Tools to Effectively Digest and Process Conflict

In this episode, Simon Goode explores how we can "digest" conflict experiences by using practical self-regulation techniques in the moment, immediately after, and over the long term. He shares tools like mindful breathing, multisensory walks, journaling, and gratitude exercises to help restore balance and process stressful encounters. Simon emphasizes that everyone's needs are different, encouraging listeners to experiment with various strategies to find what works best for them.

--------------- 

TIMESTAMPS: 

00:00 Mind-Body Self-Regulation Transformation

04:32 Digesting Conflict: Strategies and Tools

06:25 Navigating Advice Sensitively

11:00 "Understanding Sensory and Internal Perception"

15:33 Post-Conflict Reset Strategies

18:19 The 20 Sigh Method

21:04 Simple Mindfulness Techniques

23:24 "Emotional Impact of Childhood Sounds"

29:32 Mindfulness Habits: Overcoming Doubts

32:01 "Benefits of Pen-and-Paper Journaling"

36:05 Gratitude: A Path to Positivity

39:10 "Staying Calm: Practical Strategies"

41:50 Podcast Farewell Message

Transcript

0:05

Hello and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Good. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about how to digest conflict. It's a theme actually that I've been talking about as I run different seminars and workshops and speak at different events and that kind of thing, how we can almost metabolize the conflict experiences that we go through. Now when I talk about self regulation, for example, or even de escalation, I've begun to talk about the self according to these five different aspects. This is just a functional definition of ourselves, so to speak, but the idea would be that whenever something happens, this is a cue, c u e, a trigger, so to speak, but we do get to control our reaction to some extent, at least. It's not a %, but but there's a little bit of influence that we have over our own behavior. And so that's the first aspect that might become affected as we escalate. We lose that level of self control. We lose the ability to choose our words and think clearly and, you know, control our language and all of those different aspects of our self regulation, our self, execution, so to speak. And then the other aspects of our self also become affected. Our thinking can become affected. We might experience emotions and feelings as a result, anger, fear, shock, surprise, concern. It could be a physiological reaction. Our body changes as a result. And finally, our perception changes and adjusts as well. We focus on different things. We might, perceive something differently even. So those five aspects of our self, our thoughts, our feelings, our perception, our physical body, as well as our self control or our volition, all become affected when we're in the moment. Like, when we're thinking about self regulation, what we're aiming for is to increase our capacity for taking control of the steering wheel, so to speak, of those different aspects of ourself. And the more control that we can get over one aspect and the more that we can bring that down, so to speak, and deescalate, to slow down, to think a little bit clearly, to appreciate the context of what's going on, to lower the stakes, to lower that sense of perceived threat, in any aspect, like just deep breathing, for example, it changes our body, but that helps us to think differently. Or we could do it in reverse. We could challenge our thinking and realize that we're catastrophizing, and we might notice that our heart rate slows down as a result. And I think the same thing all almost needs to be dealt with when we think about longer term digesting or metabolizing conflict. If we consider what's going on in conflict as our brain responding to something that it perceives as a threat. This is a context or a situation where, historically, there's been some type of a fight or flight response that's been warranted. This is like a tribal evolution area programming and wiring showing up. It's been a positive thing in terms of our survival to act and to be either defending ourselves or to escape from a dangerous situation. So that's still what our body gets us ready for. So there's a physiological change that happens. Cortisol increases the rate of adrenaline that's being released, etcetera, which increases blood pressure and blood sugar and and all of this kind of thing, all about getting us ready for physical action. So it would make sense then that there's a physical, what would you say, like, restoring of homeostasis that's needed. If our body has adjusted depending on the situation that we're in, and if we're in conflict, our brain experiences this as potential threat, then we've adjusted towards that threat end of our possible range of responses. Right? Like, our heart rate increases because it's likely that we're going to need to run away or or to fight or to something like that. But now we're not. Now we've finished that difficult conversation that we're in. We're out of that performance management meeting with the staff member or the horrible conversation with the client, or we've closed that email of that annoying person that's written to us and triggered a bit of an escalation in heart rate or like, it's passed now. So what do you need to do to restore that homeostasis? Well, I think probably there would be options for doing that in each of those five different dimensions of ourself. Again, we could probably choose, tools that affect our thoughts, like journaling and and gratitude, for example. And there are actually a couple of strategies that I'm going to outline that you could consider, later on in this this episode. We could do things that affect our body, like deep breathing or having a shower or washing our face or something like that, or something that adjusts our perception, like a gratitude activity or reality checking what we're focused on or a mindfulness exercise. Like, any of these different options according to each of these different dimensions of our self, I think, would gradually bring us back towards that balance, that homeostasis. And so when we're aiming to digest conflict, I suppose similar to digesting our food, it it's sort of like a healthy processing of what we've experienced and bringing us back towards a healthy state longer term. So I thought what could be helpful would be to just talk about some of the different options that you can use for digesting conflict or metabolizing conflict if you've been involved in it yourself. Now, obviously, some people who listen to this podcast are managers and business owners and that kind of thing. So I suppose these could also be options that you could suggest to other people, like your staff or your team, for example. But I suppose you need to tread a little bit carefully about, you know, I found this thing that you probably should do. I guess when we come across as a bit of a know it all, we shouldn't be surprised when we get a bit of a response like, yeah, yeah, easy for you to say or something like that. Maybe an option could be role modeling that I've found this tool helpful. I don't know if it's going to be helpful for you. Ultimately, it's gonna be up to you. You might have different things that resonate, of course. Would you like me to flick you through something by email? And there's no urgency, but you can just have a look at it whenever suits. We're lowering the stakes. I don't want to introduce this suggestion with a sense of perceived criticism. I don't know. I wonder if sometimes I overthink some of those different phrasings and those different, you know, the nuances of the way that we speak to somebody, but, I've probably dealt with some particularly prickly people in my family and my friend groups at different times in my life, so I've learned I can't just say I've thought of what you should probably do. This, what would you say? It's just unsolicited advice, like, coming across as a bit of a know it all. I sometimes wonder if, you know, a really good episode of the podcast might accidentally be ammunition for somebody to go up to a different person that they know and throw it in their face and let them know what they've been doing wrong. But, anyway, that's not my intention. What I thought I could do would be to talk through some different options that you could consider. And the different categories that I've broken it down into are in the moment, like, during the conflict, what kind of things help us to process it, Immediately afterwards or soon after, like, if it was a meeting, for example, what you can do next or during your lunchtime or during your commute home or something like that. And then the last set of options that I wanted to suggest were longer term, tools or practices, I suppose, that you could consider. They're they're not usually one offs. It's usually doing something repeatedly over time that helps us to process those things that have affected us at a deeper level. But it might not necessarily be something that you need to do forever. It might be like a few months of particular exercises or particular gratitude or journaling practices or something that are helpful for you. So, anyway, I suppose as a bit of a preamble to all of that, I wanted to say that I'm certainly not an expert in all of this. I bounce between all of these different options, and the reality is that sometimes I manage it better than others. Over time, I've I've certainly managed to deal with more things better, but, you know, I still have my own spikes of stress and times when I could probably do a little bit more of deep breathing or mindfulness or something like that. And there's a real irony, isn't it, that the times when we're not coping and we need to do some self care often are the points when we feel too busy. It seems like there's other priorities that we need to be dealing with or there's other people that we need to be looking after or whatever else it might be. But I suspect that probably some of you listening to this podcast might be finding yourself a little bit out of balance and maybe conflict has been something that's contributed to that. So these opportunities for self care often are just it's just that. It's just a chance to reflect and think about how you're travelling and whether or not you might benefit from doing something differently. So in the moment, the two options that I often suggest for digesting or metabolizing conflict are breathing and mindfulness. The type of breathing technique that I find most helpful is to focus on the breath out. It's better if you use your nose rather than your mouth, and we should really focus on extending that breath out, especially if you find yourself, like, you can feel your heart racing a little bit, like that other person just said something that it's just not right. That's not true. How dare they or something like that. I'd really concentrate on that breath out, extending the breath. It acts almost as this helpful circuit breaker for the automatic fight or flight response that we we go into when we're into that reactive escalating kind of state. So, using your nose, focus on the breath out. I find it helpful to count to six out and six in. We really want to extend the breath and I find that counting to three or four or something like that's not usually enough. The minimum amount of time according to that Andrew Huberman episode where he focused on breathing is five and a half seconds, so that's why I tend to focus on the counting to six. But for the first one or two breaths, I just keep breathing out and keep breathing out and keep breathing out. And I'm often, and you might be as well, surprised at the amount of oxygen actually that we have in our lungs. And some people talk about experiencing a bit of a tingling sensation or just being very present at that point when they're really at the you know, they've really breathed out. They've fully emptied their lungs, so to speak. So really slowing your breath, it would usually take three or four breath cycles before your heart rate's a little bit slower, and that helps us to feel a little bit more calm and composed as a result. The other tool that I often find quite helpful is mindfulness, and this is another technique that I often teach to people when I'm running training workshops. The idea here is that we just focus on our senses. We focus on our perception. What's the perceptual information that's coming in and being processed by our brain right now? Like, we can focus on our five senses, sight, touch, sound, smell, taste, etcetera. Or we can focus on what Dan Siegel sometimes calls the sixth sense, introception. Internally, what's going on in our body? Are we hungry or sore? Or what posture are we in? Or can I feel my my my food digestion percolating away? Or do I need to go to the loo or something like that? And we can also even focus on the different thought patterns that's going on. What are the images? What are the the stories that are almost playing out in our head? A lot of the time when we're in conflict, what's happening is that we're either remembering and re experiencing something that happened, like even just what they just said, or we're rehearsing or pre living something that we think is going to come. It's this way of anticipating and preparing for what we might need to do next. But, you know, the playing back of what happened in the past or the pre living of what's going to happen or what we think might happen, That's not just a cognitive experience. This isn't an intellectual exercise in wondering what might happen. We experience it. The visual cortex is activated when we're remembering that scene and what that person said and the look on their face. Like, we recreate it, and we really do re experience it. You might have noticed that your heart rate increases when you remember something that caused you to be really upset. Like, our body is getting ready for that scene to happen again, even if that's something that happened, you know, kilometers away. We've we've gone home on the train by now. Like, it doesn't make any sense that our body would be getting ready for fight or flight now, but it does if we understand that we're reliving that past experience often because we haven't digested the conflict in the moment. So engaging in mindfulness, focusing on you focusing on your perception, the benefit that it has is that it brings us back to the present. It stops us from re experiencing or pre experiencing what else might be going on, and that's often the things that we're worried about, the the angry thing or the stupid thing that we said or the thing that they said that's made us angry, or the thing that we're worried about might happen next and almost preparing for that. It anchors us in the present moment and stops our mind from spinning about the past and the future. And I think that often helps us to, I guess, as much as possible to digest the experience that we're having. I think when we're in the middle of conflict and we're second guessing what we've said or telling ourselves stories like I can't do this and there's something wrong with me or I always mess up these cut types of conversations or we're just enraged and furious about what the other person's doing or we're panicked and worried. Like, we're not thinking clearly. We don't have a very accurate idea of ourself in that moment. It does feel very scary and full on and overwhelming, or it does feel very infuriating, and we almost get swept up by the illusion that's that anger. It's so seductive. It draws us in, and we lose sight of all of the other things that's happening in that moment, like, you know, how we might have contributed to why the other person's upset with us or how we could have navigated this conversation differently earlier on or something like that. That's not what we remember because that's not what we experience in the moment. Whereas when we can engage in mindfulness, it creates this really helpful differentiation for the from the experiences that we're having. And I think then that often results in us not walking away with as much, what you might call trauma in small t. You know, that that unresolved sense of I should have done something differently or there's something wrong with me and blaming yourself and taking an undue level of responsibility or something similar. So breathing and mindfulness are the two tools that work for me in the moment during the conflict. I think they increase the chances of me metabolizing or digesting it appropriately, so to speak, and getting back to balance sooner rather than later. But what do you find helpful? It might be being prepared or not overreacting or making sure that you have your say if you're the kind of person that's overly accommodating. I guess it's possible that there would be different approaches that resonate and work for you and probably for the different people that you work with as well. So the second stage of metabolizing or digesting conflict that you might consider is immediately after the conflict, what should you do? This is the moment when you've sent the email, or you've finished the meeting, or you've walked away from the debrief that you've had with your manager, or written the final conclusion to this chat conversation, or something like that. What do you do next? So these are the moments where you can go for a walk or have something to eat or wash your face or whatever else it might be. And again, it's likely that we're all going to have different techniques or options that work for us. Unfortunately, I'm often, reminded by women that attend training workshops that it's not so easy when you're wearing makeup to have to, you know, you can't just wash your face as easily because that's something that I often find incredibly helpful. It's just a very cold wash of my face to help me to reset. But there's going to be different things that work for you and if you can't do the the washing your face idea, maybe you can get an ice pack and put it on the sides of your neck or something like that. I've read that that activates a bit of that vagus nerve which is helpful for self regulation. It can be helpful for activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps us to bring us back down to deescalate. So there'll be different tools and approaches that work for you, but I wanted to outline three different options that work for me, particularly if you're not sure what to try or it's not something that you've given a lot of thought to. I've noticed that when I do training workshops and I get to the self regulation section that I often include in a lot of workshops that I run, actually, And I say to people, like, what do you find helpful to keep calm when you're under stress? Like, when someone's having a go at you, they're trying to push your buttons, how do you keep a level head? Like, how do you keep how do you keep balanced? How do you bite your tongue, so to speak? And, usually, a lot of people laugh and say that they can't. They can't bite their tongue. They just bite back. And then these are often the same people that tell me that I spend all day talking to brick walls. You don't understand the kind of customer base that we're dealing with. And I'll often say, okay. That's interesting. I wonder if there's something that you might be doing that's contributing to the fact that you're constantly running into brick walls. But, anyway, they're they're not able to self regulate, unsurprisingly. Other people, I think, they do manage to keep calm. These are often senior managers, people who are in executive executive leadership positions, and they've developed this capacity to white knuckle it through. It's almost like they just don't let themselves get upset. They remind themselves of the importance of staying calm, and so they do it. But for us mere mortals, it's not as easy as just deciding that you can. So, again, I wanted to just include a couple of different options that work for me in the hope that they might also resonate with some of you as well. So the first strategy I've just come across recently, it's the 20 psi method. The idea is that, you know, setting a timer and having too much structure and protocols for something like meditation can be quite distracting, and it's one of the impediments that gets in the way of people starting. But one of the things that you can do is to go somewhere quietly by yourself and to sigh 20 times. So when I say sigh, I mean raising your shoulders and tightening your shoulder muscles, bunching up the the neck and the the arms and all of that, and then just sighing, like just letting out a big sigh, like after a stressful event, after everybody's gone home, after the surprise party that you'd been planning, after the big speech that you had to do today, after the big exam, after the course is finished, after the kids are finally in bed and the house is clean and you've got the lunches made for the next day. We sigh in those moments, and it's often associated, again, with that parasympathetic nervous system. It's the bringing back down of our heart rate, the lowering of blood pressure, moving us into what is sometimes called rest and digest mode. So this is something that we often do subconsciously, just that big sigh that we let out. You see other people doing it, but they might often not even be aware that they are. But you can engage those same body language, the same, movement patterns, etcetera, which will be associated with those same events where things have been okay. It's after the stress. It's after the pressure has passed. So sitting quietly and sighing to yourself 20 times sounds like quite an unusual thing, but I absolutely love the fact that it doesn't take any techniques. You don't have to remember the counting pattern or anything like that. You don't need a bit of paper and a pen. You don't need any special training. You can do it anywhere. You can do it for free. Just say to yourself 20 times. So if, like me, after conflict, you're finding yourself really wired, it's likely that you won't be able to count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, all the way to 20 without getting sidetracked. So that's perfectly fine. When you become aware that you're sidetracked, it's probable that you're reliving that conversation that happened today and that conflict, just go back to the lowest number that you can remember that you're up to. If you're up to 12, just start at 12 and see if you can get all the way to 20. And just pay attention to the difference in terms of how you're feeling. And it's likely that you'll be walking away a bit more confident and a bit more composed. So it's an unusual kind of thing to go and sit quietly in sight to yourself 20 times. But if you're the kind of person that's often considered meditation or other breathing techniques or protocols, but you're not exactly sure what to start with, I absolutely love this one for its simplicity as well as its effectiveness. The second option immediately after conflict that often works often works is going for a quick walk. So I find at least ten minutes is helpful but it doesn't usually take a lot longer than that. Ten minutes walking, it engages the left and right hemisphere of our brain as we look left and right, we're moving left and right bits of our body, etcetera, which I think can also be helpful for that neurobiological processing, so to speak, that actually we don't know a whole lot about in terms of how those memories are encoded and all of this kind of thing. But the right and the left hemisphere of our brain often, I think, helps us to bring a balanced way of processing the experiences that we've just had as opposed to just sitting still and thinking about it or just trying to distract ourselves and watching Netflix or something like that. And there's a particular type of walk walking that tends to be helpful. It's engaging in multisensory perception. So as you're walking along, feel the feeling of the soles of your feet and what can you notice about the texture of the shoes that you're wearing or the ground that you're standing on, for example. And reach out and touch the leaves that you're going past and feel the texture of them. Smell the smell if you rip one apart, for example, or especially if there's nice nature smells around you, like the smell of the beach or the smell of the nice gum trees that you're walking past or the grass that's just been cut or something like that. And then think about the sounds that you're passing. I really like a YouTuber called Spanyon. He's this guy that's been in jail, so he's from this very inner city Sydney kind of background covered in tattoos and a very rough what, you know, some people might call a bogan way of speaking, but I just find him so incredibly endearing and his videos are very entertaining. He's got a lovely way of dealing with people as well, which I'm interested in as somebody that focuses on communication and conflict. So most span Spanian videos are quite funny and they're entertaining first and foremost. Sometimes they've got a little bit of a documentary edge, but not usually. The ones that I watch anyway. But the other day, I I found myself tearing up while I was watching. I I started to cry. He, he got me, he snuck in this little story about the amazing noise of walking past children's playgrounds. I think he was somewhere in The UK at the moment and they were walking past a school and so little kids like six year olds or five year olds or whatever that little kid age when their voices are still so high and they're all shrieking and giggling and screaming and everything is just so exciting and exhilarating and just the joyous sounds that that it is to walk past a playground or something like that and yeah, gosh, I can feel myself even tearing up remembering it, but he was talking about imagine being on your deathbed and how much you would crave that joyful sound of kids and you're walking past them. And the time when I was watching that spanyon video, actually, I just sent off an angry email about this very annoying minor thing that I'm dealing with at the moment. It's a it's a particular type of conflict, and it's really upset me. I I find myself still a little bit enraged about the fact that this other person's doing what they're doing. It's not gonna do me any good, though, to keep focusing on it and ruminating on it. And just that reminder about the joyful sound of kids, like, when you're going for your walk after conflict, it might not be kids around, but what else can you hear? Like, the other parts of society thinking about that person that set up the small business and all of the days that they've come working hard before today that's led up to them. Or, say, you stop and get a coffee, for example, like, just look around and admire the different way that they've decorated the cafe that they're in or something like that. When we engage in that multisensory focus, it really does increase the effectiveness of going on a walk. And, again, it anchors us in the present. And it means that you don't spend the whole ten minutes or fifteen minutes or however you go for a walk around the building, not reliving the conflict that you've just been in. Like, that's not what we want to do. And we don't wanna pre live the conflict that's coming. We don't want to invest our energy and expend all of that emotional energy experiencing and all of the emotional toll that that's going to involve unnecessarily when it's not the time and the place to do it. So I find it helpful to stop those thoughts unless I'm filling my perception with other things, and that's why I think the mindfulness in combination with walking can be particularly helpful. But what do you think? So the final simple technique that I wanted to suggest was, again, one that I've been trying more recently. I've been doing it all of this year, but it's something that I hadn't thought of until then. It's just sitting quietly and sitting still and noticing what's going on within myself. Like, obviously, this is meditation and what a lot of people talk about mindfulness, but after conflict, I've noticed that I'm almost not aware of what's going on physically. Like, I've got this very black and white surface level take on my physical state, for example. You know, I need to get to this meeting and do this. I've got these six bloody things that I need to do today. I can't believe I've been lumped with this another thing. I thought we're gonna have more time. I thought we're gonna have more money. I thought we didn't have to do much. These expectations are just unrealistic. And that's not the full reality of what's going on for me. So I find just sitting quietly let's let's say I'm driving to a meeting. Before I drive, I just sit quietly for a moment, or after I get there, I'll sit quietly for a moment. And there's no goal other than a bit of a self assessment. Like, I'm literally just casting my perception through my body or what's going on in my breathing patterns or what's going on in my thinking patterns or what behaviors I've been engaged in for today. And what I often notice is that my behaviors have shifted. It's like I've begun to adjust for this build up of stress. I'm looking at my phone more frequently. I'm eating more junk food. I've had four coffees or something. And I don't realize at the time the way that these behaviors are having a a circular effect. It's this pattern that I'm engaged in where the more stress that I'm get I'm engaging in coping at coping mechanisms effectively, but they're contributing to more escalation. So this circuit breaker of just sitting still and thinking about what's going on and what do you need to do next, it only takes three minutes. Like, I usually use a three minute timer that I've got set on my phone, but it's really helpful. And it stops that relentless barrage of rushing from task to task and I think the associated build up of cortisol and adrenaline that comes along with it. What I don't want is to get to the end of the day and be so completely frazzled and fried that I'm not good for anything. I'm not good for myself and I'm good not good for my family. I'm not good even for, you know, cleaning the toilet or cooking a good meal or or anything. So these short breaks every hour or two for just a couple of minutes, just experiment with it and see what difference it might make for you. So the final category of techniques or tools that I wanted to offer were the longer term habits or practices that can be helpful for digesting conflict. I often engage in these more so when I'm finding myself affected. Like, when it's been for me, it's usually a couple of weeks, and I can't stop thinking about something. I can't let go of it. I'm still very upset, so to speak. I still would describe it as affecting my concentration or affecting my sleep or it's affecting something. And so I turn to these, options when I need them. But I know other people, like, even in my family and friends groups, I know some people engage in these very regularly, and they are often the most, calm and mature people that I know that do them. So I wish that I could do them longer term consistently, and I suppose I'm I'm pretty optimistic that I will be able to within the next few years. But right now, it's as needed. But I suppose I wanted to say that because I think sometimes we hear suggestions like try meditation or mindfulness or a gratitude journal or something and it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the thing that gets in the way of some people trying it is the assumption that they're never going to be able to make the habit stick. And if we just grant that and say it's probably true that you're not going to be able to make the habit stick, you're probably just as hopeless and pathetic in terms of changing your habits as everybody else is and as you think that you are, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't give it a try. Right? And it might be that that positive drop or the positive seed that gets planted is something that grows and bears fruit over the longer term. It's certainly been my experience that some of the different healthy habits that I'm better at these days, like diet and exercise, for example, they've been things that have gradually changed, and I've had spurts and little periods where things have been much more on track and other times when it hasn't been. So let's go through a few of these different options, and you can think about whether or not these might resonate or things that you could consider. So the first tool that we could use is journaling. This could be very open ended. And if you're a creative kind of person, I often suggest people to just begin. Just start writing. I can remember a Rick Rubin quote that said something like, the sooner that you can get to a first draft, the easier that the project will be. And I often take this mindset into journaling. It's like, my goal isn't necessarily to get it right in exactly how I remember something or what happened. My goal is to just begin. You know, my goal is to write w r I t e as opposed to write, r I g h t. So let's shift the needle towards that direction and realize that there's no perfection. It doesn't matter if there's any mistakes. It's about the process of getting your thoughts out onto the paper. So just begin. And don't underestimate how hard that can be. The barrier of getting your notebook out and opening it and picking up a pen when you've got six things that you haven't got done today and three missed calls and two people that you're are expecting you to get back to them or something, it can be really hard to just spend a minute or two writing down your experiences of what happened. But that process of journaling, of writing it down, I think using a pen and paper is usually better than typing. It certainly is much, much more effective for me. It helps us to differentiate from the experiences that we had. We realized that whatever our initial take was, that's really just based on how we were feeling and thinking at the time. Like, that's our initial reaction that that that happened. There was a lot more complexity that went into it, and we would have done some things that's right and wrong. We weren't perfect. That's certainly true. But whatever we said and did, you know, it's affected by our context much more than we might realize at the time. But just seeing it written down on the page, it's almost like we realize that. We come to that conclusion naturally, and that means that you don't need to remind yourself not to be silly or that you're making a mountain out of a molehill or something like that. It's this opening up of this natural inclination, I think, towards health, towards that digesting of those experiences that happened. And I believe that that's probably something that's inherent within us. We are probably not very well designed to deal with relentless trauma that just keeps building up. I can imagine that our ancestors would have had incredibly traumatic lives most of their life, so they would have had to learn ways of dealing with it. And probably talking about their experiences with others would have been one of the go to strategies. And if you don't have other people around you that can listen to you deal with your busy day every day, writing it down might might be the next best option. So I write it down initially. I try to go for at least a paragraph or two, but that's kind of it usually before I get bored or distracted. And then I try and read it back. And then the third step is that I edit it. This has this incredibly powerful effect where we again, it's like we're correcting the memory. We're correcting that initial take on it. Actually, there was three other people there or, I'm just because I told them that I'm not gonna get back to them doesn't mean that I can't write back tomorrow or something like that. Like, you make a little note. But we're experiencing changing our memory. We're experiencing moving from that black and white perspective that we initially held towards more of a nuanced complex understanding of that past situation. And I think that often then translates in a really helpful way for what's going on at the moment within us as well as the next steps that we might consider taking. So even though we still feel quite affected by the conflict, we can understand that in terms of it's our natural response. We're still left with a little bit of build up or a little bit of, remnants from that conflict that we dealt with. And that will ease over time, but it makes sense why right now we can't relax. We can't switch off. This this makes sense. Where why right now we're remembering that so much. And we can remind ourselves, although it's not often that much consolation in the moment, that things will be better tomorrow. It won't be as bad as it is today. The next tool that we could consider is a gratitude technique. Just writing down five things that you're grateful for, one sentence each. And the aim here is to go for nuance. Like, we want to include a level of detail. So I wouldn't say I'm grateful for my family. I would say I'm grateful that my son is adjusting to his new school. Or I'm grateful that my wife has been able to contribute while I've been unwell. Or something like that. The more specific that we can be about the things that we're grateful for, the more effective that this technique tends to be. And five is enough. Just writing down five things that you're grateful for once a week has a number of profound benefits to us. It helps us to be more positive, less depressed, less anxious, sleep better, eat better, exercise more, etcetera. Even things which is interesting to me as a mediator, like being less likely to react when provoked by a romantic partner. So if your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend teases you or makes an insensitive comment or they're not listening very well or they give you that unsolicited advice like I might have talked about earlier in the episode, you're not likely to bite back. Just because you've written down five things that you were grateful for once a week. I just find this to be almost miraculous. The evidence is overwhelming now that gratitude is an effective technique. And I think when we're in that needing to digest conflict mode, it can be particularly fruitful because it brings us to the future focus, it brings us to the positive focus, it brings us to the gratitude focus, doesn't it? And it moves us out from that position that often conflict puts us in of seeing ourselves as the victim. The third technique, I suppose, that you could consider is just simple exercise. But when I'm needing to digest conflict, the particular kind of exercise that I find helpful as a go to is the HIIT, high intensity interval training or whatever the acronym stands for. Sprint for thirty seconds and then just walk for thirty seconds. Run up a hill and then walk slowly back down. And run up the hill and then walk slowly back down. It doesn't seem to particularly matter the pattern that you go in. The aim of the game here is that we're elevating our heart rate. We're getting ourselves into this very flustered, you know, overwhelmed kind of state, which is very similar to what happens in the fight or flight response. Right? Escalated heart rate, shaking a little bit, sweating, my voice is quivering, I find it difficult to speak, fast, shallow breathing patterns. These are all symptoms of both when you've sprinted for thirty seconds as well as that fight or flight response. And then in that high intensity interval training, what we're doing is practicing bringing our heart rate back down to balance. We're reregulating ourselves. We're bringing that parasympathetic nervous system back online again and again and again and again. And like other muscles that we train, this effectively becomes stronger, which helps us both to deal with future conflict situations that we're in and to keep calm and to keep a level head when we're under pressure, as well as for navigating the current symptoms of stress, the current impacts of that conflict that you've recently dealt with. So I suppose, overall, these are different options in terms of considering change. I often mention an old saying, if you always do what you've always done, then it's likely that you're always going to get what you've already got. So if you're finding that you've got a little bit of indigestion from dealing with recent conflict, often the option is considering change. Maybe there are different patterns that you could consider, like having the last thirty seconds of your shower be cold and get used to that really elevated heart rate and that fight or flight response as your brain and body react to that cold water and being under the pressure like that experience of jumping in an ice bath and that kind of thing. Or take a few deep breaths before you go in the door if you've got young kids and you're going into a really chaotic environment. Or do 20 push ups before starting work, or do 20 push ups after work, or do 20 push ups after that really stressful phone call, and just see what difference that makes in terms of your ability to concentrate on the next task that you're going into. And if you're the kind of person that has trouble with longer term change, the best book that I've found helpful myself is Atomic Habits by James Clear. He has an audio version of the book as well, which is very good, and I presume it's probably on Spotify as well as Audible and everything else these days. But he talks about very practical steps that you can use for sustain sustaining change longer term without relying on self control and, you know your own decision to stay calm so to speak or to get over the conflicts when you're reminding yourself that you're making too much of it and being silly. But how does that resonate with you? Do any of those options for staying calm in the moment like breathing and mindfulness, or immediately afterwards, like the 20 psi or the multisensory walk or deliberately sitting still for just that couple of minutes and noticing what's going on for you? Or maybe it's some of those longer term options that resonated, like journaling, gratitude, exercise, or changing something else, whether it's sleep or diet or some of those other more nuanced factors that I've outlined there. I'd love to know your thoughts. If you're listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment, or the other way best way to get in touch is by email. The email address that I use for this is podcast@simongood.com. So it's s I m o n g, double o, d e dot com. If you would like to get me to come in and talk to your team, run a training workshop, or a coaching session, or something like that, I'd be more than happy to talk through options. But also, please let me know about, topics that you would like me to cover on future episodes of the podcast. Maybe you've got a a question or a comment or reflection about something that I've talked about today, or maybe there's a related topic that you would find it helpful. If you've got a particular scenario that you're dealing with like a I could use it as a case study or just a recurring problem that you're dealing with, I'd be more than happy to give it some thought and provide just some options for tools and resources if that's something that's helpful. So, yeah, please let me know. But otherwise, thank you very much for listening, and I hope to see you again in a future episode of the podcast. Thank you very much. Much. Bye for now.