- Who do you want to BE in conflict?
When someone else does something that hits you as wrong, or challenging, threatening – how do you want to be in response?
Do you want to be:
- Defended?
- Assertive?
- Aggressive?
Do you want to be:
- Kind?
- Forgiving?
- Accommodating?
In the past, I’ve had great intentions in conflict: I’ve wanted to be kind, assertive, balanced. Sometimes I’ve been successful, and sometimes not.
Setting intentions for how we want to be and what values we want to embrace is a solid foundation for holding on to ourselves for sure. It is powerful to decide beforehand how we want to BE in the world.
Yet, what about the times we don’t act as our best selves. Or even more important, what about the blind spots we can’t even see in ourselves in terms of how we may be acting out of integrity with our own values?
This is what I think is equally important to setting our intentions: acknowledging our mammalian nature.
What do I mean?
These beautiful heartfelt intentions for how we want to BE in conflict are easy to find when we are in a flowing frame of mind.
When we start to feel the hackles of hot conflict arising, when we are in the throes of being activated, we are no longer in that part of ourselves. We shift into our, often unconscious, rigid selves. We are in our shadows. When any of us feel threatened enough, we go into our biologically encoded, knee-jerk patterns.
We are mammals first. Mammals are emotional beings and it is often our emotions that predominate and demand respect. We need to feel safe and be in emotional connection to allow our feelings to flow into the “we” space.
When we don’t account for the mammalian aspect of our beingness, we can stay disempowered. We don’t understand how people are not acting “nice” or as “adults” – ourselves included. It does make sense though.
Conflict kicks up a lot of old stuff – for all of us. We all have automatic responses. There is different research about how many of these we have and whether they are survival instincts, childhood encodings or trauma responses. But if we can set that academic complexity aside, and settle on these four, see which ones seem familiar to you when you feel emotionally or socially threatened:
- Fight (“You’re wrong! You’re trying to shut me down! This is your fault!”)
- Flee (“I’m out of here! Too much hassle for me!”)
- Freeze (“What?”)
- Submit (“You need help, not me.” Could also be called fawning, people pleasing or accommodating).
Why is this important?
When we don’t acknowledge we are mammals first, that our mammalian nature comes out when our physiology feels threatened, then we can’t own our part in conflict and potentially shift the pattern.
This isn’t giving permission to act aggressively or in any of the other automatic ways. I am simply pointing out that we all have the potential to act in these ways and often do when triggered, often without realizing it. And, the higher the sense of threat, the more we can devolve into our survival instincts and need more conscious calm and self-regulation.
We can stay ignorant to our own shadow aspects if we are not open to asking for, and receiving, feedback on how we show up in conflict. Some of my best learning has come from noticing my own reactions in conflict and from hearing from those I love, about how I’ve impacted them.
Intentions are one thing. Impact is quite another. Both are hidden unless we find a way to share them.
A way to reclaim power is to look at how to show up differently. Yes, systems need changing. Yes, there are raging inequalities and massive amount of injustice. Yes, someone else does need to change.
And, you know you can only steer yourself. Social change can happen one dialogue at a time. That’s your point of empowerment.
Last month, Stacey Crowley emailed me to tell me of a 20 second encounter she had with a bear and her dog last spring. Three mammals tussling together in her yard. She did a 6 minute TEDx talk about it. I think it’s a brilliant and pithy example of how we mammals react in the face of threat.
When I can admit that I intended to be kind and assertive and balanced and that perhaps I was not as much as I wanted to be, I open the door for new information and new ways of being to flow in. As Ram Dass said: “The shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light.”
My wish is for the light of awareness to shine benevolently on those hidden parts of ourselves. That is one of the gifts of conflict: it gives the opportunity to acknowledge and integrate many aspects, including that of the soft, emotional, mammal self.Buddhist psychologist Rick Hanson reminds us: “Mammals, including us, become friendly, playful, curious, and creative when they feel safe, satisfied, and connected.”
I am mammal.
