Trauma Makes You Prone to Conflict： Here's How to Stop

Experiencing an unusually high amount of conflict with others is a frequent outcome for adults who grew up with neglect or abuse. Constant fighting, arguing, and falling-outs can make it seem as if the entire world is against you. Yet if you pay attention, you'll notice a single repeating factor in many of these clashes: yourself. When trauma colors your upbringing, you may look back and see a long trail of broken relationships and friendships, which usually signals that you’re repeating trauma-driven patterns. Even if you can't yet recognize or fully control those reactions, the good news is they can be changed. What you need is a clear procedure—a protocol, if you like the sound of a scientific term—to manage conflict the moment it begins to rise, so you don’t lose your composure, become emotionally overwhelmed and damage things, push people away by always trying to please them, or escape entirely. Until we heal, old habits like these are what keep causing the same ruptures over and over. Healing the ways you relate gives you the freedom to be honest in hard moments and to refuse requests you don’t want to comply with—actions that can feel terrifying if you’ve never practiced them. You might fear abandonment, shouting, or being fired, but often the key ingredient is gentle honesty combined with practical methods. Used well, these approaches won’t destroy relationships; they can actually strengthen them. Conflict is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be destructive. To maintain lasting connections with the people who matter, you must become skilled at conflict: know how to prevent needless fights, calm down when things start to heat up, and repair any harm you cause. When you can do that, conflict becomes an opportunity to deepen closeness with those you value. The first step is learning to avoid behaviors that provoke fights. By “fighting behaviors” I mean the ways stress or perceived criticism can make your words and tone come out in a way that sparks arguments, even when you only intend to explain or reassure. While other people have their own triggers and emotional responses, you can choose how you communicate so the conversation stays open rather than igniting a battle. Once a fight is underway, everyone tends to become dysregulated; and when both parties carry trauma wounds, anger and intensity can quickly escalate until you’re left more wounded by the fight itself than by the original issue you tried to address. Here are some common ways we slide into fighting mode. Number one: abandoning words and actions. When tempers flare and you sense an argument brewing, panic and overwhelm can push avoidant reactions—hanging up, blocking a number, grabbing your keys and storming off with some cutting words. In the moment it might feel smart or protective, like it will stop things from getting worse. But if that’s your automatic escape, you’ve probably felt the remorse that follows when your nervous system calms and you imagine facing the people you just hurt by leaving in anger. Sometimes those people don’t come back into your life because of it. That cycle—run, then regret—is common. The second fighting behavior is the silent treatment. Using cold silence to grab control is an attempt to protect yourself and stop escalation, and it often functions as a crude, punitive boundary when you’re overwhelmed. While setting boundaries is valid, cutting off communication or refusing to acknowledge someone who’s trying to talk can feel punishing and aggressive, and it erodes the trust and intimacy you say you want. A better move is to say you need a pause—“I’m struggling to talk right now”—and give yourself time to use regulation tools. Third is verbal overload: letting anger gush out in a torrent, raising your voice, and verbally attacking the other person. That tends to ignite more anger in both of you and rarely produces the relief or understanding you’re seeking. Usually what you want to say isn’t urgent unless safety is at risk. You can slow down, notice what you’re feeling, and choose to calm yourself before speaking. When you’re clear and composed, you can either address the issue, set a boundary, repair harm, or let it go—but you don’t need to explode just because your emotions had no outlet. So, what should you do when a conversation starts to heat up and you can feel escalation? Try these four steps. First, notice and acknowledge to yourself that you are becoming emotionally activated or dysregulated. Second, ask for a short break—five to fifteen minutes can be enough, and if you need more, take it. If this is someone who knows you get dysregulated, be direct: “I’m starting to get dysregulated; I need to pause so I don’t lash out.” If you prefer to keep that private, use a neutral reason to step away—make a call, go to the bathroom, anything that buys you space to calm down. Third, avoid blaming or criticizing the other person for your need to take a break. Even if you’re certain they caused it, bringing up blame will only feed the argument when your goal is to reduce heat and restore goodwill. Fourth, tell them when you’ll come back to continue the conversation—ten minutes, an hour, whatever you need—and then actually return and use the time away to re-regulate. If you don’t already have tools to re-regulate, here are practical methods to use when you’re feeling overwhelmed or on the verge of lashing out. Signs you’re dysregulated are the cues you don’t want to ignore—because acting from that state almost never serves your relationships. First, remove yourself to another room or step outside. Move your body: walk, run up and down stairs, do jumping jacks—anything to shift focus from rumination to movement. Movement is underrated and is often the best first response when things heat up. Next, engage your senses: notice visual details around you (the break room, items on a counter, a plant), listen to sounds (birds, a plane, the hum of a heater), and take slow, deep breaths—feel cool air enter through your nose and mouth, fill your lungs, expand your chest and belly, and then release warmer air. Silently tell yourself, “I got overwhelmed; that’s what just happened, and I’m re-regulating now,” and remind yourself that your aim is both to listen and to express yourself without harming the relationship. Try somatic shaking: stand up, bounce lightly on your legs, allow your arms and head to relax and waggle, and shake the tension out of your body. It’s a simple but powerful way to let go of internal tightness. Another strategy I use is grabbing a pen and paper and practicing the writing technique from the daily practice—this involves naming fearful and resentful thoughts in a specific format designed to release them rather than reinforce them. I don’t teach this method casually in videos because it’s often learned incorrectly and won’t work unless done properly. You can learn it in my book Re-Regulated or in my free course called The Daily Practice; there’s a link in the description if you want to access it. If you take that free course, you’ll also receive invitations to free calls I lead every two weeks, with my team running sessions on alternate weeks, so anyone who learns the techniques can practice with others for no cost. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, a dysregulated reaction slips out and you lash out or say something you didn’t mean. That’s especially common among people with trauma histories. When that happens, a sincere, full apology is necessary. A genuine apology can repair relationships, dissolve shame, restore self-respect, and reopen the path to connection. Because many of us weren’t shown how to apologize properly, here’s a reliable approach. First, take time to prepare. Immediate apologies in the moment are ideal when they can happen, but often it’s better to gather your thoughts and do a careful, thoughtful apology afterward. If you have time, clarify exactly what you did that warrants an apology, and consider running it by a trusted friend—people are prone to under- or over-taking responsibility, so an outside perspective helps. Write notes to review details, imagine how you would feel in the other person’s shoes (hurt, betrayed, embarrassed?), and plan concretely what you will do differently going forward. Be realistic with yourself—don’t promise perfection, and avoid saying only what you think they want to hear. Next, reach out and let the person know you’d like to apologize so they can prepare emotionally; face-to-face is best if possible, followed by phone or video, and text or email only when those are the only options. When you apologize, focus solely on your role. Don’t raise their faults or qualify your apology by blaming them—don’t say, “I’m sorry I did this, but you were kind of mean.” Leave their behavior to them. It’s common that the other person won’t apologize in return, and that’s okay—when you apologize properly you take the high road and free yourself regardless of their response. You might worry that admitting fault will be exploited, and sometimes that happens, but owning your part still liberates you and helps you move forward. If remaining close to the person feels unsafe or unwanted, you can still set boundaries before and after apologizing. Here’s a simple script: reach out and say, “I’d like to apologize for…” and then state clearly and accurately what you did. Show that you understand the harm by explaining how you would feel if the roles were reversed: “I know I was gossiping about you, and if that were done to me I’d feel betrayed and worried about what others think.” Demonstrating that you grasp the hurt—and not minimizing or exaggerating—helps the other person lower defenses and creates a real possibility for healing. A sincere apology can sometimes repair damage that, before you learned these skills, might have felt irreparable. Conflict can be especially confusing if you grew up with trauma: even the smallest hint of disagreement can dysregulate you, making it hard to process thoughts and feelings. Trauma literally impairs how emotions and thinking flow, producing a sense of blockage that prevents clear perspective. That can make it difficult to discern your actual contribution to a problem: you don’t want to shirk responsibility if you caused harm, but you also shouldn’t assume blame for things you didn’t do. People sometimes take on excessive responsibility because it feels like control—if everything is their fault, then maybe they can fix it—but that isn’t accurate in every situation. Sometimes the harm truly is the other person’s doing. To clear the mental and emotional clutter so you can see your part clearly, try the daily practice techniques I recommend. In my membership program there are many live, peer-led daily practice calls—around 20 each week—led by myself, the team, and fellow members. These gatherings let people practice the writing and meditation techniques, and the community aspect is crucial: practicing regularly with others helps shift old patterns, such as habitually abandoning people because you didn’t know how to resolve conflict, apologize, or advocate for yourself. That social learning is a big part of real change. You don’t need to salvage every relationship, and it’s fine to let some connections end. But if you harmed someone and it’s safe to apologize, I recommend doing so—except in cases where apologizing might expose you to abuse or harm. I also caution against apologizing to ex-partners if it could disrupt their new relationships. Do the homework: prepare by deciding what you did, how it felt, how you’d feel if you were on the receiving end, and run it by a trusted confidant to check your perspective. When you’re clear, reach out without delay; the sooner you clear things up, the better. If you’d like a community of people practicing these tools—reducing dysregulation, reconciling past hurts, and shaping the lives they want—you can explore the membership program via the link in the description under the videos (you may need to click “more” to see all the links). There are many resources there: free quizzes, classes, and even options for online therapy through providers like BetterHelp. But the core help—the tools and a community learning to shift trauma-patterns around conflict and relationships—is in the membership. If you prefer to start small, try the free Daily Practice course; you can learn the essential techniques in under an hour without any commitment, and that’s a good place to begin.