My old pattern with conflict was simple. Someone got angry, or challenged me, or disagreed strongly, and I shut down. Quiet felt safe. If I said nothing, I couldn't make it worse.
During my training, and in groups since, I found that conflict shows up in all sorts of forms, a strong opinion I don't share, a political view I disagree with, someone reading my behaviour in a way I don't recognise, someone simply angry at something I've said or done. My instinct was always the same. Go quiet. Let it pass. Try not to add fuel to whatever was already burning.
What I couldn't do, in the moment, was see clearly what was actually happening between us. That took other people in the room. When someone else witnessed an exchange and said, I saw that differently, or I don't think that's entirely fair, something shifted. It wasn't just my own read of the moment anymore, trying to defend itself. It was reflected, checked, held up against other people's honest sense of the same exchange.
That's what slowly taught me something I hadn't properly understood before. Someone disagreeing with you, or being angry with you, doesn't automatically mean you've done something wrong. People bring their own histories, their own triggers, their own convictions into a room, and what lands on you isn't always entirely about you. It took years, not one conversation, to actually believe that in my body rather than just know it in my head.
What's changed, over time, is how I meet conflict now. I don't cower the way I used to. I can hold my position, stay present, disagree openly, sit with someone's anger or someone's strong opposing view without immediately collapsing or needing to smooth it over. That's not a skill I picked up from reading about it. It came from being in the room, under real pressure, again and again, until something in me finally recalibrated.
That's the mini experiment a group gives you that individual therapy can't quite replicate. Whatever your pattern is with conflict, fearing it, avoiding it, collapsing under it, it will show up live, with real people, in a space that's contained enough to survive you getting it wrong. You get to practise being different, not just talk about wanting to be.
This is part of an ongoing series on group therapy, what it is, what it isn't, and what I've learned facilitating it and sitting in it myself.
