Tag: confrontation

Erase, Repeat, Deny

One of my least favorite things in life is just “sweeping everything under the rug.” People love to say, almost righteously in their “kindness”: “I just hate confrontation.” And I think to myself, “Of course you hate confrontation. Almost every healthy person whom I know, with any level of kindness and empathy, hates confrontation. Nobody likes confrontation. It’s uncomfortable. It sparks defensiveness. It’s painful to think someone finds something that’s going on is ‘less than perfect.’ It rouses our own meanest inner critic and insecurities.” But here’s the rub, the relationship starts breaking down, as people try to walk on eggshells, on a bumpy rug, covering a floor of unhealed resentments. When we don’t address situations, the relationship starts being based on our own one-sided idea and thoughts of what is going on, without any earnest communication about what the other person is feeling and thinking. And in the worst situations, toxic controllers use this very human “I just hate confrontation” against us. They can keep the “erase/repeat/deny” cycle going, because we have shown that we are continually willing to just throw things under the rug, again and again.

Now one of my other least favorite things in life is pettiness. If we hold on to every little aggravation and every little annoyance and we make everyone around us miserable and we make their behavior accountable for our own happiness, that just turns us into being one of the toxic controllers. It is best to confront the truly unacceptable things that happen in a relationship or in a situation (the things that if we are honest with ourselves, we know will definitely turn into major bumps under the rug). The other minor things are our own responsibility to work through and to let go. (It’s often occurred to me that all of us would like to have magic wands to turn everyone in our lives into exactly whom we want them to be, without realizing that they too, want to use their own magic wands on us!) It’s not an easy dance. However, if we value truly authentic, real relationships, then healthy, compassionate confrontation is the only way to go. Otherwise, the monsters who have been swept under the rug will have nowhere else to go, and so they will eventually come out with great, indomitable force. And sometimes, these monster resentments have grown so large and so angry and so full of indignation and emotion, that they can cause a final rupture that is irreparable. And these terrible kinds of ruptures make a normal, healthy confrontation look like a sweet little kitten. These ruptures are hurricanes, in comparison to a small storm of confrontation that will pass on by, without any real damage, once it is cleared.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Makes So Much Sense

“This is one of the marks of a truly safe person: they are confrontable.” – Dr. Henry Cloud

Dr. Cloud has written many good books mostly focused on the subject of boundaries. There seems to be a whole lot of attention on narcissism and toxic people, these days. Back when I first learned the term “narcissism” there wasn’t much of anything about it at all on the then sparse internet. There were very few books on the subject, but it was such a relief to finally have a term and some understanding about why some of the toxic people in my life, at that time, behaved the way that they did. Now there is a plethora of information out there about these topics, some good, some not so good, but Henry Cloud knows what he’s talking about. We only have control of our own thoughts, behaviors, decisions, actions and reactions, and we are responsible for the consequences of all of these things. Healthy boundaries that we create are an important part of our overall health. There are all sorts of articles out there, talking about how to spot an unhealthy person. I think the above quote is as about as solid and telling as it gets. No one likes to confront and no one likes to be confronted, but healthy people, even if nervous and upset, can handle confrontation and work through it to a mutually agreeable solution. Trying to confront an unhealthy person, is like walking into a hurricane or a room with a ticking time bomb. The energy swirling around is scary, unpredictable and has the healthy people “walking on eggshells.” I like when someone “states the obvious”, yet what is said is so refreshingly clear that it feels like something that we have known all along, deep inside, suddenly comes to the surface and makes all of the sense in the world.