Confrontation

Confrontation.

In my short 2.5 decades on the earth, I’ve observed that confrontation can be one of the most painful, yet freeing aspects of relationship.

When I was a child/teenager, I must have been sleeping through the class on confrontation. I missed many of the review sessions, and failed most of the midterms. The only thing I got down was that I needed to be quick to apologize and repent, no matter how much the other person messed up or not — a lesson HS must have imparted when I wasn’t looking, and for that I am forever grateful.

However, when I did confront someone because they hurt my feelings (again emphasizing confrontation was extremely rare) either I would overreact, decide I was probably wrong anyway and digress, or take it as an opportunity to learn how to be misunderstood well.

Recently, I found myself in a situation that was a complete misunderstanding.  I felt like someone meant A.  A was extremely painful and terribly confusing.  In processing it, I tried to convince myself they meant B…because B would mean I was over reacting and they were completely fine.  Then resigned myself to the fact that it was probably somewhere in the middle (and for the benefit of the alphabet, we’ll call this C). C meant they were wrong in many areas, but had good points.  Therefore, I needed to suck it up a deal with it.

Normally I would say that “suck it up and deal with it” worked well for me…though I know deep down inside it only makes things worse.  Nonetheless, i decided to go with option C and try to work through it without saying the simple phrase, “I don’t understand” or ask, “why do you feel that way?” or confess, “I feel like you mean such and such and that hurts.”

Really a variety of options presented themselves.  To be completely honest, I’m just straight up scared of confrontation mostly because I’m scared to be wrong.  (Don’t worry, after this situation, I’m learning to do better).

In actuality, they meant P.  (How do I always forget there are 26 letters in the alphabet and more than 3 options to miscommunication?).

People skills lesson 1: don’t wait 8 weeks to tell someone they hurt your feelings.  Your feelings are valid…that is until you talk yourself into an absurd non-reality for 8 weeks.  Simply, Bring it up fast.  Mostly because they probably have no idea they said it in the first place and consequently don’t know they are supposed to apologize for saying the thing they didn’t know they said.

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