How to Let Workplace Conflicts Help You Heal (Part 1)

Arguments, political turf wars, misunderstandings, and emotional outbursts at work are nerve-wracking to everyone. But they can be especially terrifying for those of us who grew up either experiencing one or more of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) or in a dysfunctional home.  Martha Finney, my co-author of Healing at Work: A Guide to Using Career Conflicts to Overcome Your Past and Build the Future You Deserve,  and I coined the term Adult Survivors of a Damaged Past (ASDPs) for people who match this description. 

While it’s unlikely that there would be any physical violence – the kind you might have experienced at home, if that was your family’s habitual way of settling the score – tension among coworkers can ignite your own freeze, flee, fight impulses. Until I started sorting all of these feelings out for myself, whenever someone got mad at me (and I mean really mad), I’d revert to my smallest childhood self, expecting to die, and wanting to run and hid under my bed with my dog, Dodger and my little sister Nancy. Only problem was that my childhood bed was nowhere to be found at the office. It was just me, trying my darnedest not to break down into tears, while standing toe-to-toe with my aggressor.

(And, by the way, do you think some of these people knew exactly what they were doing? That they knew that overpowering me with raging behavior would get them the results they were looking for? You bet!)

Emotionalized workplace conflicts can pose a real threat to your traumatized mind, if you’re an ASDP. There’s no bed to hide under. You have to find some functional way to stand your ground and defend yourself. Your job may feel like it is at stake. And you will be seeing these people again tomorrow. And collaborating with them. Or being given assignments from them because they are your boss.  And finding some kind of common ground where you both can function in some semblance of trust and productive rapport. Someone has to hold it together. And it will likely be you. If you want to keep your job, that is. And hang on to at least some professional dignity. 

These are episodes that Martha and I call Bumper Car Moments. They’re incidents of conflict, where two or more people clash to a degree that feels like that collision between two bumper cars at the carnival. You’ve probably been in one of those cars at least once in your life (until you decided that being plowed into is not so much fun…neither is intentionally plowing into someone else, right?). You’re gliding around, maybe trying to stay inside the circular traffic flow, obeying the rules as much as possible. Then wham!  Someone t-bones you or comes up your backside. It’s shocking. Probably unexpected – unless you can see your aggressor take aim for you. In which case, the intentionality carries with it its own flavor of attack. There are also many times when the person who crashed into us doesn’t even know it or we may unsuspectingly do or say something that another has a bad reaction to. In all of these cases, the impact rocks your world.

In the workplace, you’re not likely to get smashed into in the parking lot. A Bumper Car Moment can be a more subtle jab that causes confusion, broken trust, or hurt feelings (or it can be a full-blown fit pitched in front of others). Here’s the thing: both you and the person you have designated your attacker are each having your own Bumper Car Moment.  And your attacker may be caught up in his or her own ASDP interpretation of events. And through that person’s eyes, you might be the instigator!

With every Bumper Car Moment there are actually four cars involved in the pile-up: Your childhood self, and the interpretations of life and how people behave that you bring with you to work; your adult, professional self, with a more mature set of responses to uncomfortable moments of career conflicts. And likewise, the colleague who just crashed into you. With all these potential permutations of how people behave, and interpret other peoples’ behavior, it’s a miracle that anything gets done during the workday at all, when you think about it.

Here’s the miracle of the Bumper Car Moment: When you and your colleagues acknowledge that these moments of intense conflict are a natural, to-be-expected, part of working closely together with others (who might be ASDPs themselves), the first thing to do is acknowledge the fact that, “Whoa! We just had a Bumper Car Moment!” This externalizes the conflict, setting the pain that comes from the impact in a proper perspective and proportion. And then it leaves room for conversation about this thing that happened outside of what either of you intended. By naming it a “Bumper Car Moment,” you and the other person can stand apart from the point of impact, and safely, calmly assess the damage as a partnership. 

That’s when the healing conversation can begin, where you are both sharing common ground and can strategize what the next best steps are.

In Part 2, I’ll go into the specifics of how the Bumper Car Moment can help you heal. And then in Part 3, I’ll explain the step-by-step of how to handle the next one that comes slamming your way.