When the Threat (is not really) Coming from Inside the House
I’ll start by telling you about two tough things I experienced a couple of months ago.
I checked my email on a Monday morning in January to find a message from one of my longest standing clients that they were shutting down with no notice. They found out on Friday that their main funding, from USAID, was suspended, and I went to the very sad meeting where everyone found out that the really important work they were doing was stopped. Indefinitely.
That same week, feeling more fighty, reactionary and polarized than I often do, I had two disagreements with people about politics, one about a relatively small difference of perspective, one about a more consequential political disagreement. I am a conflict specialist and I believe in building relationships through disagreement, and yet, I judged both of these people. I was righteous. I dismissed them. Both are people I have relationships with that will continue. In both cases there was a need to repair.
We are going through a major shock to the system. For those of us who are working to make a more equitable, and ecologically sustainable world, everything we believe in is under attack, and that can make us attack in return.
So, since we know we are going to need each other more than ever, how can we save our precious fight energy for where it’s needed? How can we save our needed relationships from our misdirected fight energy?
Picking where to put the fight energy
This is a moment – one that may go on for a long time – when a lot of us are in defense or fight mode. Whether it’s against funding cuts, government policies that aim to take away rights, or the broader economic impact of political upheaval, most organizations are feeling some sort of threat to the ways of working we have taken for granted, and the vision of a better world that we believe in. Plus we are all having a personal experience of this moment, and bringing the stress, uncertainty, and shock of all of this to work as well.
Both defending and fighting come from mobilization energy in our nervous system. It’s where our fight and flight responses come from, and it is absolutely essential for survival in a crisis, both as individuals and as organizations. It is a big rush of energy, a flood of adrenaline, and it gives us the extra push we need to launch a campaign with almost no notice. It’s fast, urgent, and powerful. It’s what enabled organizations at the beginning of the Covid pandemic to figure out how to work from home almost overnight. It’s the energy that right now, is leading global movements to find emergency funding within weeks to make sure that essential medical treatment continues.
We need this fight energy. It’s a gift that comes when we need it.
And it’s also hard to shift out of, especially when the threat is ongoing.
When everything looks like the enemy
I came to conflict work through my own experience of conflict in social change spaces. Conflict is necessary and helps us figure out what we believe and how we want to be together, but also we are not always great at finding our way through it in ways that recognize that we are dependent on each other, even when we don’t want to be.
From the perspective of the nervous system, it can be really easy in periods of prolonged threat to get stuck in a mobilized state of fight. Fight energy is supposed to be a quick burst to get us out of danger that we then shake off once we are safe. But like any nervous system survival state, when the danger goes on longer, our body can become habituated. Fight energy in particular can also be seductive. The burst of adrenaline and feelings of righteousness can lead us to like the feeling, and lean into thoughts and actions that strengthen the fight energy. This can lead to increased conflict (the same is true of prolonged flight, which can lead to unhelpful avoidance that also may eventually erupt as conflict, but this post is talking about fight energy).
Let’s look at this a bit more closely. Generally in a fight response, we experience judgment, anger, and righteousness. We tend to notice the things other people are doing wrong, or the signs – sometimes in our own minds -that they are against us. We tell ourselves stories based on these nervous system states. A fight story might tell us that the other person is bad and needs to be taken down. A flight story might tell us that they are not to be trusted, and we need to get away from them in any way possible. In other words, in a mobilized state (like fight or flight), we tend not to feel as connected to other beings, even the ones we care about or depend on.
What if, instead, we could know when we truly need to mobilize into fight or flight, and when we don’t? What if, when there has been good reason for our nervous system to mobilise, we could see right away when the threat has dissipated enough to shift out of mobilization? Our nervous system is incredibly fluid and flexible, and we can build our capacity to move in and out of different states. In times of intensity, it can feel almost impossible to move completely into a state of relaxation and social connection, but we might be able to find our way to a hybrid state between mobilized and relaxed: still mobilized, but also connected.
This is the difference between fighting in community, rather than fighting against community.
What does this look like?
If you look at the diagram above, you can see in the “Mobilized” circle that fight and flight are states we enter when our sympathetic nervous system is activated, and we have a feeling of a lack of safety. You can also see that when our ventral vagal pathway is activated in the “Relaxed and Related” circle, we are in a state of social engagement that includes feelings of curiosity and connection. But these are not mutually exclusive states. It is actually possible to have activation in both circles at the same time, and be in a hybrid state, where we might be feeling some fight energy, but we can also stay connected to our sense of community. This is where the most effective community organizing and advocacy happens: people feeling connected and working together against a shared threat. Mobilizing collective energy (rather than individual energy) to have the impact we want to have.
But fight energy in particular has a strong pull. It is urgent, demands attention, and can be a bit like a fire hose. It takes some careful balancing and strategy to direct the fight energy in the right direction, and avoid the spray hitting unexpected targets.
Let’s look at at example
Imagine your organization has had to shift its focus to address an immediate threat to your mission and values. You care very much about this situation from an ethical perspective, and maybe it has a direct impact on your job security as well. You have been feeling angry and righteous, and ready to fight for what is important to you. In a meeting, a coworker or community partner makes a comment that tells you that the two of you are not totally aligned on the best strategy to address the threat.
The fight response
What kind of reaction might come if you are fully entrenched in a fight response? It’s probably fast. You might feel your muscles clenching, readying for a fight. Maybe you feel suddenly betrayed and suspicious. Maybe you start thinking you don’t really know this person as well as you thought you did. It’s possible that you start telling them how wrong they are or how much harm their perspective will cause. For me, in a fight response, like the example at the beginning of this blog, I tend to lecture rather than listen. This rarely feels good to the other person, and as a result they are less likely to be able to hear my “Very Important Lecture.”
To be clear, there is nothing automatically wrong with a fight response. Sometimes we need them. The challenge is that a fight response can be so fast that it can be hard to take the time to fully assess the level of threat, or where the hose is spraying. Fight doesn’t usually pause to ask what might be damaged in the fight.
Slowing down to seek the hybrid state
In the context of change making, what is usually damaged when fight energy sprays uncontrolled is relationships. It becomes harder to work together. We feel less trust and connection. We start seeing each other as caricatures rather than complex beings. On the larger scale, this fragments our capacity to push for something better together in solidarity.
But we can slow down to shift toward a hybrid state: still the power and energy of fight, but with enough of a pause to remember the relationship. A hybrid state may feel more like:
- I am really angry with this person and I am going to let them know, and at the same time, I also know there is lots about them that I appreciate.
- What this person is demanding is totally unfair, and I will set a boundary that makes it clear that I will keep working with them but only if they show me respect.
- We don’t always get along and sometimes it gets tense or loud, but we always get through it.
- This person’s stance on this issue infuriates me and I would love to tell them how wrong they are, but I know when I slow down enough to ask some questions, I often learn some things about the other person’s perspective, and it often improves the quality of the debate for me from that point forward.
It is inevitable whenever people work together that there will be disagreements. Sometimes the disagreements will be fierce ones that make it feel like there is no alignment and no way to come together in the places where we do agree. Can we seek ways to remind ourselves that people are complex, and there may be other ways we support each other? Can we remind ourselves of why we came together in the first place, and why those reasons are important?
It is also inevitable that there will be harms and mistakes, and some of them will feel insurmountable. Can we find ways to check with ourselves if that is really true, or if there are ways to repair and be accountable, or boundaries to set around how we treat each other?
Sometimes someone might respond with defensiveness when someone challenges our beliefs and experiences. Can we stop and wonder even for an instant if there might be a grain of truth or something we can learn in what they are saying?
Another way
It feels righteous in moments of fight, but the risk is that we will become so small and dispersed in the search for perfection that we won’t be able to protect what we love.
But I also know we can do it differently, because I am sometimes able to do it and I help others to do it. It’s important to try to stay in solidarity with people who generally share the goal of a different future, despite sometimes disagreeing, or even disliking them. This is because the future needs us, and disagreement is a regular part of life!
If you are experiencing increased fight energy and conflict on the team you lead and you are looking for support, you might want to check out our self-paced course, Generative Conflict: Leadership Skills for Healthy Workplaces