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3.2 | What have you learned from / observed around conflict and difficult conversations?
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I am learning that the story I have long told myself about conflict and my conflict-avoidance is just that – a story. I can choose each day how I orient to conflict, whether I see it as to be avoided at all costs, necessary grist for the mill, or a gift and opportunity.
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I noticed that my instinct is to avoid difficult conversations and conflict, especially in my personal relationships. This behavior has spilled into professional settings as well. In the past two months, I’ve started to lean into the difficult conversations and look at them as opportunities to discover more and for growth. I’ve been using some skills I learned through Strozzi to make requests and offers. These practices have made addressing conflict and difficult conversations more approachable.
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Though I generally deal with conflict head-on, by slowing down and observing the content of my own mind in preparing for and during a charged conversation, I’ve discovered several areas of improvement I can begin to focus on. The biggest one is allowing myself to tap into my body during these experiences to better calm my heart, opening greater opportunities for active listening (rather than rebuttal generation), and focusing on our mutual common humanities and thus, common goals. This is already helping me to be more relaxed during conflicts, which I’ve noticed this has also disarmed my colleagues in some sense, opening their minds to shared conversations rather than simple negotiations.
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COGNITIVE: I’ve been thinking a lot about what Mark Epstein said on a recent podcast interview:
“People are often coming (to therapy) with explanations about who they are, or what’s wrong with them, or how they see the world, or how they see their partners/children/parents, or their past experience. They’re coming with formulations that can never be totally true because any individual’s history or reality can never be totally captured. There’s always more to the story than our minds can conceive, but our minds are always trying to conceive it and lock it down.”It’s impossible for any human to see beyond their slice of reality. We’re only seeing a fragment of the whole picture. Many conditions (e.g. a lot of trust and safety, etc.) have to come together for any of us to have the privilege to gain deep access to the full inner world of others (particularly their needs and vulnerabilities), and to understand their karmic streams.
When I sit with this insight, I recall the “don’t know mind” that Zen Buddhists seek to cultivate. When my mind habitually tries to fill in the blanks to create a fuller narrative, I can be aware of this process, and instead of immediately buying into this story, I can step back with more of a “don’t know mind”- while staying connected to what I know is actually be true, which is the truth of interconnectedness/interbeing and non-self, and which forms the foundation of my perspective on reality.
This helps me to hold my story more lightly, less self-righteously, with some curious skepticism, and maybe even with some humor. What I can do on my part is to try to better understand what’s going on inside of me (body, feeling, mind, assumptions, concepts) and also outside in the world. I may need to make changes in myself, and I may need to take action to make outward changes. I can try my best not to become embittered with the varying levels of ignorance/confusion/hate that I encounter in world through tapping into the above insights (compassion/understanding via “don’t know mind”, inter-being, non-self) along with embodied metta through my metta practice- all while not excusing bad behavior. When I do act, the goal is to try to act out of firm compassion rather than anger/aversion (something I still struggle with), and to avoid doing harm to myself or others.
Another thing I struggle with is with better accepting the outcome of conflicts. I heard a recast of an interview on the Onbeing podcast yesterday where Sharon Salzberg says – “We do what we can obviously to change conditions, be helpful, be restorative, and work to make things different. Ultimately it’s not going to be in our hands what we can mold much more successfully, but we can work with ourselves, with our own minds/hearts, become actually transformed in a real way”
For me, whenever I resist an outcome, it signals to me that my ego is clinging on too hard, and helps me identify places in myself where I’m attached (e.g. expectation for the “story to be written a certain way”, and the false idea that I have more control than I actually do in the grand scheme of the universe). This is a hard one, as I can cognitively understand everyone is on their own karmic stream, but sometimes still have a hard time accepting.
EXPERIENTIAL: I’d been having a series of difficult conversations with a close friend over the last few weeks. I tried to shift our communication pattern from one of defensiveness to curiosity/compassion; I started the conversation with a clear intention of wanting to understand her, and acknowledged my contribution in the conflict. I followed the “Difficult Conversations” format, and through speaking neutrally about the situation, framing it around my feelings and how it affected my identity, the atmosphere was conducive for us to have productive conversation. We came to a much better understanding of one another, which helped us untie some knots that had developed over the years. It’s hard maintaining awareness of my body. I wasn’t aware of my voice rising during the phone call until my husband stroked my hand. I then proposed an action plan moving forward to prevent future knots from forming.
I’ve noticed a few key factors underlying the process of having difficult conversations: 1.) staying embodied to notice the energy that arises in me (aversion, fear, etc.) and caring for it so that it doesn’t lead to cognitive distortions 2.) creating a peaceful/accepting atmosphere to create psychological safety, 3.) moving to understand the needs and vulnerability of the other underlying the conflict, 4.) noticing the ego’s movement toward feeling better/safer/right self and other, and not taking it personally, and 5.) holding the whole unfolding process as lightly as I’m able to (not clinging to certain outcomes that are out of my hands).
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CONCEPTUAL: I’ve been thinking a lot about what Mark Epstein said on a recent podcast interview:
“People are often coming (to therapy) with explanations about who they are, or what’s wrong with them, or how they see the world, or how they see their partners/children/parents, or their past experience. They’re coming with formulations that can never be totally true because any individual’s history or reality can never be totally captured. There’s always more to the story than our minds can conceive, but our minds are always trying to conceive it and lock it down.”
It’s impossible for any human to see beyond their slice of reality. We’re only seeing a fragment of the whole picture. Many conditions (e.g. a lot of trust and safety, etc.) have to come together for any of us to have the privilege to gain deep access to the full inner world of another, and to understand their karmic streams.
When I sit with this insight, I recall the “don’t know mind” that Zen Buddhists seek to cultivate. When my mind habitually tries to fill in the blanks to create a fuller narrative, I can be aware of this process, and instead of immediately buying into the story, I can step back with more of a “don’t know mind”- while staying connected to what I know to be actually true, which is the truth of interconnectedness/interbeing and non-self.
This helps me to hold my story more lightly, less self-righteously, with some curious skepticism, and maybe even with some humor. What I can do on my part is to try to better understand what’s going on inside of me (body, feeling, mind, assumptions, concepts) and also outside in the world. I may need to make changes in myself, and I may need to take action to make outward changes. I can try my best not to become embittered with the varying levels of ignorance/confusion/hate that I encounter through tapping into the above insights along with embodied metta cultivated through practice- all while not excusing bad behavior. When I do act, the goal is to try to act out of firm compassion rather than anger/aversion (something I still struggle with), and to try to avoid doing harm to myself or others.
Another thing I struggle with is accepting the outcome of conflicts. I heard a recast of an interview on the Onbeing podcast yesterday where Sharon Salzberg says – “We do what we can obviously to change conditions, be helpful, be restorative, and work to make things different. Ultimately it’s not going to be in our hands what we can mold much more successfully, but we can work with ourselves, with our own minds/hearts, become actually transformed in a real way”
For me, whenever I resist an outcome, it signals to me that my ego is clinging on too hard, and helps me identify places in myself where I’m attached (e.g. expectation for the “story to be written a certain way”, and the false idea that I have more control than I actually do in the grand scheme of the things). This is a hard one, as I can cognitively understand everyone is on their own karmic stream, but sometimes still have a hard time accepting..
EXPERIENTIAL: I’d been having a series of difficult conversations with a close friend over the last few weeks. I tried to shift our communication pattern from one of defensiveness to curiosity/compassion; I started the conversation with a clear intention of wanting to understand her, and acknowledged my contribution in the conflict. I followed the “Difficult Conversations” format, and through speaking neutrally about the situation, framing it around my feelings and how it affected my identity, the atmosphere was conducive for us to have productive conversation. We came to a much better understanding of one another, which helped us untie some knots that had developed over the years. It was hard maintaining awareness of my body. I wasn’t aware of my voice rising during the phone call until my husband stroked my hand. I then proposed an action plan moving forward to prevent future knots from forming.
I’ve noticed a few key factors underlying the process of having difficult conversations: 1.) staying embodied to notice the energy that arises in me (aversion, fear, etc.) and caring for it so that it doesn’t lead to cognitive distortions 2.) creating a peaceful/accepting atmosphere to create psychological safety, 3.) moving to understand the needs and vulnerability of the other which often underlies conflict, 4.) noticing the ego’s movement toward feeling better/safer/right of self and the other, and not taking it personally, and 5.) holding the whole unfolding process as lightly as I’m able to (not clinging to certain outcomes that are out of my hands).
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