Thank You for Your Patience

Sometimes I get into a conflict with someone, start to feel anxious, and soon the situation spirals out of control. Later, I ask myself what happened? Conflicts are inevitable because no two people are going to always agree. The key, however, is being able to resolve the conflict calmly and in a way that respects the parties involved. Furthermore, resolving a conflict sooner can avoid emotions from building up and resulting in a bigger blow up later.

When we talk to other people lots of events happen at various levels in our brain before words come out of our mouths. The events all cannot happen consciously and so we rely on many automatic unconscious processes to do this. These unconscious processes are acquired as we grow up. One such automatic event that I've grown up with is a feeling of inferiority. It results in wimpy behavior, but not intentionally at a conscious level. Does that make sense? Often times I am not aware of it and the times I am aware of it, I am not able to stop it because it is automatic.

Perhaps a more concrete example would help. A few years ago I was in a group where the facilitator asked me to stop apologizing in an annoyed tone of voice. I then automatically proceeded to apologize for apologizing. Then we had a laugh after realizing just what had happened. Here's my analysis of what happened at an unconscious level: 1) The person who was annoyed at me had higher status than me 2) I should behave in an appropriate deferential way toward them by apologizing.

Sometimes my automatic wimpy behavior can get me into trouble. It is also common when a person sees someone else behaving in a wimpy way, the observer behaves in an aggressive and dominating way towards the wimp. Again, this also happens automatically at a unconscious level and people may not even be aware of it. This is the situation I often find myself getting into and it creates a great deal of anxiety.

So what can I do to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control? I can behave in an assertive way. This is a third alternative to behaving in a passive, wimpy way or behaving in an aggressive, bullying way. An assertive response would be to thank the person for their time. Hence, the title of this blog entry. I do not intentionally want to feel inferior nor superior to anyone else -- just equal. So if I unintentionally act as a wimp, I would appreciate your patience. That also goes for the times where I acted aggressively towards you. Feel free to let me know as I may not always be conscious of it.