Conflict & Codependent Thinking

Raise your paw if you’ve ever said “I hate conflict” or “I’m conflict avoidant.” I hear it all the time from my clients in Anchored. I’ve totally acted from conflict avoidance many times in my life. Let’s dive into what conflict is, what it isn’t, how our codependent, perfectionist and people-pleasing habits confuse the issue and how to shift out of thinking that disagreements are conflict.

Here as always, I am not speaking to abusive or violent situations, but rather, the everyday conversations and discussions that we label as conflict and run from like a horse escaping a burning barn or lean into like our own tail is on fire.

What is conflict? And how do we distort it?

I want to testify that it’s possible to shift our story around conflict, but first we need to understand what it is and what it isn’t.

Conflict is defined as “a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one.” That’s heavy language and we have the habit of making any little thing into a moment with the weight of an extended stay in the Pit of Despair.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can start to see and feel into the difference between conversations, discussions, loving disagreements and “situations with the weight of the definition of conflict.”

And while we say we hate conflict and avoid it at all costs, what we often really mean is that we fear direct, open and honest conversation, because we sure do have the habit of causing conflict or stress in relationships. Some of our favesies are:

1. We tend to take things personally.

Which is a cornerstone habit of codependent thinking, which we define as chronically sourcing our self-worth and validation from others instead of from within ourselves, so we believe that we need everyone in the world to like us, to approve of us, to think we’re awesome and amazing or at the least, maybe kinda worthy of the air we breathe or we don’t believe it ourselves.

From that place, it makes sense that we would take things personally because it feels scary not to. We might miss someone not liking us, which is something we think is both a problem and something we need to solve for. Something we need to fix by fawning, appeasing, shape-shifting and chameleoning so that we make sure that we come across as the person we think they want us to be. The pleasing person who people-pleased.

2. Having little to know sense of internal or intrapersonal boundaries.

Which leads us to do things, like tasks for others, when we don’t actually want to or have the time or energy to, that leaves us feeling resentful, because we tell the story that it’s the other person’s fault that we said yes. We were just trying to make them happy after all… how very altruistic of us, wouldn’tchasay?

But in fact, we’re being controlling and manipulative without even realizing it, and if they’re not over the moon thrilled about us doing the thing for them that they didn’t ask us to do and prolly didn’t even want done… Claws Out Central. Rawr! It’s a show-down at the I’m So Resentful Because You Don’t Value Me Saloon!

3. Not expressing our displeasure in the moment because we fear we will displease others.

Something that was not safe or okay in childhood and in the patriarchy is definitely not something okay for humans socialized as women to do. We are to be pleasing and polite, demur and elegant and quiet, right? So instead of speaking up and saying “I don’t like that” or “that hurts my feelings,” instead we shove it in the pile of other disappointments and resentments we hold against the people we love. We do this so that when they abandon us we can be like “see, I knew it. I was right all along about how much they suck…”

It’s like holding a massive helium balloon under water. It’s eventually gonna come shooting on up outta the water, and it’s going to smack you and the people around you right in the face through blow ups, passive aggression, snarky comments or jabs, on and on with the indirect yuck.

4. The Fixer Habit.

Which is that deep desire to control others, that drives us to try to micromanage the people in our lives, often without their consent. No one likes to be controlled without their consent, right? So of course that leads to conflict when people tell us to cut it out, and then we take it personally and get resentful and the whole codependent cycle starts spinning once more.

5. We stay in relationships where there is frequent conflict.

Heated disagreements that end in one or both partners yelling, accusing, name calling, because from our codependent behaviors we believe we need the other person to love us for us to be okay, and we’re scared, at our core, that we’re unlovable, so we stick around even when unhealthy conflict is the norm, and often perpetuate it ourselves from our desire to be constantly validated.

6. Over & under-exaggeration.

We have the tendency to make someone saying “I asked you to do this my Wednesday and it’s now Thursday, what’s up?” or a date saying “I want to talk about how we communicate our needs,” into something massive, a potential life-or-death kind of moment. Or we tend to shut down in those moments and to minimize the other person’s wants, needs, opinions or ask in an attempt to avoid conflict and the potential self-flagellation that may ensue.

It’s our habit for sure to make things bigger than they are from sympathetic or to play like it’s nothin from dorsal. To freak out and think doom is nigh or to be dismissive. “Ugh. I wish she didn’t make everything such a big deal, I wish they would stop being so sensitive,” when someone tries to communicate with us, again in an attempt to avoid conflict, often at a high cost to relationships and our own mental and physical wellness as our bodies get flooded with all sorts of stress hormones.

7. We have the habit of blaming others instead of taking personal responsibility for what we do and how we feel.

See Radical Self-Responsibility. She made me feel, I did it to make them happy, he guilted me… check out that episode for more details.

8. Finally, you don’t know how to have your own back.

Your date says something and your tender heart goes “ouch, that hurt” and this voice inside you says “don’t speak up. They’ll tell you you’re wrong, they’ll make fun of you, they’ll negate you.”

I know this one all too well. It was a wound from childhood that was strengthened when I was in an emotionally abusive relationship with a lot of gaslighting. I was often told that my feelings were wrong, that I had no right or reason to be upset or hurt, that it was my fault that I had “made them say that mean thing” (literal words I heard more than once). Conflict with this person was so intense, aggressive and triggering, in the clinical sense of the word, that I learned to deeply fear conflict with them. From the skills I had then, I shut up, I went dorsal— I stopped talking, did the ole go along to get along, which was the safer choice then, instead of leaving, which I eventually did. Once I remembered how to have my own back in the face of a bully. And that was a process, lemmetellyawhat… a whole friggin journey for sure.

We talked about the useful tool of “of course they did” and I want to say: of course you act this way! Of course we avoid conflict, for all the reasons we just talked about.

For example, if we tell someone that we don’t like how they spoke to us, then they won’t like us! And that is a problem if your mindset is all about perfectionist, codependent and people pleasing! All this worry and fear about what others think of us can send us into sympathetic activation (fight or flight) or dorsal shut down (freeze, disconnection) because we think it’s not safe to not be liked. Makes sense to the lizard brain, the limbic system, the place where these kinds of fear live. For more on the ole limbic system, check out Inner Child Science.

That is: be gentle, be kind, be loving with you, okay?

You’re just a mammal, mammaling along and doing your best with the skills you have in this little minute, k? And you’re gaining more skills right now by reading Feminist Wellness so please, give yourself the grace, okay my little perfect tender ravioli?

Let’s talk about root cause, like proper little Functional Medicine nerds:

Many of us avoid conflict because of hypervigilance, which means your nervous system is always on high alert for threats to your sense of self and thus your safety.

If we didn’t feel safe either emotionally or physically growing up, didn’t see healthy conflict in our families, didn’t see adults respectful discussing an issue and coming back into love after a misunderstanding, we don’t have a map for that. We don’t have the language or script for that. We don’t quite know how that one goes… and most of us handle conflict the way we saw it handled at home, the way we learned to as kids until we step out of emotional childhood and into emotional adulthood.

For so many of us, the blueprint for relationships we saw growing up was not the most mature or healthy one. It was either the stiff upper lip, everything is fine, we don’t talk about Bruno kinda thing or maybe you saw what the authors and relationship researchers Drs Julie and John Gottman called the four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse—stonewalling, contempt, criticism, and defensiveness—as the norm then it leads to this low grade anxiety in the home where our nervous system and sense of self are developing. Of course conflict, or even just a For Realsies Convo can feel like death and doom because we didn’t learn that there is any other way to do it.  We believe that’s the only way.

So of course we live in hypervigilance.

We are adept at reading other’s energy and are highly sensitive people. We pick up on energy and interpret it through the lens of our codependent relational habits.

Empathy, compassion, reading other people’s energy isn’t a problem—it’s actually a super power. It becomes a problem when we make it a problem.

We take on the things we’re picking up as something to fix or make it mean something about ourselves. This sounds like “is something wrong? Are you sure you’re not mad at me, like, really sure?” Which can create conflict when the other person may be grumped, and may be consciously taking a beat to work through it, breathe through, sort it for themselves. And instead of being okay with others speaking up in their own time, we create tension and conflict by pushing someone else to make us feel safer, which they can’t even really do.

And for folks living in marginallized identities, people of color, queer and trans folks, disabled folks, inmigrantes, women, the undocumented, economically disadvantaged folks, neurodivergent folks conflict is something to be avoided, especially in the context of interacting with employers, schools or oppressive forces like the police because the risk of actually catastrophic outcomes are higher, which is a very Real Real.

Which is also something that gets written into our nervous systems, and is often an intergenerationally carried trauma response that makes a lot of sense, and can be exacerbated if one has codependent, perfectionist, people pleasing thought habits. On top of being told from birth that the dominant society doesn’t find you as valuable or worthy of love as cis het blond slender able bodied neurotypical white folks of European extraction.

How do our “I’m not worthy of love” thought patterns make conflict avoidance worse?

If you have a habit of people pleasing, seeking approval externally, or perfectionism, lots of things can feel like conflict that often aren’t or don’t need to be.

For example, Corrina, a client in Anchored, had some work on her house.

When the work people did a half assed job, she approached the situation as if there was already a conflict because she was anticipating a fight, disappointment and being disrespected. Ready for a conflict snowball?

• And then she created internal conflict around paying them and spent hours ruminating about what she would say, how they would respond.

• Then she spent hours crafting a carefully worded email to try to avoid conflict while also worrying about and future forecasting all sorts of conflict.

• And then she made it about her, asking in coaching if it would be unethical if she decided not to pay them for not doing the job they said they would do, also wondering if maybe she was being too demanding in wanting them to actually finish the job they said they would do the way they both agreed it would be done… was she being a bother, she wondered? Would they think she was a nag or a bitch? Would they be rude to her when they came back?

• And then there is conflict energy in the rest of her life as she complains to her friends, her partner, anyone who would listen and spent time self coaching on it over and over.

She was expending all this time and energy on a “conflict” that hadn’t even happened.

And through the coaching process we dug in and found fears of abandonment under it all. That the workers wouldn’t make it right and she would be left all alone with this mess, which is a fear her inner children often carry.

And that fear of abandonment, which is a very much human and mammalian fear, lead Corrina to take this whole situation quite personally. She, and We make it about us while simultaneously fixating on what the other person will think and feel about us. Because we feel so unsure in sense of self and safety that we project that on to the need for others to like us.

We create conflict in subtle ways if not directly.

Some people with codependent habits are so used to feeling constantly attacked that they tend to strike first and have their claws out all the time. Others will create more subtle conflict from that same energy of fear and insecurity—like a chihuahua at a dog park. You feel small energetically so you attempt to look fierce and give off that ‘donlt fuck with me energy” which can look like lashing out first because their nervous systems are most cozy when they are in conflict because it’s what they know.

When conflict is coded as an event with a high risk of death, you better believe your nervous system will react because it’s supposed to.

It’s doing its job—compassion and love, k?

And as adults get to learn how to respond—internally and externally to our nervous system dysregulation so we don’t attack ourselves or the people we love. So we don’t inadvertently gaslight or negate someone’s wants or needs. So we don’t avoid or engage in conflict from an unconscious, unintentional place. So we can speak our wants and needs from a place of self-regulation and can reach out to safe people to co-regulate with, and can learn how to have our own backs instead of taking things personally, which is when we make other people’s thoughts, feels and actions about our core value and worth.

Thank you for taking the time to read Feminist Wellness. I’m excited to be here and to help you take back your health!

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