On Not Giving Away Your Power
Have you ever found yourself in a conflict, but the other person has zero willingness to consider how they might be contributing to the tension? You’re ready to engage and look at your own stuff, but they won’t, and so it feels like an impossible stalemate.
I hear this come up so often when working with clients. “They won’t get self reflective at all, so what am I supposed to do?!”
And I know it’s so frustrating, so exhausting, so heartbreaking. But there is a way for movement to be possible, even in these seemingly stuck dynamics!
I was hanging out with my five year old the other day, and they were having some big feelings, and clearly needed to let it move through their body. Which is so great!
Unfortunately, their strategy to move those feelings was to hit me, which was not ok with me. They were upset and unable to take in my requests to stop, and so I physically moved my own body away from them.
Or, you could imagine being caught out in the rain. If you don’t want to get wet right then, it won’t do a whole lot of good to yell at the rain and demand that it stop what it’s doing! But if you want to shift your own reality, you might have options: If you came prepared, you could pull out a rain jacket or umbrella. Or, you could make your way to shelter!
Whether it’s in parenting or inclement weather or mired in conflict that we are feeling stuck, we can regain hope that things can change for the better by reconnecting to our own choice and agency. It’s about noticing ways that we may be contributing, or noticing where we might make a change, or set a boundary, that’s not dependent on the other person ever doing or being anything different.
This can be hard work - of course it would be easier if the other person could just deal with their own shit, right?! But when they can’t/won’t/don’t, we don’t have to give away our power.
Here are some simple steps to finding hope for movement in those stuck conflicts. Simple, but not easy, so be gentle with yourself as you practice!
Practice the pause. At the very least, take a couple of breaths to give yourself a beat of space before responding/re-engaging. If you are live with the person, consider asking if you can pause and come back to it later when you are more resourced/have had time to reflect. Or give yourself a few hours (or days!) before you respond to that email/text/voicenote.
Give yourself some empathy. Try placing a hand on your heart or belly. Acknowledge yourself for how hard this is. Notice what needs or values are not being met in this situation. Let yourself feel how hard that is, while holding yourself with tons of sweetness and warmth and compassion and care.
Brainstorm 3-5 things you could do to shift the situation even if the other person was never willing to be self-reflective/make a change. Is there a boundary you could set for yourself? (Remember, a boundary is about your own actions, not something you can enforce on anyone else.) Could you get understanding and acknowledgement from someone else in your life about the situation? Are you willing to look at the ways you may be contributing to the conflict, even if you never engage it with the other person, but in service of your own growth and transformation? Then try one of your ideas!
Like I said, these practices are simple, but not necessarily easy. But I do think they can be so worthwhile!
We don’t have to stay stuck in conflict just because the other person isn’t willing to engage or work towards transformation. Instead, we can slow down, self-connect, and see what’s in our own domain of choice, and find movement and transformation through reconnecting to our agency.
As we find places to make different choices or set new boundaries, we can see old dynamics begin to shift, and, we may even take the opportunity to explore our own growth edges, harnessing the potential for conflict to be generative and healing, whether or not the other person ever meets us there.