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As someone who’s devoted my whole life to peace, I’ve not always known how to value conflict. I’ve judged, detested, and feared it.
As a result, I developed patterns that some might call “conflict avoidance” wherein I sought to maintain harmony, no matter the cost of it -including the denial of my own pain, or the pain of those who are dear to me.
This pattern developed for a few reasons:
Firstly, some important relationships have not allowed for my expression of anger or differing opinions. In these relationships, if I ever disagreed, or if anything was ever upsetting or hurtful to me, I was expected to suck-it-up and get-over-it (in the name of keeping-the-peace). If I failed to do so, there would be consequences: I would be portrayed as an un-peaceful trouble-maker and I would be blamed for causing the conflict (when, in reality, the conflict was created through differing understandings, needs, or through hurt being caused). Then, to enable the denial of my conflict-related feelings, I spent many years numbing myself with substances so that, ultimately, I too became a force of conflict suppression.
That being said, I do sincerely value the ability to foster inner-peace in the face of life’s challenges. Through understanding and acceptance, I have created an inner-sanctuary that allows me to appreciate my life even in times of difficulty. Some might say that this development is one of the silver-linings that have come from conflict suppression (by the will of others) or conflict avoidance (by my own will).
Still, though there is true power in the inner-sanctuary (where peace can be unwavering), the reality was that I wasn’t actually accepting or loving all the parts of me. Namely, I rejected the pieces that had anything to do with conflict: the parts that fought and the parts that fled, the parts that were mad, and the parts that had limits.
As a result, over the years I’ve witnessed how an overly-accepting and tolerant approach to life can make me sick, ultimately contributing to serious depression, horrible digestion, helplessness and an immense lack of self-worth.
I’ve also seen how the suppression of conflict (in the name of peace) has ironically created moments of explosive anger and amplified friction. These outbursts would happen in ways that felt out-of-control, making them especially scary, and validating my belief that conflict is best for avoiding.
All that to say, learning to make peace with conflict has been an ongoing journey, and is sometimes very confusing for me. This challenge has felt especially difficult in my life lately.
So, I’ve turned to my practice of creative reflecting.
I started with journaling, which ended up being a process of clarifying the disparities between my ideal self and who I am when the rubber meets the road. The aim of this practice was to bring love and understanding to both parts of me. Here’s what I came up with:
My Aim (ideal self) when Faced with Conflict
These are some things that I know are true, and that I do my best to achieve when faced with conflict:
It’s important to acknowledge within myself what does and doesn’t feel good in relationships.
It’s important for me to know my own limits and express them with consistency.
It’s important for me to take responsibility for my own emotions, actions, and reactions through self-care and self-reflection.
It’s important to practice patience and tolerance in relationships.
It’s important to communicate when someone’s else’s actions are affecting me negatively.
It’s important to communicate with respect and personal responsibility.
It’s important to remember and nurture the positive parts of a relationship during times that feel more negative.
It’s important to remember the innate value of all involved in the conflict (myself included).
When someone else communicates how my actions are affecting them, it’s important to seek to understand their experience (even when that means understanding how they’re scapegoating or projecting).
It’s important to respect others’ limits.
It’s important not to take things personally.
It’s important to be compassionate towards those I have conflict with (especially because: When I have contempt for the person who’s actions have affected me negatively, that person tend to be less inclined to understand me, and more inclined to lash back).
It’s important to be forgiving and merciful to myself and others.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road when Faced with Conflict
These are some challenges that I’ve faced when attempting to be my ideal self when faced with conflict:
I have a natural aversion to pain and loss, and a natural desire for stability and comfort. When I’m stressed, in pain, or at loss, I have less tolerance, less capacity to choose my words kindly, less ability to take things less personally, and less energy to approach the situation with patience and empathy.
In the process of growing, sometimes I overestimate what my limits are; sometimes I only realize my limits through experiencing the difficulties of them being pushed.
When someone expresses how my actions are affecting them negatively, contempt makes it harder for me to validate their experience.
I tend to feel aggressive when I’m treated aggressively. I tend to feel compassionate when I’m treated with compassion. Treating someone with compassion when I’ve been treated with contempt takes an enormous amount of energy and effort. When I’m exhausted, this is harder for me to do.
I have a harder time listening and respecting people who don’t show respect for me or listen to me. To do so requires an enormous amount of energy. When I’m exhausted, this is harder for me to do.
When I’m feeling insecure or overwhelmed, I tend to be more sensitive to conflict, less patient, less tolerant, less available to understanding others, and/or more defensive.
When I’m emotionally triggered, the emotional charge is sometimes rooted in trauma that happened in the past. This past trauma can influence the way I perceive the situation, making me more sensitive to it. When I overreact to situations, it’s hard for me to see the truth of what’s happening. Being told that I’m overreacting tends to exacerbate my reaction rather than diminish it. Being listened to with care and empathy is more often effective at helping to realize the true scale or severity of the situation.
When someone has a strong reaction to something that I did not intend, and/or when I feel unjustly blamed, I tend to feel defensive and/or ashamed. Defensiveness and shame make it harder for me to hear what the other person is saying.
When I’m afraid of being punished or humiliated, I tend to have less willingness to admit where I’ve played a part in the conflict.
When both I and the person who I have conflict with are tired, in pain, stressed, and overwhelmed, things can get especially confusing and hard to navigate.
With all that in mind, though I (like so many) have a natural tendency to look for who’s to blame when I’m in pain or afraid, when I look at these lists (which are, no doubt, ongoing), it becomes clear that the challenges of conflict might just be part of being human. This loving understanding is always the first step in my healing.
That being said, the next step of creative reflecting is deepening. So, after journaling, I looked to the mirror of (our) nature to see what reflections life might also have for me:
At the time, it was windy and a storm was on the way. That being said, weather has always been a bit scary for me. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve feared disasters hitting. For years I dreamt of tsunamis in different times and places; and one of my most memorable dreams is of thunder and lighting. Of course, these base fears have been amplified as I grew up with mounting threats to the environment and to life.
However, despite all my big fears of the weather, I’ve never really understood it. That the clouds float and the rain falls is something that I’ve taken for granted. So, with the storm looming, I decided to face it: my fear always shrinks with the growth of understanding. Surely, the reflection of rowdy weather will also help heal my conflict avoidance.
Since then, I’ve been nerding-out big-time on things like: how the atmosphere works, what air pressure is, why there is wind, how clouds form, why clouds turn into thunderstorms -and (perhaps most importantly): the gifts that rough weather brings.
In the process, I’ve found some meaningful reflections that speak to my confusions and fears around conflict. Though, I wouldn’t say that they’ve solved everything, they have grown my appreciation for the things that most scared me -and that’s a worthy step on the journey.
So, without further ado:
The Surprising Stability that Comes from Wind & Thunderstorms
Did you know the air has weight? Invisible and permeable, yet too heavy to negate: if the masses of the gasses added up around the planet, it would be as heavy as 10 meters of ocean covering it.1 Still, it’s not distributed evenly: the air is lighter in higher altitudes, and still lighter with the heat:
When the air is cool, the molecules stick together, like chilly children cuddled up in the freezing winter. No one moves around in this dense huddle; the air is still, heavy and stable -which is just how gravity likes it: the Earth likes the weight of the air, like a cool and heavy blanket.
But then the sun comes and the molecules awaken. They start bopping around with the heat that they’ve been given. Spread out and energized, they’re difficult to catch. Those hot rebellious molecules are hard for gravity to grab, and even harder to pin down when water’s mixed in; the air is even lighter when it becomes humid. I know it sounds strange as water’s heavier than air, but when water becomes a gas, its mass is even lighter. Just like the air spreads when the heat makes it dance, when the sun warms the water, it breaks free from its liquid trance.
Together the warm and wet air begins to rise, becoming lighter and lighter as it floats higher in the sky. But as it leaves, it leaves a hole behind, and gravity’s arms are left wide-open, empty and denied. Yearning for the steady weight of the cool and dense air, the space left behind becomes a vacuum in the atmosphere that sucks in higher pressure in the strangest of ways:
The chaos of the wind is born to bring stability.
The draw of this pressure gradient calls the cold, and as the windy font moves in, the warm air gets a jolt, shooting it high into the atmosphere, past the dew point where it cools into vapor: Clouds are born when moist rising air becomes water. Then, as the water condenses, it releases its heat, creating a bubble of warmth around it to keep it rising until to goes so high that it starts freezing.
This is the birth of the cumulonimbus: the thunderstorm cloud with updrafts so strong that the water freezes as it soars above, rising higher and higher into the atmosphere, up to 66,000 feet in the air2.
Still gaining weight on its updraft journey, the ice continues to grow until hail starts forming and becomes so heavy that the air can no longer hold it, allowing gravity’s grab to send it back to the surface.
Now comes the part, where the cloud becomes electric:
As the icy updraft crashes with the hail that falls, the collision passes particles between the rising and falling balls, which knocks negative ions to the bottom of the cloud, and sends positive charges up to the crown.
An electric field is formed by this polarization, creating a yearning between the opposites: the positive top and the negative bottom are indeed attracted.
This is birth the of lighting: in the charge separation, the pool of negative ions draws positive from all around: up from the earth, and down from the crown. Then, when the plus and minus finally meet, the encounter is so strong that it produces lightning: a flash that’s 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun3, causing the air to expand so fast that it sends shock waves to everyone.
This is the birth of thunder: the sound of light when positive and negative come together.
Overtime, as the downdraft of falling water gets even stronger, the wet and rising air has less power. But without the incoming moisture, the rain becomes lighter, and the cloud begins to dissipate, and the electric field gets weaker until the storm is gone completely and the sun begins to shine: the calm after the storm, the stable air and light.
In the process, the water and heat from the equator are carried to the poles, who also send their gifts to the middle: air masses of cold.
So, though it’s true that the sun shines disproportionately, with the wind and thunderstorms, the Earth shares the energy.
With all that in mind, this song sends love and mercy to the human condition where we all struggle sometimes in the storms of sharing life’s riches.
Through the wind and the thunder, may we have faith in our purpose.
Let’s Stay In Touch.
Love you so much.
Listen to the Read-Aloud
of The Surprising Stability that Comes from Wind & Thunderstorms
(cuz the song and story are made to be heard together)
https://scitechdaily.com/how-heavy-is-the-air-the-immense-weight-of-earths-atmosphere/
https://www.britannica.com/science/thunderstorm/Types-of-thunderstorms
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-temperature#:~:text=In fact, lightning can heat,bark to be blown off.
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