If You Hate Conflict, Do This In Stressful Situations

Can you remember a highly charged discussion when you could feel your blood boiling, and the adrenalin surging in your body, and your voice shaking?

If you can, you are probably a person who is not comfortable in public conflict situations with an audience, but those who are used to these confrontations are a lot more confident and relaxed.

These people are usually thick skinned narcissists, and they think that whatever they say is right, and everyone else is wrong, always.

If you hate these situations but want to stand up for yourself, why not turn the situation around? Let the one who is your adversary, who is comfortable with conflict, talk?

This way you can remain in your comfort zone and old loudmouth narcissist can also be comfortable. How do you do this and remain true to your convictions without falling to pieces?

We use this technique in many martial arts on a physical level, but with these mental martial arts, you can apply the same techniques. Use the person’s own strengths against them.

It all starts prior to the encounter. Prepare yourself for where the conversation could head, know your adversary, and prepare for what he or she may throw at you.

It is also important that you design several questions, prior to any potential conflict situation, the answers to which will allow you and those witnessing the event to see the truth of what you are saying, by letting your conflict loving adversary say the words to make your point.

Questions that open up the assumptions of the other person are always good to ask, because that then exposes their reasoning or lack thereof. This works particularly well with loud-mouthed conflict orientated people.

Questions like. “You have stated that you were not happy with the action I took in this situation. Can you tell me why you think what I did was wrong?”

This way you get them to explain their thinking and they have to explain the reasons for their specific opinion. This is usually the point at which one of two things happen. Either they have a fantastic solution that you never thought about, in which case you can defuse the situation and thank them for their expertise. The other option is that they expose a weak understanding of the details of the situation, where you can then correct them politely.

Often these high conflict people will throw out accusations or highlight problems, rather than suggest solutions to the problem they are highlighting. The best way to handle this situation is to ask the following question.

“Thank you for sharing your concerns, they are valid and challenging. I am sure that you have thought through what we can do about these problems, so please share your thoughts with us.”

This way, you validate them as important and their statement as important too, so this will make the narcissist feel good, and then you ask them to reason.

You find most of the time that the complainers are clueless about how to solve the problems they are expounding.

When there is a personal issue between yourself and someone who is a high conflict person, you should once again let them do the talking by asking open-ended questions like. “I know there is a tension that exists between us, and I would like to understand why that is. Can you tell me from your perspective?”

This type of question assists with uncovering deeper motivations or opinions that your adversary holds. Once you expose these, you can work on discussing them and coming to a mutually agreed solution.

Much of the time when you ask direct questions and ask people to explain themselves, many will back down is my experience, because they are actually cowards.

Many also have irrational reasons for their boisterous and narcissistic attitudes, so getting them to reason through their own irrationality can be quite interesting.

So let’s recap, if you are a conflict averse person, but know there is a potential conflict situation coming up, be prepared, think through questions that can open up the assumptions of the other person. Remain calm and ask the questions and let them do the talking.

If there is an audience, (narcissists like to humiliate others in public). You will look a lot more professional by letting them expose their own lack of reasoning, rather than trying to argue directly with them.