Conflict Addiction
When things don’t go your way, what do you do?
Do you shrug and give up, or are you more likely to heave and get even? Whether you unplug or blow a fuse, your response is likely linked to your early programming. Reflecting on your upbringing and relationship history will offer essential clues to understanding your reaction under pressure and when things stop meeting your expectations or start undermining your preferences.
Defined simply, conflict is what happens inside of you when something outside gets in the way of you getting your way.
Chalk one up for the evolution of self-defense.
There is a hidden problem with conflict reactions; they make you feel better in the moment but make things worse in the long run. At first, stuffing it down or forcefully getting it out seems like the thing to do. This is because the mind under conflict thinks impulsively rather than advisedly.
Let’s explore this idea a bit more.
Think about your mind as a travel guide. It’s a handy book of information about the places you’ve been. It contains highlights of the peaks you’ve climbed and the valleys you’ve survived. With this analogy in mind, turn to the section in your guide about “Conflict.” Without going into therapy for the next six years, take the next six minutes and review this chapter. What did your parent’s marriage teach you about conflict? If you had siblings, how did your rivalries enlighten you? Consider middle school, if you dare, and review what happened around you. Were you bullied? Did you get ignored? Were you never invited to parties? When you started dating, how did things go? How did friendships end? If you didn’t earn top honors, what place were you given when considering the distinction “Most likely to have things always go your way?”
When weighed, these and many more questions provide a sneak peek into your conflict style. You’re here now because of what happened then and there. Being aware of your yesterdays gives you more power to handle today’s ups and downs.
The Grip of Conflict
The downside of what happened to you when things didn’t go your way is that it created a disconnect inside you. If you are the person who shies away from conflict, preferring to sweep things under the rug, you’re not being you. Flipping the coin over, if you are prone to flying off the wall, again, you’re not being you. Yes, you are defending yourself. But you’re not being your true self. You’re being a protected version. Whether you put up walls or prefer to knock them down, your self deserves to be discovered.
The bottom line is that you’ve been trained to react rather than respond in difficult moments. As conflict builds, distrust grows. Perhaps you don’t trust others, or maybe you’ve stopped trusting yourself. Either way, resentments, and emotional upheavals fill the distance between you and your preferred reality. In this way, conflict is the rope in your tug-o-war.
When this happens repeatedly, the grip of conflict tightens. Because of your self-protective nature, paradoxically, stiffening your grip during future conflicts is common. Creating an image of a tug-o-war pitting you against your lifetime of conflict is pivotal to evolving your ability to navigate conflict more effectively.
In short, it’s time for you to “grow up!”
What this expression means is different than you think. In this context, "growing up” means eliminating old habits you don’t need anymore. That’s sound reasonable, right?
Conflict Addiction
Against this backdrop, the concept of “conflict addiction” hopefully becomes more digestible and hopefully manageable. If I had told you at the beginning of this blog that “you are addicted to conflict,” you probably would have sneered or dismissed outright the possibility of this being true. Knowing that we all are addicted to handling conflict due to what we learned during times we didn’t know we were being taught helps set the stage for you to drop the rope, which ends your inner tug-o-war.
Summing up and moving on, ask yourself, “What do you do when you don’t know what to do?” Your answer is deeply personal and exceptionally revealing. If you do the same thing repeatedly without good results, chances are high that you’re trapped in a conflict cycle.
To break the cycle and regain control of your conflict style, check out other blogs on this website dealing with the sticky topic of conflict. In addition, you may want to consider pressing the button below to learn more about relationship intelligence, which focuses on how to “turn conflict into connection.” Sounds amazing, right?
Press the button below to learn more about how your mind works as described in Dr. Zierk’s book, Mind Rules: Who’s in Control, You or Your Mind?