Conflict with Care
If we don't learn to conflict with care, we might have to resort to wars.
I am someone who one might view as a fighter-cock. I don’t know if that word still has currency today, as it did, some 30 years ago, but it is a word that has made me who I am- somebody whose heart doesn’t race when I am confronted. In this four-part article, I hope to shed some light on conflict- on how I approach it and my thoughts around it. My sincere hope is that through this article, you are able to broach uncomfortable topics, be honest about your needs and also look at someone else as capable of making a change. I accept that I might come across as all-knowing and preachy here, it is a risk I take of trusting, just as I do when I broach uncomfortable topics. In the first part of the article, I will look at why people typically avoid conflict, in the second and third, I share some of the ways in which I have approached and engaged with conflict and in the fourth, I reflect on why conflicting with care, is a feminist issue. Please share your thoughts with me, in the comments, even if you disagree with me. I am confrontable <Hehe>
In mid- January of this year, I received a response from my friend, who I have known and been friends with for about 20 years, saying that I was too intellectual, had double standards and was antisemitic. A few weeks after that, I was told by another friend of mine, who I have similarly known for 20 years, accusing me of ‘thinking I know too much’. None of these are verbatim messages, but interpretations of the words they used for me. Just in case, these words come across as backhanded compliments (except antisemitic and having double standards), let me clarify, these were not. These messages were exchanged with me, on WhatsApp, in response to my attempting to address a brewing conflict that was either being brushed under the carpet or going unnoticed.
This is not the first time I have been in conflict with people, who I have considered close. I have had and continue to have a tumultuous relationship with my father. My mother and I have also shared a fairly tenuous relationship. I fight with my sisters and husband all the time. When I was younger, I was called a ‘fighter-cock’ and I know some of my friends in my building avoided me. The list of examples can be endless (I just recently spoke my mind to my landlord, and his entire family gathered in the room, where I was speaking), but what I want to say is that these events have made me comfortable with conflict. I have been on both sides of power- as someone who was not being heard and as someone whose hearing mattered. And also sometimes in between, caught in the middle of two conflicting parties. But all these years of not shying away from conflict has led me to become the person I am today- someone who welcomes conflict as a way to strengthen relationships. I have unshakeable faith that when we fight we do so because we want to course correct and come together, and because brushing things under the carpet, just waiting for the day when the relationship will naturally die, is not how I think of people’s place in my life. I have known people who put up with discomfort waiting until the conflicting person goes their own way- whether through a new job, a different home, moves countries, or in some cases, dies. I think that that kind of waiting is just a disrespect of your own time and also an undermining of your own ability to find peace. I can already hear one of my friends who messaged me in January (and perhaps you too, dear reader) asking me to get off my moral high donkey. (Ok, I hear you. But please hear me too.)
Conflict avoidance
There are many people who avoid conflict for multiple reasons and I know some of them from personal experience. Some of us come from families where conflict necessarily meant inciting violence. Any kind of resistance, assertion of one’s wishes, or disobedience was met with punishments- physical or otherwise. One of my friends, once told me, when we were in college that she disliked eating poha, but never told her mother, because it would mean that there would be poha for the next two weeks. Families can replicate torture in more creative ways than what the CIA might write in their Kubark manuals and my friend’s mom was clearly imaginative. My friend though had learnt how to endure the torture of an occasional poha rather than voice out her dislike for it. Conflict avoidance in her case, was also self-preservation (I will reflect a little more on self-preservation in the last article).
In some families, like mine, conflict included being physically beaten, which obviously meant, keeping quiet was wiser. In other families, that I know of quite closely, there was no place for conflict as powerless ones were manipulated to believe that it didn’t exist or that their demands were illegitimate. Any potential conflict was nullified with responses that belittled their concerns. <What, you think your brother is my favourite? Impossible, I am your mother!> Gaslighting is the word that gets thrown around these days for what I am describing. This means that children never gained the opportunity to build their negotiation skills or recognise and regulate their emotions.
On the other hand, I have also come across adults with whom conflicts are rare, or they never escalate into full blown fighting. From my observation, these people belong to those families, where their issues were addressed in a reasonable manner which taught them to replicate these ways to address their issues with others. For example, when my 18-month-old niece had begun to shriek, we were taken aback and didn’t know how to respond. Were we to keep quiet and ignore her or were we to threaten her and silence her? We didn’t know what the right response would be, until I saw my favourite parenting manual, The Natural Child, which said, that children start shrieking as a panic response if they begin to suspect that they are not being understood. At that point, if adults validate the child’s feelings, they begin to feel understood and don’t feel the need to scream. We tried that with our neice with some success, in the sense that she stopped screaming, maybe she felt understood? Most often, the root of all conflict is not being understood. Adults who are able to prevent little misunderstandings from forming into full blown fights, are those who are able to be present and communicate their presence to the other party, at the right time in the right amount, thus making one feel seen and understood. It’s like watering a plant, little by little, every day. Avoiding conflict, does the exact opposite, shuns the aggrieved party by making it look like, nothing went wrong, all is well, when all is in fact hell. This results in a panic response; am I being understood? Am I being seen? And the conflict blows up, perhaps because the concerns were not responded to in adequate ways in the first place. The corrosion of trust, as you see, had already begun and what might come after can only be from a place of mistrust.
<In the next newsletter, I will share some ways in which I have approached and engaged with conflict. Stay tuned!>
Always a great perspective, penned down well