How do we stop fighting even when the other person won't change?
Perhaps we keep having the same arguments with our partner. Perhaps we regularly clash with a family member, our children or someone at work. Or perhaps the person we fight with most is ourselves. When we search for how to stop fighting, it is tempting to focus on what the other person is doing wrong. If only they would listen. If only they would understand. If only they would change. But what if stopping the fight doesn't begin with changing them?
What if it begins with us?
In this article, I share five tips to stop fighting that we can apply ourselves — even when the other person isn't interested in changing. And the first one may determine whether any of the other four will work.
After watching, I would love to hear your thoughts. Which of these five tips speaks to you most? You can leave a comment below the video.
1. Decide: Do I Want to Be Happy or Do I Want to Be Right?
This is where I believe we begin.
When we are in an argument, being right can suddenly become incredibly important. We want the other person to understand our point of view. We want them to acknowledge that what they did was wrong. We want to win.
But we can ask ourselves a very simple question:
Do I want to be happy, or do I want to be right?
If being right is more important, we can easily become caught in an ego game. We defend our position, the other person defends theirs, and the fight continues. This doesn't mean agreeing with something we don't agree with. Nor does it mean allowing someone to treat us disrespectfully. It means deciding what our real objective is. If our objective is peace, understanding and a fulfilling relationship, proving that we are right may not take us there. Once we decide that being happy and at peace matters more than winning, the other four tips become much easier to apply.
2. When We Are Triggered, Keep Quiet — For Now
My second tip is very simple:
Zip it.
Not forever. Just for now.
When we are angry or highly stressed, that is usually not the best time to resolve a disagreement. Our bodies go into a survival response — fight, flight or freeze — and our ability to think clearly and flexibly is affected. Our higher brain functioning is reduced as more of our resources are directed towards dealing with the perceived threat. This makes it harder to solve problems, see another person's point of view and respond with understanding.
The amygdala is part of the brain's threat-detection system. It is continually involved in assessing what may be important or threatening. When something is interpreted as a threat, our stress response will be activated.
And the perceived danger doesn't always come from something physically threatening. A look, a comment, criticism, rejection or a particular tone of voice may be enough to set off our internal alarm.
That is why I suggest that we keep quiet first and calm down rather than attempt to solve the problem while we are highly triggered.
Silence Is a Pause, Not a Solution
Keeping quiet doesn't mean suppressing our feelings and pretending nothing happened. I see it as a four-step process:
Keep quiet.
Calm down.
Do our internal analysis.
If we are still upset, have the conversation.
I use simple Brain Gym® PACE exercises to pull us out of survival mode and lower stress levels as a preventative measure. In my previous blog about anger I shared several other ways we can release some of that physical tension.
Once we are calmer, we can look at what happened from a different perspective.
If we are still upset after doing that inner work, then it may be time to talk to the other person. Because continually keeping quiet while suppressing our frustration doesn't resolve anything. The resentment can build until eventually something relatively small causes an explosion.
Silence gives us space. The inner work gives us clarity.
3. Look Behind the Other Person's Reaction
This one can completely change the way we experience conflict.
I learnt from A Course in Miracles (ACIM) to look at what people do as either an act of love or a cry for love. That doesn't mean that hurtful behaviour suddenly becomes acceptable. It changes the lens through which we look at it.
When people lash out, there is often something happening beneath the behaviour. They may feel attacked, rejected, unheard, frightened, disrespected or unsafe. And exactly the same applies when we lash out. Instead of immediately asking, What's wrong with them?, we can become curious: What might be happening underneath this reaction?
And when it is our reaction: What is happening inside me right now?
One of the most valuable things we can do is create greater safety within ourselves. Calming our stress response is part of that, and also the way we treat ourselves. When we give ourselves the kindness, patience and respect we so often seek from other people, we become less dependent on someone else's behaviour for our inner peace. The spinoff will be that we feel safer when interacting with others and we will be less easily triggered by others.
4. We Are Often Not Fighting About the Real Issue
Have you ever had an enormous argument about something ridiculously small? The dishes. A towel on the floor. Someone being five minutes late. A comment that seemed innocent to everyone except us. Very often, the thing we are fighting about is not the whole issue.
I like describing this as someone stepping on an emotional landmine. They may have said or done something in the present that touched an old emotional wound. Suddenly, our reaction is much bigger than the present situation seems to justify. Instead of concentrating entirely on what the other person did, we can use the reaction as information.
We can ask: What am I really afraid of here?
Perhaps underneath the anger is a fear of rejection, abandonment, humiliation, failure or being hurt again. This is where I find mirror work particularly valuable. Rather than seeing the other person only as the cause of our distress, we can explore what their behaviour is showing us about ourselves.
For me, relationships provide wonderful opportunities to bring old emotional wounds to the surface. When we identify and resolve those wounds, it is as though some of our buttons disappear. Someone may behave in exactly the same way in the future, but there is no longer such an emotional landmine for them to step onto.
5. Stop Fighting Each Other and Find What You Both Want
My final tip is to look beyond the disagreement and ask:
What do we actually both want?
I believe that underneath our many differences, most of us want remarkably similar things from life. We want health, wealth, fulfilling relationships and to make a difference in some way. Our ideas about what those things look like may be completely different — and that is where conflict can arise. Instead of seeing the other person as the opposition, we can look for the common objective.
I learned this when my children were younger. I used to fight with them about the mess in the house. I wanted them to be tidier. Then I looked into that wonderful mirror and realised something rather inconvenient: I was messy too. Part of my problem was that I wasn't particularly organised and didn't always have suitable places for everything. So instead of fighting about the mess, we began looking at how we could organise things differently. What did we actually want? We all wanted a home that was comfortable to live in. Once we recognised that, we weren't on opposing teams anymore. We could work together to find a solution that worked for everyone.
And that is a very different starting point from: "I'm right and you're wrong."
Can One Person Really Stop the Fighting?
We often hear that it takes two to fight. There is another side to that saying that interests me much more: If it takes two to fight, what happens when one person decides to stop?
We cannot control how another person behaves. We can, however, change what we bring to the interaction. We can decide whether being at peace is more important than being right. We can pause when we are triggered rather than reacting immediately. We can look behind someone's behaviour. We can explore the emotional landmines within ourselves. And we can look for what we have in common instead of concentrating only on where we disagree. That is why I believe resolving conflict can begin with one willing person.
Want to Go Deeper?
If you are wondering how to identify some of your own childhood rules, emotional wounds and patterns — and how you can begin resolving them — I explore these ideas in much more depth in my book, Bitter or Better, I Decide – A Guide to Happy Ever After Living.
You can find out more at BitterOrBetterIDecide.com, you can also access the first few chapters.
And if there is a conflict in your life right now that you would like to approach differently, I offer single-sided conflict resolution. That means we work with you. The other person doesn't have to participate. You can book a complimentary exploration session using the button below.
Which Tip Will You Apply?
Perhaps the most important question isn't whether the other person will change. It is: What can I do differently?
Which of these five tips spoke to you most? And which one are you going to apply the next time you find yourself heading into a fight?
I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below the video and share what you discovered.
