CARRYING THE WEIGHT OF CONFLICT
I don’t know about you but, I sometimes continue to feel a heaviness after a conflict is over for a protracted period of time. I might feel it in my heart, in my head, in my gut. In any case, I experience a sense that I am weighted down. Thoughts and feelings seem to remain with me whether it is what was said to me or how the other person interacted. Or, it may be what I said and how I interacted.
Recently, a coaching client was very specific in their description of the weight they felt they were carrying about an interpersonal dispute, with these words “ I feel like there’s a 50-pound weight across my shoulders and I am stooping over from the pain”. It was a poignant description and it took a while for the client to unpack their experience. And it was a good exercise for them to understand more fully what they were experiencing and the impact that continued to consume them. Their description gave me a strong sense of the heaviness of the weight they carried.
With this in mind, a metaphor regarding the weight of conflict might help you too, to release some of the heaviness you are experiencing about an interpersonal dispute, if that’s the case. Bringing that dispute to mind as you answer these questions, might help to shed at least some of the weight you are carrying.
- What is the dispute about?
- What part(s) of that dispute are weighing heavily on you?
- In what part(s) of your body are you feeling that weight?
- How much weight in pounds or kilos – metaphorically speaking – would you attribute to what you are feeling (considering your answer to the above question)?
- What words describe the weight on you?
- What specifically was said or done by the other person that resulted in you feeling the amount of the weight you described?
- What specifically did you say or do that is also contributing to the weight you are experiencing?
- How do you want to feel instead about what happened? How or what do you want to feel about the other person? How or what do you want to feel about yourself?
- What do you think it would take – that you can do or say – to start to lessen the weight you are carrying? What would you like to say to the other person to reduce the weight you are experiencing?
- If there’s been a reduction in the weight you have been experiencing as you ponder these questions, how heavy is it now as compared to before (in response to question 2)? Why is the weight now lower if it is? Or, if it feels higher what made it so?
- What else occurs to you as you consider these questions?
- What insights do you have now that you didn’t have before you answered these questions?
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