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Relationships
The Art of Moving From Conflict to Connection
From butting heads to sharing hearts.
Posted June 3, 2022 Reviewed by Ekua Hagan
Key points
- Conflict is a natural part of relationships, but people can learn to navigate it in ways that lead to greater connection.
- When triggered, one can pause, go inside oneself, and find a resource that can self-soothe.
- Developing the capacity to attend to one's feelings and be gentle with them helps one learn to respond rather than react.
How often have you been in relationships where conflict quickly escalated, creating distance and heartache? Perhaps you're currently in a partnership or friendship where you get easily triggered—and say or do things you later regret and don’t know how to repair.
What does it take to move from butting heads to sharing hearts?
Conflict is unavoidable in our important relationships. We have an inbred longing to feel loved, understood, and connected. When that longing is frustrated, we may experience a threat to our emotional safety and well-being. Whether that threat is real or imagined, our fight, flight, freeze response gets triggered--hurling us down a familiar rabbit hole.
When triggered, some people shut down and withdraw as a way to protect their tender hearts. Others go on the offensive—blaming, shaming, criticizing, and judging as a way to vent their overwhelming emotions, or as a desperate, misguided way to reestablish connection.
Here are three vital keys for moving from conflict to connection:
1. Pause: The first thing we need to do when we’re emotionally activated is slow down. Pausing long enough to go inside ourselves is an antidote to reacting. The impulse to react is natural, but we need to apply our executive functioning to the situation. We can draw upon our rational brain to temper our emotional reactivity. We can tap into our parasympathetic nervous system rather than remain a victim of our self-protective flight/fight impulses. How do we do that? The first step is to pause, which stops the runaway freight train.
As we pause, we give ourselves an opportunity to tap inner resources within that calm us, preferably before a battle has time to brew. Taking a few slow, deep breaths is a well-researched way to stay connected to ourselves and soothe ourselves. Invisible helpers are available if we pause and know where to look.
2. Attending to Our Feelings: As we slow down, we can bring our attention to what we’re noticing inside. For many people, anger is the first emotion they notice—and perhaps act upon. It’s tempting to fly into rage and blame when we’re emotionally triggered.
There can be short-term satisfaction in blaming, shaming, criticizing, or diagnosing others rather than looking within. Blaming is designed to avoid emotional discomfort by shifting our pain to someone else. Then they may react by shifting the hot potato of shame and pain back to us. Conflict escalates.
It takes one person to have the presence of mind, inner strength, and self-awareness to make the first move toward peace. Rather than attacking or shutting down, we can bring attention to our bodies and our inner worlds. What are we really feeling inside? Is it okay to be with our experience as it is—meeting and welcoming it with an open heart?
Anger is a primary and healthy emotion when there is abuse or injustice, but oftentimes anger is a secondary emotion. Anger has been designed by nature to protect us from pain and help us survive. It worked well when we were dealing with saber-soothed tigers, but it doesn’t work so great as our go-to reaction in our intimate relationships.
If we can allow our anger to be there, while bringing gentleness and kindness toward our inner experience, we might notice an array of more vulnerable feelings. These might include sadness, hurt, shame, or fear. If we can find the strength and mindfulness to notice these more tender feelings—being with them in an accepting, friendly way, we may find that they begin to shift.
As the saying goes, “What we resist will persist.” As we open to the full range of our felt experience, we find more inner peace. Self-soothing happens as we embrace our experience just as it is.
Sharing Our Authentic Heart
Honoring our feelings just as they are is the beginning of self-love. As we embrace our authentic feelings, we’re then positioned to share our feelings and needs from a tender place rather than a combative one. As our tone of voice and demeanor reflect our deepest feelings and desires—as we congruently express what we’re experiencing inside— we’re more likely to elicit a receptive response.
It’s difficult to continue arguing with someone who is not inclined to fight back. As we become more practiced in sharing from our hearts rather than butting heads, we create a safer environment for connection and trust.
Sharing from our hearts can feel vulnerable as we expose something tender inside us. Tender shoots are easily crushed by insensitive people trampling through our tender garden. Our authentic heart needs to be protected by having flexible boundaries.
As I explain in The Authentic Heart:
“The way forward lies in your ability to surrender to love and intimacy while having the backup ability to maintain a certain kind of boundaries that keeps you connected to yourself. Understanding how to create flexible personal boundaries—differentiating your world from another’s world—creates a healthy foundation for love.”
Moving from conflict to connection is a relational art all-too-rarely taught or embodied. It requires the gentle intention to stay close to ourselves. Then, when potential conflicts are brewing—when we feel judged or slighted (whether this is real or imagined)—we have inner resources to draw upon so that we can respond in a measured way rather than react hastily—and in a way we might regret.
As we move through life staying connected with ourselves, we’re less rattled when someone else’s needs or views differ from ours. We can express our feelings while hearing theirs. We’re not so threatened when another’s needs differ from ours. No longer so alarmed or threatened by differences, we can move gracefully with the ebbs and flows that are a natural part of every relationship.
© John Amodeo
