If you have been following me for some time or know me in real life, you understand that my passion is to support black women and to help all women understand and value emotional health so that we can live highly empowered lives. One of the things that has a tremendous impact on our emotional health is conflict and our ability to maintain relationships with other women.
Let me tell ya, I have been in my fair share of verbal girl fights and have witnessed enough of them to know they rarely end well. Let me explain what typically happens:
During conflict, both parties opt out of saying what they truly feel in a humble manner because many of us have been conditioned very early on to believe that vulnerability makes us appear weak. Here is where it gets interesting: as we disagree, our brain begins to process the argument. If we have unhealed trauma, our brain will relate the conflict with that of a painful past experience. As I always say, heated disagreements are rarely about the issue at hand. When we become irate or offensive during conflict this means we have begun defending ourselves as we believe we should have when our father didn’t show up for us, when we were bullied in high school, when our mother didn’t embrace us as she should have, or a previous friend ghosted us. For this reason, many of us lash out, become super emotional, or overreact during conflict. It’s because the emotions of the past have taken over. Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk shows us in The Body Keeps the Score that when we haven’t forgiven, we may treat our loved ones who offend us even in the mildest sense the way we wish we had treated those who harmed us. Our loved ones do not deserve that.
Moreover, during conflict, our words become weapons as we try to hurt the person as best we can so that we can feel some relief about the conflict and to have something to brag about to others. “Look at how I put her in her place,” is what we say. To be honest, this has become a toxic part of Black culture that I wish to alleviate. We truly believe we are winning the argument, yet, in fact, we are creating toxic patterns and harm for ourselves. Please understand unresolved conflict has a tremendous effect on us. The Colorado Rediscovery Center states “unresolved conflict is linked to anxiety, confusion, the inability to handle conflict, depression and the innate belief that we have no value.“
Homework:
Take a moment to examine yourself by journaling the following questions truthfully:
– How have I reacted when I was hurt by a friend, family member, or partner?
_How do my parents and siblings resolve conflict?
– How many very close friends do I have that pour into me?
– How many disagreements have I had over the past year that have gone unresolved?
– Do I fear vulnerability?
– Do I have healthy conflict-resolution skills?
Go to the site and grab the devotional to understand how to resolve conflict in a healthy way.