18/05/2025
Week 7 - Conflict resolution and triggers
Howdy comrades?! 😊
We discussed a very important issue this week: how to deal with conflicts both in our personal and professional lives!
❓So what is conflict?
It is a normal part of any healthy relationship. However, when mismanaged, it can cause great harm to a relationship. When handled in a respectful, positive way, conflict provides an opportunity to strengthen the bond between two people. 🔑The key is not to fear or try to avoid conflict but to learn how to resolve it in a healthy way.
We tend to respond to conflicts based on our perceptions of the situation, not necessarily to an objective review of the facts. Our perceptions are influenced by our life experiences, culture, values, and beliefs.
When a conflict triggers strong feelings, a deep personal need is often at the core of the problem. These needs can range from the need to feel safe and secure or respected and valued, to the need for greater closeness and intimacy.
🛜Through this journey, I help you connect with yourself on a deeper level and identify those very important needs.
In personal relationships, a lack of understanding about differing needs can result in distance, arguments and separation.
In the workplace, differing needs can result in broken deals, decreased profits, loss of trust and even quitting.
❓How do you respond to conflict?
❓Do you fear conflict or avoid it at all costs?
If your perception of conflict comes from painful memories from early childhood or previous unhealthy relationships, you may expect all disagreements to end badly.
If your early life experiences left you feeling powerless or out of control, conflict may even be traumatizing for you.
We discussed some healthy responses to conflict:
1. Showing empathy by considering the other person’s viewpoint.
2. Calm, non-defensive, and respectful reactions. This can be difficult in the moment but this is something we can work on.
3. A readiness to forgive and forget, and to move past the conflict without holding resentments or anger.
4. The ability to seek compromise and avoid punishing.
5. A belief that facing conflict head on and finding a solution is the best thing for both sides.
If you are out of touch with your feelings or so stressed that you can only pay attention to a limited number of emotions, you won’t be able to understand your own needs. This will make it hard to communicate with others and establish what’s really troubling you. It is therefore important to be able to identify what you need to work on and then only can you start the process of working on and through those emotions.
To successfully resolve a conflict, you need to learn and practice two core skills:
1.Quick stress relief, which is the ability to quickly relieve stress in the moment.
One of the most reliable ways to rapidly reduce stress is by engaging one or more of your senses—sight, sound, taste, smell, touch—or through movement. Remember our group exercise on mindfulness?
2.Emotional awareness, which is the ability to remain comfortable enough with your emotions to react in constructive ways, even in the midst of a perceived attack.
This is the key to understanding yourself and others. If you don’t know how or why you feel a certain way, you won’t be able to communicate effectively or resolve disagreements.Although knowing your own feelings may sound simple, many people ignore or try to sedate strong emotions like anger, sadness, and fear. Your ability to handle conflict, however, depends on being connected to these feelings. If you’re afraid of strong emotions or if you insist on finding solutions that are strictly rational, your ability to face and resolve differences will be limited.
🏠Take home messages:
Listen for what is felt as well as said.
Be respectful of the other person and their viewpoint.
Pick your battles.
Be willing to forgive.
Know when to let something go.
We also addressed some past and present conflicts and shared our experiences.
I just want to reiterate the importance of reporting bad behaviours, especially if it is at the workplace as there are laws in place to ensure your wellbeing. No one should be made to feel like they don’t belong.
🦋Nature is a very powerful healing resource and we turned to nature to clear our minds and regain our strength to fight for what is right and stop the poison from spreading. We asked nature to help us heal.
Now, while nature is great at recalibrating our inner selves, when the problem is an outsider, we need to seek help to fix that. So please remember this!!🧸
We talked about identifying triggers and how that knowledge can empower us to move away from “reaction mode” and into self-care.(more about self-care in Week 10!)
Once we feel like we have been triggered, it is important to step back and take a break. Never respond immediately.
Understand and acknowledge your feelings without judgement. Allow yourself to feel those feelings. You are not a rock. Do not suppress them as it will do more harm than good in the long run and we will be back to square one!
‼️Remember all the tools you have under your belt by now: mindfulness, meditation, grounding routine. Use them!!
Have clear healthy boundaries and use your support system!
Questions:
How can you process your emotional response better when faced with a conflict?
What coping mechanisms do you already have in place?
Activities:
🍊We are baking an orange, olive oil and cardamom cake (quite healthy!)
🖍️We are doing some colouring in our adult nature colouring book (I recommend the Mindwaves Calming Colouring: Nature – Book from Kmart, only $6!)
🔊When we go on our nature walk (and that can be anywhere we choose!) we are going to keep our ears open for some natural sounds (birds, insects, water, wind) and to record them (you can do it as a voice memo on your phone!).
🍃Fun fact: That calming sound of wind blowing through trees and rustling their leaves is known as psithurism (pronounced sith-err-iz-um). The word comes from the Greek word psithuros, meaning whispering.
Reflections:
Reflect on some of the triggers that you have been able to recognise and what techniques have been helpful to you to deal with them (eg deep breathing, journaling, mindfulness).
👯Have we caught up with any of our friends this week? How have we spent quality time with them and how did we feel before and after?
💸Next week we’re gonna be talking money!! (finances!)
Take care of yourselves and be kind to yourselves and to everyone around you. Many people fight invisible battles and neglect themselves. They find themselves in conflicting situations often and do not have the means to cope healthily. We must feel grateful that we have the knowledge and skills to try and deal with conflicts better compared to them. Do keep that in mind next time you find yourself in a hairy situation and try and be the bigger person! 😊🧡
