How to deal with conflict

[Ima Freeman]

Experience shows me that I'm bad at handling conflict with others. Be it coworkers, family or friends. 
If someone is opposed to something I did or there are arguments I can't really handle it emotionally.
My first instinct is to not give anyone any surface, to be somewhat ignorant.
Even if I stood up for myself, I have strong emotions that run my mind afterwards.
My knees get shaky and I feel resentment.

Are there techniques to get better with handling confrontations and be calm during it?
 

[DianaFr]

My personal favorite in instances like these are CBT techniques, STAR method in particular. It stands for Situation, Thoughts & feelings, Actions, Results. It makes you examine what exactly takes place in each situation and what's your reaction to it, which in turn allows you to notice patterns. Once you've done looking at the present situation, you can create the alternative STAR - how would you LIKE to take hold of the situation, what thoughts you ought to be thinking to act in your preferred way etc. Than it's a matter of bridging the gap with practice and rewriting your normal behavioral pattern with a new one. 

[Ima Freeman]

@DianaFr Thanks for sharing

The thing is that I always react calm and try to minimize damage.
But I can get very resentful, can hardly shake that feeling and want to ban people from my life.
My ego is hurt very easily, and I don't want that. I wan't to be at ease and not so vulnerable.

[shree]

@Ima FreemanYou could try inner child dialoguing to explore the root cause. It’s likely tied to a deeper fear you may not be fully aware of.

[gettoefl]

Conflict is always how you see things and nothing to do with what others do. The key to dealing with conflict is having solid boundaries and being hyper selective who you allow access to you. If you have no say in the matter then label others as friend or foe and proceed accordingly. Friends get the authentic you and foes get bare presence and, as soon as business is conducted, polite withdrawal. Many people are not helpful for you and need to be kept away. Let others seek conflict but play no part in it. In this way, every day can be conflict free. This all reminds me of a quote: Before you think your life is a complete disaster, make sure you're not surrounded by assholes.

Edited February 20 by gettoefl

[Human Mint]

Avoiding it. That's the only way you'll end up meeting people that won't create conflict mindlessly. It is like a virus and you'll quickly adopt a conflictive attitude. It is easy when you have nothing to lose, but often times you'll have to sacrifice a paid position or friends.

[Aaron p]

Annihilate yourself with psychedelics lol

[UnbornTao]

Good question.  

[Nilsi]

Embodiment.

In Germany, we have the saying "aus sich herausfahren," which literally means to leave one’s body in the heat of an argument - and that’s exactly what it can feel like in intense conflict, and probably what you’re afraid of, unless you’re a psychopath or a schizo. Instead, try to stay grounded, centered, and confront the situation from that place.

Peter Ralston’s Zen Body-Being is an excellent manual for embodying this state.

[Schizophonia]

Can you give a precise exemple ? 

[Spiritual Warrior]

Honest communication, express exactly what you are thinking and feeling. No manipulation tactics.

[Raze]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkuZnyLASLo
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc3ARpccRwQ

 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

It is a good question - and different strategies apply to different situations.

Is this question more related to work, or purely interpersonal relationships?

It is helpful to have a strong divide between the two.

With work: I am here to do a job, and in the end, as long as I am not being offensive, any emotional issue another party has is their own inability to regulate their emotions. I treat others with kindness and respect as a rule. But I am firm & relentless. Brutal with honesty. My issues in work arise when men cannot receive clear orders from a woman without fluff and padding along with it. Just their cultural conditioning there.

In personal relationships: I have grown to the stage where I have the emotion & can observe it, but I am disconnected from it. I let it wash over me and then leave. I never, EVER, take action or make a decision while in a charged emotional state.

It helps to try to see where you may be 'approval seeking' in your life.

From your elaboration, it seems that instead of accepting and embracing the charged emotion (then letting it recede) you are attempting to power through and disregard your own needs. Or perhaps you are squashing it down?

This is an issue with boundaries, and if not attended to, will lead to resentment.

'Poor me' thinking.

Self pity.

It is a form of self abandonment.

Most issues that you feel internally that linger, and cause renumeration, arise as a result of ones inability to reconcile responsibility.

Inability to reconcile responsibility is really the root of trauma.

[Ima Freeman]

@Human Mint I did that in the past, but the problem arises when you have agonistic people around, who use your lack of boundaries and niceness to assault you. 

One thing I suspect is, that I have a personality that is prone to be attacked, for whatever reason. Maybe I'm quirky, or not the witiest or fastest, I only suspect

Some might get trough with such an personality because they are cheerful and kind of a goof, but I'm quite tense and sober at the ground level
 

[Ima Freeman]

On 22.2.2025 at 1:13 PM, Aaron p said:

Annihilate yourself with psychedelics lol

I have to be careful.

Last time I took a normal dosed trip of LSD, I had some emotional trouble at the end of the trip, causing me to frantically leaving my flat, feeling a slightly panic followed by being teary and having a fall in my self-esteem, then I went jogging because I was so agitated 

Something like annihilation is something I won't follow because I tend to have emotional disregulation and I could run into panic attacks 
I like to nudge myself into meditative states or higher contemplative states carefully with moderate doses

[Ima Freeman]

20 hours ago, Nilsi said:

Embodiment.

In Germany, we have the saying "aus sich herausfahren," which literally means to leave one’s body in the heat of an argument - and that’s exactly what it can feel like in intense conflict, and probably what you’re afraid of, unless you’re a psychopath or a schizo. Instead, try to stay grounded, centered, and confront the situation from that place.

Peter Ralston’s Zen Body-Being is an excellent manual for embodying this state.

The problem is my body can't handle confrontation. I feel nauseous, shaky, heartracing, sweating
I'm pretty sympathetic and nervous generally

[Ima Freeman]

21 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

Can you give a precise exemple ? 

Lately I asked to friends for postponing a date for a little time, came late to that and one was very directly projecting his anger onto me
Looking back his anger was justified, but I still plan to cut him out of my life, because I feel disrespected.

A coworker had a very disregarding attitude towards me after I respectfully turned her romantic longing to me down.
I tried to ignore her passive aggressive attitude and stayed stoic. But I felt bad because I can't stand people disrespecting me.
Basically she was in such an attitude where nothing would have really helped other than a clear rebuke from the higher ups.
I did not even tell my manager once.

In another workplace, a pretty unregulated one, I had some quarrels because I was trying to improve things, but in a direction one coworker did not like. That was a quite reactive and immature person when coming to a dispute with someone. I was  setting up boundaries in a respectful way, but did not urge the manager running the place to settle the dispute for good. He was not interfering much.  

Mostly it comes down to me being someone who is very autonomous, which is not liked and seen as a threat by some people.
I'm not really communicative with others and can even get purposefully ignorant to the elephant in the room (the conflict)
And I tend to be hurt quite easily and have the impulse to cut people from my life

[Ima Freeman]

20 hours ago, Spiritual Warrior said:

Honest communication, express exactly what you are thinking and feeling. No manipulation tactics.

This might be seen as to hysteric because of how easily I feel hurt

On the other hand I manipulate by being ignorant, like having no surface

[Ima Freeman]

18 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

In personal relationships: I have grown to the stage where I have the emotion & can observe it, but I am disconnected from it. I let it wash over me and then leave. I never, EVER, take action or make a decision while in a charged emotional state.

Very helpful. Thank you.
The eMotion tries to push me to a fight or flight reaction

[Letho]

@Ima Freeman two-fold.

1. Focus on your cognitive empathy - directed simultaneously for both yourself and others:

Cognitive empathy for others is obviously lacking in some areas / shuts down in the presence of conflict, perhaps because you feel you're not being empathized with. This is a normal occurrence and is one of the cores of most lapses in human connection. 

Truth Pill = Most people suck at empathy in the modern techno-addicted age where you're not having to expend energy to train it naturally through the environments feedback loops as much as the past so you'll need to get used to not being empathized with. That being said, have preferential treatment for those relationships where it has consistency and transparency in communication when there's difficulties.

2. Have unbounded compassion for self and other while operating purely strategically in number 1.

We're all dealing with a population of people that mostly do not learn to operate strategically because we're implicitly conditioned to adopt the status quo of societies equilibrium, aka analogous to what's often referred to as 'regression to the mean'. This is because our consciousness is dragged in an 'attracted/magnetized' sense to what is more likely to bring it balance relative to its unique operations, and its biased towards the social norms even if they're imbalanced. Sometimes in particular if you're a naturally empathic person with an unhealthy childhood because you've spent most of your younger life finding yourself in reaction to the emotional environment, which makes them a good case study to compare with someone with very low affective empathy. Because they're not having to experience the emotions of others, their nervous system just has their internal inputs to feedback loop from and therefore the maturity of their sense of self is easier relative to this extent while having shortcomings in recognising the emotional boundaries of others whereas the more empathic (affective) person used in the example will naturally have more issues instead with respect to identifying their own emotional boundaries in the prevention of being taken advantage of in this regard by the person with lower empathy. 

This creates the context for interpreting the population and the boundaried vs unboundaried communications we have with them across an "Empathy Self vs Other Recognition" spectrum with affective and cognitive empathy being the major mediators concerning the maturity of the sense of self vs other overtime. This spectrum can help us paint a more nuanced perspective on conflict vs agreement and its absolute terms concerning felt and thought resonance vs its more relative nature that opens us up to appreciating a greater sense of complexity imbedded underneath each interaction we have. By approaching interactions, especially those conflict based, with this awareness, the elevation of that will measure the outcomes of intelligence that were meant to result, inclusive of healthy boundaried disagreement that can expand rather than contract a relationship when people are able to "meet in the middle" of their maturity on this spectrum. The compassion for self, directly reduces your anxiety in conflict situations while giving you an opportuntiy to leverage an expansion on the strength of your sense of self in a healthy rather than ego fuelled way and in return, giving you the space to do this for another rather than being compounded to the opposite end when the ego shuts down these higher social abilities and its subsequent stable context for continued mutual growth with another. 

3. You're creating your own balance with another while at the same time, there's always the ever-presence of societies balance unknowingly being leveraged

Drawing on paragraph 1 of point 2, number 3 is the essence for what creates the meaning and the future value adding of our relationships as we move down a path of discovery with others the more we explore empathy, self and boundaries in the context of one another in them. However, if you can remember that with every person, there's "Their Society" breathing down their neck in the form of prior psychological conditioning and just the presence of the impact of sensing larger social dynamics at play in the moment that etches in implicit conformity on both boundary and agreement points, then this unique balance you're creating with someone can be given the intelligent artistic contrast it deserves to define agreement/disagreement points which create the parameters of that exploration. This boundary of society is always in relationship with the boundary of self and it finds its point uniquely for every individual relative to their niche developmental paths. This is why you can have an extremely kinky nurse, doctor, police officer and nun in their own varied form and a very 'standard' sexual opposite with a woman that's going to find herself behind bars in the next 12 months, just for example. The self is regardless always finding itself in reaction to the friction of society pressing against the skin of this internal sensory awareness, and where there is the less development in self-computation of empathy across this mediation the more there will be this reactionary sexual opposite presence as its balancing point, relative to unique personality inclinations. 

4. Create and Identify Context: then refine, refine, refine. The more defined you make your drawings on these lines, the more obvious the picture becomes and your identification of its attraction vs retractive points

As you've now experienced from 1 to 3, the more "aha" experiences you have on the human condition all the way to individual examples you can paint with your life, this greater nuance translates into a solidarity that spells out fluid action with ease because now the world of another is much more cleverly defined in context with the world of self. Naturally, this not only translates into comprehension that enhances intellectual navigation but its going to completely change your energy as well that will make you not only less conflict prone but conflict susceptible which alters in advance the way people react to you and the likelihood that they even choose responses that are akin to 'conflict prone territory', in essence you've not only internally changed the future but now you're literally giving off a new vibration that alters the chemical energetic makeup of another and vice versa that establishes new grounding points that redefine the context by which conflict occurs, likely towards more progressive healthy ends where there is the maturity to facilitate. 

5. You are your energy far before you are the mind of your thoughts that are the makeup of that ancillary, and they are too

Definitions create the spaces of our energy and energy creates the spaces of our energies. Focus on altering the energy within and the energy without will naturally change, vice versa. You can practice moving your energy in various ways for example and notice via self experimentation how a change on the lines of energy here are a training of the maturity of those lines that makeup the self, its world and the complementary other and its world along with the boundaries that define the governance of our (conflict) mediation to mutual evolution.