I have often been called confrontational. I have never felt confrontational.
The meaning of the word never felt right to me, the negativity of wanting confrontation, never resonated with me.
Even so, I would understand why people would think that. Confrontation is “tending to deal with situations in an aggressive way; hostile or argumentative.”
Even as I think about it today, isn’t the very act of calling someone confrontational the very definition of confrontational? But the reason that people tended to believe this about me is that I actually deal with things. I don’t sweep anything under the rug.
The reason I struggle to let things go has definitely been a combination of OCD tendencies, to keep things clean/pure/unblemished or, and possibly in addition to, fear. Fear is often highest when we don’t know what we are fearing. When we know what the potential outcome is, we can make a rational choice, but when we are facing down the unknown, often the fear becomes irrational. We are literally fearing the unknown. Fear of the unknown is at the root of many of our daily fears.
I have seen and witnessed what happens when people don’t address issues. The issue, which often starts as something small and relatively inconsequential, festers and becomes something so large that it ends up destroying everything around it and in its path. Therefore, when I notice something festering in the corner, I fear sweeping it under the rug. What if it starts to stink under that rug and then we have to throw the entire rug away?
Imagine that you break a bone, but you are hesitant to go to the doctor. Let’s look at the two obvious options:
a.) You can suffer through the hurt of getting the bone set (i.e., putting things back as they should be) and then you just let it heal and even if it’s not back to normal, it is certainly back to a state close enough to normal to be a good assimilation of normal. And the likelihood of having future pain or problems with that arm or leg are pretty low. Maybe it’s a bit weaker, maybe it’s a bit more susceptible to future breaking, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s patched up so well that it grows even stronger.
b.) Let’s consider the alternative. Imagine that you fear that bone setting process – it will be painful! You will do anything to avoid it. Why would anybody willingly go and sign up for pain? You tell yourself that the body will heal – that’s what bodies do. And, yes, things “heal.” But with your bone in the wrong position, it heals incorrectly. Now you can no longer do normal activities without pain. You feel pain where you didn’t before. You feel pain almost every moment of every day. In the perfect stillness you can still almost remember what it was like to be pain-free, so you think it’s time to go back and get the bone set. But now it’s not so easy to reset. In fact, the bone must be rebroken in order to set it. The attempt to avoid pain has caused a longer, more drawn-out pain than you would have had with the original bone-setting process. Avoidance of the initial pain has resulted in a pain so large and so vast that it can no longer be dealt with.
Getting a bone set isn’t fun, and confrontations aren’t fun. But in the end, if you want things to heal, it’s usually a better choice to face the bone-setting head on. My intentions for confrontations are almost always to prevent future pain. It is always scary to bring up things that you know are going to cause discomfort or anger in the other person. So sometimes the fear of anger or the fear of the confrontation jolts me into sounding a bit more confrontational than I feel inside.
My intentions are always good.
My intentions are to prevent the mold from growing under the rug, which would cause a persistent health issue.
My intentions are to put the bone back into position to heal in the correct way.
My intentions are pure.
However, if you have the courage to get the bone set, or the fortitude to sweep up the trash and put it out with the other trash, the likelihood of future hurt is greatly diminished. I’m not confrontational, I am afraid of messes that cannot be cleaned up, broken bones that cannot be fixed. I feel the fear and then face it anyway – do it because it’s the right thing to do. I choose clarity over comfort. I choose love.
