we are going to get lectured or get scolded or have a long draining conversation afterwards, there is not much motivation to do the right thing. We end up checking out and it becomes rigid dogma rather than flow, rules rather than guidelines, control rather than connection, reaction rather than response. It can often drive a codependent dynamic of programmed reactions that try to avoid the ugly reactions in others, rather than connected motivation.
Conflict in our Culture
When we avoid conflict in the short term, it comes back to us in the long term. Our health is dependent on our ability to manage hard conversations. One major reason people avoid conflict is not wanting to feel the emotions of the other person. In his new book “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture,” Gabor Mate outlines some of the distinct personality traits that he finds to be prominent in people with chronic illnesses from cancer to autoimmune diseases, some of which include “harboring and compulsively acting our two beliefs ‘I am responsible for how other people feel’ and ‘I must never disappoint anyone,’ repression of healthy, self-protective aggression and anger, over-driven, externally focused multi-tasking hyper responsibility, based on the conviction one must justify one’s existence by doing and giving” (p102).
These features are distinct coping tools that we develop to keep ourselves safe in toxic cultures, upbringings and environments, however when left unchecked they become erosive to life affirming energy. As Mate goes on to say, “these dangerously self-denying traits tend to fly under our radar because they are easily conflated with their healthy analogues: compassion, honor, diligence, loving kindness, generosity, temperance, conscience, and so forth.” When we truly give from an empathetic place, it comes from a full cup, overflowing to others and is mutually symbiotic. Both receive in the giving. Or in times of crisis, the giver offers with a full awareness of the risks and the sacrifices made consciously.
Often it is hard to make requests of others while swimming in the depths of a toxic culture defined in worthiness, productivity, timeliness and completion. Finding this balance between self, other and environment means are constantly dancing and shifting our levels of pressure to contextualize, making it much more like a tango and less like an algebraic equation that you could ever master and plug into. Different people, different environments all require differing levels of pressure.
Empaths in Conflict: Be True to You
Conflict can be hard. How do we live a full spectrum of emotions, feeling our feelings, while still staying regulated? Working with horses has taught me that I can have all of the vast depth of emotion and still be able to manage my internal state. Usually when I am honest with my feelings, even grief and anger, my horses draw near. It’s when I hide them or mask feelings that the disconnect happens.
Being an empath and being able to feel into and sense others’ emotions is often a response to trauma. While this is a gift, it is not appropriate in mature relationships to use this gift to anticipate the moods of other people and to act in a way that curbs their anger, judgement, guilt, doubt, etc. That generates a pattern of codependency, where we learned to anticipate and read others’ emotions and act in a way that neutralizes or de-escalates the situation, even if it is out of alignment with our own integrity or inner truth.
Seeking peace in the short term, (not rocking the boat, not speaking truth, staying small and quiet) was often a means of staying safe. And in abusive childhoods and traumatic situations sometimes that skill is exactly the thing that helps us to survive. However, upon seeking safety and higher ground, we cannot continue to leverage the short-term comfort against long term healing.
Be generous and gentle with yourself, remembering this is a process, not a perfect, and you will likely get it wrong sometimes. Like all relationships, improving our relationship with conflict is an active work in progress throughout the course of life that requires immense grace. Be kind and gentle with yourself as you navigate it.
