Conflict Avoidance Is Actually A High-Risk Strategy

So far, we have considered a few answers to the question, what causes people-pleasing?

• The need to be liked

• The fear of rejection

• The desire to stay safe

Let’s consider one more cause of people-pleasing behavior: the need to avoid conflict. Here, “conflict” means disagreement, upsetting others, awkwardness, friction, misunderstanding, or just bad vibes in general.

You do not have to have grown up in an abusive home to want to desperately avoid conflict. But you may nevertheless have internalized the lesson that not giving people what they want usually results in bad outcomes, and it’s easier just to be “nice” and avoid rocking the boat.

We’ve all done this at some point or other, whether it’s biting our tongue when we really wanted to speak out or pretending to go along with something just because the alternative seemed like too much to deal with.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with trying to avoid conflict, and there’s nothing intrinsically valuable about disagreeing! The challenge for people-pleasers is simply to find the right balance. Being a mediator who values harmony and cohesion is a great thing, and you can be proud of that if it’s a skill you have. Being terrified of disagreement or inevitable bad feelings, on the other hand, is a problem.

Conflict avoidance is where we avoid conflict at all costs. It is not the same as being easy-going, accommodating, or able to find mutual resolutions to problems. Conflict avoidance is where we carefully weigh up everyone’s needs and find a solution that makes everyone happy—except we completely ignore ourselves in that equation. That’s why, in fact, this strategy itself may become the problem.

Here are some examples of conflict avoidance as a people-pleasing strategy:

You quickly change the topic when someone says something wrong or offensive, just to avoid calling them out or causing an argument.

You put up with uncomfortable situations rather than kick up a fuss. You don’t want to offend!

You go silent or flee interactions rather than disagree or face awkwardness.

You deny problems or how you feel about them. You’d rather swallow your own discomfort than cause it in someone else.

You don’t express yourself honestly in case it makes waves.

You agree to unreasonable demands to keep the peace . . . but then grow resentful about it anyway.

As with all forms of people-pleasing we’ve explored, conflict avoidance costs you something enormous: your authenticity. Honest communication and genuine intimacy fly out the window. Problems fester beneath the surface, and people are completely in the dark about how everyone truly feels. Most commonly, it’s not conflict avoidance so much as conflict deferral—the problem often comes back to bite you later on!

The Terrible Tale of the “Gunnysack”

“Gunnysacking” is a sure sign of conflict avoidance and people-pleasing. This is how the tale of the gunnysack usually plays out:

Melissa is the most junior member of her team at work, and a good decade younger than everyone else. Because she has low self-esteem and she’s petrified of causing a scene and potentially losing her job, she quietly puts up with behavior she really dislikes. She smiles and complies when asked to clean the office or fetch coffee, even though it’s not in her job description. She keeps quiet when people steal her ideas and flaunt them as their own. She says nothing when her boss repeatedly misspells her name.

What Melissa is doing is quietly accumulating each of these little insults and injuries into a gunnysack. She holds on to every one of them, and the sack grows bigger and bigger. One day, the receptionist is a little curt with her, and Melissa tries to put that, too, into the gunnysack. Except by now it’s so full that it suddenly explodes. All at once, Melissa loses her temper and lashes out at the receptionist, who is completely bewildered, and Melissa is in fact disciplined later for her outburst.

The gunnysack tale is a tale of irony—in wanting to avoid conflict at all costs, you actually wind up with one big, catastrophic conflict at the end, when you cannot take any more. Even worse, after the flood, you may feel so guilty and horrible that you double down on your future efforts to “be nice” and never, ever let anyone down again . . .

Out comes a new gunnysack.

But . . . What’s the Alternative?

People-pleasers can feel genuinely mystified about how to fix conflict avoidance since they can’t imagine what a healthy alternative looks like. Be more argumentative? Happily embrace conflict?

The first thing to realize is that pretending to be cool with things you aren’t cool with doesn’t actually change the problem. The situation may appear okay, but that is only on the surface and usually only temporary. The truth is that disagreements, grievances, problems, and issues all continue to exist, and pretending they don’t doesn’t change a thing besides maybe delaying the inevitable.

Unless you consciously address conflict, you only create misunderstanding, disappointment, or a nice full gunnysack waiting to burst. And you get all that on top of the original problem you were trying to run away from in the first place.

Here are some ways to consciously address conflict rather than store it away where it can earn compound interest! It’s not as difficult as it may seem at first.

Use AND Not BUT

If you hate being contrary or disagreeing with others, then try doing it without using the word “but.” It’s a simple trick that teaches you that two people can in fact have different viewpoints at the same time without them necessarily threatening one another. For example, just because you feel right, it doesn’t mean the other person is automatically wrong. You can both be right! Express this by saying “and” instead of “but.”

For example, “I know that you’re keen on a vacation soon, and I’m aware that we may need to watch our savings if we want to reach our goal this month.” (You express your opinion without positioning it against theirs. Look how nicely they both sit together in the sentence without bothering one another!)

Try a Hypothetical

People-pleasers can sometimes think that to be assertive, they need to loudly and boldly claim their opinion, everyone else be damned. But you don’t have to. You can introduce a difference of opinion in the form of a question or a suggestion to consider some alternative scenario.

For example, “A vacation would be amazing right now, I agree. Is there a way we can organize one while still meeting our savings goals for this month?”

Draw Attention to the Impact of Actions

It can feel awkward to draw attention to your disagreement or conflicting opinion, especially in a work context, because it can come across as an emotional or psychological admission. It can seem like all you’re doing is presenting the other person with the fact of your disagreement, which can sometimes feel like a dead end or even a challenge. But you don’t have to frame things this way.

Keep your focus on the practical real-world outcomes of different ideas, opinions, or actions. For example, “If we go on a vacation next month, it’ll probably cost us around $xxx. How is that going to impact our savings plan?”

Become Curious About the Deeper Causes

Is there an underlying issue that it would be wise to address directly? If you disagree with someone, sometimes the issue is completely resolved when you dig a little deeper and find out the cause of that disagreement. If you do this, you get the chance to resolve things some other way.

For example, “I thought we both agreed on our savings goals, but it seems like a vacation is more of a priority for you now. I’m curious, what’s changed?”

In this example, you may discover that the vacation is actually an attempt to solve a deeper problem, let’s say work stress. Once you know what this problem is, you can solve it directly, maybe without spending money on a vacation—it’s a win-win situation.

You’ll notice that in all of the above strategies, expressing a different opinion does not require you to be forceful, inconsiderate, pushy, or arrogant. In a very real way, this is the real path to avoiding conflict!

With good communication, reasonable boundaries, and a spirit of open-mindedness, you approach any difference of opinion calmly and without seeing it as a threat. And that gives you the best possible chances of resolving conflict, not just sweeping it under the carpet to be uncovered later.

If conflict avoidance is a stubborn issue for you, it may be worth working on your core assumptions on your own time before you encounter potential conflict with others. Here are a few things to guide your process:

What are you really avoiding?

The superficial answer is “conflict!” but ask yourself what you are actually avoiding by avoiding conflict. Does it have something to do with the need to be liked, the need to prevent rejection, or the need to maintain harmony as a matter of self-preservation? It may be a special blend of all of these!

Use the “Five Whys” technique and keep burrowing down to what you are really running away from. For example:

I don’t want to keep paying so much money to be a bridesmaid several times a year, and I hate the stress of it all, but I never say no.

Why?

I don’t want to get into a big argument about it. If I say no, then my friends will be upset with me.

Why?

Because they’ll think that I’m a bad friend.

Why?

Because good friends do whatever they’re told, no question.

Why?

Because if they don’t, then why would people want them around?

Why?

Because people only have value if they are useful to others. If they aren’t, then there’s no reason for them not to be discarded!

And there it is. You are not really afraid of conflict, but of being discarded or abandoned if you don’t comply. The conflict is a scary thing to avoid only because it would lead to this discarding, which is what you’re really afraid of.

The thing about this technique is that you may be surprised by what you uncover, and your deepest, most hidden motivations are always going to be completely unique to you. Notice in the above example that the answers to the questions aren’t necessarily true. They are simply a reflection of the core beliefs, assumptions, and narratives that are being held. It may be that once you clearly verbalize these hidden assumptions, they have less of a hold on you. “Wow. Is this really how I want to feel about my friends?”

This exercise could lead you to more thoughtfully consider the cost of conflict avoidance.

Trying to avoid conflict is a strategy purely designed to reduce harm, but you may realize that it doesn’t actually do this, and in fact, it creates additional harms of its own.

You lose self-respect, you trash your own boundaries and invite others to do the same, you quietly hold on to resentments, and perhaps worst of all, you forego the opportunity to have a genuine and intimate connection with another person.

Conflict may be unpleasant, but it is real. And it’s also the only thing that, by going through it, allows us to access positive outcomes like forgiveness, reconciliation, and deeper understanding. Isn’t that worth more than the illusion of peace?

Takeaways

• People-pleasing is sometimes part of a bigger behavioral response to childhood trauma called “fawning,” i.e., a flood of appeasing, soothing, and conciliatory behavior.

• You may need professional help to address a fawning habit, but you can also make strides by re-parenting yourself. This entails choosing to give to yourself now what you weren’t given as a child. Reparenting also entails connecting with your values and principles, getting in tune with your own emotions, and learning to have fun!

• People-pleasers can be conflict avoidant, but this is actually a high-risk strategy, and you may gather resentments only to explode later (“gunnysacking”). Instead, use “and” instead of “but” in conversations, or try the “Five Whys” technique to get to the heart of what you’re really avoiding.