Home psychoanalysis: What's wrong with me?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I’ve got this intense fear/aversion to conflict. Any conflict at all. When someone disagrees with me, I invariably try to smooth things over. Not that I necessarily back down, but I calmly distance myself from the situation, call it a “misunderstanding” and then try to explain why I’m right without making it a me vs. them thing. When all else fails, “agree to disagree” and get the heck out of the conversation.

I don’t know why, but it’s a physical discomfort, like a rodent clawing inside my stomach and I just have the urge to “get away”. I have no fight response, only flight. It’s even worse when it’s not me in the situation. Other people fighting, or worse, that kind of diplomatic arguing with thinly veiled hatred, makes me wig out.

Cases in point: two people arguing in the lounge at school. I had the sudden urge to be ANYWHERE but there, and just left the lounge. Outside I felt the need to justify my action, and went for a drink of water even though I wasn’t thirsty.

At a concert, two kids stood on their chairs obstructing our view. I physically couldn’t bring myself to say anything, my fiancee had to tell them.

It doesn’t happen with fictional fights, but even the news shows where they hound some deadbeat landlord as he covers his face with an umbrella, or People’s Court kind of shows, or where John Stossel interviews someone and says stuff like, “But you knew your product killed people” and the guy very awkwardly replies, “That… hasn’t been proven,” or whatever as he squirms.
I have to change the channel.

The latest bout of it came when my fiancee needed some moral support at school. She had a complaint about the way the administration handled something and they were giving her the brush-off. (I’m being deliberately vague here.) These guys were being major jerks to her, and she was going to have a meeting to tell them this. She wanted me there. I wanted to be there for her, but everytime I thought about the meeting, and how awkward, and conflict-ridden it would be, I got THAT FEELING and began to dread it. Well, I managed to force myself to go, but the whole 2 hour meeting, I sat there stone-faced, willing myself not to bolt out of the room, as the rodent (I think it’s a hamster) clawed from the inside of my belly. (At one point he pulled out a fork to scrape on a blackboard. I don’t know how that all got into my belly.)

So there are likely to be more meetings and I want to support her, but I don’t know if I can handle it again. And just in general I think it would be healthy to handle conflict a bit better.

So:
a) What the hell is wrong with me?
b) anyone else out there like this?
c) Is there a name for it?
d) what do I do about it?

Thoughts?

2

[Freud]
Tell me about your mother…
[/Freud]

But seriously, how did you parents relate to eachother? Have you ever accepted confrontation? Can you somehow get that hamster surgically removed and contribute it to SDMB? Considering the way these servers run some of the time I suspect they could use the extra help…

3

You could be me! I HATE conflict. I have never been able to watch the confrontational bits on 60 Minutes, et al. Even shows like I Love Lucy and Three’s Company make me nuts (all the secretive stuff behind each other’s backs that eventually LEAD to confrontation). When there is even a little bit of conflict going on between two people in my office, I leave the room. I get all queasy and uncomfortable.

Sigh I’ll just sit back with you, gonzoron, and wait for help to arrive. :smiley:

4

Great, avoids conflict and multiple personality disorder. This is going to take a lot of time, how are you set financially? :wink:

Seriously, if this interferes with your ability to live a normal life (and it sounds like it’s damned close) then seek some professional help for this. You might get some insightful stuff here but you’ll probably also get a lot of white noise, and with no strong feedback loop it will be difficult to sort the two out. Good luck.

5

I don’t like conflict, although I’m not as averse as the OP is.

I think in my case it came from having a strict father who yelled a lot. I dealt with it by tuning him out. If I complained or tried to say anything in my defense, it just prolonged the verbal abuse.

Gonzoron, you talked about how you felt during the meeting, but how did the meeting go? Were tempers high or were all the parties behaving like rational people?

I would second the recommendation to talk to a professional about it.

6

It sounds like this is a familiar feeling to you, and that it probably comes from way, way back.

Can you think of particular times way back in the past when you felt like this?

Can you describe the feeling in terms of what it means to you? In other words, what do you feel is going to happen if there’s conflict? What consequences might there be? What would happen to you if you got into a conflict situation and didn’t flee?

What might the consequences be of people hating each other or being angry with each other? Is there anything that might act as protection against that? Is that protection missing? Have you felt as if it was missing before?
I hope that thinking about all those questions will be a little bit helpful. It might provide you with a little food for discussion if and when you go to see a real professional (which I personally, IMO, suggest you do). It sounds to me as though your conflict anxiety is making it very very hard for you to do things that life calls upon you to do. When things affect your quality of life, it’s good to consider getting them sorted out and untabgled.

Best of wishes to you.

7

Thanks everyone for taking a crack at this nut.

To answer some questions:
My family life is/was great. My parents are very loving, still married after 29 years. Mom’s a bit overprotective, but not much, and a little flaky, but in a good way. Dad’s a hard worker with a groan-inducing sense of humor. They hardly ever fight, and when they do, it doesn’t last long.

I don’t think I’ve ever been good with conflict. I can’t trace it to any single event as the first time, I just only really thought about it in the past few years. I know that as a child, I was really very good because I HATED being yelled at.

I would gladly have the hamster surgically removed, if I could. :slight_smile:

Sitcom conflict never bothered me. I like 3’s company.

I don’t intend to take the SDMB as serious treatment, I just wanted to see what people thought about it. If it really starts to get bad, I’ll see a therapist, but so far, it’s annoying, but handlable. Just kinda mysterious.

The meeting was pretty much all I had dreaded. No outright yelling and screaming, but a lot of high tempers. Very “lawyery”. My fiancee doesn’t intend to sue the school, but the people involved don’t know that, and act very much as though they are covering their asses in case she does. Lots of evasiveness and faked sincerity.

Tansu, you raise a lot of good questions, but I don’t think I can answer most of them:
What do I feel is going to happen? I don’t know, it’s just a dread. I can’t put my finger on what I think will happen. I can definately say that when I’m directly involved, I do worry that the conflict will cause someone to resent/hate me, and I do see that I hate the idea of someone not liking me, which probably stems from being teased a lot as a (fat, geeky) child. I especially fear the loss of a friend due to conflict with them, since I had precious few friends growing up and I treasure the ones I have now.

But all that (kinda) makes sense. What I don’t get is why I get the hamster feeling watching OTHER people in conflict, even moreso than when I’m involved. I don’t know what I think will happen, I just dread it.

The consequences of people hating each other: well, in general it can be really, really bad. Look at the Israel situation, or September 11th. On a smaller scale, like GonzoGal vs. the School… nothing much really. I suppose they could pull some strings and kick her out, but I doubt even they would be that petty, and that would open them up to real legal action. So, I don’t know what I’m really afraid of.

I don’t really know what you mean about protection. There’s no protection against people hating people, that I know of.

It’s only occaisionally that this anxiety interferes with my life. I’d like to be rid of it, but not enough to go to a professional, yet. It’s more of a curiosity to me, when I look at it objectively. It seems like something I should be able to handle. It’s a very weird feeling to have my body/mind turn on me when the situation comes up.

8

Maybe when you watch other people arguing it’s like a picture of what might happen if you got into an argument. And because you’re not involved you don’t have any control, or anything to do that would make it stop. You just have to look at it and see a picture of conflict. Or leave, which is what you said you did.

I reckon (and I may be talking out of my ass, since I don’t know you that well, and I haven’t had the years of analysis and years of training to enable me to qualify to talk about this properly)… I reckon that what you said about fearing the loss of a friend because you were short on friends and teased as a kid has FAR more to do with this than your relationship with your parents does.

Fear of abandonment comes to people in all sorts of ways - fear of someone turning round and saying “You are an asshole. I no longer like you. From now on, I hate you” is one of the ways it can come about.

9

You might want to check out a book called The Highly Sensitive Person.

My wife is the same way and she thought the book hit it right on the nose.