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# Distinctions for Inner and Outer Conflict Resolution I’ve been thinking a lot about conflict resolution lately, so I interrupt your usual productivity content for some short and sweet reminders for when your head is spinning or your relationship is fraying. ## Distinctions Stop the Domino Effect There are concepts that sometimes feel very connected but are actually distinct. When they’re not distinguished from each other, they act like dominoes. When one domino falls, all the other dominoes fall, too. It can look like “I’m hurt, therefore you must have wronged me, therefore you’re a bad person, therefore you must be punished.” The result is escalation of conflict.1 In inner conflict, a worried thought can escalate into panic and overwhelm. In outer conflict, a hurt feeling can escalate into a broken relationship and a fractured community. Distinctions put space in between our dominoes so that our conflicts don’t get escalated for no reason. ## Feeling ≠ Thought ≠ Behavior **Feelings** are not right or wrong. They simply are. **Thoughts** can be accurate or inaccurate. **Behaviors** can be helpful, harmful, or neutral. This makes it safer to feel your feelings, because feelings do not require you to believe associated thoughts or engage in associated behaviors. ## Listening ≠ Obeying, Understanding ≠ Condoning **Internally:** you can listen to the angry part of yourself without lashing out. You can listen to the helpless part of yourself without giving up. **Externally:** you can listen to someone you’re angry at without doing what they say or giving up your own perspective. You can ask someone to validate your feelings without asking them to agree with your thoughts. This makes it safe to listen and seek understanding2, because you can do so without giving anything up or signing any contracts. ## Perspectives ≠ The Whole Truth The world is too complex for us to understand. Even our own minds and bodies are too complex for us to understand. So our understandings are always partial and simplified. That means two perspectives can both have a piece of the truth. **Internally:** you can feel both angry and guilty at the same time. Realizing that you don’t have to pick – both can be true – brings relief. **Externally:** you can see the kernel of truth in someone else’s perspective without giving up your own perspective. You can ask what’s distorted about your perspective without giving up what’s true about your perspective. ## What You Do ≠ Who You Are To do wrong is not to be a bad, unloveable person. To be a good, loveable person is not to be a person who never does wrong. You are a good, loveable person. As such, you deserve compassion. You do wrong sometimes. When you do, you are called to do right: to stop the harm, to apologize, to offer amends, and to work on the root cause of your wrongdoing so that you can avoid relapse.3 This applies internally, too: your troublemaking parts actually mean well. Even your inner critic doesn’t actually hate you. ## Holding Accountable ≠ Shaming and Punishing To stop wrongdoing long-term, people have to take a hard look at themselves and change the root cause of the wrongdoing, deep inside themselves. Deep change requires feeling safe. Feeling shame is the opposite of feeling safe. Though consequences are sometimes needed to motivate certain people to begin the accountability process, compassion aids the accountability process. ## Compassion ≠ Enabling Wrongdoing is obviously bad for the person wronged, but it is also bad for the wrongdoer. It does not bring true happiness. It usually signals an unhealed wound that stands in the way of true happiness. And it often brings harmful consequences. Allowing people to continue doing wrong is not compassionate. Supporting someone through the difficult process of change is compassionate. ## Pain ≠ Wrongdoing Being in pain does not necessarily mean you did something wrong. Being in pain does not necessarily mean someone wronged you. Pain deserves compassion. You don’t have to have someone to blame to deserve compassion.4 You don’t have to be blameless to deserve compassion.5 ## Needs ≠ Strategies **Internally:** Parts of you cause you trouble when they have ineffective, even counterproductive strategies for meeting your legitimate needs.6 **Externally:** People’s true needs are generally compatible with each other. But their strategies for meeting their needs can be incompatible.7 Domination and exploitation are not true needs. Whenever someone seeks to dominate or exploit, look for the true need hiding behind that strategy. ## Safety ≠ Safeness Safety describes how safe you are objectively. Safeness describes how safe you feel. You can have less safeness than safety, especially when you carry unprocessed trauma.8 When you feel unsafe, there may be an external danger, an internal wound, or both. ## Projecting ≠ Overreacting Sometimes we have a big emotional reaction to a small slight because it activates feelings from the past. When this happens, you’re not overreacting; you’re reacting the right amount but to the wrong thing. Your feelings are valid, but some of them are about the past. Punishing the person that reminded you of them will not heal them. ## Revenge ≠ Closure, Justice, Peace Revenge is not a need, but a strategy for meeting needs. Yet, it does not necessarily meet those needs. It does not undo what was done. It does not guarantee that the wrongdoer understands or regrets their wrong. It does not end grief.9 ## Boundaries ≠ Punishment Your boundaries are an expression of your autonomy and self-care. They’re for you, not for changing or hurting other people. You can enforce boundaries with someone while having compassion for them. ## Questions to Help You Make Distinctions What are your thoughts on this conflict? What are your feelings around this conflict? What thoughts and feelings are you trying _not_ to think or feel? Have you felt this way before? How much of this feeling is about the past? How can this conflict help you see places in yourself that deserve healing? What strategies and behaviors are you using? What needs are those strategies trying to meet? What are other ways of meeting those needs? 1. Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman describes how the escalation of interpersonal conflict can have terrible outcomes. ↩︎ 2. Imago Dialogue is a good format for listening to understand during conflict resolution. ↩︎ 3. See the Staircase of Accountability from the Creative Interventions Toolkit. ↩︎ 4. A major theme of Conflict Is Not Abuse is that people conflate conflict and abuse when they believe they are only eligible for compassion if they are abused. ↩︎ 5. Buddhism teaches compassion for all living beings. ↩︎ 6. This is a principle of Internal Family Systems. ↩︎ 7. This is a principle of Non-Violent Communication. Check out their list of basic human needs. ↩︎ 8. I believe it was Linda Thai who taught me this definition of safety and safeness. ↩︎ 9. Gollwitzer, Meder, and Schmitt (2010), described by Eric Jaffe, found that revenge only felt better than no revenge if the recipient demonstrated understanding of their bad behavior. Sociologist Nancy Berns says that a death sentence may bring closure to a trial but it does not bring closure to grief. ↩︎ ### Share this: * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) * Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) * Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) * ### _Related Posts_

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