#274: Attachment & Conflict (Part 3): How to Experience Healthier Conflict
Conflict is one of those inevitable parts of relationships that most of us never actually learn how to navigate well.
Depending on our attachment patterns, we often default to one of two extremes: we either avoid conflict altogether or rush in with urgency, trying to resolve it as quickly as possible. Neither approach typically leads to the connection we're looking for.
The good news? Conflict is a skill. And like any skill, it can be learned.
Whether you're navigating disagreements with a romantic partner, a family member, a friend, or a colleague, learning how to approach conflict differently can transform the quality of your relationships. It's not about eliminating conflict altogether—it's about learning how to move through it in ways that deepen trust rather than damage it.
Shift Your Mindset About Conflict
One of the biggest barriers to healthy conflict is the belief that someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong.
When we enter disagreements trying to prove our case, defend ourselves, or convince the other person that our experience is the "correct" one, we quickly become trapped in a cycle of blame and defensiveness.
Instead, try shifting your perspective.
Rather than seeing yourselves as opponents, view the unhealthy communication pattern as the problem. It's no longer me versus you—it's us versus the pattern.
This subtle shift creates far more room for curiosity, empathy, and collaboration.
Don't Be Afraid to Pause
When emotions escalate, it's tempting to keep pushing through the conversation in the hope of finally reaching resolution.
Ironically, that's often when we're least capable of having a productive discussion.
Healthy conflict sometimes means recognizing when neither of you is in the right headspace to continue. Taking a timeout isn't avoidance when it's done intentionally. It can be one of the healthiest things you do.
A pause gives both nervous systems time to settle so you can return to the conversation with more clarity, less reactivity, and a greater capacity to actually hear one another.
If You Have Anxious Attachment...
People with anxious attachment often experience conflict as deeply threatening. When emotions are activated, there's a natural impulse to seek reassurance, explain everything, and resolve the issue immediately.
While understandable, these habits can unintentionally make conflict more overwhelming for both people.
Slow Down and Say Less
When anxiety takes over, many people begin talking faster, saying more, and trying harder to make themselves understood.
The challenge is that the more overwhelmed your partner becomes, the less able they are to truly hear you.
Instead of filling every silence, allow space. Speak more slowly. Say less.
Giving your partner time to process often creates far more productive conversations than trying to fill every gap with more explanation.
Stay With One Issue
Another common tendency is bringing every previous example into the current conversation.
You may find yourself saying:
"This always happens."
"Remember last month when..."
"And it's not just this..."
While this often comes from a desire to feel understood, it usually leaves the other person feeling overwhelmed and defensive.
Keeping the conversation focused on one issue at a time makes it much easier for both people to stay engaged and actually resolve something.
Accept "Good Enough"
For many anxiously attached people, conflict doesn't feel fully resolved until there's absolute certainty that it will never happen again.
But relationships rarely offer that kind of guarantee.
Sometimes a healthy outcome isn't perfection—it's progress.
Being willing to accept an imperfect but genuine repair allows relationships to move forward instead of becoming stuck in endless cycles of reassurance-seeking.
If You Have Avoidant Attachment...
People with avoidant attachment often experience conflict very differently.
Rather than feeling compelled to move toward the conflict, they often feel overwhelmed, flooded, or unsure how to respond.
This can lead to shutting down, withdrawing, or becoming defensive.
Say What You're Experiencing
If you genuinely don't know what to say, say exactly that.
Simple statements like:
"I'm feeling overwhelmed."
"I need a minute to think."
"I'm not sure what I'm feeling right now."
are infinitely more connecting than going silent.
Your partner is usually far less distressed by hearing that you're overwhelmed than by trying to interpret silence.
Advocate for Yourself
Avoidant partners often swing between two extremes:
apologising simply to end the conversation
becoming defensive and rejecting everything being said
Neither approach creates genuine intimacy.
Healthy conflict means sharing your own internal experience honestly while also remaining open to hearing your partner's.
Your perspective matters too.
Avoid Dismissive Language
When conflict feels uncomfortable, it can be tempting to say things like:
"Here we go again."
"Do we really have to do this?"
"I'm not doing this."
Even if those comments are driven by overwhelm rather than malice, they often communicate something very different:
"Your feelings are a burden."
That kind of dismissal tends to intensify conflict rather than end it.
Healthy Conflict Is a Practice
No one handles conflict perfectly.
We all fall back into old patterns from time to time, particularly when we're stressed or emotionally activated.
The goal isn't perfection.
The goal is becoming more aware of your default responses and gradually replacing them with healthier ones.
When you learn to slow down, communicate more openly, tolerate discomfort, and remember that you're on the same team, conflict stops being something that threatens your relationship.
Instead, it becomes one of the very things that strengthens it.
Every disagreement is an opportunity to build greater understanding, deeper trust, and more emotional safety—provided you're willing to approach it differently.
Because healthy relationships aren't defined by the absence of conflict.
They're defined by how we repair, reconnect, and grow through it together.
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[00:00:00]:
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking once again about attachment and conflict. And today's episode, which is part 3, is all about tips for having more productive, healthier conflict in your relationships. And I think that this will really span all of your relationships in your life, not just romantic relationships. So it's not one that won't apply to you if you're not currently in a romantic relationship. I think overall conflict is a skill that most of us are lacking in. And as we've talked about in the previous 2 episodes in this series, depending on our makeup, we've probably habitually learned to move away from conflict or to rush in and kind of smother conflict, try to make it go away. But few of us have a really healthy, positive blueprint around what it means to go through conflict and rupture in relationships in a way that isn't really damaging and that isn't kind of solely about our self-protection, however that shows up.
[00:01:01]:
So being able to Actually taking a 360-degree view of the situation to honour our experience and the other person's experience is really like relationship mastery. And it will vastly improve every relationship in your life to cultivate these skills and to be humble enough to do that work, because I do think it takes a lot of humility and maturity to have conflict in a healthier way. So we're gonna be talking about some general tips for anyone in a relationship or otherwise, you know, how you should be thinking about conflict, ways that you might reposition your mindset to lessen the chance that you end up really stuck in a rut of villain and victim, me versus you, fighting over whose experience is the right one and both ending up feeling unheard and disconnected, which is of course not what we want, but often what happens. And then I'm going to go into specific tips for people with more anxious attachment patterns, as well as those with more avoidant attachment patterns, as I promised I would. As a follow-up to parts 1 and 2 of this series, which were kind of a deep dive on the experience of conflict from each of those perspectives. So if you haven't listened to parts 1 and 2, you may wanna do that before listening to this episode, or you can go back afterwards. It doesn't really matter terribly much. Before we get into today's episode, I did wanna remind you again that my program, the Secure Self Challenge, is coming back and it's kicking off next week.
[00:02:35]:
So in case you missed me talking about it, historically I've run the Secure Self Challenge as a 28-day challenge, but for the first time ever, I've decided to build it into an 8-week program, which is really all about building self-worth and becoming someone who you genuinely like and respect, and transforming that inner relationship as the foundation for transforming your other relationships in your life. And I would say your relationship to life more broadly. This is really the work for those of us in particular who anxious attachment patterns, although I will say that this programme is probably the least anxious attachment specific of my programs. So if you're someone with, for example, more fearful avoidant patterns, the Secure Self Challenge is also a really beautiful programme for you to consider. But tending to that broken inner relationship and starting to show up for ourselves, starting to really know ourselves, starting to back ourselves, starting to navigate life in a way that is self-honoring on every level. It allows us to rebalance our centre of gravity so that it's not over there and trying to control other people and obsessing over what they think of us or what they don't and whether they'll choose us or whether they'll leave us. All of that's so, so energy intensive and very, very draining, and it just takes us further and further away from ourselves, and we feel really lost and alone and vulnerable when we're living and relating from that place. So the Secure Self Challenge is all about bringing yourself back to base and rebuilding building that foundation, not so that you don't need to go and be in relationship and you can just be your own island of solitude and independence.
[00:04:12]:
That's not at all the point. It's just that we relate really differently when we are comfortable with who we are and we know what we want and we're willing to stand behind that. So if that sounds like something that you might want or need, I would love to invite you into the challenge. It'll be a really beautiful opportunity to do this work with me and with other people who get it. It's a very community-focused Yeah. So there's plenty of interaction with me, with others, live calls. There's a community space, all of the things in addition to the video modules, which you can do in your own time. And so there's still a few more days to join, but the early bird price will be ending tomorrow.
[00:04:53]:
So if you are at all considering joining, today's a really good day to do it. We won't be extending that early bird price to anyone who reaches out after the deadline. So the link to all of that is in the show notes. There's all of the information on my website, you know, the full curriculum, FAQs, all of the things. So go cheque it out if you're at all interested and consider joining us for the challenge, which kicks off next week. Okay, so let's talk about how to have healthier conflict. Now, as I said in the introduction, I think a really key overarching piece is ensuring that you are both approaching the whole idea of conflict in your relationship from as constructive and collaborative a place as possible. Because as we all know from experience, it's really, really easy to slip into this very antagonistic, oppositional mindset of needing to figure out who's wrong and who's right and whose experience is more valid and whose behaviour is justified having regard to the other person who started it and all of the things, right? And naturally, of course, we live in our own experience and that's how we see the world.
[00:06:00]:
So of course we think that we only did our thing because they did their thing first. And that's always going to feel true to both of us. We think that we're responding to someone else rather than starting it. And all of the things, right? We could just argue until the cows come home about the truth. But the real truth is that we're both having an experience of each other and of the moment. And if we keep trying to fight over whose experience is right, we will just keep fighting. And that's not ultimately what we want. What we really want is To feel connected to this person who we love and who we value and who we are maintaining a relationship with.
[00:06:39]:
And we wanna feel like they care about us and our experience. We wanna feel attuned to, we wanna feel like they understand, or at least that they're trying to understand. These are the things that we actually want. So just going to battle over whose experience or emotion or response or all of that is justified is a Big waste of time and we just need to like park that because it's never gonna get us what we want, right? So really step one in all of this is when it comes to conflict, I need to shift out of that oppositional approach and into curiosity as much as I can. So curiosity really just asks us to pause in our judgement and our analysis and actually inquire as to what someone else might be going through, how they might be seeing the situation, how our good intentions might not have landed as we'd hoped that they would've, how we might've been misunderstood along the way, and really approaching the whole situation from this place of we are on the same team. And this conflict cycle that we get sucked into so reliably is our common enemy that we wanna be protecting ourselves against. That's the piece that we wanna be really watching rather than protecting ourselves against each other. Because naturally, whenever we're in this stance of feeling like we need to protect ourselves against the other person, then it's really, really hard to ever find connection from that place because we have very limited empathy for someone who we feel threatened by.
[00:08:12]:
So, you know, if you are in a relationship, I think a really great starting point saying like, let's not do this. We're on the same team. Let's not go into our usual conflict. Let's not let this get the better of us. Can we pause and reset? I think having that reminder, it's almost like a circuit break of you and I, we love each other. We care about each other. Let's not get sucked into old patterns because they are so, so easy to get sucked into, and we all know that. So I think being able to remind ourselves of that overarching vision and goal and intention that like we are on the same team and we do want good things for one another and for our relationship, and we can get through the friction of a moment that gets misconstrued or a concern or unmet needs or whatever other challenges we might be facing.
[00:09:03]:
The purpose of us being in a relationship together is to face those things. As a team. And I think when you can shift out of fighting each other to fighting against those unhealthy patterns that you get drawn into, that's a really powerful shift. I think another helpful general tip is to really not be afraid of taking a timeout or having a redo, or just like taking the pressure out of the moment if you can feel something escalating. And this is just an area where you have to exercise some responsibility because it's so tempting to just like chase the Yeah. That escalating tension, right? When you feel so fired up and you feel like they're doing their thing and you wanna react and they're pushing your buttons and you're pushing their buttons, it's really— oftentimes it's quite frustrating to not follow that because the urge is so strong and you've got all this energy in your system that's saying like, take the bait and go. So I usually think that there's like a huge degree of maturity and love actually in declining to participate in that escalating back and forth, when you can feel like something's picking up some heat and you know where it's gonna go, saying something like, okay, this is clearly not working as a conversation right now in this moment. Like, let's take a breather.
[00:10:19]:
Let's come back to this later. Or, can I start again? Because I feel like this isn't landing very well. Can I have another go? Like, just really finding a way to reset and either taking a pause away from the conflict altogether or just Acknowledging that it's not going to plan rather than kind of buckling in and going for it. I think all of those little gestures of goodwill signal to the other person, even on a subconscious level, like, this person is not my enemy, right? They are not trying to hurt me. They're not out to get me. And I don't have to have my guard up. I don't need to be ready to go into battle with this person. So as much as possible, finding ways to signal love and care and consideration in those moments where we know that the heat is rising a little.
[00:11:06]:
Because realistically, and I've said this before, and if you've done any of my programs, you will have heard me talk about it. When we become dysregulated, and in those moments when we're both dysregulated, our systems are just registering the other person as a threat, and that leads us to feel more dysregulated. We can't really have healthy conflict when we're both really fired up, when the tension's running really high, when we're both feeling attacked and blamed and judged, and it's bringing up all of our stuff from all of the other moments that maybe didn't get resolved. Like, it's really, really hard to get anything done from that place. And as I said earlier, the thing that we all want, which is like attunement and understanding and connection, and for someone to see us in the experience we're having, we're not gonna get it in those moments. So we should really just stop trying to push through and trying to be right and trying to overpower the other person and actually just almost like take in a bird's eye view and go, yeah, this is not worth doing right now, this is not going to lead me or us where I want us to go. So being, you know, humble and courageous enough to actually just decline to participate in a really loving way and say like, look, let's not do this right now. It doesn't feel like it's going to end well.
[00:12:21]:
And I don't want that for us. I think it's a really beautiful personal boundary to have in your relationships. And for anyone who might be thinking like, why do I have to be the one to lead that? Because I know that that can be a bit of a sore point, particularly for a lot of people in anxious avoidant dynamics feeling like, well, they're not going to be responsible and boundaried and be learning about how to have healthier conflict, so why does it fall to me? It doesn't fall to you. It's something that you can choose to do for yourself and for the relationship, or you can choose not to do it. But like, that's entirely your choice. So you can absolutely exercise your right to continue having dysfunctional, unhealthy conflict where you're reactive and lash out and do all of the things if that's what you want, just to prove a point that you you shouldn't have to be the one to do things differently, then go for your life. But I don't think that that's really what you want. So in all of this, I think we have to look at where's my agency, where's my power, where's my choice? And that resides with how we respond, the choices that we make.
[00:13:25]:
And from that place, oftentimes our relationships take a new path and new things become possible because we've decided to clean up our side of the street and lead the way towards a different way of doing things in our relationship. So I don't think that you can really lose by deciding that you're to step out of your part of the dance. Okay, so moving now to some more specific tips for anxious partners, and then I'll speak to some specific tips for avoidant partners. And these are more like little in-the-moment things based on how you typically show up during conflict and ways that you could maybe course correct so that you don't fall into those or exacerbate the cycles and the patterns that you probably find yourself in when it comes to conflict. So as I talked about in the episode on anxious attachment and conflict, What's very common is to speed up and to say lots of things and to kind of go into overdrive and overwhelm the other person emotionally and cognitively. It's just like a lot to be on the receiving end of, oftentimes because you've been bottling it up and you've been rehearsing it and practising it and saying all of the things in your head and having the imaginary conversations. And so when you finally get your window of opportunity, it's like all systems go. And particularly if you have an avoidant partner, that can be a lot to kind of sit and receive.
[00:14:39]:
Yeah. So my first tip for you, if you're someone with anxious patterns, is just to slow down a lot and say fewer words. Resist the urge to fill every silence with more words or more poking and prodding. I used to be really, really terrible at this in my previous relationship. If my partner was kind of sitting processing something that I'd said, I couldn't tolerate the silence or I'd interpret it as, you know, him not caring or him kind of zoning out or ignoring me. Yeah. I'd keep poking and saying like, aren't you gonna say something? Are you just gonna sit there? I just really couldn't handle sitting in the stillness of that when so much fire was happening inside of me. And so that's something that I had to really work on.
[00:15:27]:
And my current relationship, when we have conflict or big conversations, which is much less often than we used to, and certainly much less often than I used to in my previous relationship, but when we do, there'll often be extended silences. And that's absolutely— Yeah. fine for me. I'm pretty comfortable to leave that space because I know that my partner is processing and that in order for him to give me the kind of thoughtful, considered response that I ultimately want, he needs that space to be able to do it, and he needs to not feel the pressure of me kind of looming over him. So really try and give more space to the conversation. Try not to overwhelm the other person with all of the words and all of the And all of the context and explanation. And that's oftentimes a thing that we do because we're trying to micromanage how we're received. And we wanna make sure that we are perfectly understood.
[00:16:29]:
And that makes sense because we've probably got a history of feeling misunderstood or invalidated or dismissed. And so we're trying to almost like preemptively buffer against that happening. But I think oftentimes it actually just hits the other person like this big wall of anxiety that they have to absorb, and it's a lot. Yeah. Finding a way to just say what you need to say in as plain language as you can, and then leaving some space for the other person to respond, I think is a really, really good skill for you to practise and to work on. And it will be something that you'll need to practise because it won't come naturally for most people. Okay. Next tip for anxious attachers is try and keep the conversation to one issue.
[00:17:09]:
Again, I think because we're so accustomed to feeling invalidated or dismissed or brushed off when we bring a concern, we'll often try and like really bolster our case, so to speak, by pulling all of the examples of all of the times that this has happened. And it's not just this, it's also that, and it's this and it's that. And we try and make our feelings inarguable. And we try and prove to them without a shadow of a doubt that they really have done this thing or they have hurt us in this way and we are justified to feel the way we do. And of course, like again, that's coming from a really earnest place of wanting to be understood, but it often has the effect of the other person just feeling like ambushed and attacked. Because it's not just like, oh, you're coming at me about this thing, but you've also been harbouring all of these other things that apparently I've been messing up or disappointing you with. And almost always you're just gonna get defensiveness or shutdown when you go in with a full shopping list of complaints and criticisms and bringing in all of the past things and maybe trying to like relitigate or reopen past conversations that never fully felt resolved. Like, all of that is really counterproductive.
[00:18:23]:
And what will almost always happen is you won't get resolution on any of those things. The conversation will just escalate and then kind of spiral and end without anything satisfactory. Whereas if you keep it to one issue, then you're actually in with a shot at getting somewhere on that one issue, and that's a better outcome than getting nowhere on 15 issues. So I know that it's really hard to do that, to keep the focus narrow, Because you probably do have all of these other things that have been bothering you that you haven't been speaking up on. But I think that over time, as you build a healthier culture in your relationship around conflict, and you feel like there's a bit more positive momentum, and you actually start to have healthier conversations around conflict, and you start to rewire that blueprint that says, oh, okay, conflict can be had in a way that feels emotionally safe and productive, and we actually get somewhere, then you probably won't end up harbouring all of those worries and pushing them down until they explode. So I think over the long term, if you can just try and clock some wins, so to speak, then that will only be of benefit to the broader pattern that you have around expressing things, around self-advocacy, and around conflict and resolution. Okay. And the 3rd tip for anxiously attached people is try to accept a good enough solution and try and figure out what that might be.
[00:19:47]:
I think for a lot of us, we can really hold out for like the perfect solution, the guarantee that that's never gonna happen again and you're never gonna feel hurt and they're never gonna leave you or they're never gonna— like, we really want certainty because our anxiety is so braced for disappointment and hurt and betrayal and all of those things. And so it's really hard to actually accept an apology, a commitment, an acknowledgement. We wanna look for the holes in it. We wanna look for the flaws. And so it's really common to say things like, well, you said that last time and it hasn't changed, so why should I believe you now? Or something like that, which again, And that makes sense if it has been an extended pattern of this. And that's maybe another conversation if you've given someone 50 chances to change something that feels really important and they're still doing whatever they're doing. But when we just push back and shut down every effort at repair or apology or offering a solution, it can make it feel really unwinnable for the other person. And that can be pretty demoralising and they can kind of cheque out and just throw their hands up and say, well, I give up.
[00:20:53]:
I don't know what you want from me. And then we feel more And like they don't care and like they're not really trying and that hurts. You know, we all know how that goes. I'm sure you know how that goes. I certainly do. So I think really what we can do there is know when to accept something that is good enough. It may not be the perfect solution. It may not be a guarantee that nothing is ever gonna happen again.
[00:21:15]:
That's not something anyone can give us. But I think we need to see when someone is trying. And again, coming back to this spirit of collaboration and go, okay, I appreciate that. Maybe it's like step one in a solution that's gonna take many steps. But accept the step one and agree to cheque back in in a week or whatever. Just try and again, like, get some momentum, clock some wins so that you feel some sense of success out of the conversation and like you're coming back together in connection and a joint vision, because that's what's really gonna allow you to move forward and move away from that conversation feeling like you've accomplished something. And I think that's really, really important for both people. Yeah.
[00:22:00]:
Okay, so now I wanna move to some tips for avoidant people in conflict. I'm seeing how long this episode's getting. I'm wondering if I should have split this up, but anyway, we're gonna go with it. And the first one is, if you don't know what to say, if you're feeling a bit shell-shocked, a bit like a deer in the headlights, a bit overwhelmed by your partner's emotionality or expressiveness or the things that they're saying to you that might feel accusatory, say, I don't know what to say. Yeah. Okay, articulate the fact that you're struggling to find your words, because it's okay that you maybe operate differently to your partner in those moments. You might feel like you kind of go numb, or you cheque out, or you slow way down. You can't find your words, you don't really know what to say.
[00:22:42]:
That's fine. But when you just sit silently and stare into space, or stare into your lap, or just say nothing for really extended periods of time, it's really easy for that to come across as, I don't care, or I'm not really paying attention, or I'm not really invested in this conversation. And even if that's not the truth, if you have a partner with more anxious attachment patterns, there's a really good chance that they're going to interpret it that way because they are very susceptible to feeling like they're too much, like their feelings are a burden, like people don't care about them. And so if you can say, I'm listening to you, I'm just taking this in and processing. I don't really know what to say right now, but I'm here, right? Like, that is so much better than saying nothing, and it doesn't really take much from you other than just to deliver the line and to try and say it sincerely and with love. So I think that just an acknowledgement of that, or even saying, I'm feeling overwhelmed, or I'm feeling defensive, is so much better than just like doing the thing. So don't hesitate to narrate your inner experience. If you can't actually find the words to say, or you're feeling a bit overwhelmed, just say, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.
[00:24:01]:
And as I said at the start, taking a breather is absolutely fine. It's just really important that you come back to the conversation, because I think for people with more avoidant patterns, the temptation is to just pull away and stay away and try your luck at not bringing the conversation up again and see if you've kind of gotten away with it, so to speak. Which will almost certainly infuriate infuriate your partner, so try not to do that. I think another really important tip for avoidant folks is to actually advocate for your own experience in conflict. I think this gets missed a bit because most people with avoidant patterns either collapse into appeasement and just want the conversation to end, so they sort of apologise for everything and say whatever they need to say to just make it stop, or they get very defensive and just bat everything back and refuse to engage. But neither of those extremes offers any space for your own self-advocacy and for your own sharing about how that's impacting you in a really honest and vulnerable way. And so I think that it does tend to end up being about the anxious partner's emotional experience a lot of the time, and that creates this asymmetry on both sides. I think both partners perceive an unfairness.
[00:25:13]:
And what you'll often hear from avoidant folks is, you've always got something that you wanna talk about. I never complain to you about how I'm feeling. I'm never coming to you with my unmet needs. It's just always you coming to me. And so I think that there's something in that, which is that it's important for you to start learning to identify like what that feels like for you and actually speaking it. And again, that might feel like really uncharted territory. And of course, when your whole impression of conflict is like, it is not worth it, nothing good comes of it, the likelihood of you bringing more things into that space is maybe low. But I think part of actually creating creating a healthier relationship overall is being able to have more balance around conflict and there being space for both of your experiences, rather than it all revolving around one person's experience and the other person just feeling a bit overwhelmed or suffocated by the responsibility of responding to that or managing that or providing reassurance or apologising all the time.
[00:26:18]:
So I think if there are things that you're feeling resentful about or harboring, rather than just using those the basis for kind of pulling away or turning away, shutting down, disconnecting, bring them to your partner. And that's like a real growth edge for you is being able to speak those things, the things that are bothering you, the things that don't feel great. Try to trust that your partner can handle your honesty. And maybe they can, maybe they can't. You'll only know by trying. But I think it's a really important exercise for you in taking up more space in your own relationship. Because the alternative just proves your storeys about relationship to be right. That they're more trouble than they're worth.
[00:27:00]:
They mainly take from you rather than give to you and all of those things. It's just easier if I'm alone. That will only ever be proven untrue if you're brave enough to step out of your pattern and actually run the experiment and see what might happen if you do take up more space, if you do allow yourself to be seen and known and cared for in the way that you actually wanna be cared for rather than just in the way that someone else maybe wants to care for you. Okay. Another thing for avoidant Yeah. And then also, folks, this hopefully goes without saying, but really try not to engage in any kind of language that feels really dismissive. Things like, oh, do we have to talk about this? Or like, give me a break. Or, here we go again.
[00:27:40]:
Or, I'm not doing this right now. Like, anything like that that conveys, this is tedious and burdensome, and I don't have the time, energy, interest, or patience to deal with you right now. I think that that can come up a lot, and it's really, really damaging to the relationship. And particularly again, if you have a partner with more anxious patterns, that's just going to feel confirming of all of their worst fears, and it's going to lead them much more intensely into their anxiety and their insecurity, which is only going to make the whole thing worse. So out of love and care for your partner, even if that's your internal dialogue, bite your tongue on those things. It's not helpful, it's not loving, and I think it's one that you really want to just have some boundary around, because that will only lead to negative consequences for your relationship if you're putting those things into the space. It really, really exacerbates the cycle, even if it feels really true. Even if you do feel overwhelmed and exasperated and suffocated and worn down, say that you're feeling worn down, you're feeling overwhelmed.
[00:28:50]:
Don't say those kind of offhanded, snide remarks that can land really unkindly with your partner. And the last thing that I'll say, and I sort of alluded to this before, is If you do need to take a break, it's good to be really clear around the parameters for that. So rather than just saying like, I'm not doing this right now, I'm leaving the room, or, you know, if you aren't physically together, like hanging up the phone or refusing to respond to messages or just kind of cutting it off unilaterally, that's just going to leave your partner hanging and they're going to, again, like massively ramp up in their anxiety and their stress response. So what you want to do as an alternative that still allows you to get your needs met around the space, because that is a really important regulatory tool for you. And I would say that avoidant folks probably have better instincts than anxious folks around, you know, taking some space away when things are getting heated. Anxious folks just tend to be a bit like a dog with a bone and keep pushing. I say that as someone with that proclivity, but say something like, okay, I need a break. I'm feeling myself getting heated.
[00:29:57]:
Let's talk about this in 2 hours, or let's talk about this tonight. Set the bookend for when you're going to come back to it and honour the bookend. Don't just leave it and hope that you can kind of get away with not having the conversation and maybe they'll forget. I promise you they're not going to forget. They're going to be counting down the minutes until you come back to sort of test whether you're going to stand by your word. There's a whole nother conversation to be had around whether that's a helpful thing to And as a side note, during any time and space apart in conflict, you know, if you've taken deliberate timeout and you're on the more anxious side, don't spend that time just mulling over everything and rehearsing what you're gonna say and like continuing to get your system riled up. That defeats the whole point. But going back to the avoidant side, you know, take the time and space that you need, but be respectful and be considerate and do what you say you're gonna do.
[00:30:51]:
So if you say you're gonna come back to the conversation, come back to the conversation. Even though it's probably not what you wanna do, you And even though you'll probably have to kind of drag yourself to it, do the right thing because that's respectful of your partner and the relationship more broadly. And the more that you do that and prove yourself to be trustworthy around conflict, the safer they're going to feel, the safer you're going to feel. It's just going to be a win-win for everyone. Okay, so that was a bit of a rundown on some tips for healthier conflict. I hope that that's been helpful. As I said, while the focus was kind of on romantic relationships, as is usually the case on this podcast, I do think that a lot of those tools could be applied to non-romantic relationships, because these are really just life and relationship skills, and so, so useful if we are wanting to improve the safety and the depth and the connection in our relationships. Being able to sit in the discomfort of conflict without just defaulting to all of those protective patterns that we might have is so, so valuable, and something we should all be striving to cultivate in our relationships.
[00:31:57]:
So hope that that's been helpful. As I said, if you do to join me in the Secure Self Challenge, today's a really good day to sign up. You know, one of the pillars that we focus on is self-advocacy. And so we do learn all about healthier communication in the broader context of self-worth, with a particular focus on how self-advocacy just lands differently and feels different when it's coming from a place of really healthy self-esteem rather than, you know, fear and desperation and panic and control and all of the things that can come up when we're in that really insecure place. But otherwise, thanks so much for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks, guys.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
attachment, conflict, healthy conflict, relationships, productive conflict, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, relationship skills, conflict resolution, communication, self-worth, Secure Self Challenge, self-advocacy, emotional regulation, curiosity, connection, empathy, relationship patterns, teamwork, boundaries, taking timeouts, emotional safety, vulnerability, defensive behaviour, self-protection, partnership, relationship rupture, relationship repair, unresolved issues, relationship maturity