Managing Conflict When You're Tired: Practical Strategies for Low Energy Challenges

In this episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast, host Simon Goode shares five tips for managing conflict when you're tired. He discusses how tiredness affects our thoughts, emotions, and behavior, leading to a higher likelihood of conflict, and provides strategies like slowing down, strategically adjusting timing, and self-regulating frequently. Simon also touches on the importance of managing expectations for ourselves and with others when our energy levels are low.

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00:00 Managing Conflict While Tired

06:03 Fatigue Impairs Decision-Making

07:09 "Strong Emotions: Not Overreacting"

12:38 "Slow Down for Clarity"

13:31 "Calm Through Slower Actions"

16:59 Managing Stress and Energy Levels

21:27 Self-Regulation Strategies for Meetings

25:57 Managing Fatigue and Productivity

29:05 Managing Tiredness in Conflict

30:18 Engage with "Conflict Skills" Podcast

Transcript

0:04

Well hello and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host professional mediator Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict, whether that was connected to workplace conflict or situations outside of work. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe. In the episode today, I'm going to be talking about five tips for managing conflict when you're tired. Now as usual, I've decided to talk about this particular topic because there's a bit of personal relevance for me at the moment. I'm feeling very tired and even as I sit here recording the podcast episode, I can sense my brain's not working at its full capacity, so apologies in advance if I mix up my words or anything doesn't come across as clearly as I intended it to. And when I look back on my relationships, and particularly the relationships that have been challenging and I've had some conflicts that was tricky, a lot of the time, there's a very strong correlation with me being very tired. I showed up and I think in a lot of situations, I had a bit of brain fog going on, so I wasn't articulating myself and choosing my words as carefully and expressing myself as clearly as maybe I could have. And it also meant that I was much more prone to react. When we're tired, we, like, jump down somebody's throat for a relatively small comment that we might make when on a different day, we could probably just take it on our stride. And in the moment, the challenge is that we're not exactly aware of how our tiredness is contributing to the situation. Of course, unfortunately, the more tired that we get, the more of a simplistic black and white story we tell ourselves about the situation that we're dealing with, which is probably that it's all the other person's fault and nothing that we've done. And when we can zoom out, we often see that the way that we've responded to them, for example, might have also contributed to the conflict, and us being very tired might have influenced the way that we responded. In the episode today, I'm going to be talking about five different lenses or approaches or tools that we can use for managing conflict, generally speaking, when we're tired. So if you've noticed a similar pattern to myself that a lot of the grosser, yuckier, more stressful, more complicated conflicts that you've been engaged with often went hand in hand with periods when you had low energy levels as well, then my hope is that there'll be some additional options that you can use for tweaking or adjusting the way that you're dealing with your situation so that you'll find that to be helpful. Now the first area that I wanted to talk about was simply understanding the effects of being tired. Now I'm thinking about this as a relatively purely physical thing here. Like, I'm talking about maybe times when you haven't had enough sleep. But, of course, tiredness can manifest in different ways. It might just be that you've done a lot of physical activity, so you're not feeling like you want to do more action, but you're not necessarily feeling like you need to sleep, if you know what I mean. Or maybe you're tired from something else like concentrating. You've had to really, I don't know, go through a complex set of data and make sense of it, for example. Or the other area that can drain us is self regulation. When we need to really bite our tongue and keep a poker face on during an important meeting with something. Afterwards, we can also feel really drained. So the way that I think about the tiredness is that it's the part of our body that's physical, so that's the bit that's drained. And a lot of the times there's particular things that our body needs to replenish that energy. It might be food or having a shower or just having a rest, sitting down, going into more comfortable physical conditions, like in the air conditioning, for example, if you've been working out in the hot sun all day. And so we can do things to just change our body. When we're feeling tired, adjusting, you know, what's going on for us physically would be something that would be helpful. And that's kind of the obvious starting point when we think about something like self care or even self regulation. If we're feeling worked up after a conversation that we've been in, we've got the physical part of us to start with. Our hearts racing, our muscles are tired or tense, all of this kind of thing. But that aspect of us, our physical body, is also connected to the other aspects of us. I sometimes talk about expanding our definition of the self, the way that we think about ourselves. And we're not just our physical body, of course. We've got consciousness and thoughts and emotions and all of this kind of thing that go along with our physical body. And when we're tired, that influences those other aspects of us, the way that they operate, the way that they tend to focus on, and ultimately the way that they inform our behavior. So if we start with our thoughts, when we become more tired, our brain, of course, doesn't want to invest the energy in complex thinking and difficult decision making, etcetera. If you think historically about when your ancestors lived in tribes and they were tired, they didn't want to think about a number of options that they should do tomorrow. They just wanted to rest. So for you, your brain naturally wants to avoid complex thinking tasks when your energy levels are low. It's why going and facing that very complex Excel spreadsheet or something is particularly tricky when you haven't slept well. So one of the things that we can appreciate is the fact that we don't have the full rational, logical decision making powers that we would normally have access to when we're tired. It's simply not there. Our thinking looks instead to much more simplistic black and white explanations for things, like I said, which often involve blaming the other person for a situation that's happening, and they also involve attributing the other person for a cause in what's going on. We think that it's probably because of something that the other person's done. Of course, that is inherently something that our brain's likely to do because we're wanting to avoid potential explanations that mean that we need to do something because we don't want to invest that additional energy when our resources are drained. So this means that we can prepare for this. We shouldn't expect to be able to make complex decisions. We shouldn't expect to be able to choose really nuanced language, like writing a really complicated email or sitting down and having a very technical discussion. This might not be the time and place to do that simply because I understand that when I'm tired, my thinking patterns change And this isn't going to ideally be, you know, the the the parts of myself or the way that I show up in this situation in the way that I need to. Our feelings and emotions are also affected as well. Our emotions become much more volatile. We might have a sudden onset, more negative emotions, extreme spikes in emotions, for example, and maybe even illogical reactions to triggers. I know that when people experience very strong emotions, especially when it's something to do with conflict, they feel a bit silly. I think it and myself as well, I tell myself something like, I'm being silly. I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. Why am I the kind of person that overreacts you? Well, the truth is that you're not overreacting. If you think about living in a tribal situation where you really did rely on a small number of people around you for your survival, then conflict and difficult conversations and standing out in public and making a mistake and being embarrassed, these weren't small things. Like, this might mean that you don't get food or you can't find a mate or you're not seen as the same level of status within your tribe. So for me, the very strong emotions that come from things like conflict, it's not that they're illogical or we're being silly. It's more that we've got an outdated hardware system. Like our brain and our body have evolved through thousands and thousands of years of living in tribal kind of situations. So that's the bit of our brain that tends to react when we're tired. We're not accessing the logical, rational bits of our brain. It's the the tribal brain, for want of a better word, that comes out. And that triggers the strong emotions, the anger, the fear, etcetera. The reason that we experience these strong emotions are to get us ready for action. They are part of the way that our body, regulates our metabolism. So when we experience anger, that often comes with physical changes like an increase in heart rate, for example, blood pressure, blood sugar. This is all getting us ready for this fight or flight response, which have been good options for dealing with threats historically. The problem is that these days, when I get an email from my boss or a call from a difficult client, it's not going to be helpful for me to experience the anger. There's no one to fight, and it's probably not gonna be very helpful to flee. So usually, it's better for me to sit down and face the conversation that I need to deal with. But when I'm tired, I'm much more likely to experience those waves of very strong emotions. And that, again, it starts to give us information about the options that we have for looking after ourself and regulating those strong emotions. So those are the two areas that our body tends to affect. Our thoughts and our feelings change. But there's other aspects of our self that we could consider as well. Our perception changes when we become more tired. We're more likely to look for things that our brain would interpret as a perceived threat. What's not going to be good for our survival? Things like someone giving us a side eye or rolling their eyes when we make a comment or interrupting us or not getting back to us as quickly as they normally would by email. Whereas in some situations, we could just take it in our stride and go with the flow and it wouldn't really affect us. When we're tired, our perception adjusts. We're much more hypervigilant to identify these potential threats, and our brain tends to ruminate and remind us about the potential threats. It reminds us that that person said this annoying thing in the email yesterday or that you said that embarrassing thing and everybody looked at you and thought you're a bit of a goose. So our perception adjusts as well. And then finally, our volition or our behaviour changes as well. When we're tired, we don't have the same capacity for self regulation. We don't have the same capacity for, exercising restraint. We don't have the same capacity for choosing long term gains over short term gains, for example. So when we're very tired, all of a sudden you're at the fridge with the door open and you've got the chocolate bar in your hand, and you probably can't even remember thinking about whether or not you were hungry. This is because our brain kind of goes on to autopilot in some of these relatively minor kind of decisions. Or when someone makes a negative comment, sometimes you'd be able to bite your tongue, but if you're very tired, you're not going to be able to. You'll blurt out something or at least make a facial expression reaction or something like that. And this often triggers a snowball of stress because they respond or react to us. We get more annoyed at them. We probably display some of this, and then around and around we go. So that's the first tip that I would give is to simply understand the effects of being tired. And it's not simply a physical impact on you. It also affects your feelings, your thinking, your perception, and your ability to exercise self control. The second tip that I would give, generally speaking, is to slow down. Pause before responding during a conversation. Just taking a moment to think if it's too awkward and you want to buy yourself a little bit of time, for example, I sometimes just summarize what's happened in the conversation so far. Okay. So you've raised this, with me. And as I mentioned, this is actually the first time that I've come across this, so it's news to me. I'm doing a bit of processing. You've explained that you think it's probably because of this, and you're wanting us to do this. And I suppose I'm just reflecting on that. That is an option. And just if we did go down that route, what potential problems that might cause and are there any other options that we should consider? So I'm kind of becoming the narrator in what's happened in the conversation. You've said this. I said this. I'm thinking this. I'm not sure about this. I still need some information about this. We haven't made a decision yet about this. So I'm effectively kind of slowing down the pace of the interactions. And I'm I might do this just because I need to think. But another benefit is that it gives the other person that we're dealing with the chance to think and reflect as well, doesn't it? Stop rushing. When you become more tired, one of the ironies is that we don't wanna spend time doing tasks. So even little things like taking a cup to the kitchen, like, don't sprint there. Be careful of walking very quickly and washing it up in a very frantic rushed way and wiping it up with a tea towel, sort of blustering your way back to your desk. Our brain is interpreting our body as well as our behavior in the way that it makes sense of what's going on in our current situation. And when we're frantic and rushed, this is usually associated with situations where there's danger. Like, of course, if there's not much time, you need to move quickly. But our brain looks at us rushing around and it thinks this might be a situation where there's potential danger here. This is that idea of a perceived threat. So when we can slow down our behavior, it inherently helps us to begin to feel a little bit more calm and composed as a result. Things like adjusting your body language, like opening your chest, lowering your shoulders, lifting your chin, but really slowing down the actual actions that you're taking, pausing a moment before you open up the document on your computer, taking three deep breaths before you go into the meeting and begin. These little moments can often make a big difference in the way that we show up in the following conversation. Another part of slowing down is that you won't want to make quick decisions. I talked in the previous section about the fact that our logical rational section of our brain is inherently limited the more tired that we get. So, of course, we don't want to rush into anything. The challenge is that our brain has a hard time saying no. That's not something I need to worry about. Well, guess what? Your brain's probably going to immediately begin worrying about it at every possible opportunity for the next twenty four hour period at least. Our brain has an easier time accepting something like not now. This isn't the time to make this decision. Yes. That's something that I might say. I've drafted the email. I've scheduled a time tomorrow morning to go back and look through it with a fresh set of eyes. And we almost need to remind our brain about that. Sometimes I talk to myself out loud and say, yep. I get it. That's an important conversation to have. Right now is not the best time to be focusing on it. I don't know if you're the kind of person that likes to draft an email but not send it, but that tends to be quite a successful strategy for a lot of people. In the heat of the moment, you probably have some things to say and writing it down can be an opportunity to get it off your chest. But that might not necessarily be the absolutely most nuanced ideal phrasing for all of the bits in your email. And to be frank, a lot of the time you could probably cut most of it out and just send a couple of paragraphs instead of this 18 paragraph manifesto that you've been working on. But coming back to it with the fresh set of eyes is the key here. The cortisol, the buildup of the stress hormone in our body, it actually stays in our system for up to eighteen hours. So I would suggest coming back the next morning, if possible, to have a look at it would be ideal. But if not, just later in the afternoon or later in the day would be the next best option. The next tool that I wanted to talk about was strategically adjusting timing. Now even when you're tired, it's not like you have a flat constant rate of energy. In actuality, what you will have are ebbs and flows in your relatively low energy levels. So even if you're tired, there'll be times when you're very, very, very tired, like in this thirty minutes or this five minutes or this fifteen minutes or whatever, these afternoon versus the morning. And there'll be times when you're tired but not as tired. So sometimes we can strategically schedule conversations that we need to have or particularly complex or challenging tasks that we need to do. And what we don't want is to stack stresses. If you're going from one difficult conversation into the next one, you're going to have that buildup of cortisol, that buildup of adrenaline going through your system. And when our tired, our brain is more prone to look for potential threats. So that buildup is going to happen even quicker than it might normally occur. So you might need to look for more regular and frequent opportunities for self regulation, spending a couple of minutes doing a quick deep breathing activity before the next meeting that you run into, going for a walk around the building, going out to get a coffee, having a meeting, walking instead of sitting inside in the fluorescent lights. Depending on your situation, there'll be different options that you can consider, but you don't want to stack the demands on one hand in a situation where your resources are going to be continually drained in the other. If you're going to get through it in more of a balanced way, it's probably going to be using timing to adjust your level of resources with the levels of demands that you're dealing with. Now if you erupt, which is likely if you're very tired, you make a negative comment or a meeting or a conversation doesn't go well. The other thing that you'll need to think about in terms of timing is how to fix it and when. Like, even though you think that you should probably apologize or you do wanna talk to that person about the conversation that went pear shaped, this might not be the best time to be dealing with it when you're both tired and you've both got that buildup of adrenaline. It's a balancing act because you also don't want, in some situations, for a problem to sit there unresolved. But for me, I often find that finding some way to acknowledge it, like, I'm sorry that didn't go well. That got out of hand. I said some things that I regret. I'd like to organize the time to talk it through, but right now I'm not in the right headspace. Could we pencil in the time tomorrow morning? So you could do it by email or just touch base with them verbally. And at least there's something scheduled and you've got it in the diary. If it's, you know, your partner or something, it might not be let's put something in the diary. It might just be, could we catch up tomorrow morning? I think I'll be in a better headspace by then. Because you don't want to engage in a situation when you're already heightened. And what I've noticed about conflict and people being tired is that apologies or people wanting to resolve conflict too early can actually backfire. They go in and they say something like, look, I'm sorry you're upset about with with me because of this, but they don't do it in a very genuine way. They don't say I did this. I shouldn't have done it. They might say, I'm sorry you're upset or I'm sorry you feel that way. Or they might say, I'm sorry, but because they're very tired and they can't bite their tongue. And, I mean, how does it feel to you when someone says, I'm sorry, but it usually doesn't go over very well. I I can remember I was doing some training a little while ago, and one of the participants was from Egypt. And he said, Simon, one thing I've learned in conflict is that you never put a but in an angry person's face. And I can still remember it, and I think that I'm sorry, but is one of the worst buts that you can probably put in somebody's face in some ways. So in terms of timing, when is the best way to resolve it? Even in situations when it's gone pear shaped or things aren't good, there might be a small step that's needed right now, like letting them know that you're prepared to talk about it and sort of breaking the ice to some extent, but not getting into opening up the can of worms and going through the fine fine level, you know, of detail, debrief, etcetera. Do that once you've had some sleep and you're in a different headspace. The fourth tip is to self regulate more frequently, earlier and after conversations as needed. I've touched on this already, but there will be specific things that you can do to regulate your nervous system, appreciating the fact that it's more likely to ramp up quicker, like the escalation will happen quicker, and the potential triggers or cues that cause the escalation will be more broad. In other words, you're scanning more broadly for potential threats. And if your brain picks up on a potential threat, it just hits the gas. It hits the accelerator, and you're off to the races. You're moving very quickly. You're not steering. You're not thinking about the consequences of your behavior. You're not thinking about what someone else might be experiencing. You almost get captivated and sucked up in your wave of emotions because historically, again, this is what has been helpful for our survival as humans. It's not ideal for a modern workplace situation or conversation with your mother-in-law or your nine year old who's having a meltdown or something like that, and you're feeling stressed and tired and frazzled yourself. So when you're tired, that self regulation will happen more frequently. I often actually do it during a lot of meetings that I go to when I'm tired, And it's something that you're not going to think of during the meeting, so you'll need to remind yourself to do it. Like, I'll write down sometimes on my bit of paper breathe or a little symbol or something like that if I don't want the client to know what it is. And it's literally a reminder for me to take stock of how I'm traveling and then do something about it. Now I talked about those five aspects of self earlier, our body, our thoughts, our emotions, our perception, and our behavior. And each of those five give us different options for self regulation. We could self regulate our body physically, limit the amount of coffee that we're drinking, for example, have something to eat, wash our face. We could adjust our perception, focus on a more helpful, productive task that I can do instead of remembering this conversation that's really upsetting me that happened earlier in the day. I could adjust my emotions like I could debrief with a colleague or spend time hanging out with people that make me feel better. I could redirect and watch a show that makes me feel joy or listen to a song or look through a photo album of an old memory or something like that. Or I can adjust my thinking. Maybe I'm, catastrophizing the problem or taking it personally or rushing to think that I need to make a decision or respond right now when actually that's not realistic. So each of those five different ways of thinking about ourself also give us options for self regulation. And when you're tired, you'll be needing to do that more frequently than otherwise. And then the final tip that I wanted to give was about your expectations. Now this is a little bit about communicating it with others. You want to be on the same page about who's going to be doing what and clarifying expectations is an important part of that. But it's also with yourself. If you're a high performer, it's very easy to show up to work or in parenting roles or even with your partner and family responsibilities. Thinking that you're going to be kicking goals every day, you're going to be hitting it out of the park, you're going to be a high performer because you are a high performer. Well, the reality is that you're going to be performing as well as the sleep that you've had the night before. And when you're very tired, your expectations probably need to adjust a little bit. So that could be to do with the level of complexity in the task that you're doing or the meticulous level of detail that you'll be able to be capable of. For example, I'm speaking at a conference down in Sydney next week, and I had to send through the slides yesterday afternoon. And I can remember I was just so tired. I felt completely brain dead. And so my expectations for that slide prep session was just get something together that's good enough. You know, the presentation itself is probably going to be okay. I I enjoy doing that kind of thing, and it's the kind of group that I'm reasonably I resonate with naturally. But the slides aren't gonna be such a big deal, so I really did need to remind myself about the fact that this just needs to be good enough. If there's a little typo or I forget to put something that I wanted to initially or something, it's not the end of the world. But when I'm tired, my brain thinks that it is the end of the world because it's having trouble filtering what's an actual threat and what's something that I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, so to speak. So that could be one area. It's like how complex or how good a job am I going to be able to do? But the other area would be the kinds of conversations or the kind of people that I'm capable of dealing with isn't always the same. Like, if I'm really tired and frazzled, there's a particular person that just annoys the crap out of me, the the look on their face, the way that they speak, the phrasing, the the way they act like they know everything, the way they put me down, the might be their smell. It's funny that the small things that sometimes you can just let it go when you're very tired, you're just so much more likely to react or for them to bother you. And then what happens is this drip feeding ourselves of this cortisol, we've got this very slow build up of stress happening behind the scenes. So, eventually, we blurt something out or we take something personally and get upset about it and have trouble concentrating afterwards or something. So which conversations are you capable of dealing with right now? And which conversations would be better to hold off until you've had some sleep and your energy levels are a little bit higher? Now you could talk to other people about your expectations, like your boss, for example. Hey, boss. I just wanna let you know I'm very tired today, so, you know, know, I'm not gonna be as productive as I normally would be. I don't know how you find this going for you, but I don't normally find a whole lot of empathy from other people when I'm tired. I don't know if this is just the people around me in the context that I'm working in, but even my wife, if I say I'm feeling really tired today, I'd well, I certainly don't get much sympathy. I can tell you that much. But my boss, I mean, what are we expecting them to do realistically? What would be more helpful would be have a specific request that you can make. My energy levels are a bit low. Can I focus on this today rather than this? Or would it be okay if this morning I just put my head into this and know, I can get stuck in and just concentrate and feel like I've made some progress? Or I need some time this morning to make a few difficult calls because I know that I'm not gonna be in the right headspace to do it this afternoon. Would it be okay to organize this and this and this? So it's a specific request, and I'm giving a message that I'm not trying to avoid responsibilities or put my work onto others or something like that. Like, I'm pulling my weight. I'm doing my fair share. It's just that given my state at the moment, this is going to be the best fit for me. And, again, sometimes we can have a specific request that our boss is able to say yes to or a partner maybe. And that's more likely that you'll get either a yes or a no or no, but I can't do that. But what about this? Whereas if you just say, I'm tired, I just wanna give you a heads up. I often think that the only, effect that that has is it makes them a little bit more hypervigilant about the fact that we might not be pulling our weight. I don't know. This is probably an interesting one to finish on because there's a bit of a subjective element here, but I don't know. I know that there's a few different popular counselling models and communication tools like nonviolent communication. When you do this, I feel this, you know, and I just don't know how they work in reality. Hey, boss. When you give me a lot of tasks to do, it makes me feel overwhelmed because I haven't had much sleep. So can you just give me a few tasks at a time? Like, a boss is very likely to say, well, this is the job. Like, what do you expect me to do? Whereas a specific request, like, hey, boss. I get that all these tasks need to be done. If it's alright, could we go through the first three? I just wanna cross a couple of things off the list, make sure I'm on the right track, and then we could organize a time to go through the rest. I don't know. If that doesn't work for you, I'm happy to go through them all at once like we normally do, but I am finding that there's more room for crossed wires doing it that way. What do you think? Like, I'm not talking about my feelings. I'm just saying, this is the situation. Could we do this differently? Maybe I am a little bit more assertive than some of the more traditional counselling, you know, the communications training type of psychologists, but or maybe this is a cultural thing and this is the Australian. We do tend to be reasonably, direct in the way that we communicate in Australia. It's what's called low context kind of communication. Hey, it's Simon calling. I wanted to talk to you about this. Have you got a moment? Whereas in other cultures, there's much more about the background and the context and managing the relationship and all of this kind of thing. But for me, when I'm very tired, I don't normally find it helpful helpful to say, can you give me some sympathy here? I do find it more helpful to say, could we do this? Could we change this? Could we organize this? Is this going to work on your end and renegotiating some of the practical arrangements? But I would love to hear your thoughts. Okay. Well, I really do hope that that's been helpful for you thinking about some of those options for dealing with conflict when we're tired, whether it's understanding the impact of our physical energy levels being drained and how that influences our thoughts, our feelings, our perception, and our volition, slowing down in some of those options that I talked about for introducing a bit of a pause, and that's often the difference, isn't it, between a reaction and a response ultimately. I talked about some of the strategies that we can use for managing timing, some of the ways that we can self regulate and how we might do that more frequently than usual, and even some of the ways that we can manage expectations, both ourselves as well as with other people around us. But I'd love to know your thoughts. If you've got a question, a comment, a thought about something that I've talked about, I'd love to hear from you. The best way to get in touch is the email address podcast@simongood.com. If the episode has been helpful and there's been something that's been useful for you, I'd be incredibly grateful if you would consider leaving a positive review. It makes a massive difference for little podcasts like this, and thank you so much in advance for the people who have gone ahead and left positive reviews. I've been reading a couple of them lately, and I have to say it really does warm the old heart. And if you're interested in additional tools for dealing with conflict and communication, please consider pressing subscribe. Otherwise, hopefully, catch you up again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills podcast at some stage. But until then, all the best. Bye for now.