1.
You Fear Disappointing Or Displeasing Anybody
Conflict
avoidance is classic
people-pleasing behavior.
If people-pleasing doesn't sound that bad to you (why would you not
want to make other people happy?), we're talking about the extreme
here: where a fear of provoking displeasure or negative emotions in
others keeps you from expressing yourself or trying to fix issues.
Conflict avoidance often comes from a deep fear of pissing anybody
off or making them "dislike" you in any way; in the
conflict-avoidant person's mind, enduring a bad situation is better
than fighting about it and possibly incurring somebody's displeasure.
2.
You Pull Conversational Maneuvers To Get Away From Fights
Serial
conflict-avoiders will have a series
of unconscious manoeuvres to get out of fight situations.
Maybe you throw out a joke; maybe you get all passive-aggressive;
maybe you leave the room, or deliberately change the subject. But if
things start to look like conflict, your immediate reaction is to
either get out of the situation or somehow change it so that it's
more peaceful, rather than seeing the fight through.
3.
You Practice "Gunnysacking"Conflict-avoiding
people are
often gunnysackers.
It's a term from psychology, referring to the practice of silently
accumulating grievances, annoyances, and problems as they build up,
and then letting them all go in a rush as the "sack"
bursts, often completely flooding their target. Gunnysacking is
intimately related to conflict avoidance, because it's what happens
when you don't resolve things as you go along, and just hold onto
them instead. It can also reinforce conflict-avoidant behavior,
because after the flood of misery dumps, you may feel absolutely
wretched and irrational, and resolve to "be more peaceful"
in the future. Cue new gunnysack cycle.
4.
You Experienced Bad Conflicts In Your ChildhoodA
bit of fighting isn't actually a bad thing. You just have to learn to
fight well, and fight respectfully. But conflict-avoidant people tend
to have learned, early in their lives, that conflict
is a frightening, negative experience to be avoided at all costs,
rather than something that can actually resolve problems. Violent
fights, irrational parents, conflicts that escalate rapidly into
seriously damaging slanging matches: if you've seen a fight go really
badly wrong, you'll be inclined to pull away from all possibility of
that happening in the future, even if your coworkers are unlikely to
pitch a horrific fit if you disagree about a PowerPoint.
5.
You Silently Resent That Things Don't Resolve
Here's
the thing: in adulthood, some things rarely resolve properly without
a good fight, or at least somebody standing up for themselves and
asserting their opinion. If you're conflict avoidant, instead of
telling your boss they've got your pay wrong and need to fix it, or a
boyfriend that their birthday card for your mom was offensive, you'll
suffer in silence. Key word "suffer," because the issue at
hand won't change if you won't engage in discussion about it, and the
same thing will likely happen again. And that's how resentment
builds.
6.
You've Suffered Injustice And Unfairness Just To Avoid A FightIf
you can think of more than one example where avoiding a fight led to
a significant disadvantage on your part, you're probably a prime
candidate for conflict-avoiding status. Sometimes avoiding conflict
is a good idea; if somebody is being irrational, prone to violence,
or just needs to be calmed down rather than met with assertive
responses, it's a good and diplomatic idea. But you have rights, and
if you've let them slip rather than go for a direct confrontation,
you're avoiding conflict and costing yourself things in the process.
And no, complaining to other people doesn't count as helping a
conflict resolve itself.
7.
You Have A Fear Of Expressing YourselfThis
is tied to #4. Fights are, ultimately, about expressing
our own position in
ways that may convince the other person that they're wrong. If,
however, you've come from an environment where your own views were
met with dismissiveness, snorts of derision, serious smack downs,
constant criticism, or any other kind of systemic dismantling, you're
not going to feel comfortable asserting yourself.
This
is also, frankly, a feminist issue. Women, as Jennifer
Lawrence pointed out so eloquently in her essay for Lenny Letter
about salary negotiations,
are supposed to be "nice". We're not supposed to play
hardball, step up to criticism, come out guns blazing, or stand our
ground. We're culturally expected to couch any self-expression within
apology, humility, and gentleness. Being assertive is not part of our
set of cultural weapons, but it damn well should be. If you avoid
conflict because, on some level, you believe it's not ladylike to get
involved in deep, dirty fights, you may be doing yourself a serious
disservice.
Getting
out of conflict-avoidant patterns is tricky, but there are a lot
of psychological
guides to getting what you need out of a conflict,
from pre-planning your sentences in your head to figuring out how
you'd like things to resolve ahead of time. It's all right. A simple
verbal confrontation over sandwiches with a barista won't kill you. I
promise.
