8 Conflict Best Practices (part 2) — From Reactivity to Repair
Chapters:
1. Why You Should Listen to Part One First
How these practices build on each other—and why skipping the foundation can backfire.
2. Conflict as a Path to Pleasure and Stability
Reframing disagreement as an opportunity for trust, safety, and deeper connection.
Best Practice #5: Don’t Take It So Personally
3. Why Emotional Reactions Are Automatic (and Not the Problem)
Understanding the difference between feeling triggered and acting from the trigger.
4. Rejection Triggers and Old Emotional Imprints
How present-day moments activate historical wounds.
5. Zooming Out: Observing Instead of Collapsing Into the Story
Shifting from “I’m unlovable” to “I’m noticing tension in my chest.”
6. Creating Space Between Sensation and Reaction
How distance helps prevent conflict from turning into a fight.
Best Practice #6: Repeat What You Heard Before Responding
7. Slowing Down as a Peace Practice
Why rushing is violence—and slowing down creates connection.
8. Why Your Perspective Can Wait
Trusting that there will be space for your experience without urgency.
9. Reflecting Back What Was Said (Not What You Assumed)
How simple repetition interrupts escalation.
10. When You’re Not Actually Having the Same Conversation
Why misunderstanding meaning—not words—fuels conflict.
11. Clarifying Before Defending
How repeating back gives your partner a chance to correct misinterpretation.
Best Practice #7: Self-Regulate or Co-Regulate
12. Emotional Activation as Nervous-System Energy
Understanding triggers as physical experiences in the body.
13. Breathing to Interrupt Reactivity
A simple inhale–exhale practice to slow heart rate and calm the system.
14. Movement as Emotional Release
Stretching, walking, cleaning, or exertion as non-destructive outlets.
15. Sighing, Grunting, and the Body’s Natural Intelligence
Ancient regulation tools we’ve been socially shamed out of using.
16. Why Children Recover Faster Than Adults
How expression allows the body to return to baseline.
17. Journaling, Voice Notes, and Self-Witnessing
Different ways to process charge without dumping it on your partner.
18. Co-Regulation Through Rhythm, Touch, and Song
Why syncing nervous systems builds safety faster than talking.
19. Singing as Regulation, Bonding, and Spellwork
How shared rituals anchor commitment during stressful times.
20. Regulating With Nature, Animals, and the Earth
Why contact with living systems calms the body.
Best Practice #8: Create a Container for Conflict
21. Why Capacity Matters More Than Timing
Checking for availability before opening a hard conversation.
22. Desire vs. Capacity to Engage
Understanding that caring doesn’t always equal readiness.
23. Asking Instead of Assuming
How prefaces prevent unnecessary rupture.
24. Choosing the Right Moment for Repair
Why waiting can be an act of care—not avoidance.
25. From War Culture to Repair Culture
How these practices retrain your nervous system toward collaboration.
26. Conflict as a Skill You Practice, Not a Problem You Solve
Why repetition turns effort into habit.
27. Reflection: What Practices Are You Already Using?
Invitations to notice what’s working—and what you want to try next.
Alright, welcome back to part two of the eight conflict best practices series. In part one, I covered the first four best practices. And in part two, I'm going to cover the last four. For the most part, the order of the practices really doesn't matter. But if you haven't listened to part one, I do recommend starting there. Because if you attempt to try any of these best practices, without having listened to the very first one, it may or may not go so well. So if you haven't listened to part one, go ahead and start there and then circle back to part two. And for those of you who are returning, let's get into it. What if your sacred partnership could be a source of pleasure and stability amidst the chaos of these times? I'm your host, Forrest Williams, Certified Relationship Coach and Disciple of Love. And I help you learn the art of trust. By waking up from unconscious patterns so you can enjoy the pleasure of relating.
Number five, don't take it personal. Which is so much easier said than done. But that's why I have to say it as a recommendation around a best practice. And so like I said, it's not that you're not going to feel what you're feeling. That is automatic. That's out of your control, actually. But what you can control is how you respond to that feeling that comes up in your body. So at the example of, do you want to go for a walk? No, not available. Oh, I feel rejected. There's that feeling of I'm rejected. My lover doesn't like me. My lover's not interested in me. That you're going to feel that ripple through your body. So we're not trying to eliminate that because that's actually impossible. What we're looking at is actually, can you take it a little bit less personally? That's not the default way of taking it. And so that's why it's a practice. And I would say it's a challenge, but it can be so connecting.
So how do you take it less personally? You just zoom out a little bit and observe yourself. So if you can imagine that you're watching a movie of your life and you're observing both you and your partner, you're just observing, okay, this is how our patterns are interacting with each other. That's a neutral framework. So when you're making a narrative of like, I must not be lovable. I am rejected or my partner is rejecting me, which is very personal. The practice there is actually to zoom out and observe. Oh, they said they're busy right now and I'm feeling tension in my chest. Hmm. This is how my pattern is showing up because patterns are going to show up and, you know, usually it's rooted in something historical. It might not even be that you're being rejected in present time, but it's a real feeling that that gets triggered and you feel like you're being rejected in present time. But what you want to do here is just zoom out and observe, oh, interesting. My partner's not available. Now I'm feeling rejected.
And I think, you know, this practice of taking it a little less personally, I mean, sometimes it might be personal. Don't get me wrong, but we're looking at this as a practice. It's something that can, um, release some of the tension and help you actually distance yourself from the hook of getting, um, hook of reacting to the initial feeling that comes up. And this supports the idea of, you know, conflict doesn't have to be a fight. There's a misalignment here where your partner is not available and you're feeling rejected. You're feeling unlovable. Your partner is feeling totally neutral about not being available. You're having a very intense emotional experience. And so what you want to do is zoom out and just observe. Interesting. This is what's coming up. It helps create a little bit of distance and space so you can slow down and take the next step, which in this case would be approaching the assumption with some curiosity.
Best practice. Number six, repeat what you heard the other person say before you share what is coming up for you. This is definitely going to slow things down. And I noticed because of that, um, social conditioning within capitalism, like everything is so fast paced. You have all these social media apps that are getting even more fast paced, like every year, every month. Um, there's just so much rushing energy just all around embedded in society. It's at work, it's at school, it's at, um, on the highway or on the roads. There's just so much rushing. And so to actually slow down enough to repeat what you heard someone say before you respond to it can feel painfully slow. Okay. But remember slowing down 10% is a peace practice because rushing is violence. Slowing down is connecting and it has an energy of peace to it.
So, when you're having an assumption or an interpretation of what is happening from your perspective, that's a valid perspective. But the idea here is before you share your perspective, which there will be space for if you just trust there will be space. It doesn't have to be immediately. There's not urgency for you to say, hey, this is what's coming up for me. You can actually just repeat back what you heard the other person say. So, going back to the I'm busy example, I can't go for a walk. You can repeat back. You're like, oh, you're busy right now? So, that's just repeating back. And again, what that's doing is creating a little bit of distance so you're not getting hooked on the initial reaction. You can say this, oh, you're busy right now, while you're feeling this intense emotion in your body. Doesn't mean you have to suppress this emotion or deny that it's there. But the practice here is holding both things at the same time. It is a skillful practice. It's not the easiest, but we're looking at best practices to navigate conflict. And the reason it's not easy is because it's not a mainstream cultural norm. Okay. And so, what you're doing here is you're practicing a culture of repair between you and your partner. Once you can practice these things enough, even if it might feel like some heavy lifting, what you're doing is creating a foundation that is going to solidify the more you practice it, which puts you into that repair culture, which is a culture of connection. Because, like, you know, the only thing that's worse than conflict is feeling disconnected after conflict. Conflict can already be tense. It brings up so much, right? But it doesn't have to end in disconnection. And so, zooming out, creating a little bit of space, a little bit of distance, so you're not reacting. Like I said, that initial reaction, you're going to feel it in your body, but you don't have to interact with your partner from that place of reacting. And so, repeating back what you heard the other person say creates a little bit more distance, and it helps that wave kind of ebb and flow, the emotional wave that you're experiencing. So, you're not just getting hooked on it when it's cresting, and then it's crashing, and maybe it ends in something more destructive, where you're attacking your partner.
So, this is a bit advanced, because it's asking you to manage whatever's coming up for you. Maybe it's stress. Maybe it's pain. Maybe you're hurting.
I would say it's pretty advanced to manage that, and then also communicate at the same time. But again, you don't have to do this right away. You'd slow things down 10%, take a deep breath, and then repeat back what you heard. And then, to combine the other practice with it, number four, approach assumptions with curiosity. You say, okay, this is what I heard. Is this what you mean by that? This is what I'm hearing.
The interesting thing about this practice is that you'd be surprised how often you are not on the same page with what is being said. It's one of the most common things that actually makes conflict escalate, is because you will not be on the same page about what was said. And one person, or even both people, might be reacting to what they thought was communicated. And when I say communicated, I mean, what is the message that was delivered? Not what was the verbatim words that were said. Like, what are you hearing? What are you understanding? Because oftentimes, if you're not repeating back what you heard, maybe you're not understanding what the person actually said or what they meant to communicate. And so you're both having two different conversations, which in itself is disconnecting. But when you're reacting to the pain that you're feeling in what you misunderstood, it's only escalating the fight energy. Because maybe you're attacking now, or maybe you're getting closed off or guarded. And so there's a lot of value here in just repeating back what you heard. And oftentimes what I find is you might repeat back, oh, so like, let's say, hey, I'm busy. I'm not available now. If you repeat back what you heard, you could say, oh, so are you saying that you're not interested in hanging out? And that gives the other person an opportunity to be like, oh, actually, the message I meant to communicate was that I do want to hang out, but not in this exact moment because I'm not available.
Number seven is to self-regulate or to co-regulate. So what I'm referring to here is regulating your nervous system. Because when you're experiencing that emotional intensity, or if something gets triggered in you, I like to imagine it as this little zing of energy that's moving in your body. And when you're getting triggered, usually it's not a pleasant, like, feeling. Usually maybe it feels sharp, or it feels hot, or it feels shaky, or actually like you might feel constriction even. Um, and so what's going to really help you to actually embody all the previous practices I told you is to regulate your nervous system. Again, this does not mean that you're eliminating your emotions, that you're not supposed to feel them, that they're wrong for coming up. It's totally natural. The thing that really trips people up is not understanding how to relate to their emotions. And so when you're not regulating yourself, because you just don't know how, the culture didn't tell you, not your fault. But when you're not regulating yourself, it makes it that much easier to get hooked into reacting from a place of pain, which usually leads in disconnection. It's usually not ending in collaboration. Um, so you know, of course, taking a deep breath never hurts. You could take one deep breath and that's going to be changing the pattern. Um, maybe the pattern is to just get hooked on the initial reaction and to attack. And so taking one deep breath can go a long way. If you take three deep breaths, it's going to go even further. Um, and if you're worried that you're not going to be heard, if you slow down too much, it could just be like, Hey, can you give me a second? I need to take a deep breath. Or it could be like, Ooh, I'm noticing that triggered something in me. Give me a second to take a few deep breaths, but I still want to talk. Right. And so that's the collaboration. You're asking for space for you to take care of yourself, to regulate your nervous system. Um, and so that's the most simple breathing technique I can give you. There's a million out there. The most simple one. Um, I want to offer because the simplicity means it's more likely you're going to do it is to breathe in through your nose for four seconds. Breathe out through your mouth for eight seconds. So when you're doubling the length of your exhale, that's going to help slow down your heart rate. When you are activated, your breathing naturally gets shallow. And so you're counteracting that.
And if you're super duper activated, it is optional. But if you want to, you can even hold your breath for four seconds in between the inhale and the exhale. And that's going to slow things down even more for some people that triggers some anxiety, like holding your breath. So, you know, it's something to experiment with, um, teach their own, you know, whatever works for you. That's fine. Just empower that. It's going to be different for everyone. Another way that you can regulate your nervous system is by moving your body a bit. So if there's an intense emotional charge in your body and you're feeling activated, maybe that energy wants to go somewhere. So, you know, I've heard a lot of people tell me, yeah, when I get upset or angry, I just clean the house, which is kind of, uh, to be honest, like I've witnessed this in action, um, when I was a kid growing up and it kind of be kind of an intense energy to like watch or to be in the room with. Cause like, it's a different energy when you're cleaning the house from a place of peace and calm versus when you're like pissed off and you're like rushing around and you're like scrubbing really intensely. So I'm not saying don't do it. Um, but I'm just saying sometimes bringing in some movement can help give that charge a place to go. That's not attacking your partner. And if you need to clean, then Hey, you know, you're feeding two birds with one scone there. That's great. So cleaning the house could be one example. It could be stretching. Okay. Like if you're noticing your chest is getting really tense and you're like, Oh my God, I'm getting into a freeze response. What you can do is actually just roll your shoulders back a bit. You can stretch your hands above your head, lean to the left, do a nice stretch, lean to the right, take some deep breaths going into there. If you need to go like walk around, like maybe you step outside and you walk a little bit, or you even run a little bit, you know, you can experiment with what makes sense. Um, I think it varies moment to moment. Um, and really the, the trick here is tuning into your body and asking what would feel relieving in this moment. And, you know, relieving in a non-destructive way where you're not turning against your partner. So maybe you even do some pushups. Okay. Like, I don't know what your thing is. Maybe you love, um, ping pong. I don't know. Like whatever. Just bringing in some movement can help release some of that, um, emotional charge that is activated in your body.
Um, another way to self-regulate is by letting out a nice big sigh. So you could take the, um, deep breath, uh, four seconds in through the nose, eight seconds out through the mouth. And as you're exhaling, letting out a
was that eight seconds? Did anybody count?
Um, sighing is really ancient technology. I mean, the body is like a brilliant, um, Um, mechanism that will regulate yourself if you let it, but what happens is through social conditioning, we feel shame or embarrassment about taking care of ourselves or letting our body do its natural functions. Um, but interestingly enough, one of the ways that dogs relieve stress is they'll yawn and that just happens naturally, right? It's like when your body gets hot, it's going to release sweat because that's a natural system to cool yourself down. So the body intuitively knows how to calm down. You just have to let it. Um, and so sometimes that looks like just letting out a sigh, you know, and maybe some people will misinterpret that as like, Oh, you're upset. But if you're in a conflict, maybe you are upset. Okay. But the sigh doesn't have to mean that you're attacking your partner. It could just mean that you're regulating your nervous system and it goes a long way. Um, something similar to sighing is grunting, which sounds kind of funny. I think of like a, um, a warthog when I think of grunting. Um, but that's not actually what I mean. What I mean is like taking some rhythmic deep breaths, but letting out more of maybe like a moaning sound or, you know, a grunting sound. Um, so I gave you the sigh example. This is really effective for me personally when I'm angry. So when you're grunting, it's of like a sigh on steroids. You're just releasing that charge. And for me, the anger feels like a volcano. It feels hot and it's ready to fucking explode. Okay. And so the grunting, it's not violent. Um, usually I'll, I'll step away and I'll say, Hey, I needed some space to cool down, but can we reconnect in like 10 minutes? Can we check in? And then I'll just go. And it's almost like a meditative thing. I'll do, um, bonus points. If you put your feet on the earth while you're doing this, but just taking a deep breath on the exhale. So that's the grunt. Um, you know, I've done this for 20 minutes once and that's how long it took me to actually feel like calm in my body, but who knows? Maybe it'll take you one minute or two minutes. Depends on how emotionally activated you are. And if you think about it, children do this intuitively. So if you've ever heard a child cry, of course there's tears, but there's also like, I don't know if I've called a grunt behind it, but it's like a wailing. It's like a, it's just funny to do that because I feel like a kid. It's so fun. Um, but again, that's the body's intuition, right? There's a certain age where you get shamed out of that, where it's like, act your age. Don't be a baby. Only babies wail like that, but it is the body's intuitive way of releasing that charge. Cause like, you know, I'm sure you've seen a child cry and then five minutes later, they're moving on with their life. They've completely forgotten about what upset them because that wailing or that grunting or that sighing, it's so intelligent, right? Like it does help you return to baseline so that you can move forward. Whereas if you're not sure about how to regulate, if you're just suppressing, it's going to be really hard to move forward. Um, cause it's going to be really hard to communicate when there's all that charge just trapped in your body.
And then of course, if you need a journal, sometimes that helps. It also helps slow things down. Um, teach their own. Some people are really into that. Some people don't like writing. If you don't like writing, you can always leave yourself, um, like a voice memo, like you record your voice or you can record a video of yourself and just delete it afterwards. Or, you know, for me personally, sometimes, um, I have listened to the voice recording or even the video, like maybe a week afterwards. And it is a point of self-reflection where I'm like, Oh, interesting. That was really charged for me. Like, I feel really neutral about it now, but it's kind of like an interesting way to study yourself. If you're like really into self-growth and shit like that, then you can do that. Um, but there's no way that's better than the other. I vary between the three, you know, just depends on my mood. Um, and then of course, co-regulation is the idea of you're regulating your nervous system alongside someone else. And so your nervous systems are syncing up together. And the cool thing about this is that there's a million ways to do it. All you have to do is sync up with each other. So one example is swaying back and forth. I'm sure again, if you've seen a baby, how do people interact with babies? They rock them in their arms. There's that co-regulation of syncing up and movement together. Yeah. Um, even singing in a choir can be co-regulating cause you're all synced up. Um, and singing is actually really great. Um, regulator, um, helps like soothe the vagus nerve, which is like the main central highway that connects all of your nerves in your body. Um, and there's something about using your throat and using your voice that is really just like soothing. So if you think about cats purring, that's one of the ways they soothe themselves. And again, it's like, they're, um, kind of like calming down the, the vagus nerve. So singing is great. If you're able to sing, that's a great, um, regulator or even co-regulator. Um, there's this song, there's a song my partner and I sing together that I made up one time when we were experiencing some housing instability, which like, if you've ever experienced that, it's the most stressful thing ever. I mean, I'm sure the most is probably an exaggeration. I don't know what, I'm not going to rank what's the most stressful, but it's insanely stressful, um, to have housing instability. You know, it's like the root chakra is so ungrounded when your housing is ungrounded. And so I came up with the song just to remind me that like, okay, even though it's stressful, I'm committed to staying on the same team because naturally when you're, um, dysregulated, your capacity is lower. If you're experiencing external circumstances that are dysregulating your root chakra, you can just assume, okay, I'm at lower capacity right now. So I might be more likely to engage in my unconscious patterns. And so I made up a little song to kind of counteract that, like something to anchor into. And I'm going to sing it for you right now.
Through this hot mess, seasons come and go. Life is full of change. My love for you grows and nothing can take that away. I love you more. And it just keeps going. It never ends. Honestly, you just end it whenever you want to, but it's like, it's cute and cheeky, Cause it's like a silly little song I came up with, but literally it was so anchoring when I would sing it even in my head, but especially out loud. And then sometimes when we sing it together in since insanely co-regulating. So it helps us both just return to baseline. And the added bonus of that specific song that I made up for that circumstance is that's actually a spell that I'm casting. So it's like saying, Hey, I know these are hard times. And so how can I counteract these hard times with this spell? It's like amazing, um, amazing combination of like co-regulation regulation and like spell casting. I'm really into singing songs. Um, yeah, but even cuddling is co-regulating. You can co-regulate with the earth just by touching your bare feet on the ground or in the sand or in the ocean water or a lake, some kind of natural water, not, um, what's it called, uh, sink water or like bath water, but touching, you know, like, like direct contact with earth essentially. So it could be on rocks, not so much on concrete, definitely on ground on like mud or dirt. Um, I live in the desert actually. So I've been walking barefoot on the rocks, which is insane. Like my feet are really torn up, but I'm like, yeah, I'm co-regulating. It takes a deep commitment to do that. Um, but there's so many ways to co-regulate. You can also do this with an animal or a tree. So if you're petting a cat, if you're hugging a tree or even just putting your hand on a tree, very co-regulating. Um, like I said, you really don't learn these skills growing up. Most people don't. It's not the norm. So if you were one of those lucky people, you're probably not even listening to this podcast. Okay. Most people don't just inherently have these skills because we've deviated so far away from our nature because of this dominant war paradigm we live in. It really doesn't encourage, um, peace, slowing down, checking in with yourself, respecting your body's needs and feelings. That's just like counter-cultural to the imperialist paradigm. Um, so just having a few things to lean on can go a long way.
Lastly, the eighth conflict best practice, I actually don't want to go too deeply into it because there's so much to say here. And I feel like I've already said so much. I'm ready to take a break to be honest with you, but I will make a whole separate episode about creating a container for conflict. This is a deeply skillful practice and it's so simple, but there's a lot of little things that go into it. So I'm going to give you a brief idea of what am I talking about here when I'm saying creating a container. Now, I alluded to this a little bit before when I said you can create conscious agreements around how do you want to navigate conflict? And so that in itself is a container, but there's a few little things I want to offer here. Um, actually maybe I'll just offer one for now. So the one thing I want to offer around creating a container is not making an assumption about how much desire does your partner have to open a conversation where maybe there's a feeling of disconnection or misalignment and how much capacity do they have? So often what I see is, you know, one person will come home from work. The other person is already home. They're like maybe making dinner or something. And they'll just open up a conversation with no preface and they'll say, Hey, this thing you did earlier, I'm upset about it. And you know, maybe their partner receiving that is like hangry. Maybe they're dehydrated, maybe they're just tired after work. So a lot of times what I see is when there's not this conscious check-in of like, Hey, do you have the space right now to be in this conversation? And like how much you even want to have this conversation? Because those two things need to have some level of overlap in order for the conversation to happen productively. Um, if there's this assumption of like, Oh, we don't have capacity for this. Well, it's cause you don't care. But often what happens is that there usually is a desire. If your partner cares about you, they're going to want to hear about, Oh, what did I do that made you upset? You know, like I care how you feel and I want you to be, um, feeling respected. And so tell me about it. But maybe it's after dinner after you've eaten and relaxed a little bit, or maybe it's the next day. Cause maybe it's a Friday night and you're like, I've had such a long week. I'm going to have way more, more capacity tomorrow morning. You want to talk about it then?
Okay. So we'll leave it there for today. I mean, I've given you so much. You can really chew on that for like probably weeks. Honestly, there's so much there to practice. Um, I hope this felt helpful. Maybe there's some things you already knew, but you know, I think it's helpful to be reminded because like I said, these are practices. The more you put it into practice, the more it actually becomes a habit where you don't even have to put the effort into it anymore. So the whole point of creating these practices is to reprogram away from that energy of war, fighting and disconnection, and to reprogram into that energy of collaboration, care, connection, and love. So I hope this feels fruitful. Um, and maybe you can tell me what are the things you're already doing? And what are the things that you want to try out? You can leave that in the comments. I'd be curious to know. Thanks for tuning in. Peace be with you.
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