Why do I find arguments with my partner so upsetting?
If you’re ordinarily a strong and responsible woman who carries the load in your relationship and generally feels capable and collected…but you find yourself buckling with panic, fear, and mistrust of your partner when you get into arguments with him…
…then the path forward for you lies in clearing your own past pains around feeling safe, identifying what your needs are, and setting ultra clear boundaries.
In my experience, the most accomplished of women can fall into a total state of internal collapse when it comes to conflict with their partners. (I can relate to this all too well - both with myself, and with endless female clients that I support).
It isn’t necessarily because your partner is the wrong man for you, though, or that you are fundamentally incompatible, or doomed together. Nor does it mean that your future is bleak and you cannot trust them in it.
It’s because many accomplished people, myself included, have a strong sense of ambition and high-achievement that’s (whilst wonderful) actually rooted in wounded patterns from the past - from childhood.
These childhood wounds, or ‘past pains’ as I like to call them, happen to us between the ages of 0 and 8, when our brains are squishy and malleable, absorbing everything that we perceive around us. Children also have a natural egocentrism which means that as part of their development, they inherently take in everything around them and make it about them. That’s just how humans, we, develop.
A lot of high-achievers (and this applies to men too) will observe their parents investing into them, pushing them to greater heights, telling them that they can ‘achieve anything that they put their mind to’, and that ‘they can always do better’, and ‘try harder’ and ‘there’s always room to grow’.
Motivating messages, absolutely, with great intentions.
Yet for a child, the subtext is:
“You must keep trying; you are not good enough as you are”.
And so, this message, drummed into the little child, becomes their belief system and worldview…
Which leads to this powerful drive.
And wonderful ambition.
The darker underbelly though, is that the child lives in a perpetual state of latent ‘unsafety’.
This continues on into adulthood.
If you are deemed ‘not good enough’ from a young age, then you are always going to feel on edge with being ‘yourself’.
This means you are also going to feel on edge with expressing your needs (because presumably these are not good enough either) and putting down boundaries (because you second-guess those, too).
All of this shows up in adult life as a tremendously ambitious, high-achieving person….
…who buckles in the face of conflict feeling triggered at the prospect of being unsafe (there is a perceived attack being aimed at you) and not good enough (doubting oneself and feeling unable to express oneself clearly).
The end result is…total internal collapse. Of even the most driven and strong people.
The solution, then, isn’t to book a marriage counseling session. Though that can help, to an extent, for sure, if your need is to mediate the topics of argument between you and your spouse (though in my experience, meditation is rarely what is in fact needed).
With all the clients that I’ve worked with, and all the training I’ve done, it's less about meditation and more about learning to stay strong, upright and secure in the face of conflict.
In other words, learning to anchor yourself deeply into your own sense of worthiness, enoughness, self-trust, and being able to see past the stories in your head saying, ‘you are not good enough’, ‘you are unsafe here’, ‘you have to run’, ‘you have to stop talking’, ‘you don’t matter’, ‘you are powerless’ and so on…
And be able to advocate for yourself.
To be secure.
To be unphased.
And to do this, you first have to identify and overcome any residual past pains, those childhood wounds, around feeling unsafe.
Now - before I go on - to be clear, I am not speaking about serious abuse, violence, or any sort of physical harm being enacted upon you.
And absolutely, your partner will have to do their own inner work on how they show up in conflict and learn to regulate their own emotions, behaviors, and words.
I am speaking about conflict that feels like it shouldn't be so upsetting, or triggering - or is upsetting more often than not, and you want to regain control of yourself within it.
In my experience, most folks have an unsafety wound. This is something I learnt in my relationship training from my teacher, Thais Gibson, but also what I see consistently in practise. And I see it with myself.
This is the culprit at the root of our triggers.
We have to overcome our wounds around feeling unsafe. We do this by working with the subconscious mind and doing ‘rewiring’ work on a cognitive and somatic level. This is not the work of a therapist, but someone specializing in the subconscious mind (hello - me).
Then, once that past pain is cleared, we want to:
Identify what your needs are at that moment. Both with the topic you are arguing over (which is why knowing yourself intimately and doing this inner work before things get really bad is so critical) and with the conflict itself. What do you NEED? Do you need the pace of conversation to slow down? Do you need a time out? Do you need a hug? Do you need empathy? Validation? Do you need a kinder and softer tone?
Set clear boundaries. This means telling your partner that you are not available for whatever it is that brings you intense distress. For me, I’m sensitive to raised voices, eye rolls, and gesticulating. My interpretation is always one of latent violence and it brings me distress. I cannot tolerate it. For my clients, it might be violence. I had one female client who was used to tolerating her husband raising his voice and slamming his fist down at the desk when he felt frustrated. This is not tolerable. I had another client who’s husband was throwing things at the wall. A client who’s female partner would walk out the room and slam the door. It frankly doesn’t matter what your boundary is, you are allowed to have a boundary. But you want to have that boundary set after you’ve worked on overcoming your past pain around feeling unsafe - because this is what will allow you to ensure that what you are asking for is reasonable and fair.
Once you have done those three things: 1. Worked on clearing that unsafety wound, 2. Identified and articulated your needs, 3. Set your boundaries, you should find that conflicts become more manageable and less terrifying.
Yes, your partner will have to cooperate and partner with you on this. How you ask them is content for another post (i.e. how to communicate to them) and I will write on this soon.
The point is, this is all learnable and things that you can proactively do to support yourself in navigating future conflicts.
If you would like support with this, please reach out and schedule a call with me. In my work, I will help you:
Identify what your past pains are that are making you feel triggered and go into a state of internal collapse, and help you overcome these.
Get clarity on what your true needs are, beneath the wounding and hiding of your true self, so that you can articulate this to your partner clearly.
Learn what your boundaries are, and how to set them in a way that actually works.
We do this together over 90 days with the end result being helping you feel secure and confident in yourself, trusting yourself, and knowing precisely what to do in your relationship, feeling safe and capable of handling it all, fully confident (and even excited) for your future.
Ready to reignite your relationship? Click here.
