My fear of conflicts.
Conflicts stress me out. I try to steer clear of any potential conflict. Hell, I can’t even watch movies and soaps that have a scene with a potential conflict coming up; I’ll change the channel or walk away. Recently, I had work situation where I had to deal with a potential conflict, or rather start a conversation that could result in a conflict. I procrastinated for a couple weeks, and after I could no longer possibly delay it, I sent out an email. I got a response within a few hours, and obviously as expected, the person had valid reasons for why he was not OK with what I was proposing. I was fuming. My wife happened to notice I was slightly off, and asked what happened. I snapped at her- ‘can’t I have one moment alone; can’t I be silent for one moment? Do I need to explain everything all the time’? I spent the next few hours feeling guilty about the outburst, and in parallel, continued to fume. I had a session coming up with my therapist the next day, and obviously this was what I was going to talk about.
Why did conflicts stress me out? Why did I have so much trouble facing a conflict? I had read enough about creating a win-win situation, putting oneself in the other person’s shoes to understand what they really wanted, and so on; of course, nothing helped me from being stressed. I wondered- is there actually a conflict, or was everything just playing in my mind? I read about inner and outer conflicts; inner being conflicts between two parts of yourself wanting different things, and outer being conflicts that are external in nature. In one of the group therapy workshops I attended, a point came up about how everything lies within us. There is no need to react. There is no need to respond. You can deal with every situation within yourself. There is no point responding or reacting when the other person is not ready to listen; you will expend your energy and only get more frustrated. I asked my therapist- is there something like inner and outer conflicts? Why am I so averse to conflicts?
The first thing we set straight- there are no outer conflicts. There are only inner conflicts. Outer conflicts are just situations that need a solution. There are two parts within us that are under conflict- we assume one of those, and project the other part on the other person. If we start observing how we react to what the other person is saying, and just address things on face value, we will slowly, but surely, get rid of our inner conflicts. What will remain is just the situation that needs to be handled, and as we handle more situations, and conquer more inner conflicts, eventually, these situations will not stress us out. We also spoke about how everything is in conflict, and directly related to how they balance each other. Starting from subatomic particles, everything survives in relation to each other. Organs within us, while exist independently, work in relation to other organs to sustain the human body, humans sustain themselves in relation to the environment, and you can look at the entire universe as parts of a whole, until God or whatever universal force that is indivisible. Once we are able to see the whole of the parts in conflict, and by this I don’t mean inner conflict, we will be able to address the situation.
This made sense to me in a simplistic manner; after all, when two individuals have a problem, they escalate it one level up to get someone else, say their boss if these are employees, to resolve it. It is not that that the individuals don’t have the ability to resolve it. It is just that they have not transcended the level of the conflict, and looked at it from one level up. I also went back and looked at the emails in question; one email had a question which I had interpreted to be sarcastic; it felt like the person was asking me to question to pinpoint some fault with me. In the second email, he was just stating why he did not think someone from his team would not be able to handle a project. I was projecting my insecurities on to him. This was another thing that we spoke about in my session.
I’ve always had a nemesis at all stages of my life. Someone I compare myself with, feel that’s how I want to be, and feed my insecurities. I wanted to understand if this pattern was also about me projecting my inner conflicts on to different people. In a way, it made sense. I’ve always wanted to be a go-getter. I’ve always been in awe of people who are aggressive, are achievers, and grow faster than others in the team. I’ve always wanted to be like that, and I’ve always believed it is something that I can be. However, I’ve never been able to be like that. There is a part in me that strongly believes I am not good enough, and there is a part in me that believes I can be that go-getter. I choose to take the position of not being good enough, and I project the achiever part of me on to someone in the team, and as they say, what you believe happens, the other person grows in ranks faster than me. My therapist then asked me- tell me three characteristics of an achiever (according to me); the three things that came to my mind were- spontaneity, confidence, and the ability to solve problems. The next question was whether I’ve at any point in time displayed these characteristics, which was an interesting question. Some of my friends consider me the most confident, spontaneous person they knew, and it is true; my insecurities don’t surface at all with some people. I’ll be my most confident self when I’m amongst them. So, in a way, depending on the situation, and who I am with, I alternate between the two parts within me – the confident part and the insecure part. I realized that the choice was with me then. I can choose to be confident or insecure. I asked my therapist: how can I ensure I always choose the confident part? He smiled and said, all you have to do is to be aware of what you are choosing. You don’t have to try to change anything. The next time you feel insecure with someone, consciously make an effort to be aware if you are projecting your achiever part on to the other person, and taking the insecure position. As you do this repeatedly, the conflict will slowly break, and you will realize you are the achiever.
Coming back to the original conflict with my work that I was talking about. My email triggered a string of responses. I pushed back hard, took a stand, and tried to be objective about how I looked at each response. All of these happened in a matter of two hours. I had two calls within these two hours, unrelated to the conflict. I just could not focus. I could hear the other person speaking, but could not understand what he was saying. My mind was still thinking about what should be my response to the last email. I was aware that this was happening and I tried to get back to the present, and was successful in parts. I was flabbergasted at the impact a very minor conflict had on my mind. Eventually, the result wasn’t what I wanted. I knew even before I started the email thread that the solution wasn’t simple and I would eventually have to do what I did not want to do. Generally, I would have just gone ahead with it, assuming that anyway there would be no solution. However, this wasn’t about me. This was about my team. Hence, I had to push. Irrespective of the outcome, I’m glad I did. While in the short term, it wasn’t an outcome that I wanted, everyone agreed that this was a problem, and we needed to find a solution in the long term.
I mentioned earlier that I was uncomfortable with conflicts even in movies. I was wondering how the inner conflict theory could be applied to it. Was I projecting some part of me on to the characters in the movie? It did not make sense to me. I think as I face more situations that are typically thought of as external conflicts, I will stop seeing these external situations as conflicts, and my fear of conflicts will go away. It is this fear that makes me uncomfortable. I need to first be aware of my inner conflicts, treat external situations as situations and not conflicts, and as I do this more and more, I will no longer fear conflicts.
Anyway, that’s how I’m thinking today. Looking back, as I go through the daily grind, different situations bring different levels of clarity, and my understanding of conflicts might be different a year from now. Does not matter. What matters is that today, I’ve grown a little in my understanding of my fear of conflicts. That’s all that matters.