Conflict. Don't you hate it? It just scares me to death. And that's a very grown up awareness of mine. I used to think I liked it. Or that at the very least, I felt powerful with all my guns blazing. That's probably the part I liked. The guns blazing so I could feel powerful instead of afraid. Today? Quite the opposite. I've realized it's all the feelings that scare me. There are often too many at once and I need time to sort out what's real, what's not, what's mine, and what's someone else's and in the heat of an angry or hostile discourse, I just want to run. Period. The old ancestral fight or flight response. My own anger used to serve as a pressure valve--like on a pressure cooker. If you don't release the pressure off the valve before you try to take the top off, it will blow sky high--through the ceiling. I mean it. And leave a dent. A big one. And that was because I was a big "feeling stuffer". Hence all the pressure in my cooker.

I was raised in a family where nobody talked about how they really felt--whether you liked it or not, you just went along. If you tried to tell someone how you felt they either told you "that's not how you really feel" or slimed you for telling the truth-- and then shamed you. Can you relate? I know you can 'cause I can see a lot of your heads nodding....and some of you are sipping your coffee and saying "yep...exactly." I am a product of the people pleasin' '50's where no one was allowed to tell the truth because that wasn't nice. Girls and women were taught to "look pretty and be nice"--no matter what. No matter if it feels terrible and you are screaming inside, you gotta take one for the team. And if you are a guy, you got the "stiff upper lip and be in control always" message. And for goodness sake, be a man. Don't feel, don't share, be tough. And die early from heart disease or cancer because you stuffed everything.

I have one big ginormous question: who made up all these insane rules and why in this world did our parents pass all this nonsense on down to us? Answer: Because everyone was terrified to "rock the emotional boat" and that they might be shunned if they let the cat out of the bag. Which brings me to, shunned from what?? Shunned from what a bunch of other people have decided is "correct...right...good..." for themselves--- and everybody else. That's nothing more than control, folks. You know what I'm talking about.....the herd mentality. Think cows...walking the same path...right behind each other nose to tail, because they are too stupid to walk their own path. And they wear a path in the grass, doing this. Day after day. Because the alpha cow/bull said "this is the correct path".
I still don't enjoy conflict but today I understand a lot more about my reaction to it and that I can change my response to it by saying two little words: Time out. Then I can walk away, think clearly, and come back later and respond. Works lots better and there are a lot less dents in my ceiling.