Afraid of Confrontation and Conflict? A Primer for All of Us

Have you ever wondered why it is that you, or someone you care about, is SO afraid of confrontation and conflict?  What causes a person to avoid confrontation and/or conflict like it's their job?  How does an individual's past history impact living in a state of avoidance versus assertive communication?  How can a person make positive changes in this regard, if in fact it is even possible?  Keep reading....

It isn't enough to believe or excuse oneself  by claiming "Well, I'm an introvert...and introverts don't like confrontation or conflict of ANY kind." Believing a statement like that presumes some clearly negative traits about people of "introvert" status.  This would be like saying, "Well, I'm a (insert label of choice here)...and (same label for group) cannot dance."  Give me a break.  This isn't fact.  This is fallacy.  So, erase this part of your "absolutely true about everyone who is (insert label here)" belief system today.  This is why being "woke" is such a controversial issue these days.  People really do believe that they genuinely understand ALL people who are A, B, C, D, or E.  Which is a joke.  I don't understand you and you don't understand me until we start honestly communicating with each other about "who" we are exactly across all areas of our own life and functioning!  Also, if you really want to cut down to the chase of "woke" status, how about this:  I will accept, respect, and honestly interact with you any day of the week.  However, if and when our communication degrades down to my realization that your character is in the crapper....that's when I no longer would want anything to do with you.  Kind of like meeting and getting to know Jeffrey Dahmer at the one end of the spectrum...or the casual misogynist neighbor up the street on the other end.  In other words, when I realize that someone is a person of questionable and/or obviously "not good" character---I bounce!  That's how I remain "woke" to myself.

So let's start by looking at what confrontation actually is.  It is when we want to communicate what we most often perceive as an "uncomfortable truth" with someone else.  That truth may relate to ourselves...or the person we are speaking to...or a "system" of some kind (family, work group, neighborhood HOA meeting members, etc.).  Just as important, when we have a NEED we want to communicate to someone---and that person is instrumental in having our need satisfied.  Just because we will be communicating something that isn't necessarily "easy" for us to share or say---confrontation does NOT mean the listener(s)' response will be immediately shaming, guilt-inducing, frightening, harshly judgmental, and/or otherwise inappropriate.  HOWEVER, people who are reluctant to share uncomfortable truth(s) or personal need(s) typically can't fanthom the thought of losing someone's approval, acceptance, and "like" over something they communicated as part of a conversation.

So, this meme came up on my facebook feed the other day.  It's true.  Absolutely true.  Without a doubt true.  Is this your history that led to your adult pattern of avoiding confrontation and conflict like the plague?  And listen...this outcome can also come from growing up with ANY adult or older-than-you family member who treated you in this manner more often than every so often!  Don't you remember, "Stop crying!  I'll give you something to cry about!"  "Quit your belly-aching!  Do you think we're made of money?!"  "Stop being so selfish!  You aren't the only kid in this house!" and/or the infamous "I wish you had never been born!"

Yeah, like that.  When we are brave enough to say what we think, feel, or actually need as children...only to be taught that our own thoughts, feelings, and/or needs mean very little or nothing to the "elders" around us---how do you think YOU would turn out later on?  This way, that's how!

Of course, there is hope.  There is always hope.  You still aren't living in that imprisoning world of yesteryear.  You, yourself, are fully adult now.  You CAN practice with whomever you want how to say what you mean, mean what you say, not say it mean, and say it on time and to the right person.  Yes, you can do it!  Yet you have to acknowledge that you can't live in a constant state of IMAGINED fear when you think about saying or sharing "this" or "that" with someone you believe might shame you in some way for expressing yourself and/or your needs to them!

If nothing changes, remember that nothing changes!

You matter.  Your thoughts, your beliefs, your attitudes, and your opinions...all of these things DO matter.  Unless you are able to clearly communicate these things comfortably---you won't.  And when that happens, no one will be able to recognize the lovely person you are underneath all that imagined fear plus worry!  

Think about it this way:  if you believe something you say to another person will automatically count as "confrontational"....why are you thinking that way?  What you are doing inside your own head is believing a couple of things that are not typically based in reality:  "If I disagree with someone else's opinion, attitude, or belief---I am being confrontational/asking for drama." "If I say what I want or need from someone directly---I am being weak/selfish/pathetic etc. etc."  No, you are not.  You are merely expressing yourself openly and honestly.  Remember when I mentioned above about not wanting to be in a relationship with people of questionable or no good character?  Unless you are dealing with someone of this type...you aren't!  So stop presuming everyone whom you share your own thoughts, feelings, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs with----will respond or react to you badly.  They won't.  And even if someone does offend you by what they say, all you have to do is respond with the one question that puts the responsibility of what's happening in real time back to the individual offender:  "Interesting.  What made you say that just now?"

Until next post...

Today is Thanksgiving Day 2022.  Happy Thanksgiving and here's a thought for this day:  

Happy people are not always thankful, yet thankful people are always happy. <3

Maybe 2023 is the year we can all practice being grateful for what we have...instead of angry, resentful, and/or bitter about what we don't have!

Are You...Paying "Appropriate" Attention?!??!

Paying attention...and sustaining focus...is one of the executive functions of every human brain.  When we have difficulty with paying appropriate attention to ourselves and others, life can get very complicated very quickly.  And with humanity being the way it is, we tend to pay way too much attention to the people, places, and things we "want" to pay attention to----and then pay very little if any attention at all to the people, places, and things we perceive as an undesirable responsibility, a duty, and/or a form of obligation.  Yep, that's how we roll all right.  We either want the love, acceptance, and approval of certain people we come across in this lifetime---and/or we want to experience power, pleasure, and/or avoiding certain personal responsibilities we don't feel like being responsible for on a consistent basis!  This is a fundamental dilemma of every human being in existence, once he/she/they are old enough to "notice" it!  We want to pay too much attention to what makes us feel powerful (which is DIFFERENT from feeling "empowered" oh by the way!).  When we want to feel "powerful", that usually involves someone paying the price (and not in a good way!).  

When we are motivated by our need to be and feel "empowered"...that means we are confident enough in one's own ability to COMFORTABLY say what you mean, mean what you say, don't say it mean, and say it on time to the right person(s) involved in the discussion of the moment.  So, just to be clear, feeling "powerful" and being "empowered" are two very different things!

Any person over the age of five knows what it's like to want to feel pleasure in whatever form that takes in one's own life.  How each of us goes about pursuing those feelings of pleasure are going to depend on what we are into...what we are passionate about...what we "prefer", etc. etc.  Some people eat dessert...a lot.  Some people read books.  Others go shopping.  There are those who fish and hunt.  I could go on...yet pursuing "pleasure" does have its limits.  When we pay more attention to "this" than we do to our own real lives outside of our pleasure pursuits---we can end up clueless to our own real life reality.  Just imagine every vice and addiction in existence and you'll understand my point.  When people allow their vices to run and ruin them...they usually do (run and ruin them!)!

What causes attention-related problems in the human brain?  All sorts of things, that's what!  Attention-deficit disorder chief among them...but then diagnoses of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and pretty much ANY of the other anxiety-based disorders can do it as well.  After all, who can "think straight" when they are anxious enough?  That would be nobody!  Traumatic brain injuries can also cause attention-related problems inside the brain...as can certain viruses contracted throughout our lives.  Did you know, for example, that the latest neurobiochemical research has demonstrated that carriers of the herpes simplex virus are more likely to develop Alzheimer's as they age?  Yep, no kidding.  Just like the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy has now been linked to babies born on the spectrum for Autism.  There are other factors of course, including sustained emotional neglect during childhood, poisoning by toxic elements found in our air, water, and food, alcoholism, drug use and abuse, etc.  

Since my work often involves "waking up" ourselves to the relevant facts of who we are "now" and how we got there...I am always grateful for the historical perspective(s) my clients can speak about when they start paying "appropriate" attention to their own life's narrative.  For example:

"Yeah, that time I first got stitches at age three for running into a picnic table.  Every time my parents would tell me that story, they would also tell me how it scared the living hell out of my aunt!  Not my parents, not my uncle...but my aunt!  So what was the point of telling me that story in the same way so often throughout my life?  Doesn't make any sense!"  (Paying "appropriate" attention to a past event involving parental neglect and ambivalence...)

"Listen, all I know is I hate confrontation AND conflict.  I just do.  I don't know why...I don't know where I learned it from...I don't know why I feel like my mind and my insides are in a constant state of emergency..."  (Paying "appropriate" attention to issues around past emotional neglect and what happened when we made our OWN needs known to someone else we loved and cared about...)

"Both of my parents treated me like I existed to take care of my younger siblings.  I didn't get anything "good" for being the 24/7 babysitter of my siblings.  In fact, I got yelled at a LOT about what I didn't do correctly.  JC, I was only a kid myself!  Why would they ever think it was o.k. to have a kid under 10 years old being in charge of a literal infant and two toddlers?"  (Paying "appropriate" attention to a mutual "avoidance of personal responsibilties" on the part of this individual's parents growing up...)

"I don't know....I came here thinking my problem was about my boyfriend not listening to me and not respecting what I ask him for.  Now I am thinking my problem is me putting up with anything from any man I date so I don't end up alone..."  (Paying "appropriate" attention to casual misogyny in the context of a primary "love" relationship...)

Waking up from our own unique forms of the deep sleep IS truly a good thing!  Staying asleep---not so much.  When we stay asleep to the lessons our lives have been repeatedly showing us, we are doomed to repeat the same crap and same mistakes our parents/grandparents/siblings/extended family "taught" us throughout our growing up years.  This and all the other stuff we learned from our peer group(s) and "outsiders" to our family system as well!  Waking up translates to Step 1 of breaking our own cycle of dysfunction.  Step 1 also translates to "recognizing" what we have been thinking, feeling, and doing/not doing that is NOT good for us.  When we can recognize and then take responsibility for ourselves in this way, we are learning how to go from paying too much attention to the wrong things...and not enough attention to the right things....to paying more "appropriate" attention generally speaking!

These days, I still find it astounding how many people will just walk across a road or parking lot without looking up---and/or around them first!  Just because the law in our state specifies that pedestrians have the right of way, that law does NOT mean that a pedestrian can just walk themselves into vehicles that are only inches away from them while in transit.  I mean, in the old days we called this behavior a straight up "suicide attempt".  Yet these days, walking into moving vehicles is accepted practice (?!)  Because NOT paying attention is becoming accepted practice across all areas of life and functioning for ALL of us!

Don't get me started on cell phones.  In our quest to be entertained, are we really so obsessive that we cannot function in real life reality without them?  I have often said if our country were actively engaged in some form of global warfare...half of our population would no doubt die within the first couple of weeks!  Without their cell phones, or their Starbucks, or their porn, or their Dr.FeelGood(s) substances and practices nobody knows about....all dead.  I give it two weeks.  No kidding.

Just read today, by the way, that some idiot or multiple idiots are attaching explosive devices to drones.  You know, the kind you can buy these days from most any toy store because hey, "drones" are fun to play with (?!).  Okay then!  Love the direction this world is headed because WE ARE NOT PAYING APPROPRIATE ATTENTION!

I could go on, but I'd be typing here for another week.  To close today's post about paying more appropriate attention...just try paying more appropriate attention to the "ads" you see when your game of Solitaire or Wheel of Fortune or Candy Crush (on your phone) times out and you are forced to watch some random game app ad for 20 or 30 seconds.  Are you sick and shocked simultaneously?!  I sure have been!  To talk about sexist, mysoginistic, sexually inappropriate, vile, abusive, and otherwise rated "X" content in cartoon form is just freaking MIND BLOWING!  And these *%$)_@ ad designers don't think young kids are seeing this garbage when they suddenly appear online?  Of course they do!  That's their whole point!  

When we go after our own kids in order to corrupt them the way we "want" to corrupt them, we have lost both our humanity...and our souls.

Until next post...

Pay appropraite attention!  

Real Life Matters!

Yes it does!  Yet we humans have had a fascination with anything BUT "real life" for about for-ever!  Even when I was a kid myself back in the old days...I couldn't WAIT every morning to be able to watch cartoons before going to school.  Back then, early morning cartoons during the week and on Saturdays was pretty much all we kids had to take us away from real life---if only for 15 or 20 minutes.  Then, as I got older, Saturdays represented "babysit the kids with the t.v." day as the morning cartoons included "other" kid-focused television shows like Captain Kangaroo, Bozo the Clown, The Ghoul, Sir Graves Ghastly, etc.  On those days, we could sit in front of the t.v. staring at it for at least six hours or more.  The OG personal electronics device of the early 60's era no kidding!

Even walking home from school during my childhood, my friends and I would talk about pretty much anything BUT real life.  My third grade year was so caught up in the "Monster Mary" game I created for play at recess, I was WAY ahead of the curve when it came to module creation and functioning as my school's first official DM!  Strahd my behind okay?!  (You won't get the reference here unless you are a current or former player of D&D)!

Needless to say, as children...we can spend a lot of time fantasizing....role playing...getting caught up in any and all vain imaginings we can conjure up---and to what end?  To avoid reality, that's what end!  And we only get better and better at it as time goes rushing past--and we keep choosing fantasy over reality.

What we didn't know then was that learning to gaze at fantasy while only intermittently glancing at reality could become a seriously bad habit with the power to alter the course of our lives in ways more bad than good over time!

Real life matters.  It always has.  Just today I read that the author of the book Julie & Julia (which was made into a movie in 2009 featuring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep) passed away from a heart attack at age 49.  I did watch the movie when it came out, but I never read the book.  As part of her obit, it turns out the author wrote a second book "Cleaving:  A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession".  I remember reading that one after it came out until I couldn't stomach the content anymore.  I didn't link that second book to "her" until it was mentioned in her online obit.  IMHO, the author should have stopped while she was ahead (given the success of her first book).  As I read the reviews of her second book after her death...all I could think of was how easy it is to ignore AND avoid reality when someone prefers focusing on its alternative.  Now that she's gone at such an early age, I can only hope she is remembered more for her first book---rather than her second!

...and I can't help but wonder if she really would have gone ahead to write that dumpster fire of a second book had she known she would be dead before Halloween 2022!  

Real life cannot truly be avoided.  Even though people try very hard to avoid their own at times or all the time...or those of others they love and care about...reality cannot be swept away like dirt on one's kitchen floor.

Some more examples:  the applicant who shows up for a job interview as a receptionist at a busy urgent care facility...but who also sports 5" long talons (fake nails) and tells her interviewer, "Oh, I can work the computer just fine with these;  they don't bother me!"  

...the elderly man (or woman) who is seriously struggling to walk with every step, but who refuses to use a cane, or a walker, or a motorized scooter to move about....

...the young girl who consumes barely 600 calories a day, drinks no more than 16 oz. of water, and wonders why she feels "bad" most of the time...

...the teenager who knows "something" may be wrong with him/her/them...but parents keep saying "You're fine!  Whatever it is you'll grow out of it!" 

Real Life Matters!

If you need help with this issue, please get it!  Call or text me for book referrals, online or in-person support group referrals, and/or to make an appointment to see me!  

The more we drift away from "what is"...we may find that it becomes too overwhelming and too difficult to come back.  Don't let that happen to you!

Until next post....