If you're like many people, your first impulse in conflict is to avoid it — or at least delay it. You wait for the "right" moment. You rehearse what you'll say. You soften your words, manage your tone, and try to anticipate how the other person might react.
You may even take responsibility for the conversation going well.
And still, the same conflict keeps showing up.
You try to communicate thoughtfully and stay regulated. But once emotion enters the room, your body tightens, your attention shifts outward, and whatever you were hoping to express gets lost.
You leave wondering if you said it wrong, chose the wrong moment, or should have done it differently.
This is where many people get stuck — not because they're doing something wrong, but because their nervous system learned long ago that connection requires careful management.
When Conflict Triggers Old Roles
For many people, especially those who grew up as the peacemaker, emotional manager, or "easy" one, staying attuned to others' reactions became a survival skill. Monitoring moods and smoothing emotional intensity helped preserve connection in early relationships.
Those adaptations make sense — and they often persist into adulthood.
It's also common for these patterns to show up most strongly in our primary relationships. Romantic partnerships, close family ties, and other attachment bonds activate older wiring more quickly because they matter deeply. When familiar strategies resurface, it isn't a failure — it's often your nervous system trying to find a new way through.
While this blog speaks primarily to romantic relationships, these principles apply broadly. The grounding practices here can be used in conflict with anyone — partners, family members, colleagues, or friends.
Your Body Offers Clues About What's Happening
Long before your mind catches up, your body often signals when old patterns are activating.
You might notice tightness in your chest or throat, rounded shoulders, holding your breath, or a pull to become smaller, quieter, or hyper-attuned.
These sensations aren't problems to fix. They're information.
They signal that your nervous system is shifting into an old strategy — often one organized around maintaining safety by managing someone else's emotional state. The goal isn't to eliminate these responses, but to notice them early enough to regain choice.
How to Stay Grounded in Conflict
Staying grounded doesn't mean staying calm or perfectly composed. It means staying connected to yourself while remaining in relationship.
You're connected to yourself when you have access to your body, breath, internal signals, and point of view. You're remaining in relationship when you're present and engaged — without collapsing into the other person's emotional state or abandoning your own.
From a somatic and attachment-based perspective, nervous system regulation in relationships is supported not just by insight, but by how you inhabit your body in moments of stress. Many of us learned early to cope with emotional intensity by pulling inward — collapsing the chest, rounding the shoulders, or shrinking our physical presence — as a way to preserve connection.
While this strategy once made sense, it can limit access to clarity, voice, and choice in adult relationships. One way to support regulation, then, is to practice taking up space.
A Grounding Experiment
First, notice what happens when you pull inward. Let your shoulders round slightly. Let your chest soften. Maybe your gaze drops or your body curls forward.
Notice:
- Is it easier or harder to find your words?
- Do you feel clearer or more disoriented?
- Does your breath feel restricted?
Now, gently shift. Sit or stand with both feet planted. Add a slight bend to your knees. Engage your core just enough to feel support. Let your chest widen and allow your back body to be present.
This isn't about dominance or "powering up." It's about sensing yourself as an adult — supported, upright, and here.
As you experiment, notice:
- Does your breath move more freely?
- Do you feel clearer or more grounded?
- What changes when you stay connected to yourself instead of tracking the other person's reactions?
If it feels helpful, bring to mind a recent conflict. First, imagine it from the smaller posture. Then imagine the same moment while grounded and supported.
What feels different?
What feels more possible?
Even subtle shifts in posture or physical space — such as taking a half-step back — can help regulate your nervous system in real time. This isn't about leaving the conversation. It's about staying in it without abandoning yourself.
When practicing new strategies, it can help to name this explicitly. You might even share ahead of time that you're learning new ways to regulate yourself, so if the other person notices you doing something different, they know it's to help you stay present and clear in your interactions.
Both People Are Allowed to Have Feelings at the Same Time
One of the most important — and challenging — shifts in relational work is realizing that someone else having feelings does not require you to lose access to yourself.
Two things can be true at once:
- The other person may feel hurt, overwhelmed, or emotionally activated.
- You can remain grounded and connected to your own experience.
For many people who learned early to manage emotional intensity, another person's distress automatically signals danger — a cue to soothe, fix, explain, or retreat. In those moments, it can feel as though only one person is allowed to have feelings at a time.
Healthy differentiation allows for something different: parallel emotional experiences. You don't need to calm the other person in order to stay present. You don't need to disappear for connection to remain intact.
A Note on Emotion vs. Dysregulation
Strong emotions are allowed. Upset, frustration, sadness, or reactivity do not automatically mean something has gone wrong.
At the same time, emotional expression and nervous system dysregulation are not the same thing. Dysregulation occurs when the nervous system exceeds its capacity to stay present and responsive, and when that happens, communication often breaks down for both people.
Learning to differentiate between emotion and dysregulation — in yourself and in others — can bring clarity. We'll explore that distinction more fully in a future post.
For now, the focus is not on managing someone else's internal state, but on supporting your own regulation so you can respond with choice rather than reflex.
A Brief Word About Safety
The practices described here are intended for situations where both people are physically safe and there is no threat of violence, intimidation, or coercion.
If conflict includes fear for your safety or ongoing emotional harm, staying grounded in the moment may not be the most supportive response. In those cases, additional support and safety planning are essential.
Regulation work is not about enduring harm — it's about expanding choice where safety is present.
Reflection Questions to Support Clarity
It may be helpful to explore:
- Am I taking responsibility for the other person's emotional state or reaction?
- Am I interpreting their discomfort as evidence that I did something wrong?
- Which old family roles or attachment patterns tend to activate during conflict?
- How does the dynamic shift when I allow both of us to have feelings without trying to fix them?
Regulation Is the Foundation of Healthy Conflict
Healthy relationships don't thrive because conflict is avoided. They thrive when people can regulate themselves, stay present, communicate clearly, and repair without abandoning themselves.
When you support your nervous system first, communication becomes clearer, boundaries strengthen, and conflict no longer requires you to disappear.
A Gentle Invitation for Support
If conflict consistently pulls you into over-functioning, shutdown, or self-doubt, individual therapy can be a powerful place to work with these patterns at their root.
Somatic and attachment-based approaches, such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, focus on how relational patterns live in the body. Rather than relying solely on insight or communication tools, this work helps you notice when old strategies activate and shift them in real time.
You don't need to be "better at conflict." You need more support staying connected to yourself when it matters most.
If you're curious about exploring this work at your own pace, we're here to support you.