Embracing Conflict

At Beth and Jim’s house, the dining room had become a war zone. Exhausted after a long day of work, all they wanted was to find some comfort from each other. Instead, an argument about household chores had escalated into a full-blown yelling match.

Conflict shows up when what we want or think clashes with what someone else wants or thinks. Our primal instincts get threatened, and we try to protect our territory—our version of what is right and wrong, our opinion about what should happen next or our sense of entitlement to get what we want.

Because conflict taps into those deep instincts, it can feel like a personal attack. Depending on how situations were handled in our family of origin, our default response to conflict may be to fight, flee or hide.

Those responses may feel comfortable to us, because they’re what we know, but they’re no fun. And as a result we may do just about anything we can to avoid conflict. We may agree to something...