Some people have separate drawers in their mind. They can open or close a drawer at will, and whenever they don’t want to think about a topic – they just don’t. If they had a conflict with their partner before going to work, they go to work and forget all about it until they have time to process. For others, it’s a bit more complex – anything unresolved gets stuck in a perpetual loop in your mind. It impacts your mood. It impacts your ability to eat or sleep. Putting it plainly – it sucks.
So today, let’s unpack why this happens and how you can practice self-care while a conflict is still unresolved, especially if it takes multiple days (or months or years).
Why some of us get stuck during conflicts
There are two ways to see conflicts. (For the sake of simplicity, here I treat all conflicts as the same thing, but maybe your mind treats different types differently.) One is: “Conflicts happen. They pass. They’re not the end of the world.” The other is: “Conflicts are dangerous. They are unpredictable, and a threat.” (From here, there are two sub-tracks: “Conflicts need to be resolved ASAP” and “Conflicts need to be avoided at all costs”.) Now most of us know that conflicts happen, pass, and usually aren’t the end of the world. But even if we know this to be true, we don’t always feel it. The part in our brain that’s responsible for our survival doesn’t agree. It’s in full-on survival mode.
Why this happens usually has to do with what we’ve experienced in the past. Every time a conflict happens, your mind stores the experience on a subconscious level. Imagine growing up in a household where conflicts would happen but would always get resolved, without making you unsafe or unloved. As you grow older, you sometimes get into conflicts, but they’re never really threatening. They’re just a normal part of your life. Your subconscious learns not to fear conflicts. On the other hand, if you grew up in a household where conflicts would lead to verbal or physical violence or to abandonment (or if you’ve experienced this in your relationships later in life), your mind gets the message: conflicts aren’t safe!
When we learn that conflicts aren’t safe – and especially when this is paired with anxiety as opposed to the craving to just withdraw and hide – we keep seeing them as a threat until they get resolved. Which is especially difficult if you’re in a conflict that just keeps on being or never gets resolved.
Now, here comes a nerdy part, but bear with me.
Understanding nervous regulation in your body
There are different systems in our body that regulate… everything, really. How we breathe. How much energy we store. Our digestion. Now for this part of our story, two systems are especially important. One is the parasympathetic nervous system, also known as your ‘rest-and-digest’ system. When this system is activated, our body allows processes that are very vital but not in-the-moment necessary when trying to battle threats: digestion and recovery.
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The other system is the sympathetic nervous system. When I first heard about that one, I expected it to have something to do with having sympathy for someone. But it’s the opposite. This is the fight-or-flight system and it prepares your body for keeping you safe. It’s the system that’s active when we perceive conflict as a threat. And this system doesn’t (self-)care about keeping your happiness or your digestion. So it doesn’t prioritize them.
This is one of the reasons why so many of us struggle with practicing self-care when we’re in a conflict. We’re not lazy. We’re not ignorant. Our sympathetic nervous system is just focused on what it believes to be more important things.
Why the solution isn’t just pushing for a solution
If this is how you feel, the most natural impulse for you in a conflict may be to push the other person for a solution. Talk. Talk more. Keep going. And yes, talking about a conflict is usually a good idea! But timing is important here.
If you want the best odds to solve a conflict, you need three ingredients:
- You need to know where you stand
- You need time to talk
- Both you and the other person need to be out of your triggers
Knowing where you stand means you’ve been able to calmly reflect on the conflict. What’s your take on what happened and what you need moving forward?
Time to talk is an obvious but sometimes difficult one: if one of you needs to leave in 10 minutes, this is not the time to bring up something big and complex (in fact, it’s a great way to get you stuck mid-conflict!)
And most importantly (and often overlooked): both of you need to be out of your triggers. When something triggers you, your survival system snaps into motion and this isn’t a system of careful contemplation and mutual care. It’s about action. Kneejerk reactions. Your most visceral response. And here’s the trick about this one: it never ever considers being wrong (or even less right). When you’re in this state of mind, having a reasonable conversation and showing empathy for each other becomes very hard.
And these three aren’t one-off things. Maybe you know where you stand, you have the time to talk, the other person says something that triggers you, you need to take a time-out to contemplate, when you’re calm you reconsider where you stand, etc.
This may sound tedious (and honestly, it can be), but it beats getting stuck in a cycle of confusion and hurt. So if you notice that for either of you, one of the three ingredients is missing – try not to push it. Instead, take some more time to get there.
Meanwhile, you practice self-care. Here’s how.
Self-care in the middle of an ongoing conflict
Before discussing ways to practice self-care in conflicts, let’s first briefly talk about two things that don’t work.
First, don’t battle your thoughts. This is the ‘Don’t think of a pink elephant’ mandate. The more you’re trying to not think about something, the louder the warning bells of it chime in the back of your mind. That’s the alert system of your brain and it’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do: making sure you don’t ignore the threat. So don’t try and force yourself to not think about the conflict. It’s exhausting and it’s not the best use of your energy.
Second, you may try to distract yourself from the conflict by doing something else. Now the temptation is distracting yourself with things that don’t require any effort on your part (which makes sense if your energy is low because of the conflict). For some, this may be cannabis or alcohol. For others, it’s mindless Instagram scrolling for two hours straight. Again, I know it’s tempting. But it’s also risky. You teach your mind that you need these things to feel happy. That way lies addiction. Instead, when aiming for distraction, focus on things that you know are good for you in the long run. Exercise. Art. Going outside in nature.
Take care of your body
When you’re in the middle of an unresolved conflict, you may find it’s hard to take care of yourself. Getting off the couch and dragging yourself to the kitchen to get some food or to a shower becomes a heroic feat. Here are a few tricks to make self-care a bit easier:
- Food: Healthy food is good, but any food is better than no food at all. I usually try to make sure I have some liquid food because it’s easier to eat. Sometimes, it’s a bottled smoothie. Other times, a can of soup. Things like yoghurt can also work. But if all you have is a bag of chips – a bag of chips it is.
- Drinks: Fill a big bottle and keep it near you. Small sips add up. Stay hydrated.
- Bathroom breaks: Go.
- Sleep: This one is tricky if you’re prone to insomnia. Going to bed at your normal time and relaxing your body is a good start. So is regulating your nervous system (more on that one below). If all else fails – if you can’t sleep, at least allow your body to rest. Lie down, eyes closed. Try to slow your breathing.
- Shower (or take a bath): Water makes almost anything better.
Regulate your nervous system
Remember those two systems we discussed at the beginning of this blog? One important part of selfcare is making sure you activate your parasympathetic nervous system. The one that feels you’re safe and allows you to relax.
There are many ways to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, such as slow and controlled breathing, gentle touch (cuddling!), meditation and singing.
What do all of the above things have in common? They get you back into your body and into the present moment.
And just in case you’re curious: your sympathetic and your parasympathetic system can be active at the same time. They don’t cancel each other out – for any given function in your body, one will tend to overrule. There’s a chemical explanation for that, including lovely concepts like excitatory effects, but we won’t go too deep into that. But if you’re curious, a gross oversimplification would state: sympathetic overrules the ‘rest’ part of the parasympathetic system, but not the ‘digest’ part.
(If you want more tips for helping regulate your nervous system, check out our Anxiety Emergency Kit; it’s packed with information, exercises, mantras and more to help you regulate!)
Recenter
Remember how I wrote conflicts are best resolved when each of you knows where they stand? Set aside some time to tune in with what you believe in. What’s important to you? Do you feel like you need to do something differently next time? Is there a boundary you would like to uphold?
If you already have a vision blueprint, this is an amazing moment to grab it and check this how this conflict and your relationship with this person fit in with your vision of who you want to be and how you want to show up.
(If you don’t have a vision blueprint yet, this is also a great moment to start making one! Here’s a quick tutorial and here are cards to prompt you to go deeper.)
Best tip for last: regular check-ins
Okay, so you know how your parasympathetic system is about being in your body and a lot of self-care is also about being in your body? And you know how when you’re in the middle of an argument and you’re stressing out about it you’re decidedly not in your body?
Help yourself get there.
This is a super simple tip, but it works.
Set an alarm for every 30 minutes or an hour. Whenever the alarm goes off, you pause whatever it is you’re doing and you answer the following questions:
- Am I hungry?
- Am I thirsty?
- Do I need to go to the bathroom?
- Am I tired?
- Do I need a hug?
And if the answer to any of these is yes, try to meet your need to the best of your abilities (yes, this includes hugging yourself!). Above all, be gentle with yourself. Self-care and self-bullying don’t go together. So treat yourself the way you’d treat a kid in a playground who just got into a fight. Give them a hug. Promise them things will be better. Because they will be. This conflict will pass. And you’ll still be here.