conflict is the art of checking underneath the rocks

avoidance, etc

Florine Stettheimer, Bowl of Tulips, 20th century,

I’m having the best writing week I’ve had in years. It makes me happy but it also makes me sad, because why is it the case that I’m happiest when I’m writing a lot, and yet… I’m often not writing a lot?

I think many (but not all!) writers can relate to this: some of our time is spent actually writing. Another significant chunk is spent anticipating writing, agonizing over what you have or have not written, and procrastinating. Writing, as I see it, involves both a lot of avoidance and a lot of overcoming avoidance.

As a result, I’m certainly an expert on intrapersonal avoidance. I also like to think that I know a thing or two about interpersonal avoidance. I was telling my friend C that I see both as the same thing: a fundamental fear of conflict.

I tweeted this a while ago: As a rule the psychologically healthier someone is, the less time it takes them to do something they were eventually going to do anyway. Anything from sending a text to quitting a job. I’m not sure what to call it—processing time? lack of blocks? low avoidance?

Here’s one way I model it: the psychologically healthier someone is, the more willing they are to face and overcome friction. Friction, in my mind, is synonymous with conflict. For instance, I noticed a couple of weeks ago that one subconscious hesitation I had about editing my book was fear that I didn’t know how to resolve some of the problems with the plot, and wouldn’t be able to. Which is of course self-defeating, because the only way I can resolve the problems is through editing and rewriting parts of the book. When I became conscious of that fear, and decided I was willing to grapple with it, I could unblock myself creatively.

Imagine seeing life as a series of confrontations stretching out before you. More radically: imagine being excited at the prospect of confrontation.

For much of my life, I was so afraid of conflict that if I noticed in the middle of a haircut that I, uh, was getting a haircut I didn’t want, I simply kept my mouth closed and accepted that I wouldn’t like my hair for six months. Looking back now, I find this completely bonkers.

Q: Why was I so unable to just speak up and say what I was feeling?

A: I was afraid of making things awkward.

Friends, the optimal amount of awkwardness is far from zero. One thing that really annoys me about the term “people pleasing” is that it implies consideration for others, when really it’s self-serving. You are, in fact, pleasing yourself by avoiding any prospect of a negative reaction from another human being. Which is, generally speaking, not what’s best for them and not what’s best for you.

Here’s how I model the three stages of avoidance:

1. You’re delusional. You have some completely dishonest reason for why you’re avoiding what you’re avoiding, like “I can’t text the girl back because I’m going on a vacation to Mexico next week and I should text her when I’m done traveling,” and you sincerely believe it.

2. You’re aware that there’s something you should do but you just absolutely can’t do it.

3. You do it.

I don’t pathologize avoidance itself, because everyone avoids things. Trust me, even the most conflict-happy person needs a week off once in a while. But of course, it becomes a problem when your fear of friction dramatically affects your quality of life. Here’s how I described it to S: most people live in a way where it’s like their psyche is a backyard and there are 10 to 12 giant rocks in the backyard that they are terrified of moving, because they’d have to see what’s underneath. So instead they just chart a path around the giant rocks and pretend not to see them. You can easily imagine how depending on how many rocks you have in your backyard, and how large they are, your ability to move around quickly becomes constrained.

Conflict is the art of checking underneath the rocks. It’s something you only learn by doing. It’s really, really scary. It’s also often the only sincere way to solve the problems in your life.

I think I’m on a journey to be more honest with myself. This seems to have had the side effect of me being more honest with other people about how I feel and how they affect me. It can be as simple as giving feedback during a haircut, or as heavy as telling a friend how I felt let down by them. And sometimes the right thing to do is to say nothing at all. But you can’t have real discernment if you aren’t willing to brave conflict, because then the only option you have is to run away and keep running. When it’s fight or flight, sometimes the right option is to stay and fight.

all the way to the bottom

Christopher Wood, The Cove, 1926

I know most of the people I’m closest to better than they know themselves. For many years when S was annoyed I would ask him what was up and he would reply that everything was normal. Really? I’d say. It seems like you might be upset about X. Oh, he would say upon reflection, I guess I am annoyed you did that. It wasn’t him being passive aggressive: it genuinely took him longer to identify his emotional state.

It was easy for me because I was watching from the outside. Also, as you guys know, emotions happen to be my special interest. I take a particular pleasure in shepherding people from one state to another, and I am often happiest myself when I am in transition. There’s nothing more gratifying than hearing someone admit something in conversation, then pause and say: Wait, I didn’t know I felt that until I told you. It’s a special feeling to know that someone’s body trusts you before their brain has even made up its mind.

I like being trusted. And to be honest, I love being right more than just about anything else in the world. It’s my worst quality—I’m pretty sure that I’m perceptive basically because I so enjoy being correct. I’m never happier than when I say, I told you so. I know that’s unbecoming of me, but there you go. Anyway, turns out it’s extremely useful to be a smug, annoying person who takes a lot of pride in their predictions when people rely on you to decipher their present and future emotional state.

So: I’ve long known that I am a trustworthy steward of other people’s emotions. But I’ve also known for a while that I’m not always the best judge of my own. Why is this? Like I said above: it’s easier when you’re watching from the outside. Very astute people can be incredibly dense about their inner life because they simply don’t have the correct vantage point, and are constantly incentivized to lie to themselves. When other people were struggling with a dilemma I could immediately see what they really wanted and why, but when I struggled with a choice I experienced my emotions as hot pot: varied, bubbling, and unclear.

I really don’t like hot pot.

*
You might have noticed that I’ve been writing a lot lately about topics like coherence and self-knowledge. That’s because in the past couple of months I’ve noticed a shift in myself. All my life, I’ve tried to make up for my blind spots by asking trusted people for advice: my friends, my therapist, my boyfriend, even Claude. But something’s flipped: lately, I’ve been significantly more interested in asking myself what I should do.

Turns out, I have a pretty good sense of my emotional state. I just often prefer to avoid it. This is because much of the time confronting what you really want involves some degree of anguish, change and suffering. I don’t want to suffer. I want everything to be nice, smooth, and pleasant, like everyone else on earth. But I’ve noticed that avoidance usually does not result in the problem going away. It actually makes the problem come back with a vengeance some months or years later. For better or for worse, confronting yourself tends to be the best policy.

How do you confront yourself? Well, for me it looks something like this:

1. There is a situation where I sincerely feel I don’t know how to proceed

2. I tell myself, Fuck you, you do know how you want to proceed

3. I sit down and resolve to think about nothing else for around seven hours

4. Usually by hour three or four I’m like, Oh.

5. It generally takes me some time to actually act on it.

I call this process going all the way to the bottom.

*
Some things can prevent people from going all the way to the bottom:

• their sense of who they should be and what they should want

• expectations and judgment

• fear of consequences

• trying to rationalize the pros and cons

It is really, really hard to ask yourself: What can I actually live with? What am I capable of, right now? What will I regret? Because you may really dislike the answers.

*
People know things, and often choose to un-know them. Knowledge, quite frankly, is sometimes too much to bear.

If you’re upset with someone, you have to address it. But wouldn’t it be nicer to just ignore it?

If you don’t like your life circumstances, you have to change them. But that’s so much work.

If you know it’s never going to work with your girlfriend, you have to break up with her. But you still love her, so how can that be true?

*

The way I conduct relationships is extremely anxiety-inducing for anyone who hears about it. My parents do not understand my career, and neither does my therapist. I am, at almost all times, so delusionally confident it would make you scream. I have my own way of doing things. I’m my own person.

What I learned this year is that I like hearing what my friends think and I will continue to solicit advice from people I trust but ultimately I have to do things my own way. The only way I can do that is if I’m willing to feel things all the way through. And if I’m willing to accept the consequences.

In many confusing situations, there is no such thing as the right choice. There is only the right choice for you, right now. And you can’t identify that if you aren’t willing to go all the way to the bottom.

Noticing things about other people and nudging them forward is my primary passion in life. It’s also a way of avoiding myself.

I’m always going to be scared of what I’ll find. I’m always going to look, anyway. That’s the way I want to live.