Tara: By this point in the practice, you may have found mindfulness helping in stressful situations, and bringing more presence into your life. But what happens when you find yourself locked in conflict with your boss or your partner, and mindfulness goes out the window?

What happens when you feel really stuck in blame, anger, hurt and defensiveness? Today we'll look at mindfulness practices that can help in these situations.
When we feel threatened, part of our evolutionary design is to go into fight, flight, or freeze, none of which serves so well when it comes to good communication to understanding each other, to being able to resolve conflict. Neuroscience research confirms that mindfulness improves the brain's ability to process emotions under stress. It trains us to shift our response away from that primitive survival reaction into accessing more recently developed parts of the brain, in particular, the prefrontal cortex with its capacity for perspective, reasoning, flexibility, and importantly for empathy.

What this means is that when we get caught in the conflict, rather than being locked into fight, flight, freeze, we have the capacity to access what I like to call attend and befriend. Naturally, in certain circumstances and situations, it's critical to protect yourself and others. But many times we simply get triggered and we find ourselves catapulted into conflict. And as we know, when we're angry, our perceptions get skewed and things can begin to escalate. In a favorite Jules Feiffer cartoon, an obviously upset woman is proclaiming, "But I love you." And her husband's responding, "Don't you threaten me." So, we have these well-worn patterns of misinterpreting others and reacting. Releasing them begins with mindfulness.
There are four key mindfulness strategies that can help you navigate conflict wisely. They're pausing, stepping into your own shoes, stepping into another's shoes, and remembering to communicate in a way that connects.

So, let's look briefly at each one of these. The first is the power of pausing. Most everything we regret has occurred because of a chain reaction that played out without the benefit of a mindful pause, whether it's pressing the Send button with a nasty comeback to someone's email, hanging up on someone, saying something we know will be hurtful. When we lash out in anger, we inevitably perpetuate the cycle of misunderstanding. So, this is the necessary first step, stop, we have to pause, we have to take a breath and reboot.

Now, sometimes it's possible to pause in the midst of a conflict, but there are times when pausing requires removing yourself from the situation. You might say, "Excuse me, I need a moment." In the space of a pause, you can calm yourself and reconnect with your best intention. So, while exploding in anger might give you that momentary sensation of power, in the long run it creates more hurt and anger, it fuels further hostility. Once you've paused, you move to number two, and that's step into your own shoes. And by this we mean, bring mindfulness to what's under your reactivity. What's behind the anger? Maybe you're feeling hurt, afraid, disrespected. If you can first attend and befriend your own vulnerability, you'll be far more skillful in responding to the other person.

So, that brings us to number three. Once you've stepped into your own shoes, you can then step into the other person's shoes and sense what's behind their anger, their hurts, fears, their unmet needs. Remember the dog who was acting aggressively because its leg was in a trap? If you look closely, you'll see how the person you're in conflict with is also caught in a trap and may be suffering or having a hard time.

These first mindful steps enable you to do number four, which is express yourself without feeding more defensiveness and aggression. This means communicating to further understanding, communicating to connect. The husband of a successful realtor felt a growing anger as he watched his wife spend so much time at work. She must value her career over him, he thought. Soon, every time she came home late or spent long stretches working online, he'd confront her. In reaction, she'd become defensive and pull away.

So, realizing how stuck they were, he resolved to try attend and befriend. The next time she got caught up working and he noticed his anger building he chose to pause. During those moments he calmed himself, reminded himself that what he wanted was to feel close again, that he mattered. He realized that under the anger he was feeling hurt and rejected, and he imagined what it would be like for her to come home and then have to face his resentment and anger. Taking these steps allowed him to approach her in a new way. Without any blame, he told her about feeling hurt and disregarded. This honesty and vulnerability softened her defensiveness. So, rather than deepening the rift, pausing and attending and befriending brought new understanding and care to the relationship.

While these mindfulness steps are simple, they aren't easy. They require stepping into unfamiliar ground without your traditional armoring, but remembering to take these steps can mean changing lifelong patterns of anger and defense. With practice, starting perhaps with the less intense situations of resentment and blame, you'll become more and more skillful in mindfully navigating conflict when it arises. So, let's do a guided exercise together that explores attend and befriend. Allow yourself to arrive, coming into stillness and collecting your attention with the breath. We'll take a little time as we begin with our core practice. So, let your anchor be in the foreground, whether it's breath or body sensations, offering a clear and kind attention to your moment to moment experience.

Now, bring to mind a situation in your life where there's conflict, a situation where you find you get triggered and become angry, defensive, maybe judgmental, where you feel some animosity. Let yourself imagine this situation like an unfolding movie and pause just at the moments when you're feeling most triggered. Imagine at these moments, finding a way to slow down the action in the situation, perhaps saying something like, "Let's just take a few minutes break and then revisit.", or of actually leaving the situation more fully. Then in your mind's eye, arrive and a pause. Sense yourself coming into real presence, taking some moments to calm yourself with your breath, to relax muscles that might be tight. Try to relax your face. Let your eyes soften, relaxing the root of the tongue.

In this pause, sense your best intention in addressing this conflict. What's most important to you? Is it the fact that you care about that other person? That you want to continue being able to work with that person in a harmonious way? What's important to you? Now, step into your own shoes, letting yourself feel your own agitation, noticing where it is in your body, letting it be as full as it is. What's under this? You'll find that under any blame and anger are other difficult feelings. Is it hurt? Fear? Powerlessness? Self-doubt? Deficiency? Take some moments to bring a gentle and kind attention to whatever vulnerability you find, attending and befriending your inner life next.

Next, see if you could step into the other person's shoes and imagine what he or she is struggling with. Perhaps feelings of being rejected or deficient, being disrespected or not cared for, being blocked in taking care of his or her needs. Try to sense how that person has a leg in a trap. Finally, sense how you might communicate in a way that is honest and non-blaming, making what you say be about yourself, your own feelings and needs, and not arouse more defensiveness and hostility. You might imagine how, in the days and weeks to come, your way of navigating can shift increasingly from the reactivity of fight, flight, freeze, to attend and befriend. While you can't control another response, you can trust that by taking these mindful steps, your communication will better serve mutual understanding and goodwill.

Before closing, returning to your core practice, letting your attention rest in your home base of breath or body sensations. And if any strong experience calls your attention, then meeting it with a clear and gentle presence. 

© Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield
Reprinted by permission.