Finding and protecting your peace is essential, especially during your adulthood. Some tend to confuse this concept with total conflict avoidance, but there are some key differences to note.
1. Avoidance keeps you from moving forward
Many people want to close themselves to conflict, but obstacles and disagreements are natural. About 30% of couples fight once a week or more. Families and friends can also have arguments here and there. Disagreements may be petty in nature, or they could also hold more profound meaning.
Avoiding an argument forces you to bottle up concerns and emotions until they become significant unresolved issues. Calmly and mindfully dealing with confrontation will help you keep moving forward and maintain your peace.
2. Other people’s feelings matter too
Conflict avoidance only prioritises your personal peace. Learning to be sensitive to other people’s emotional states can help prevent resentment and defensiveness in the long run. To be human is to be empathetic, which can bring much more peace to your relationship than you might think.
3. You need to process trauma
You’ve likely heard the fight, flight or freeze response, but what about the lesser-known fawning option? This action involves redirection for conflict avoidance via overanalyzing or rationalising. You reassure yourself that things are OK even when they aren’t.
Trauma occurs throughout different life stages. For example, when childhood trauma is triggered, you’ll feel like the threat is happening in real time. To find peace with those events in the future, you must eventually work through that conflict instead of avoiding it. It takes time, but it’s a journey worth taking to preserve your long-term well-being.
4. Conflict avoidance is temporary
Conflict often appears to come out of nowhere. However, it often stems from unresolved fear and pain that you may need to address and require. Conflict avoidance is a temporary means to find peace.
For a more permanent solution, change your behaviour to look past your panic. You must practice emotional agility to avoid being overwhelmed by a negative emotion.
Embrace lifelong peace
Support your long-term peace of mind by asking yourself in each situation — am I truly protecting my peace, or is this simply conflict avoidance? Assessing how you perceive and respond to these situations is one of the first steps to changing for the better.
This story was originally published on The Carousel.
