Telling people to "just do conflict better" isn't enough
For a lot of people, the idea that you can have healthy conflict in relationships is... unfamiliar.
If you grow up in a family/culture where conflict just leads to hurt, you might easily go one of two ways:
Since "people just end up hurt in conflict," you resolve to never lose. You learn tricks to put the other person off balance, and no matter how hard they go, you go harder. Of course this doesn't feel good, but if you believe conflict just results in hurt, at least you're not the one who gets hurt the worst.
Since "conflict just leads to unresolved pain and disconnect," you avoid it at all costs. Maybe you learn to appease the other person, dodge disagreements, or tamp down your own wants/needs/feelings to keep the peace. If conflict just hurts, why would you ever go near it?
Both of these understandable childhood "lessons" lead to a lot of problems, and I’ll talk about those more in the Strong Enough To Talk newsletter.
If these types of beliefs and "lessons" are what you learned in childhood, you're certainly not alone. But you also haven't been exposed to the full truth.
The fuller truth is this:
Conflict can be done in a healthy way, and it can lead to your relationships feeling stronger and closer.
The communications skills and emotional skills you'll use to healthy conflict may be unfamiliar, but the good news is that they can be learned.
And here's the even better news: you can get started on them right now, without me even telling you what they look like.
To do that, check out my IG post on how to build a practical model of healthy conflict.
In it, I'll offer a perspective and a few questions that you can use today, right now, in order to start developing an internal guide for how to have healthy, connecting conflict.
Telling people "just do conflict better" isn't enough. We need these sorts of clear, internal blueprints for how we go about "doing conflict better." Watching my IG reel can you help you start sketching out that blueprint right now.