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Compassion in conflict: Making peace with but/and

Leave a Comment / Dealing with Anger, Forgiveness, The Shame Cycle / By Sara
Wald / March 17, 2024

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 Trauma tricks us into believing that everything is black and white, right or
wrong, us versus them. This is our survival instinct kicking in. When our only
options to conflict are fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, we become reactive.

This may have worked well in prehistoric times, when our biggest conflict
was eat or be eaten. But modern life is much more complicated and
layered. Unfortunately, our subconscious brain development hasn’t really
kept pace with our prefrontal cortex that controls conscious, rational
thought.

This means that, as soon as we slip into a trauma response, we basically

become cavemen. This explains why people do “crazy” things when they are
triggered. Fortunately, we are beginning to understand how to circumvent
our triggers before we slip into dysregulation. But I’m getting ahead of
myself…

Before we can learn to manage our triggers, we need to back up and talk
about culture, brain development, and how they relate to each other.
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 Compartmentalizing
Historically, the way that the humans have handled our triggers is to stu!
them ever deeper, which actually does work, but only in the short term.

The term used to describe “stu"ng our feelings” is compartmentalization.

Basically, we put the feelings in a box in a dark corner of our brain, lock it,
and throw away the key. This works in a pinch, and in small doses is a
necessary skill to navigate life.

Let’s face it. There are plenty of times it simply does not work to fall apart
and feel all the feels. If everyone walked around sobbing at work, or
screaming with rage in the line at the grocery store, all heck would break
loose.

Rewarded for ignoring our feelings.

It makes sense, then, that previous generations bestowed high praise on
those who could maintain control of their emotions. Humanity has a long
history of rewarding quiet stoicism, whether it be straight A’s for the
children who sit quietly in their seats and work diligently, or medals for
combat veterans for keeping their cool under pressure.

And again, there is most certainly a time and place for stoicism. The trouble
is not necessarily that we maintain control of our emotions in order to
successfully navigate life. The problem is that we are only now learning that
those big feelings must be released at some point, or the pressure will
become too great.
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 We either explode or implode.
Explode happens when we unleash the wrath of pent-up rage or sorrow
over something relatively small and unrelated to the task at hand.

And implode happens when our bodies finally fall into illness, poisoned by
years of pent-up pain and anger that has been trapped inside our nervous
system.

Death by stoicism.
We’ve all heard of people “dying from a broken heart.” Or people having a
“midlife crisis.” A guy turns 40 and suddenly buys a convertible and runs o!
with his secretary. A woman goes full-on berserk and rams her car into the
truck in the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly because he cut her o!.

Thankfully, these middle-aged stereotypes are becoming less relatable as

gender stereotypes and poor coping mechanisms go the way of decorative
ashtrays and cassette tapes. This is thanks in large part to advances in
neuroscience and psychology that teach us how to manage our big feelings
as they arise, rather than continually ignore them and hope they go away.

Humanity is beginning to learn that eventually – and it really does tend to

happen around 40-50 years of age – the locked box inside our
subconscious that’s holding all those unexpressed emotions becomes too
full and bursts at the seams, spewing red hot emotion everywhere.
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 The danger of compartmentalization
The biggest issue with compartmentalization is that we never learn how to
process emotions in a healthy way. When we believe that big feelings are
inherently bad, experiencing emotions in itself becomes traumatizing. This
results in stacking additional trauma on top of what was already a
traumatic experience.

Let’s say you’re at work and suddenly your boss walks in and announces to
everyone that your employer is closing down, e!ective immediately. Some
of the emotions that will immediately arise are anger, sadness, fear, and
grief. How will you pay your bills? How will you buy food and housing and
utilities? What is your identity if you don’t have a job?

These are very real threats to your survival that will generate a fight, flight,
freeze, or fawn response, depending on your own unique temperament
and coping mechanisms. You might be overcome with the urge to throat
punch your boss, or overturn a desk.

You might want to run screaming from the room. You might just stand
there, frozen, unable to move. You might run to your boss, fall on your
knees and plead for them to change their mind.
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 Not a single one of these things will
resolves the problem.
At the end of the day, you’ll still be unemployed. So what do you do? You
quietly gather your things and leave. And then what?

Past generations would tell you to suck it up. Get on the phone or pound
the pavement, looking for a new job. Dress in a crisp suit or your cleanest
work boots, and head out into the world again. Take it like a man. Be a lady.
Pull yourself together.

And where do all those big feelings go? Into the locked box. Until one day,
you just can’t take it anymore.

How does this lead to all-or-nothing

thinking?
When we stu! our feelings, they don’t just disappear. They are absorbed
into our tissues and held for safe keeping as memory in our nervous
system. Over time, those pent-up emotions begin to clog our systems,
cloud our brains, and seep into all of our interactions, big and small.

With all that pent up emotion, we never really leave the triggered state.
There’s always a part of us on-edge, even when we’re sleeping. This is why
nightmares and insomnia are so common in those who have a habit of
stu"ng their big feelings.
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 Understanding nuance and duality
requires a clear mind.
In my coaching work, I’ve learned that sometimes the most triggered
people are those who seem to have it the most together. They are like a
pressure cooker, just a few stressors aways from bursting wide open.

The other extreme are those who seem to always be in crisis. They blew
their top long ago, and they are in a perpetual state of explosion, ready to
fight anyone who crosses their path.

In both cases, if these individuals had known how to safely express their big
feelings as they arose, they wouldn’t be holding so tightly to the edge of
their tolerance. It’s no wonder these folks struggle with duality.
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 Hearts and minds at max capacity.
Unlike cavemen, the problems we face in our day-to-day lives are very
rarely either/or. We face complex issues that often have more than one
right answer, depending on personal perspective and unique
circumstances.

Philosopher Lawrence Kohlberg created a scenario called the Heinz

dilemma that – to oversimplify it a bit – was essentially a guy named Heinz
who couldn’t a!ord lifesaving medication for his sick wife, so he broke into
a pharmacy and stole it. Was he wrong, or no?

Either/or, black and white thinkers would say, “Thief! Throw him in jail!” or
“Throw the pharmacist in jail for denying him the medicine!”

But it’s not that simple, is it? The pharmacist must make money or she can’t
feed her family. Heinz must have the medicine, or his wife will die. What is
right, and what is wrong? It gets messy really fast.
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 Cognitive dissonance
When we encounter a situation that requires duality, we experience
something called cognitive dissonance. This is the discomfort we feel in our
brains and bodies when we experience internal conflict between two
separate beliefs.

When our nervous system is already maxed out with suppressed emotion,
we don’t have the margin to process complex problems and ideas.
Unresolved cognitive dissonance manifests as indecision, procrastination,
self-loathing, and blaming and/or rejecting others.

And because we are intelligent and intuitive beings, on some level – either
conscious or subconscious – we know we haven’t given full and fair thought
to resolving the problem, which creates a secondary burden of shame on
top of the already complicated issue, which results in compounding our
traumas.

Heaping trauma on top of more

trauma
Every situation we encounter, big or small, every day, has the potential to
traumatize or re-traumatize us. The only way to avoid this is to learn to
release the existing big feelings we are already carrying around, and then
naming and acknowledging new traumas as they arise.

If we don’t learn to manage our big feelings when they happen, they are
going to keep coming back to haunt us in all of our future interactions.
Every time we pile on more trauma, we risk overloading our nervous
system. Eventually, the lock box is going to burst.
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 The evolution of the human nervous
system.
We are, as a species, only at the very early stages of understanding why and
how we must release our big feelings. We are only now beginning to
understand the internal lock box we’ve been culturalized to keep in our
subconscious, and only now beginning to understand how to relieve some
of the pressure of stored emotion.

From a cultural standpoint, when we realize that every person you meet is –
to some degree – carrying around a locked box of big feelings in various
stages of capacity, some about to burst at the seams, it becomes easier to
understand why there is so much unrest and conflict in the world.

We are living in the middle of a major shift in human consciousness, fueled

by our ever-expanding understanding of how our own brains work. It’s an
exciting time, but also a little like walking blind through a giant labyrinth.
We don’t know where we’re headed, which can feel really unsettling,
especially for people who are living in a constant state of dysregulation due
to complex trauma.
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 What’s the answer?
The single best way to turn o! your fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response is
awareness. Instead of shutting down your big feelings as they arise,
acknowledge them. Say hello to them. Rather than pushing them
immediately away into the locked box, give yourself time to really feel them.

Then, once they are named and acknowledged, take three slow, deep
breaths. Internally, reassure your trauma brain that you hear its warning,
but you’ve got this. It can stand down. It seems a little strange to have a
conversation with yourself, but there is increasing evidence that suggests
this is exactly what your subconscious needs to halt the danger warnings.

Once you’re feeling more regulated, you can step into stressful situations
with a clear mind, ready to take on whatever comes your way. When your
nervous system is regulated, you are better able to appreciate nuance and
find workable solutions for complex problems.

If you find yourself having to stu! the big feelings in the moment, it’s okay
to put them in the lock box temporarily. As long as you step back later,
when the moment allows, to revisit the big feelings, name them, and
release them.
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 Ways to learn more about Redefining
Love:
Read the book! More information available HERE!

Watch the TEDx Talk HERE!

Browse the site. You can start HERE!

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accountability, and grace with Redefining Love SWAG, available HERE!

Related Links:
What is Redefining Love?
Boundaries
Accountability
Grace
The Shame Cycle
Dealing with Anger
Understanding Emotions
Naming, Blaming, and the Uncluttered Subconscious

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