When Avoiding Conflict Causes Harm
I remember a couples therapist whom I hold in high regard (now retired) often said, “The worst thing a couple can tell me when we’re starting therapy is, we never fight.” He explained that this was often a sign of rough sessions ahead of him. Now having done many couples sessions and have delved into much of the literature, I can understand why this rung so true. When a couple doesn’t fight many things go unsaid. They let something slide because they don’t want to rock the boat. They don’t bring up things they want in the relationship or in life because it feels selfish or they don’t want the other person to feel uncomfortable.
When we avoid the conflict we create an unmet tension or pressure within our minds and bodies. Each time we avoid a conflict we add to the pressure until it explodes out like a pressure cooker. This is why the couples therapist I mentioned worries when couples don’t fight. That pressure and tension is there just waiting to be released.
Even outside of intimate relationships we can have a tendency to avoid conflict. We might not bring up politics or religion when we have family over to keep the peace. We don’t like our uncle's/aunt’s politics so we’ll skirt around those issues and avoid the phone calls and just get through the holidays. Then the relationship drifts further and further apart where you become strangers even though you are family. All of this in order to keep the peace within the family who don’t understand you.
Or that friend who keeps doing microaggressions or persists at pushing your boundaries. You put up for it for a while, but then you just don't want to deal with it, so you don’t invite them out anymore. They might feel hurt but we justify our actions by telling ourselves stories about the pain they caused us. And then that friend and you just don’t seem that close anymore.
There are times we do need to remove ourselves from a situation. There are plenty of people who are toxic and/or doing abuse. However what if we learn this as an effective way to address one situation we are at risk of using it for every situation. But a tool to manage abuse may not be the one to maintain friendships, family and intimacy. Sarah Schulman wrote a powerful book called Conflict is not Abuse. In it she reflects that we often confuse abuse and causing harm with being “conflicted” or not in agreement with someone. I might not agree with my uncle’s/aunt’s philosophy on life, but how can I get them to understand my way of seeing things (or vice versa). That friend keeps pushing boundaries and that is annoying, but it isn’t causing direct harm. How do I tell them that the more they push boundaries the more I don’t want to invite them to things? My partner is not doing their fair share of the chores and childcare. Again not causing harm but the unfairness is infuriating and I need to address this and not let the pressure keep building. But instead of addressing these things we have a tendency to leave the situation or ignore it.
By avoiding conflict we can cause a lot of harm. So many times I have heard a story where someone has ended a relationship without ever telling the other person the relationship was over. This happens in intimate relationships, but much more often with so many friendships.
“Ghosting” is often described as “ending a relationship by curing off all communication without any explanation.” When someone has been ghosted, they are left with so many unanswered questions. A phrase I use often is that “in the absence of data our minds go to worst case scenarios” Our brains create elaborate stories about what might have happened. Maybe they are hurt? Did I say something? Is there something wrong with me? Am I unlovable?
In fiction or a good TV show, a good story has an introduction of tension and some form of resolution of the tension. In Nanette, comedian Hannah Gadsby calls this tension and release. With ghosting the response to tension is to walk away. Avoidance of conflict does not bring resolution to the struggle, but rather a story without resolution and more often, isolation.
There is a difference between ghosting and taking a break. Ghosting is about ending a relationship and choosing not to work on it. Taking a break is about needing a reprieve from the conflict. Many people in conflict get angry that people might need to take a break since they are looking for the resolution to an issue. However for some people they get overstimulated within fights where they feel escalated or shut down or feel unsafe. Taking a break is about taking space to reset ourselves so we can be our full selves within a conflict.
Therapists often dislike ghosting since it leaves so many relationships without any closure or resolution. Why do we need this resolution? Maintaining relationships is one of the most basic aspects of being human. We are constantly looking for ways to connect with other people. This past year with the pandemic has shown us how much we need those relationships. When we rely too much on one strategy (avoid/leave) we become trapped by that coping skill. It limits our ability to connect with other people. We have to learn how to restore, repair, and re-connect with other people when we don’t see eye to eye.
Also Supremacy (in its multiple forms) thrives is a space of conflict avoidance and lack of resolution and accountability. When we don’t understand the harms we have done, we continue to keep doing the harm. By avoiding conflict we create a void where there should be accountability. When we don’t talk about the harm that has been done to us, we will continue to live in a world where we can be harmed and learn not to speak up to those who cause harm. By avoiding conflict, we can take part in our own trauma of creating a world where there is no safety. But for those who have been harmed, we often put the onus on them to do the heavy lifting, but often they need support and community to do the hard work.
Growth
“But why should I do all this work when they are the one at fault?” “But they are the ones that will get more out of this than me.” “How do I bring this up without feeling guilty?” These are all phrases that I have heard before. Often they focus on the unfairness of it all. (This post is about moving away from avoiding conflict and not the things we need to hold accountable, but there are ways to build those things.) However there is growth for you in approaching this conflict instead of avoiding it. I once told a client that she was so used to whatever scraps she could get in life that it felt scary since she feared the story of “what if they left me.” However by asking for her needs she was holding herself accountable to herself. By asking for her needs she was getting rid of the story that she was unworthy of love and start telling the world what she actually needed/wanted in life/relationships .
Another saying I have (I have a lot of them) is that “the hardest part of getting to the gym is getting to the gym.” Getting ourselves to show up is one of the hardest parts, but an essential part to our growth. I will never become stronger if I don’t show up to the gym. There are many ways I might talk myself out of getting to the gym (or starting this conflict conversation). We often focus on the unfairness, the guilt we are feeling, or that I just don’t want to do it. But if we show up to the gym and strengthen myself, I’m doing it for me, not for them. We can practice moving past our guilt and making sure our needs are heard. And yes there might be some heavy lifting, but that too shall make us stronger.
Community
When we build communities, there will always be conflict. If we avoid conflict then we often are left with isolation. Good communities build in accountability to maintain the safety in a space. There are often people that I refer to as “bullseye people.” This is in reference to a Vulnerability Dartboard where the people in the Bullseye are the people who you can be the most vulnerable with. These people have respected your boundaries and do the work to maintain their place on your Vulnerability Dartboard and in your community.
Within this Vulnerability Dartboard, people move closer and further from your center space based on where we are in conflict. You gossip or share a secret that wasn’t yours, I’ll move you further out because you broke trust. If in return you recognize the harm you did and work on rebuilding trust (over time) then I’ll slowly let you back in.
We use the phrase “calling people out” (or just calling-out) when we want to list all the harm that they did. I often call this “dropping the mic” since I’ll list out the harms, drop the mic and then walk away before you can say anything. There are times we need to call-out, but I prefer the calling-in. If you want to be closer to me, then you need to do better. Calling-in allows people back to being closer to us and the community that we want to build. Calling-out is about stating harms and harming back while Calling-in is about accountability and restoration. Calling-in is about bringing people closer, while Calling-out leads to isolation.
Circling back to those Bullseye people, these are people who know you are your core. These are the people that will help you do the hard things. The bullseye people are going to make you accountable to yourself so you can address the harms that were done and call people back in. I think of the show the Red Table Talk where they all hold each other accountable to do the hard work. They also acknowledge and validate that it is hard and painful, but worth it.
Sometimes we go to the community that will not hold us accountable. They will tell you to just walk away or you deserve better. This might sound relieving, but there is an insidious side to this. What stops them from just walking away from you? If we build a community where it is okay to walk away when there is conflict, we never get stable ground to be vulnerable and build a space where we grow and change.
Avoid Shame
Sarah Schulman, of Conflict is Not Abuse, brings attention to an insightful equation: Trigger + Shame = Escalation. These types of conflict are often hard, but escalation is a state where we can not hear what the other person is saying. In Escalation we are prone to defensiveness and talking over the other person. Shame (there is something wrong with you) often leads to this escalation response. Guilt, which is more focus on behaviors rather than what is wrong with a person on the intrinsic level (shame) leads to more effective communication. Someone may escalate with guilt, but shame will get there faster.
Build Safety
When I do trauma work I often tell clients “I need the room to feel safe before we can go into the uncomfortable.” I say this because they need to build a relationship with me to know I’m a safe place and I need to understand how they regulate themselves so they are not trapped in the trauma. But I’m also often asking clients what are cues of safety. My mother did this brilliantly when she had to reprimand me for bad behavior. She was always stern, but let me know she did it out of love and to keep me safe and accountable. I never felt shamed when we were in those conflicts and I learned from those experiences.
When we go into these conflicts we don’t learn right away what makes a space safe or unsafe, but by having the debates we start learning the rules of what each of us needs. There is never a one-size fits all solution to building safety (which is why I need to work on building it with clients). But if we avoid conflict we never learn what that is for ourselves or others. In couples therapy the focus is often on how do we fight better and that is building the safety between the couple so they know they are being called-in and not called-out.
Sometimes we have to move towards the conflict, instead of away from it. Without conflict there is no change. We need to address the tension to bring about the resolution. Growth can only happen when we challenge ourselves to go into the uncomfortable and become less conflicted. So where is there conflict in you life?