I Wasn’t Born Afraid of Conflict

How a girl who defended others lost her voice and what it takes to find it again

When I think of the girl I was, I don’t see a quiet child waiting for permission.

I hear the answer rise before she has time to wonder whether it is safe to say: “That’s not fair.”

If someone with less power was being treated badly, I stood up for them. I defended people who were less fortunate, even when that meant challenging my own mother. I could see the imbalance, hear the hurt in the way someone was spoken to, and feel something in me move toward the person who needed defending.

I wasn’t fearless. I was clear about what mattered. When I saw unfairness, I believed I should speak.

So when I say I used to suck at conflict, that isn’t the whole story. I didn’t begin as someone without a voice. Life kicked me in the ass, and somewhere along the way I lost confidence in the one I had.

I can trace one turning point to living abroad. The hardest part was being in the swirl of conversations where I couldn’t understand any of the words around me. Voices moved quickly; laughter rose and fell; I could hear the rhythm and emotion but not follow the meaning. It is a particular kind of loneliness to be present and still outside the conversation.

When I did speak, the difficulty changed. Cultural differences could make my words land with a tone or meaning I hadn’t intended. I began watching faces, listening for what people heard in my words, and replaying how I had said them. What I meant and what was received did not always meet.

Language, culture, judgment: each added another layer between what I meant and what someone else heard. I had not stopped caring about justice. But I was no longer sure my voice could carry what I meant across all those differences. The girl who once moved toward conflict to defend someone began to hesitate before she entered it.

And there were the horrible years of my marriage, and the divorce that followed. Those years belong in the story of how my voice changed. I don’t need to lay out every detail here for their weight to be real. After them, courage meant something different. It meant learning how to trust my own experience, speak from it, and stay present in conversations that were hard.

That is when I began learning how to have courageous conversations.

At first, the structure gave me something to hold. Start with your intention. Say what you observe. Speak from what you feel and need. Say what you would like to happen. Invite the other person’s perspective. Leave room for a suggestion to change.

It gave my voice a path to travel. I could be honest without making the other person my enemy. I could name an impact without claiming I knew their intention. I could ask for change and stay curious about what I had not yet understood.

But the intention has to be real and mutual. I can’t announce a shared purpose on both our behalf. I might say, “I hope we can improve how we work together. Is that something you’re willing to work toward with me?” If we don’t agree on why we’re talking, we are likely to pull the conversation in different directions.

And when we do agree, we don’t have to solve everything in the same breath.

This conversation may have been forming in my mind for days. I have tried out the words in the bath, carried the feeling through a long drive, imagined what I hope the other person will say. For them, this may be the first time they’ve heard any of it. Their body and mind may need time to catch up with mine.

So we can pause. “I’m glad we both want to work on this. Let’s take a little time to think, and come back to the details tomorrow.” Giving someone time after mutual intent is agreed is part of respect. The point is to make room for a thoughtful conversation, not to extract an immediate answer.

I learned that structure. I practiced it. And still, there were moments when it all seemed to vanish.

When someone comes at you with judgment, malice, toxicity, ego, or a fight over who is right, your nervous system may move toward an unhealthy state before you can bridge yourself back. You hear the attack; your body braces. Your jaw tightens. Your heart beats louder. The room seems smaller. Before the careful words can arrive, you may be defending, withdrawing, appeasing, or fighting back. At least, that was often mi experience in such situations.

I know what it is to be brought down by the way someone approaches me, even after I had worked hard to grow. In those moments, it can feel as if every chapter about courageous conversations has gone out the door. That doesn’t mean the learning was false. It means knowing the words is only one layer of the work.

The deeper layer is learning what happens inside us before the words come.

In my model, dragons live at the core: protective forces connected to what we value most. When something important feels threatened, the dragon rises. It may push us to fight for fairness, disappear to preserve belonging, or take control to restore a sense of safety. The dragon is not the enemy. It is guarding something precious. But if we don’t know what it is protecting, it can take the reins before we have a chance to choose.

Learning to recognize those dragons, regulate ourselves, and differentiate takes time, years of practice. Differentiation helps us stay connected to another person while remaining grounded in our own experience. Self-actualization is part of becoming able to act from a more whole, grounded place, rather than being run entirely by a protective response.

My childhood trauma belongs in this deeper layer of the story. It can shape what feels safe, how quickly protection rises, and what it costs to speak. I don’t need to turn this article into the full story of my trauma. But leaving it out altogether would make my journey sound too simple, as if a communication framework alone could reach every part of me in the middle of a difficult moment.

The framework matters, and so does the inner work. Self-regulation does not make another person’s attack acceptable or make a toxic interaction safe. At the same time, when our nervous system is dysregulated, even a kind interaction can feel unsafe. That feeling is real, even when the other person is trying to connect; our state may be shaping how the moment reaches us. Sometimes courage is pausing, tending to what has been activated, and returning only when there is enough regulation, shared intention, and respect to continue. Sometimes the courageous next step is to keep the boundary in place.

Here is the question I had to face: What do I do when someone approaches me in a way that runs counter to the courageous conversations I’ve spent years learning to have and am still learning to recognize?

I don’t begin by teaching them. I begin by noticing what is happening in me. If my body is already braced and my dragon is driving, I may need to pause before I can offer any real invitation. I can remind myself what I value and what I want the conversation to make possible.

When I can reach for the words, I can ask, “I want to understand what’s happening and find a way forward. Is that something you want too?” If we can agree on that intention, I can speak from my own experience: “When this happened, I felt this, because this matters to me. I’d like this to change. What matters to you? What would you suggest?” Then I have to make room for the answer, including an answer that changes my idea.

If we cannot agree on the intention, or if judgment, attack, and right-fighting continue, I don’t have to keep trying to build a bridge alone. I can say, “I want to talk about this, and I’m not able to continue while we’re attacking each other. I’m going to pause now.” I can return later if there is enough respect and willingness from both of us.

That is the part that can be hardest to accept: the more courageous person cannot make a conversation mutual by carrying both people’s courage. I can invite. I can model. I can set a limit. The other person still has to choose whether to meet me.

This is why I try to notice when facts turn into a fight about convictions. A fact can matter. But when we use facts to prove that our interpretation is the only right one, ego can take over. We gather evidence, correct the record, and try to make our version win. Right-fighting lives there. Winning that contest is rarely the end goal.

The end goal is to understand what is happening between us and find a way forward.

Imagine a colleague checks in with you several times a day about your progress. You feel frustrated and irritated. Trust and autonomy matter to you, and the repeated check-ins make it harder to work in a way that honors those values.

You could say, “You keep micromanaging me. Stop checking up on me.” But that turns your interpretation into a verdict about the other person. The conversation may soon become an argument over whether “micromanaging” is fair.

Or you might say, “My intention is to improve our collaboration. I notice you check in with me three to five times a day about my progress. I feel frustrated and irritated, and I value trust and autonomy. I’d like to find a rhythm that lets me work independently while giving you the information you need.”

The “I” matters in the feeling and need layers. “I feel frustrated.” “I value trust.” “I need room to work independently.” I can ask what the other person values and needs; I shouldn’t tell them what they feel or need. If I offer a guess, “I wonder if regular updates help you feel confident about the timeline. Is that close?”, I have to be ready to hear that I’m wrong. When they tell me their truth, I need to receive it, not argue them into my meaning.

Then I can offer an idea as a suggestion, not a verdict: “One possibility is that I let you know a few days in advance if I see I’m unable to complete the task without help. What would you change? What would work for you?”

The idea is allowed to change. In fact, the other person will often want to shape it, because agency matters. To make a useful suggestion, I need to learn to notice what matters to them. Perhaps they value predictability, reliable information, shared ownership, or the chance to respond before a risk grows. I can’t know by guessing. I need to ask, listen, and let their answer teach me.

That is how we work toward consensus instead of compromise. Compromise can leave both people giving something up and neither feeling understood. Consensus means continuing to shape the idea until we can both own the way forward. The solution may look different from the one I brought in. That is not a loss. It means it has room for both of us.

When I look back at the girl who stood up for someone being treated unfairly, I don’t want to tell her she was wrong to speak. I want to understand what happened to that voice and what it needs now.

It needs more than bravery. It needs a way across the distance between what I mean and what another person hears. It needs patience when language, culture, and judgment make communication harder. It needs the confidence to speak from my own experience without turning my convictions into weapons. It needs the wisdom to pause when my nervous system is overwhelmed, and to give another person time with an idea that is new to them.

It also needs the courage to make room.

Knowing I am worthy helps. It doesn’t make me immune to pain or guarantee the other person will meet me with care. It gives me somewhere to return when their words shake me. I can listen without surrendering my dignity. I can own what is mine without taking responsibility for everything.

And when the dragon rises, I don’t have to silence it or hand it the reins. I can listen for the value it is guarding: trust, respect, autonomy, fairness, or the hope of being understood and let that value help me speak with courage, not force.

That is what I mean by a courageous conversation: an honest, accountable invitation grounded in mutual intention. We speak from our own experience, make room for the other person’s truth, allow time for both nervous systems and minds to catch up, and shape a suggestion together until there is real ownership.

It isn’t always tidy. It doesn’t promise agreement. It asks us to stay curious about what matters to each of us, and to return to the end goal when right-fighting tries to take over.

In Leadership Landing program, this is part of the deeper work of leadership. We explore the values beneath our reactions, the convictions that shape what we believe is happening, and the protective dragons that appear when something important feels threatened. The goal is not to become flawless in conflict. It is to have more choice: to bring honesty, accountability, curiosity, and self-respect into the conversation and to invite the other person to bring their agency too.