Leveling Up Conflict Skills with Fight Wise

The relational dojo made me more comfortable getting triggered and increased my comfort remaining connected to key issues and my partners in conflict.

Over the past two years, I’ve gone deep into meditation and emotional work, dramatically improving my baseline well-being. After a life of on-and-off chronic stress, I’ve really improved my ability to be chill and relax, but since a lot of this improvement came while I’ve been on sabbatical, I went for a while without seeing how it would hold up against real-world stressors.

Then in late September, a string of conflicts with old friends revealed that conflict was a pretty obvious growth edge for me. I felt okay with how I handled the conflicts externally, but I was taken aback by how dysregulated I became internally, and in one case, I felt off for several days.

When I saw Gabe Broussard (VividVoid_) tweet about the Fight Wise course he was offering with Rich Bartlett, I jumped on it.

Course Overview

Delivered online via Zoom, Fight Wise spans two weeks, with two two-hour sessions each week. The course included some theory, especially nervous system education around developing awareness of how triggered you are and responding appropriately by cooling down or, if necessary, trying to table a conflict for another time.

The theory was helpful but what made the course special was the relational dojo where we practiced conflict through a series of exercises in breakout rooms of two or three people:

• Session 1: Trigger Practice: We identified personal triggers and had our partners repeat triggering phrases to help us get comfortable with the sensation of being triggered. I had been triggered in the past when people commented on my emotional state, so I asked my partner to say things like “wow, you’re being really emotional; you look really frustrated.” My partner leaned into this and really revved me up.

• Session 2: Unwise vs. Wise Conflict: We role-played conflict scenarios, first fighting as unwisely as possible, then as wisely as we could. I found that first fighting unwisely (being a total asshole) made it easier for me to stay connected to the core issues at hand instead of slipping into avoidance when it came time to fight wisely.

• Session 3: Past Conflict Role-Play: We brought in real past conflicts, replaying them first with a difficult partner, then with a more amenable one.

• Session 4: Future Difficult Conversations: We chose an open issue in our lives that might require a challenging conversation and role-played it. This exercise helped us engage with sensitive topics and prepare for real-life scenarios.

Experience and Lessons

It was striking how activating it was to engage in trigger practice or role-play in this safe, artificial setting; I was probably 80% as triggered as I would have been in real life, and I think practice getting triggered and being around other people getting triggered in a safe environment was probably the most valuable aspect of the course. It made me generally less afraid of triggering myself or others and unlocked a new courage to tackle difficult conversations.

A new insight I got from roleplaying conflict was how helpful it was for my partner to tell me their emotional state. I grew up thinking that expressing anger was bad, so saying “I’m angry” was the last thing I wanted to do, but I noticed that hearing that my partner was angry or upset was useful information for me, even if they were being particularly over-aggressive or irrational when they were roleplaying unwise fighters. It makes me more willing to say “I’m angry” or “I’m upset” in real life, or something like “I’m really concerned by this” in a business setting where explicit emotional content might not be as welcome.

The other big takeaway for me was that leaning into empathy and awareness of my own emotional state and my partner’s emotional state unlocked an increased ability to be direct and remain on topic with the key content in the conflict.

Putting it To Work

Feeling more confident with conflict unlocked a few things for me:

• I reconnected with one distant family member and one old friend who I had not spoken with in years, patching things up and bringing love back into my life that had been blocked by hanging on to some old resentment.

• I’ve stood up for myself when people engaged in behavior that was bothering me that I may have let slip in the past.

• I’ve picked up the phone to directly resolve issues that the old me would have ruminated about for hours.

Closing Thoughts

I liked the course enough that I became the first person to ever take it twice. A big part of what makes it work is that Rich and Gabe are total mensches who complement each other well: Rich is the caring collaboration expert with a backbone and Gabe is the former Marine with a big heart.