Fear of confrontation.

The fear of confrontation implies the repeated avoidance of conflict in the bond with others. People who experience it try by all possible means to resolve, calm down, or avoid situations that could trigger fights or discussions, trying to minimize or annul the conflict.

In the background of this fear, there is a multiplicity of possible causes and ways of approaching it. We can initially think about what the conflict would mean for that person. As we already know, in psychology, nothing can be asserted in a universal and exact way. As much as there are shared patterns or characteristics, each individual manifests them in their own uniqueness, so that general statements cannot be made. Much less with respect to fears, since, in general, they have a very direct association with aspects of personal life.

The fear of confrontation in a person who has lived a large part of his life witnessing situations of violence, for example, takes a different slant than if it were present in someone who has not experienced such situations. And these factors of the experience itself are essential to understand the background.

We could think that confrontation as such always implies a certain risk and a certain possibility of rupture. Here you can unify the fear of abandonment, the loss of the other's love, loneliness, and the fear of one's own aggressiveness.

Many individuals who are calculating and strive to control their behaviors excessively may be afraid of exposing themselves to situations in which they feel that they may lose that control, becoming angry or letting violent emotions erupt. It usually happens, moreover, that the more the person tries to control the aggressive, taking excessive care of their forms and manners and being "correct" from every point of view, the more repression there will be around their more aggressive aspects and with greater fury, they will come to light when they do it. So, for these people, who put so much effort into being kind and calm, confrontational situations imply an enormous risk, one that can expose them, letting out that part of themselves that they hope to keep hidden.

In other cases, such as the one mentioned initially, the anguish in the face of fights and arguments that may bring to mind unpleasant memories is intended to be avoided above all else. And, consequently, the potential conflict is avoided altogether.

Another background situation could be the fear of being attacked, violated, or harmed by another, both physically and verbally. The danger that this implies and the difficulty of defending oneself in the event that this is the case mobilize the individual to avoid the conflict.

The avoidance of conflict or confrontation usually has a correlate, which is that the conflicts appear the same and in many of these cases, magnified.

Even though all the efforts in the world are made to avoid it, the conflict exists, the confrontation will appear sooner or later.

Knowing how to deal with conflict and differences is a way of learning to live with others. Necessarily in some contexts, the conflict will appear and in general, these encounters tend to be the ones that make possible the change or the passage to a new instance.

 

 

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