Someone asked me on a call recently how I approach conflict. She was really asking about communities. How do you build a culture where conflicts get worked through, instead of set aside until they harden?
I do not think I gave her the answer she expected, because I did not start where she started.
Before I ask myself how do I resolve this, I ask something else first. Do I want to be in this at all?
I want to say that plainly, because a lot of us carry the opposite belief. All too often, people who practice Nonviolent Communication have this idea that if there is a conflict, a good NVC person jumps in and tries to empathize and mediate it.
That is exhausting. If that is the standard you are going to set for yourself, it is not sustainable.
I am not sure how many of you have been in a relationship, in a community or at work, where the same conflict goes on over and over and over again. Not because you are not showing up. Because the other person is not there yet. They do not have the capacity, or the willingness, to shift.
There is a point where you have to decide. Do I have the energy for this? Is there even the tiniest hope that there will be change?
This matters more, not less, when power is in the room. When someone with more institutional standing than you says let us have this conversation, you are still allowed to say no. Being invited into a conversation is not the same as being obligated to have one. I want people to have real choice here, especially the people who get asked to explain themselves most often.
And if you do say yes
Then there is work to do before you begin.
The first piece is an honest look at myself. Am I holding judgment right now? Am I already certain how this should be resolved and who should be the one to move? A lot of the time we walk in with real rigidity about what we want to see happen. When I notice that in myself, I pause. Conflicts are not served by haste. The faster we try to do everything, the more problematic it gets.
The second piece is that I go get support before, not during.
I think about what builds up inside us as a pressure cooker. If the pressure keeps building, and then we all arrive at the conversation with all of that pressure still sealed in, we are only adding more pressure to the pot. It is going to blow.
If I get empathy first, some of that pressure comes down. I arrive already heard. I know what actually matters to me, not just the strategy I walked in wanting.
When I am supporting a community through conflict, this is most of the work, and it is also the part that most often does not get done. Smaller listening circles first, sometimes with people who hold the same view, so they can hear each other and find what is truly important underneath. Only after that do we come together.
Why I say yes to the ones I say yes to
So why enter any of them?
Beloved community is the phrase I keep returning to. It comes from Dr. King, and the way I hold it is that it is family.
In a family there are people you flow with easily, where everything moves between you without friction. And there are people you clash with every time you gather, where you find yourself thinking, why is this person in my family.
What I want from family, and what I did not always get, is a place where we say the hard things to each other. Not because we are angry, but because we are committed to each other growing. Where I can say, what are you doing, stop, that is not okay, and say it with love, because I want to see you grow and not because I am trying to shame you.
I am aware that many people never got that experience of family. That is part of the heartbreak for me, and I do not want to be glib about it.
So I want to be careful here, because two things sit close together and they are not the same.
Beloved community does not mean everyone always has access to everyone. People leave families to survive. Communities remove people who are doing harm. Boundaries, consequences, and endings are part of this work, and none of them are failures of love.
What beloved community asks is that we do not treat people as disposable. That I can hold you accountable, at full volume, without deciding you are outside the human family.
We ran a retreat for years bringing activists and NVC practitioners together. One man came six years in a row. He was white, he had a fair amount of privilege, he would name that himself, and he did not get it. He did not get it. But he kept coming back, because what he met there was not judgment. He was received.
Being received did not guarantee he would change. I want to be honest about that. It made change more possible than shaming him would have, and that is a different claim, and a smaller one, and I think it is the true one.
And then beloved community takes that and widens it past the people we know.
I am not okay if my neighbor down the street does not have food. I am not okay if my neighbors are worried about being imprisoned if they walk down the street because they do not have the right immigration status. I am not okay if someone cannot get medical care. And because the human family cannot thrive if the planet is not thriving, I am not okay when the toxins and the landfills go into the poor community while my community has clean air.
That is a lot to hold. It is also exactly why I am careful about where I spend myself. I cannot be in every conflict and still be here in ten years. Neither can you.
You are allowed to choose. Please choose well, and please do not do it alone.
Somewhere to practice this
The Living Peace Retreat runs August 20 to 23, online, with Oren Jay Sofer and me. Four days working directly with what this piece is about. How to tell the difference between a conflict that is asking for you and one that is not. What to do with the judgment you are already holding before you walk in. How to receive empathy so you arrive already heard instead of still full of pressure. And how to stay in a hard conversation without leaving yourself behind in it.
Open to everyone, including people who have never practiced NVC. Sliding scale of $750 to $1000, with scholarships available.
Learn more and register
Roxy Manning, PhD is a clinical psychologist, CNVC certified trainer, and author of How to Have Antiracist Conversations and The Antiracist Heart.