New Year’s Resolution: Lose the Fear of Personal Conflict and Learn to Deal With It in a Positive Way
“Lose your fear of personal conflict and learn to deal with it in a positive way”
Do your friends perceive you as difficult to talk to because you are quiet and reserved? Worse yet, are you perceived as boring, even as a confident, responsible, and honest person? What is wrong with this image?
Well, as you probably already know, a lot of imagery is perception… what she perceives of you is determined by how you do things to her. Are you the surly and silent type of guy? Are your feelings hidden so deep inside you that you never share them? Her perception will lead her to believe that you are uninteresting and too closed off to bother.
Is there a way out?
First you need to understand where this behavior of yours comes from. It’s probably a delayed reaction to something that happened to you long before, in your past: maybe there was some violence in your childhood, some abuse. You learned early to shut up to protect yourself from the consequences of confrontation, now any confrontation.
Years and years of that strategy have left you with an inability to express yourself and say what you want out of a relationship… Your best response is to shut up and say nothing.
In the present, no matter how much your partner asks you, it is more evident that when you shut up, it seems that you have no words. Or even worse, you don’t care enough to answer….
The longer you remain silent, the more rejected and isolated she feels, and she keeps pushing for answers. This vicious cycle is endless, and you may end up serving the title of “passive aggressive” with full honors…
No one knows that inside of you there is a person who wants and needs to open up! They blame you for shutting up, because they don’t know what you’re resisting inside. If you were to talk, worse things could happen, maybe a fierce fight or ugly confrontation, and that’s the last thing you want to have!
The issue here is that you don’t know how to confront in a soft way, and that is damaging all your relationships… in the end the only recourse for you is to walk away or stay behind.
How could you present a picture of someone with better communication skills? How can you express yourself and communicate your interests in a peaceful and respectful way? Here is a very simple way:
You are in the middle of a difference of opinion with your lover. You have said why her interest in you is a “NO, I don’t want to do it”. But she keeps begging…
Here you can go; or make a demonstration of impassive silence, or say:
“When you… (keep pestering me with a project I don’t care about)
“I feel… (under a lot of pressure)
“Because… (I could use my time in a better way, but I don’t want to disappoint you)
See how easy it is? If you learn to apply this formula in other situations, you will find a very easy way to break this sullen and introverted image of yourself. In the process, you are opening up without aggression, revealing your feelings, and having a deep conversation with her. What more could you want?