A frequent game at my dinner table that my oldest likes to play is to offer his opponents (also known as his siblings) two terrible options that his opponent has to pick. Anything from acts of bravery that may end your life or excessive greed if you only think about yourself.
Here might be a difficult challenge for those of us that are highly sensitive:
Would you rather tell your partner/mom/boss that you are mad at them or have a root canal?
I’m sure many of us will spend some time contemplating which is actually the worst option!
Even though I’m making light of this, it can be a really difficult thing for us to do.
Just the idea of conflict can fill us with such discomfort. For me, it’s like I have sandpaper on the inside scraping against my skin.
We can also become so confused by our anger. We either question ourselves or make excuses for the person. Questions like:
- Is it really a big deal?
- Am I just overreacting?
Or we start to make excuses for the person and how they behaved:
- I’m sure that isn’t what they meant.
- She must have just forgotten about me, she’s really busy.
The questions and excuse making helps us avoid the conflict.
For most of us, we become so overwhelmed by conflict that our brain goes empty. We might start out the conversation with clear thoughts but if the person disagrees with us and offers us their way of seeing the problem, we lose our thoughts and can end up agreeing with them.
It might be a few hours, days, or weeks before we realize that we actually didn’t agree. And then it’s hard to go back and have the conversation again.
Is it possible to change this behaviour? Yes, but it takes work. It’s about being intentional and building up this muscle.
Here are two suggestions to try:
- Before having the conversation, imagine it happening. As your heart starts to race and your mind feels foggy, take a few slow deep breaths and notice your body returning to a calm state. Continue this until you feel a bit more grounded.
- Write down two or three sentences that are the most important things you need to say about why you are upset. When you are speaking with the person you are upset with, look at what you wrote down. By simply reading this, you are bringing back the logical part of your brain which allows you to have the conversation.
Are there any other things you do that help you have difficult conversations?
