Confrontation

‘You have a problem with confrontation’ ( a psych nurse)

‘You have not confronted the most important person yet - yourself’ (My counsellor)

Yikes….my body is wracked with fear and anguish. My experience of confrontation is negative….scary…frightening. Confrontation means I will upset someone, rock the boat, stand up for myself (and I always seem to fail at that). The last person I want to upset is me. I have already rocked my boat by giving up on my marriage….so what exactly does this mean? Why is my thinking so skewed?

Ok…so lest take a look at what this word means anyway:

Confront: verb

1. to face in hostility or defiance; oppose: The feuding factions confronted one another.
2. to present for acknowledgment, contradiction, etc.; set face to face: They confronted him with evidence of his crime.
3. to stand or come in front of; stand or meet facing: The two long-separated brothers confronted each other speechlessly.
4. to be in one’s way: the numerous obstacles that still confronted him.
5. to bring together for examination or comparison.

 HMMM…..methinks I am only looking at one interpetation and application of this word!  The red indicates my automatic response – which results in flight not fight as a response. The purple on the other hand requires no fight or flight but careful consideration, openness, balance, considered and careful judgement.

 1. to face in hostility or defiance; oppose: The feuding factions confronted one another.

I am not a hostile person for the most part. I have been known to be verbally violent I guess, and on the whole have only lashed out in hositility on rare occassions – when my patiences wears thinner than rice paper. I may have behaved defiantly as a child – but always secretively – I never openly defied my parents, the authorities….potential for punishment was always a good deterrent.

‘Oppose’ has a slightly different connotation though. I can oppose someone’s viewpoint, even support my opposition with what I think is good rational argument so this is a word that should not make me want to run in the opposite direction. Maybe it’s because when I did ‘oppose’ the view for example of a parent my view was often dismissed as ’silly’, ‘immature’, ‘irrelevant’ simply because it did not agree with that of the parent. Opposing for me has often been met with a severe lack of acknowledgement. Hence, to oppose is frightening. Responses to my oposition are known to attack my self worth. OK…THAT has to change!

Don’t ask me how yet – I don’t know!

I recall being accused by an employer once of ‘talking through my bum’;  of not knowing ‘what I was doing’. Instead of opposing this view, of standing up for myself I quaked. I fell to bits. I cried in response to his hostility. I had no skills to respond with and defiance. His judgement was mean, unfair, totally uncalled for in that situation. I was being trained as a shift manager at a Mc Donalds store. It was Monday night – usually a nice easy night to be left ‘in charge’, but this particular night was Cup Eve and my training had not covered ’staffing’ issues. This had always been done for me. When he arrived and saw people waiting, saw the stress of me trying to manage the crowd he blamed me for getting it all wrong. The very next day I rang a previous employer, asked for my job back and resigned from Mc Donalds. Nope…I don’t do confrontation well. As a 21 year old this kind of crowned it. So I chose not to oppose his judgement event hough I knew it was unfair. This was typical of my behaviour for many years to come. In this situation I don’t do confrontation. I run.

 2. to present for acknowledgment, contradiction, etc.; set face to face: They confronted him with evidence of his crime.

Well lets see now…I have coloured this purple. I don’t feel so nervous or frightened by these words or ideas. I am actually very good at presenting myself with ‘evidence of’ my crimes…and its bad! In doing so more often than not I am not kind to myself and don’t acknowledge the bits that are worthy of praise…and sometimes its not even a crime at all…just a crime in they way I think others see me.

11 long years ago I tried to present for acknowledgement my view that my marriage was over. I presented my husband with evidence of how things had gone wrong for us – our ‘crime’ – it wasn’t all his fault. But my decision to call the marriage off, to be separated was judged by significant others. I lost confidence in myself and instead continued to be who I was not and try to make the marriage work. I listened to the blamers.

This time round I have presented only to myself the acknowledgement that I was unhappy, depressed, lonely and the only way out would be to be putting myself first. I steeled myself against those who would judge – who would put me down for my decision. The worst offender this time has excommunicated me. He totally fails to acknowledge the efforts I went to to make the marriage healthy and happy. He totally fails to acknowledge that I did my best, I was a ‘good’ wife and mother. He totally fails to acknowledge his son has a role in the failure. It saddens me incredibly he is like this as I did my best for his son for many years. However, if you are still reading, you can see that I CAN present the bad stuff for acknowledgment and come face to face with it. It hurts, it’s hard, but I can. And, whats more, I am and have dealt with the conseuquences. Some are hard to take, but I take them nonetheless. (There have been plenty of consequences which have turned out to be easy to take too!)

3. to stand or come in front of; stand or meet facing: The two long-separated brothers confronted each other speechlessly.

This I struggle with lots. I need to stand face to face and actually present for acknowledgement some of the issues and problems being created by my ex, my my teenager daughter…but I can’t. I make excuses. I delay. I put off. I try to be ‘nice’ and not swing punches – verbal or otherwise. I find it hard to do in the workplace, with colleagues and freinds. Perhaps because the result of doing so as a child led to weeks of passive agressive treament – the silent treatment and I still fear that. Yet I know, that when you do spill it, when you do say something, you meet facing,  it often all turns out for the best. Not everyone is passive-aggressive, or violent, or abusive. Its the significant others I find the hardest to face. I would so love to be brutally honest about my feelings and offer reality checks to some.

My body still responds with fear when I am in one of these situations. I often stay calm, cool, collected….and stew for days, weeks, months….I got to the point where I was numb. I did not even recognise when something was upsetting me and needed to be dealt with. My body is beginning to respond. I am learning to acknowledge my gut feeling and label a response when it happens. I am gradually able to meet facing someone or something that has upset me.

As a teacher I have developed the skills of both acknowledgement and constructive criticism. I stand and meet issues head on on a daily basis. Whenever I used these with significant others I was accused of ’sounding like a teacher’. It’s time to stop responding to that by backing off and start saying instead- THAT’S WHAT I AM! It’s what I do. If you don’t want to listen fine, but I will still have my say. I have feared this will leave me lonely. I am not so convinced of that anymore. I need to keep growing in this way. I need to stand and meet (x) facing.

4. to be in one’s way: the numerous obstacles that still confronted him.

This one has been a problem in the past…the obstacles to the persuit of happiness and bliss have been many. We all have them. Trouble is I let them pile up on my shoulders instead of constructively moving them out of the way. These obstacles include the expectations of others, the expectations of society – double income 2 kids – and the values and beliefs I carried. These can be fixed, and to some extent have been.

I do not let most of the old fashioned social values and expectations rule my life anymore. I left my marriage. I do not equate being a good responsible parent with being married anymore. I have done something about being overweight and unfit. I have found some of selfconfidence I once posessed which was buried beneath the obstacles I carried. I am learning to say ‘no’ so I don’t take on more obstacles. I have also banned ‘can’t’ from my vocabulary. But there are still some obstacles there….

-fear of all kinds of things….rejection, loneliness, judgement,

-the ‘good girl’ syndrome (I will explore this one later)

-the usual: money! There is never enough to do all you want to do…ad debt as there is still some of that too.

No doubt these ‘obstacles’ can be dealt with, the values and beliefs can change…given time. Maybe I should write a post focussing just on ‘my obstacles’…and how I plan to deal with them! That brings us to #5

5. to bring together for examination or comparison.

This I can do. I can compare, examine, pull apart and put back together all kinds of things. Its problem solving at its best. I do it in my job. I do it in my craft. It is what I will have to do to overcome the red points above! I need to remove the automatic ‘hostility’ I feel about the word confrontation…this post has been a step towards that.

Confrontation does not have to be hostile, abusive or even a negative experience.

It

- can be freeing

- can relase the burden of obstacles

-can be enlightening to ones journey of self discovery

-can return ones self confidence

-be nurturing

-can create new and interesting relationships

My counsellor asked me to provide 5 positive statements for every bit of negative self talk I notice. Here is the first:

I am no good at confrontation. It scares me.

1. I can engage in good rational constructive criticism

2. I can confront without being aggressive or hostile

3. I value confrontation as a way to grow and learn.

4. I can respond to confrontation that is not aggressive or hostile and be thankful for the lesson.

5. I can confront the negative self talk and find 5 positives!

Enuff!