00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 429, "Emotionally Mature Conflict." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright. Hello there. Welcome to the podcast today. As always just glad to have you here, and I am so glad to be here and to share with you some content that I've been preparing for you. Quick reminder, next Talk With Tanya is October 13th. It's always on the second Tuesday of the month. Just a free webinar. We come, and we chat. We had, like, eight people there today, so it's not super huge, but it's just great discussion. We talked a lot about sense of self today, which was really brilliant and fun to talk about. So would love to have you join us this next time. 

00:57 

So you can go to my website, tanyahale.com, go to the Group Coaching tab, and you can find information on that. And sense of self classes are something that I have done a lot of over the last few years, because they're just so foundational to the work that we do and to our relationships being healthy and healthy and happy. And so, I don't know when I'm doing my next one. I'm just finishing one up in the next couple of weeks, and it has been delightful. So, keep your eyes open. Sometime in the future I'll do another one, because they just are so great and so important for us. 

01:33 

So let's see. The show notes. You're gonna have so many podcasts to listen to. I probably put, gosh, I don't know, 20 or 25 probably. I'm gonna challenge you. If this content kind of strikes you and you go, "Oh, oh, oh, I see, I see, I see," I'm gonna challenge you to go down and start knocking your way out through that list this week. Listen to two or three a day. Just see what you can learn. See what you can understand. See what pieces are going to fit together for you to help you move into a greater emotionally- emotional maturity so that you can show up better in your relationships. 

02:17 

This is brilliant stuff. I tell you what, it has made the biggest, biggest difference in the relationship that I'm able to create with my husband, Sione, compared to the relationship that I had for 24 years with my previous spouse. I was always so confused in that marriage. I, I knew something was wrong. I knew it was not working. I was so unhappy. I knew he was unhappy. I knew that I was not figuring it out, and I just didn't know what to do about it. And this content, the things that I have learned and the processes that I have figured out have made such a difference. 

02:54 

And now in my relationship with Sione, it is brilliant, and it is fun, and it is easy. And we are creating something that just feels so magical to us, and so miraculous as well. And I know we're not unicorns in this, but there are a lot of us out there that are in situations like Sione and I were in, where we were just like, "I don't get it. I don't get what's going on, and why am I not understanding? Why can't I figure this out? I'm a smart person. I'm a good person, and so is my spouse. Like, how can we not figure this out?" Well, I got it figured out for you, and I understand what it takes to show up as an equal partner, what it takes to create the kind of relationship that feels beautiful and easy and equal. 

03:38 

So, if you love this content today, check out those show notes and start digging your way through those podcasts. I think that you would be amazed at the pieces that would come together for you this week if you were to do that. 

03:53 

Alright, let's jump in. We are talking about emotionally mature conflict this week. So let's start off by defining a few words for us. So emotionally mature is the ability to understand, manage, and express your emotions in healthy and appropriate ways instead of reacting impulsively. Okay? So it is understanding that what is going on with us emotionally. Now, we're not  always gonna be completely on top of it. There are gonna be things that are gonna happen, things that are gonna shock us, things that are unexpected that are gonna take on. We are humans. Let's put that out there first and foremost, right? But emotionally mature means that I am seeking to understand those things. I'm seeking to understand the impact that they have in my life, the impact they have in my relationship, and I am seeking... When I see that those things are wreaking havoc, I'm seeking to figure out how to clean them up and how to show up better. This is emotional maturity. 

04:52 

So let's talk about some of the key ways that you can start to tap into emotional maturity. One, self-awareness. This means that you know your triggers, you're able to name your feelings accurately, and you start to understand how your emotions affect you and affect others. This is really a key point, is that we start being self-reflective enough and we confront ourselves enough to understand this level of self-awareness. What's going on inside of me? What's causing that to happen? And how is it impacting me and other people? 

05:31 

Here's another one: emotional regulation. This is being able to pause before you react so that you can stay calm during stressful or frustrating moments. Okay? We have to be able to manage our emotions. We're gonna talk about that a little bit later in the podcast. 

05:47 

Third one, accountability. This means that we are willing and able to own our mistakes and apologize honestly and openly without blaming other people. Right? Without thinking that it's somebody else's fault or making ourselves the victim. We are willing and able to take accountability. 

06:10 

Number four, handling criticism. This means that we can listen to feedback without becoming defensive or letting it destroy our self-worth. We don't make it mean anything about our worth when somebody criticizes it. We might be able to look at it and go, "Oh, I can see how that behavior that I did was hurtful." But our behavior and us are not the same. And this is where a sense of self is really going to be valuable, and we're gonna talk about that more in this podcast as well. 

06:45 

Number five, respecting boundaries. An emotional mature person accepts limits set by others while also maintaining healthy boundaries of their own. Okay? So we recognize when other people set those on those, we can respect and honor those, and we have our own boundaries of what we feel is okay and what is not okay, and we communicate those effectively. 

07:12 

And the last one, the sixth one, is empathy and validation. This is like being able to listen to other people, trying to understand their point of view without being judgmental, and being able to validate their experience and their emotions. Validation does not necessarily mean that we agree with what they're saying. Two people who are on opposite sides of the political scale could still have empathy and validation for the other person. This doesn't mean we agree with people. It means that we see them as humans who are having their own experience, and so we seek to validate their experience, say, "Wow, that sounds really frustrating," and we seek to have empathy and say, "Wow, you know, I've been in situations and I get how frustrating that can be." 

08:06 

So while emotional intelligence, we sometimes call that EQ, is the ability to recognize and label emotions in yourself and others, emotional maturity is the active ongoing practice of managing and applying those insights in daily life. So a lot of people can be emotionally intelligent but not have emotional maturity because the, excuse me, because though they understand the wording and the knowledge, they don't implement it. Okay? Maturity really is just the implementation of wise concepts. Okay? 

08:47 

So let's talk about how your sense of self is so vital in being able to have emotional maturity because the sense of self is the piece of me that says, "I'm okay. I'm a human. I'm flawed. I have all these weaknesses, and I have all of these strengths. I do all of this stuff great, and I'm not so great at this. And I, I sometimes say things that are hurtful or unkind, and I love people, and I try to do it well. And so when I do hurt people, I circle back around and I clean it up, 'cause ultimately I'm a good person." And when we have this level of a sense of self, this strong sense of self, we are able to step into emotional maturity because it allows us to continue to manage and apply the skills of apologizing, circling back around, seeing our  struggles, seeing our difficult emotions, owning how those emotions impact the world around us. 

09:54 

So a strong sense of self is one of the most foundational pieces of the work that we do because if we have a struggling sense of self, it impacts everything that we do and every interaction we have with other people. We really have to have a strong sense of self. So a strong sense of self allows us to stay emotionally regulated and engaged during a conflict, and that's what we're talking about today. When we talk about an emotionally mature conflict, we're talking about staying emotionally regulated and also engaged during a conflict. 

10:32 

So let's talk about emotional regulation for a minute. This would be the ability to effectively manage, monitor, and respond to your emotional experiences. And this is when I can see that I am getting emotionally deregulated, meaning my frustration is getting bigger than my sense of peace, or my anger is starting to bubble over, or I'm starting to let those frustrated or more difficult emotions drive the bus. 

11:06 

Okay, this is a concept like, of course you're gonna be angry. We all feel angry sometimes. We all feel frustrated sometimes. And we say, "Okay, anger, you can come on the bus, but you gotta sit in the back. Anger, you don't get to drive the bus, but you can come along for the ride. Of course I'm gonna be angry and frustrated and irritated with certain things, and you're not driving the bus here. I'm gonna drive the bus, but you can ride along in the back." Okay? 

11:31 

So this is the deal. We all have emotions. Our bodies were created to feel emotions. It is normal and natural to have them. But we get to learn how to not suppress them, which means we don't hide them, we don't bottle them up, we don't ignore them.Okay? We acknowledge them, but we don't let them drive the bus. "Oh, come on on the bus, but go to the backseat, will ya?" Okay? We don't suppress, we don't pretend that we don't have them. We acknowledge them and we don't let them run the show. We also choose our responses, so we don't let the emotions rule us, tell us what to do. We acknowledge them, and then we also choose how to behave. We're not going to be impulsive or reactive. 

12:23 

And big, strong, difficult emotions will push us in the direction of being impulsive and reactive. And every one of us has experienced that, where we've said something or done something that was hurtful or unkind or even mean because we allowed those emotions to bubble up and get big. And it's also this awareness around how they are impacting us. 

12:49 

So let me give you an example. Do you remember in the '80s when I was learning how to drive, we had these cars, and we would have to crank it and pump the gas, especially in the wintertime. Now, usually not in the summer, but just in the winter when it was so cold. And we would have to pump, pump, pump, pump, pump. And eventually, the car would either get enough gas to it and it would start, or we would flood the car, meaning it, in my, like, very, very limited auto knowledge, which for me meant that it got way too much gas in there, and then it couldn't start. And so we called that when I flooded the car. So we had to wait for two, three, four minutes, and then we could try and start the car again. 

13:35 

This is kind of what happens to our primitive brain and our prefrontal cortex. There we go. All right. So when I start getting emotionally deregulated, when my anger gets bigger and bigger and bigger, eventually it's like it floods my prefrontal cortex. Now remember, prefrontal cortex is our thinking brain. It's where we can plan and predict. It's where we are logical, where we can figure things out, and how we can choose to act the way that we want to act rather than being acted upon. 

14:09 

And so it's super important that I keep my prefrontal cortex online. Otherwise, if I go offline, my primitive brain is back there going, "Woo-hoo, free party. I get to say and do whatever I want" And we do. And that's when we start saying hurtful things and when we start acting in ways that are so unbecoming of us or so unlike us even. Like, it's just like we look back at ourselves at times, and I know you've had this experience, 'cause I have, where we just go, "Oh my gosh, I don't even know who I was when I was doing that. What was going on?" And that is because we have let our prefrontal cortex to get, get flooded. 

14:49 

So we want to stay emotionally regulated by not allowing our prefrontal cortex to get flooded, or if it does, we're going to manage it. Okay? We're going to move ourselves to a place where we can regain control of our prefrontal cortex. And we'll talk about this a little bit later as well, but it means that sometimes we stop a conversation in the middle if we notice we're getting emotionally deregulated, and we say, "You know what? I would love to finish this conversation, and I'm getting a little emotionally deregulated. I need to go take a walk and get myself back online. I would love to be back here in 20 minutes, and can we can we continue the conversation at that point?" Right? 

15:32 

So we need to be aware of are we getting flooded, and it's impacting me, and I'm gonna start behaving in ways that I don't want to behave. So let me separate myself out before I hurt you, because I love you too much to hurt you. Okay? So, here are some strategies to keep ourselves emotionally regulated. We can have what is called often a cognitive reappraisal. Okay? So this is changing how you think about a situation to change your emotional response. Okay? And this is what I talk about all the time. Okay? Technically, cognitive reappraisal. For me, I talk about it as look at your thoughts. Check and see what your thoughts are doing. Right? 

16:19 

When Sione does something, I can choose to think, "Oh my gosh," like, "He's such an idiot," if I wanted to think that. But if I think that, then how do I feel? I feel annoyed. I feel irritated. And when I feel annoyed and irritated, how do I start behaving? I start making passive-aggressive comments. I might make little digs. I might start criticizing him or attacking him, right? 

16:42 

But he could do something, and I could go, "Ugh, that's just so Sione. That's so cute. I love that he does it that way." Now, maybe I don't love that he does it that way, but I take a chance to think a different thought, and I choose to remember that, listen, he's a human, just like me. He's going to do things differently than me. Of course he is. And as is every other person in the world, right? We all do things differently. And so checking your thoughts and saying, "Listen, I can see what I did here as a mistake, or I can look at it as a chance to learn. I can look at it as me being stupid and being dumb, or I can look at it as me being a human and figuring it out." I get to watch my thoughts. 

17:31 

The next thing we wanna do to keep ourselves emotionally regulated is to calm our body, right? We can use deep breathing. We can use meditation, physical movement to lower our stress, like going for a walk. We can just separate ourselves out for a time so that we can get our body and our mind where we want them to be. 

17:56 

And the last one is just accepting, acknowledging an emotion without judgment and letting it pass naturally. I've talked about this in other podcasts where... And I do this work with my clients sometimes when they come on and they're slightly dysregulated with an emotion when we're having a call, we will take a time to just have them close their eyes and just look for the emotion in their body. Where is it? Is it in your gut? Is it in your chest, your throat, your shoulders, your neck, your head? Find it in your body. And then we're just gonna, like, give it a couple of attributes. Like, is it, is it heavy? Is it light? Does it feel like it's pushing out on your chest? Does it feel like it's, it's, um, squeezing your stomach? Does it feel like it's bulging behind your eyes? Like, what does it feel like? And then does it have any kind of a movement? Does it have a pulse? Does it ha- is it buzzing? Is it a, a th- strong thud, or is it a boom, boom, boom? Like, what's going on, right? 

18:58 

So we try and, and acknowledge it, and then we say, "Oh, this is anger. This is frustration. This is insecurity." And then we just sit and focus on the emotion. It's in my chest. It's hot. It feels like it's squeezing my heart. It's in my chest. It's hot. It feels like it's squeezing my heart. And when the times that I've done this, I just keep saying that over and over and over because my primitive brain is gonna be saying like, "Listen, this is uncomfortable. I don't like this. I wanna get over this, so let's think about something else." And I get to go, "Nope, it's in my chest. It's hot, and it's squeezing my heart." I just get to bring myself back to the feeling, back to the feeling. 

19:39 

'Cause guess what? It's just a feeling. It's just a vibration in my body. It's not going to hurt me. I'm totally safe, right? And so I get to bring myself back, identify with that emotional deregulation. And I get to acknowledge it. And then what I find is usually within a minute, maybe two minutes, that feeling starts to either dissipate or starts to dissolve. And then I've done it with myself and I've seen my patients, like their shoulders drop and they let out this breath kind of like right? It's just like all of a sudden they've processed through the emotion. And this is what we call accepting it. Just accept that this is what your body wants to feel right now, okay? 

20:24 

So when we're emotionally deregulated, we will tend to avoid and isolate. This means that we oftentimes want to push away those difficult feelings. We might want to pull away from loved ones to, um, either physically or emotionally distance ourselves, or we might even pretend a problem doesn't exist, right? And this is sometimes where we might give the silent treatment or start doing some stonewalling, right? Rather than dealing with the emotion, we move into these dysfunctional patterns. 

20:57 

Another one that we might do is emotional suppression. We might bottle up our feelings, which actually increases the internal stress, and it leads to explosive outbursts later on, okay? Because we hold it back, hold it back, hold it back, hold it back, and then pretty soon one little thing, like they call that the straw that broke the camel's back, right? One little thing and we blow, and it's completely out of proportion with what was going on. But that's because it was weeks, days, months of bottling something up. 

21:30 

Another thing that we might do to manage those emotions is substance misuse. We might start relying on alcohol or drugs or prescription drug misuse in order to numb emotional pain. We're trying to avoid the pain with a substance. And we might also start numbing out with distractions, okay? So this could be like we might binge-watch. And it's one thing to watch one or two, maybe three episodes of a show. It's another to seven hours later get up off the sofa where we can hardly walk and we're a little bit dizzy and blurry because we just keep watching because we're trying to avoid the emotion. We might scroll social media, or, you know, that doom scrolling we call it, right? Or we might overeat to avoid feeling the emotions. 

22:27 

Sometimes we distract with good things. Sometimes we might go for a run, and we might be a big runner in order to avoid our distractions. We might actually, instead of overeating, we might undereat because the power and the control that comes from that will also distract us from difficult emotions we're feeling. 

22:47 

Another thing that we might do is move into protection and blame, right? We might lash out at other people or blame them for our emotional state rather than taking ownership of our own response, right? And this happens. 

23:02 

So look at the destruction that can come from these in our own personal lives and in our relationships. If we don't learn to be emotionally mature and emotionally regulate, we create a lot of problems. So learning to emotionally regulate is a vital skill in managing conflict. 

23:21 

So let's talk about conflict for a little bit because I define it a little bit differently than some people. I don't see conflict as a negative thing. I like to look at conflict as just being neutral. Listen, you have an idea and I have an idea, and they're not the same. That's not contention. Contention is when we're fighting and, and blaming the other person and thinking the other person's stupid for not seeing it the way we are. Conflict is just I like blue and you like red. We don't have to be the same on everything with everybody. In fact, we never will be. It's just a difference of opinion. 

23:59 

And those differences of opinion come into conflict because we don't see things the same way. This is not a problem because of course you see things differently. Different people have different backgrounds and ideas and experiences, and all of that frames the way that they see the world. 

24:21 

Conflict can lead to either contention or it can lead to greater connection depending on how we respond to the conflict. Emotional immaturity leads to contention, while emotional maturity leads to connection. So if we start to marry all of this together, talking about how we can have emotionally mature conflict, because conflict will happen. 

24:47 

Let me give you some examples of emotionally immature behavior during a conflict. The first one would be we start blaming and getting defensive. We turn arguments around so that you're always the bad guy instead of admitting fault, right? We always blame the other person, or we get defensive. We're like, "I didn't do that. Don't start talking to me that way," right? Those walls come up. That's one way. 

25:13 

Sometimes we might start to stonewall or shut down or give the silent treatment, and this is where we refuse to talk. We walk away. We go silent during difficult conversations. I saw a couple just a few weeks ago when he was really stepping into trying to have a difficult conversation, and she literally just turned her body and looked away. Like, there was... It was just so fascinating to watch her. She just went silent, and she was just...physically, she shut down. She didn't want to have that conversation. 

25:48 

So this happens a lot, and sometimes people will, will give the silent treatment for days and sometimes weeks. They won't talk to their spouse unless they absolutely have to, and then it's just about what time are we leaving or something like that. But other than that, they do that. That's emotionally abusive behavior, actually. But it is refusal to engage. That's emotionally immature behavior. 

26:18 

So here's another one. Overreacting. Disproportionate reactions, right? So a minor issue comes up, like someone forgets to wash a dish, and you get explosive, anger, tears, a major outburst, right? So a dish is not a big deal. But it turns into this big, huge thing. 

26:42 

Another way we can be emotionally immature is that we take zero accountability, refusing to apologize or say things, or we say things like, "I'm sorry you feel that way," instead of owning our own actions, right? "I'm sorry you feel that way" is actually very dismissive. It's not an apology. It's telling them the problem is theirs. That is zero accountability. If I say something that's hurtful and they approach me about it and I say, "I'm sorry you feel that way," that's just saying, "This is your problem. I haven't done anything wrong," right? So we take zero accountability. 

27:18 

Another emotionally immature behavior is that we have poor boundary reactions. So we treat a normal personal boundary as a personal rejection or an attack, right? Somebody says, "Hey, I really don't feel comfortable with you calling me names when we're having these discussions," and we go berserk. "What? I can't say anything right. Nothing I ever do is good enough for you," right? And so a regular boundary that's very appropriate, like, "Don't call me names when we're having this talk," turns into a personal rejection or an attack. 

27:55 

Here's another one. Lack of empathy. Focusing only on our own feelings and struggling to see things from their perspective. So that one, like, just this complete lack of, "Oh, you think it's hard for you? Let me tell you," right? This is all emotionally immature. And some of us have a lot of work to do. And some of us, I think we're always going to have some emotional immaturity in the way that we show up. And part of this is us learning to be more self-reflective and find it and see it and address it. 

28:32 

Let me give you another one. Passive-aggression and mockery. So using sarcastic comments, eye rolls, heavy sighs, turning a serious discussion into a joke to dodge accountability. This is all part of being passive-aggressive, right? And this is emotionally immature behavior. 

28:49 

And one more I want to talk about, denying reality. And this might be where we start gaslighting or claiming that things did not happen the way you experienced them to protect ourselves. "I didn't say that," when it's very likely we did, right? Gaslighting is trying to get someone to believe that their recollection is completely wrong, that that's not what happened. 

29:13 

So let's go flip to the other side of this coin. So let me give you some examples of emotional maturity in conflict. This would be staying calm, taking accountability, pausing when we're overwhelmed instead of attacking or shutting down, and getting curious to understand what's going on. So here's some things we might use, and we've talked about this, the, "I need a break," right? Most people know that we should take a break when we're angry, but we might do it incorrectly by stonewalling or by walking out or giving the silent treatment. Emotional maturity rather gives a boundary with a return time. Okay? 

29:56 

So we might say something like, "I really want to resolve this, but my nervous system is too flooded for me to think clearly right now, and I need to go for a 15-minute walk so I can calm down. And then I would love to come back and sit back down and finish this conversation." Notice they are taking accountability for their emotional deregulation, which all of us have emotional deregulation at time, and they have a plan. Like, "My prefrontal cortex is flooded- I've gotta get back online before I can have a logical, calm conversation. And sometimes we call this the difference between abandonment, which is storming out, and regulation, which is taking a pause that is timed. Okay? If we never wanna walk out of a difficult conversation just going, "Okay, I'm outta here," thinking, and we always wanna put a timeline limit on it and say, "Listen, I..." Or maybe we have to go, maybe we have an appointment and we can't stay, then we get to say, "Listen, I get this, and I really want to resolve this with you, and I have a doctor's appointment that I need to be to, that I have to leave for right now. When I come back tonight, can we talk about this at this time?" It's always going to come back with a plan to finish the conversation. Okay? 

31:16 

Another thing that we can do when we are more emotionally mature is we can shift from you statements to I statements. So changing this single pronoun can completely disarm defensiveness. So letting go of the blame to take personal responsibility. So instead of being accusatory and saying something like, "You always ignore my texts, and you make me feel like I don't matter to you," we might say something like this instead, which notice how much more vulnerable this is, "I feel anxious when I don't hear back for hours because I value our connection and our relationship." Right? 

31:54 

And so notice the difference. It's not on you always ignore me, it's I feel anxious. We are owning what is ours. The problem is not that they don't respond to our text, the problem is that I make it mean something, and then I feel anxious. Let me give you another example of shifting the you to an I. "You completely ruined this project by missing the deadline." Notice the blame, notice the accusation. Whereas instead, if we said something like, "I..." Notice we're changing it to the I, "I am feeling stressed about our timeline because the missing pieces put us behind." Notice we're not blaming, we're not accusing, we're not attacking, we're not criticizing. We are focusing on, I am feeling stressed. 

32:44 

Now, yes, that takes more vulnerability, but this is also more honest, and it sets this up. Remember how I've talked about we need to rock the boat but not create a tsunami? This is what we're talking about here, right? So, we want to use the I instead of the you. Okay. 

33:06 

Another technique we can use is the acknowledge and validate. Okay? So in an argument, an emotional mature person stops trying to win the debate and focuses instead on validating the other person's reality, even if they disagree with the premise, and we talked about this a little bit earlier. You don't have to agree with their thoughts. You don't have to agree with their point of view in order to validate the emotion, the experience that they're going through. Because what is right is more important than who is right. We're not trying to tell them that they are wrong. What is right is showing up loving and kind. 

33:48 

Also remembering that being right is so often subjective. In most of the things that we go through in the course of a day, there rarely is a right or a wrong. So instead, we seek to focus, we focus on seeking to understand from their point of view. Okay? So for example, your spouse might say, "You care more about your job than you do about me." Okay? An immature response would go, "Oh my gosh, you're so selfish. I can't believe you think that," right? We might attack them for saying that. But a mature response would go, "Oh, it makes total sense that you feel that way because I've been working late all week long. I can see how lonely that must feel." Notice the validation, you must feel lonely, and also the owning it. 

34:43 

Like when someone tells us something, "You care more about your job than you do about me," we get to say, "Oh, where is the truth in that?" Because there might only be 2% truth, but that 2% truth will make a huge difference in what you see. I call those the gold nuggets. Okay? So validation is not the same as agreement. You can validate someone's feelings without agreeing that their thought or their belief is factual. Okay? 

35:15 

So here's another way that we can show up in an emotionally mature way. We can seek to repair after a blow-up. So emotional maturity is not about being perfect. We are so human. Of course we're gonna make a lot of mistakes. But emotional maturity says, I can repair after I make a mistake. I can circle back around. I can apologize. I can own the part of the conflict, you know, or the contention at this point. I can own the contention that I stepped into. 

35:49 

So for example, let's say that you were having a conversation and you lost your temper and you raised your voice. And a mature repair would say something like this, "I want to apologize for yelling earlier. It was wrong of me to raise my voice regardless of how frustrated I was, and I really want to try discussing this again when you're ready without my bad attitude interfering." Okay? 

36:13 

Mature repair owns it, and they reach out to fix it. They reach out to say, "You matter more than this issue to me." So remember that a mature apology focuses strictly on your behavior without adding a defensive, "But you triggered me" Or, "But it really was your fault," or, "Here's why you're responsible," at the end, right? Remember, remember I talk about the AABC, accuse, attack, blame, criticize. If we are doing any of those four things, that is, that is emotional immaturity, and it will not resolve conflict. It will exacerbate the conflict and turn it into contention. 

37:02 

So let me give you some real-life scenarios and responses, 'cause I, I think these are really helpful to see. So let's say that there's a disagreement with somebody that you work with. So an immature response would be venting behind a colleague's back or ignoring the issue. A mature response would be requesting a direct private conversation to talk through the problem and to find a joint solution. Get curious, seek clarification, have an honest conversation using all of those things that we talked about before, right? 

37:37 

So what about handling criticism? Let's say that somebody gives you some criticism. An immature response might say something like, "Oh, that's just how I am." Or it might get defensive and turn it around and say, "Oh, well, this is actually your fault." Right? A mature response is going to listen openly to the feedback. You're going to be able to separate your character, who you are, from the actions you're being accused of. And remember that there's no right or wrong, okay? And also handling criticism is asking ourselves, how might they be right? What in what they're saying is right? 

38:22 

And then I love this phrase that a friend shared with me several years ago, where she just said, "Criticism is a poorly worded request." So if someone gives me criticism and I can pull back enough to say, "What are they actually requesting of me? What do they really want?" It's gonna make a huge difference. Notice the mature response is not this immediately jump in, do what my emotions drive me to do. A mature response has us standing back and going, "Okay, let me see this from their point of view. Let me understand what's really going on. Let me get curious so I can dig in a little bit more." Okay? This is all mature response. Okay? 

39:06 

So let's say that you have an overload in the middle of an argument. Like, your prefrontal cortex gets flooded, and you feel it bubbling and bubbling and getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and all of a sudden you feel like you're gonna blow. Okay? An immature response is going to allow that to happen. You're gonna start yelling and insulting and calling names and storming off and all that kind of stuff. A mature response is going to pause the conversation by saying, "Okay, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I need a 20-minute break to regulate, can I come back in 20 minutes so that we can finish this conversation? This relationship matters to me. I want to be able to think clearly, and right now I'm not thinking so clearly." Stop in the middle of an argument. There is no sense continuing on trying to save face. 

40:00 

Stop as soon as you notice the overload happening, as soon as you notice the, the flooding happening, because you're not going to make any progress past that point. So when we're emotionally mature, we recognize that, and that is a tool that we implement. 

40:17 

And another one is making mistakes. An immature response would be blaming the other person or deflecting accountability. "This is your fault. You're the one who did this. The reason I'm angry is because of you," kinda thing. Whereas a more mature response is acknowledging your specific part in the conflict without making excuses. Okay? We're not saying, "Well, it's your fault 'cause you triggered me." No. Yes, people trigger us. Things happen that trigger us, but the trigger is all within me. It's my job to look at my trigger and go, "Oh, why is that a trigger? Why do I respond so strongly to that?" That is what I get to do. I get to own my part of the conflict. 

41:07 

So when we seek emotional maturity, and when we combine that with a strong sense of self, we lean into conflict without fear and insecurity. In fact, conflict then becomes a chance for us to develop greater connection, because we understand the other person better. We show them that they matter to us. We respect them and their point of view. We love this person, and we want to understand them better, because what is right is more important than who is right, and our ego takes a back seat to our love for the other person. 

41:43 

This sense of self allows us to be humble and teachable, and we are able to be wrong without it meaning anything about us except that we're human. Of course I'm gonna be wrong about a lot of things. That's what being human is about. A strong sense of self says it's okay to be wrong. When we're aware of our faults and our failings, okay, that's a very human thing to do. So what do I do now? Right? A strong sense of self is not threatened by other people being better at something than we are. Of course there are people better than you at whatever it is. There always will be. But we're not threatened by that because we know that I'm an amazing, strong, good person even though somebody's better than me. A strong sense of self also acts from a place of love rather than a place of fear. And love shows up with kindness, with genuine concern and compassion, with a desire to connect. 

42:56 

I think so many of us have, have gotten in the habit of responding with contention. We see so much contention in the world. Movies, it's all about contention. TV shows, people around us, videos that we watch, things that pull us in on, on, in reels on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok. The things that seem to pull our attention are the people fighting, the people yelling, the things going on. We all have that. But that's all contentious, and that leads to disconnection. If we want to connect with others, we have to slow down. We have to choose to listen, seek to understand, get curious, ask questions, validate their experience, their point of view, own where we have messed up, where we have, have done something wrong. 

43:54 

We will absolutely have conflicts in our lives and in our relationships. It's part of being a human. We all see the world from our own perspectives and our own experience, and none of that is a problem. The problem is believing that others should, notice the S-H word I just used there, that others should see it the same way that you do, and getting dysregulated when they don't, trying to manipulate other people with our dysregulation. 

44:24 

So check your view of humanity. Do you really believe that everybody's human and that humans were created to make mistakes? Remember, I think it was last week, the grace one where I talked about of course we're all human, but being human is part of the solution. It's not part of the problem. So check your view of humanity. Do you really believe that, that all humans are gonna make mistakes and that those mistakes are part of our process here in life? And use your dysregulated moments, because you will have them, use them to learn more about yourself, to learn more about your triggers, and to clean up the thought processes that may not be helpful to you in your relationships. Okay? 

45:13 

One of the most amazing things that I get to do with my clients is help them with this last piece. I get to help them understand their triggers. I get to help them see, clean up those triggers. Why is that a trigger? What's going on? What am I making that mean? Clean up those thought processes that are causing them to show up dysfunctionally in their lives and in their relationships, and then move forward. Create a different pattern of behavior. It's brilliant work. 

45:45 

If you struggle moving into this, go to my website, tanyahale.com, click on the free consultation tab, get on my calendar, go down to the show notes, listen to those, I don't know, probably 20 podcasts I've got down there, 25, I didn't count them, but there's a lot of them this week, and start working through them. Learn what you can. Figure this out, because your elements of emotional immaturity are destroying your relationships, and if you can gravitate toward being more emotionally mature, your conflicts will lead to connection rather than contention. 

46:28 

This is brilliant work, my friends. You can figure this out. I know you can. And if you need my help, gosh darn it, I got you. Let's get to work. I promise you one-on-one coaching is amazing in what you can learn and what you can see in a short amount of time. Okay. Have an awesome, awesome week, my friends, and I will see you next time. Bye. 

46:52 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "Weekend Win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.