Why Avoiding Conflict Can Cost Us Our Health
What we were never taught growing up
It’s rather strange when you think about it. At school and at home, we learn all sorts of useful and sometimes not-so-useful things: trigonometry, conjunctive verbs, and even how to eat with cutlery, starting from the outside in. Or, if you’re South Asian like some of us, how to eat properly with your hands and never, we mean never, let the food reach the third digit of your fingers.
Yet somehow, despite all of this instruction, most of us were never taught how to work through interpersonal conflict.
Pause for a moment and think about this…
How many times have you avoided a difficult conversation?
How often have you replayed something someone said in your mind?
How often have you felt tension in a relationship but had no real framework for how to work through it?
Most of us were never taught how to navigate these moments. Yet they influence our relationships, our stress levels, and ultimately our health far more than we tend to realise.
And this is curious when you look around. Much of human culture revolves around relationships. Listen to most music, read a novel, watch a film, or explore many self-help books and spiritual traditions; they are all, in one way or another, about our interactions with other people.
Even entire legal systems exist to deal with what happens when relationships break down. The judicial system, and even documents such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, are concerned with what happens when relational boundaries are crossed.
But the law tends to intervene after the relationship has already broken down.
Very little attention is given to something far more useful: how we might work through these relational difficulties before they reach that point.
Strange, isn’t it?
When conflict becomes a bonfire
We all know that interpersonal conflict can escalate into deeply painful outcomes:
- Rage
- Fear
- Isolation
- Internalisation of distress
…and in some cases, this prolonged tension can contribute to chronic health problems or even violence.
Many of us have seen this in our own lives. When conflict is left unattended, it can grow into something much bigger, like a bonfire that begins with a small spark but quickly burns out of control. Emotional damage follows, and sometimes the flames leave the relationship beyond repair.
I was recently reminded of this through a client’s story about her son’s student flat.
The flatmates had been struggling with one particular housemate, Bjorn. He was messy, inconsiderate, and had a habit of playing drum and bass most nights until 4 a.m. Over time, resentment quietly built among the others.
Eventually, they decided to find new accommodation for the following academic year. The only problem was that no one had told Bjorn.
When Bjorn suggested they should have a house meeting to discuss where everyone might move next year, things began to unravel. Two of the boys suddenly had lectures to attend. One girl wanted to soften the blow by suggesting that everyone was simply moving into different flats. Another girl, however, said that because of her religious convictions she could not lie, and bluntly announced:
“You are a nightmare to live with.”
It’s not difficult to imagine how painful that moment must have been.
How could this situation have been avoided?
In this blog, we will walk through some simple but powerful steps to help manage interpersonal conflict more constructively. Because in truth, this situation could almost certainly have been handled differently, perhaps even during the first week of living together.
And for the record, I enjoy drum and bass as much as the next person… but 4 a.m. every night?
Think about your childhood for a moment…
When you were younger, you may have observed or learned how to argue. And if you went to my Catholic school, perhaps you even learned how to win debates at any cost. But what is the point, really, of winning the battle only to lose the war, otherwise known as the relationship?
Many of us learned how to defend ourselves, either verbally or, in some cases, physically. Others learned to withdraw when things became too intense. Some of us learned to keep the peace at any cost, becoming the rescuer. (Click HERE to read more about the ‘rescuer’.)
Do any of these sound familiar?
These early patterns often follow us quietly into adulthood, shaping how we respond when tension or disagreement arises.
And this is where things become particularly relevant in health and wellbeing.
One of the realities our students quickly discover is that health is rarely just about symptoms. A client may arrive with digestive issues, fatigue, or hormonal concerns, yet beneath the surface there may also be stress, family tensions, work pressures, or unresolved emotional experiences. Over time, these pressures can influence physiology and contribute to illness.
A skilled practitioner, therefore, needs more than the ability to interpret symptoms or functional testIf you have ever been told, ‘your blood tests are normal’, not ‘normal’ or not yourself, then you have already discovered one of the reasons functional testing has become so popular. Functional tests are designed to provide additional information about how the body is functioning. They may explore areas such as hormones, digestion, nutrient status, fatty acids, the microbiome, genetics, metabolism, or stress physiology. Think of them as gathering more pieces of the health puzzle, ideally before a dis-ease ‘shows up’. Sadly, most people turn to functional tests, once they have a dis-ease. results. They must also be able to help clients recognise how unresolved tension or interpersonal conflict may be affecting their health and, importantly, guide them in learning how to navigate these situations more constructively.
In the 21st century, supporting health often involves helping clients develop greater awareness of the connections between their emotional experiences, relationships, and physical well-being, while equipping them with practical ways to work through these challenges.
This is ONE of the reasons psychological coaching is integrated into the training at the New School of Nutritional Medicine. Practitioners are taught not only the science of health but also how to support clients through the human experiences that often lie beneath symptoms.
The surprising truth: conflict is normal
Very few of us were ever taught how to remain psychologically present, physically regulated, and relationally engaged when something difficult is happening between us and another human being.
You may find this surprising: conflict is not an occasional disruption in relationships. It is, in fact, a core feature of them.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Long-term observational research from the Gottman Institute, which has been studying relationships for over fifty years, suggests that around 69% of relationship conflicts are perpetual. In other words, they do not disappear, even in stable and loving relationships.
What does this mean in practice?
In my work as an integrative psychotherapist and coach, I often hear clients say things like:
“This relationship isn’t working. We seem to be in a constant state of negotiation or conflict. Why can’t they just do what I want?”
But it is equally worth asking another question: what would the relationship look like if there were no disagreements at all?
Is it possible that the relationship has moved from hot molten lava to slow-burning embers to cold ash? If that were the case, might the emotional importance of the relationship have eroded?
This is worth pondering.
We do not tend to have long debates with the person at the supermarket checkout. Not because we always agree with them, but because that relationship carries very little emotional investment. However, when a relationship matters to us, emotional responses naturally surface.
With this in mind, when an ongoing conflict arises with someone important to us, the goal is not to eliminate it entirely, but to manage it through dialogue.
A helpful analogy is to think of relationships as gardens that require continual tending. Left unattended, even the healthiest garden begins to change. The same is true for relationships. They are dynamic, and the ways we interact within them are always evolving.
Once we truly understand this, our entire orientation toward conflict begins to change.
At the New School, students begin to see conflict through this lens. Rather than something to avoid, it becomes something to approach with greater awareness and understanding.
During their training, students encounter interpersonal differences in professional practice through their work in dyads and triads, and of course, within everyday relationships with family, friends, and sometimes work colleagues. As part of the Inner Coaching component of our Year 1 curriculum, learning how to work through interpersonal conflict becomes a core part of the training.
The myth that conflict should be solved
Most of us approach recurring conflict as if it represents a failure, a failure of communication, compatibility, or goodwill. We may find ourselves thinking or saying things like:
“If I could just explain myself properly…”
“If they really understood me…”
“If we could just find the right compromise…”
Then the issue would disappear.
But most recurring disagreements are not simply misunderstandings. They often arise from enduring differences in personality, temperament, emotional needs, values, and how we regulate our sense of safety.
Much of this is shaped early in life. Think about how conflict was handled in your own family when you were an ankle-biter. Was it discussed openly? Avoided entirely? Escalated quickly? However it was handled, those patterns often become the templates we carry forward, consciously or unconsciously, into our adult relationships.
Some people feel secure through structure and predictability.
Others feel more alive through flexibility and openness.
Some regulate emotional distress through discussion and closeness.
Others regulate through space and internal processing.
For some, planning feels reassuring.
For others, planning feels constraining.
These are not simply preferences that can be corrected or negotiated away. They are expressions of how different nervous systems organise experience and attempt to maintain a sense of safety.
And, somewhat counterintuitively, this means that many conflicts are not problems to eliminate; they are differences that need to be managed over time.
Problems in life rarely disappear altogether. What changes is how we learn to work with them.
Think of problems, including interpersonal conflicts, as waves. The waves will not stop. What matters is how we respond to them, what we learn from them and how we ride these ‘waves’ of conflict.
Conflict can feel overwhelming
If most enduring disagreements are normal, why do they feel so destabilising? Why would many people rather run a thousand kilometres with a backpack stuffed with smelly socks and a leaky tin of sardines than engage in a disagreement?
The answer is that conflict is not primarily a cognitive event. It is a physiological one.
When interpersonal tension rises, the nervous system rapidly shifts into threat-detection mode. Notice what happens in your body. Your heart rate increases, muscles prepare for action, and a cascade of physical changes begins. Some people start sweating in unusual places, their jaw tightens, their stomach tenses, or their breathing becomes shallow.
What happens to you? Your attention also narrows. The brain begins prioritising survival over reflection. Next time this happens, and we guarantee it will, try to notice what signals your body is sending.
At sufficiently high levels of arousal, sometimes referred to as Diffuse Physiological Arousal (DPA), or more colloquially an amygdala hijack, the neural systems responsible for perspective-taking, impulse control, and flexible reasoning become far less available. In simpler terms, the parts of the brain that allow us to pause, reflect, and respond thoughtfully temporarily go offline. What remains active are the older, more primitive systems designed for survival.
In practical terms, once emotional intensity crosses a certain threshold, people lose the capacity to engage constructively, not because they are unwilling, but because they are temporarily unable.
You may recognise this moment. You hear yourself saying things you know you will regret almost immediately afterwards. Your amygdala is operating at warp speed, while the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s thoughtful, reasoning centre, has effectively gone out for lunch. Meanwhile, the threat-sensing system is shouting all sorts of things without much of a filter in sight.
What appears from the outside as stubbornness, indifference, or hostility is often a nervous system operating in survival mode.
Imagine this.
You raise a concern that has been bothering you, perhaps about how household responsibilities are divided. Maybe you feel that you are doing the bulk of the work. the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning and you think to yourself, ‘this is not a hotel’.
Your partner, or perhaps your teenager, becomes quiet. Their posture shifts. Eye contact disappears. After a short while, they say very little, or they leave the room altogether.
You feel dismissed, possibly ignored, and confused. Perhaps even angry that they refuse to engage. From the outside, it can look like avoidance or a lack of care. But physiologically, something very different may be happening.
Their heart rate may have surged beyond the threshold where meaningful conversation is possible. Their nervous system has interpreted the interaction as threatening, and shutting down or numbing out becomes the strategy it uses to defend against that perceived threat.
Without understanding this, the pursuing partner escalates. The withdrawing partner retreats even further. Each person’s attempt to protect themselves intensifies the other’s sense of threat.
The conflict begins to feed itself. Sound familiar? You are not alone in this.
The capacity that changes everything: Mentalising
If we accept that conflict is fundamentally shaped by physiological arousal, then communication skills alone, valuable as they may be, are not enough. Something more is required.
That capacity is mentalising.
Mentalising is our ability to understand behaviour in terms of the underlying psychological and emotional states that give rise to it. It allows us to recognise that behaviour is rarely random, malicious, or purely intentional. Instead, it emerges from an internal experience, thoughts, emotions, fears, and attempts to feel safe.
In moments of conflict, mentalising is usually the first capacity to collapse.
Certainty replaces curiosity.
Assumptions replace reflection.
Behaviour is interpreted as character.
You may recognise some of these familiar thoughts:
“They don’t care.”
“They are so selfish.”
“They are manipulating me.”
“They always do this.”
Mentalising reintroduces something incredibly important: psychological space.
Instead of reacting only to behaviour, we begin to consider the internal world that may be shaping that behaviour, including our own.
Why this matters
Conflict is not a failure of love.
It is not a failure of compatibility.
More often, it is simply the natural outcome of two nervous systems trying to feel safe at the same time.
And once we truly understand that, our entire orientation toward conflict begins to change.
Conflict Doesn’t Have to Get Ugly
You are in mid-conversation and it starts off small with a comment about the dishes, in a tone that feels slightly off. You can’t name it, but you feel it. And then suddenly, you are no longer talking about the dishes.
You’re talking about everything. Everything they always do. Everything you never say. Everything that’s been suppressed for ‘aeons’. It all comes out over the dishes. Even the one time he called you by his ex-girlfriend’s name.
Your heart is racing, your chest is tight, and you are either talking too fast. At some point, you find yourself thinking, ‘what just happened?’ That conversation did not go as you intended. And to be honest, it rarely does.
Healthy conflict is not improvised, you cannot wing it. It usually ends badly, possibly with someone capitulating (but internally resentful), it escalates or is swept under the proverbial rug and simmering away out of sight, until the next flare-up. Yet nothing is resolved
A practical framework for navigating difficult conversations
In the first part of this series, we explored why conflict feels so hard and how our nervous system, history, and relational patterns can quickly turn small disagreements into painful stand-offs. However, once you understand why conflict escalates, the next question becomes:
What can I do differently when conflict arises?
At The New School of Nutritional Medicine, students often discover that interpersonal conflict is not simply a communication problem. It is a psychological, physiological, and relational process.
In those moments, your HPA axisThe HPA Axis stands for the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis. Sounds complicated, but it is essentially one of the body's main communication systems for responding to stress. It is like your body’s internal stress-response network, linking the brain and adrenal glands in a constant conversation about what is happening in your environment. Whether you are running late for work, worrying about finances, doom-scrolling at midnight, or genuinely facing danger, the HPA Axis helps coordinate the release of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline to help you adapt and survive. shifts into high alert, your sympathetic nervous system gears up as if you are facing a sabre-toothed tiger, and suddenly, the conversation is no longer just a conversation.
However, when we begin to understand this process, conflict becomes far more workable. Let’s introduce you to a simple yet powerful sequence that can help prevent disagreements from spiralling into emotional warfare.
Here’s the good news: the following is a psychological sequence adapted from psychodynamic, DBT and CBT. When this sequence is disrupted, escalation is likely to occur. When it is maintained, even difficult differences can be navigated. Yes, they can!
The sequence is simple in structure but demanding in practice:
Regulate → Mentalise → Express → Repair
Each step depends on the one before it.
Many of our students tell us that simply learning to recognise which step has been skipped already changes how they approach difficult conversations.
Think about your last difficult conversation. Not the one that went well, but the one that didn’t. The one where your tone changed, where you felt misunderstood, where something in you had already heightened before the conversation even began.
If we were to pause that moment and rewind slightly, we would almost always find that one of these steps had been missed (Regulate → Mentalise → Express → Repair).
Step 1: Regulate your physiology before you relate
Relational thinking requires physiological stability. This does not mean becoming perfectly calm. It means reducing arousal enough to make reflection possible. Sometimes this is as simple as
- pausing
- noticing bodily activation
- grounding
- temporarily stepping away
This does not need to take long, but it does somewhat reduce the likelihood of an amygdala hijack (see part one).
We all know that without regulation, every word spoken will be filtered through the lens of threat perception, and that rarely ends well.
For many people, this is often the turning point: the quality of the conversation is usually determined before the first sentence is even spoken.
Step 2: Mentalise under pressure
Only once the nervous system stabilises can curiosity ’enter the space’.
Do you notice that when you are sitting in the storm of conflict, it is ridiculously easy to display all sorts of distorted thinkingHave you ever convinced yourself that someone is angry with you because they replied with ‘K’ in a text message? Or assumed that because you ate one biscuit, the entire healthy eating plan is now ruined, and you may as well eat the whole packet? Welcome to the world of distorted thinking. Also known as cognitive distortions, these are habitual patterns of thinking that can skew how we interpret ourselves, other people, and the world around us. They are incredibly common and part of being human.? For example,
- jump to conclusions (‘you were late home, is there someone else?’)
- categoric thinking (‘you always do/say this’)
- combining rumination with guilt (‘if you loved me, you would spend more time with me’).
A better way is to mentalise.
- What might be happening inside me right now?
(body signals, emotions, thoughts, behaviours) - What might be happening inside the other person?
(body signals, emotions, thoughts, behaviours) - What assumptions am I making that may be incomplete?
Mentalising does not remove disagreement. Mentalising restores perspective.
At the New School, students frequently describe this moment as the point where conflict shifts from accusation to curiosity.
A case of unexplained infertility
At the New School, we understand health is not simply about low iron levels, a dysregulated HPA axis, low sIgA requiring supplementation, or prescribing betaine HCl and digestive enzymes for indigestion.
Health and well-being are far more layered. Sometimes, the most important ‘intervention’ is not nutritional at all but understanding and learning how to work with conflict.
For some individuals, conflict behaves like a chronic, low-grade inflammatory process.It does not always present as an obvious flare but can simmer beneath the surface, influencing physiology, behaviour, and relationships over time.
Imagine a common scenario: a couple, Sara and Suresh, are trying to conceive.
Sara comes for nutritional support. There is already pressure in the background, from expectation, unspoken fear and the quiet grief of not seeing that blue line on the pregnancy test, month after month.
Another cycle passes, another negative result, tension builds. She wants him to be more proactive, to take responsibility for his health, his sperm quality, his role in this process. But he seems to minimise it and acts as though it has nothing to do with him.
And then it happens again. Another ‘failed’ month. She drops to the floor, overwhelmed, blaming him. Her voice rises. He goes quiet. She starts shouting…and he mutters softly, almost under his breath: “I can’t hear you… I can’t hear you…”
From the outside, it might look confusing, even rude, perhaps indifferent. In that moment, Suresh is thinking, ‘she is overreacting as always, she just needs to calm down.
What was once intimacy has now become scheduled, pressured, and almost mechanical. Something that used to feel connecting, now feels like a task.
But when we pause and look more closely, a different picture can emerge.
For some individuals, conflict is not simply uncomfortable, it is overwhelming. If childhood experiences connect raised voices with fear, unpredictability, or harm, then the nervous system can go into ‘shutdown’ mode. Suresh’s nervous system is responding to something familiar, where he learned to be ‘quiet’ to avoid repercussions from his angry father.
So what we are witnessing is not Suresh’s avoidance or indifference, but self-protection. This is where the role of a practitioner shifts from ‘nutritional therapist’ to a psychological coach.
We are no longer simply asking, ‘what nutrient, supplement, lifestyle habit is needed?’ but how we support Sara by applying the four-stage process, to work through interpersonal conflict.
However, you, the reader, may be thinking, the issue is with him, as he is not ‘stepping up to the plate’ in terms of his responsibilities. However, Sara cannot change him. But as Sara is the client, not Suresh, we can empower her to self-regulate (step one) when/if the blue line is negative before she mentalises, which then provides capacity to mentalise (step two).
Let’s ease into step 3, as once Sara has self-regulated and mentalised, she can engage in a loving yet meaningful dialogue.
Step 3: Express without escalating
Only when regulation and mentalising are present can needs be communicated clearly.
Effective expression can be described as S-E-N-R
- the observable Situation
- the Emotional impact
- the underlying Need
- a specific Request
In Sara’s case, the S (for situation) refers to her desire to conceive, but it also encompasses her relationship with Suresh, the most important relationship in her life. By describing the importance of her relationship and her desire to conceive, she can discuss Suresh’s lack of commitment to their shared hopes of creating a family.
Having described the situation (S), the next step is to describe her emotions (E). Such as sadness, loss, brokenness, anger, emptiness, neglect or failure. This leads to what Sara’s needs (N) are. Her needs are to know that Suresh supports her, is with her, understands her and is also committed to starting a family. If he agrees with her needs (and this is always subject to dialogue) she can then make requests (R) for him to make lifestyle changes such as working on his health, including addressing the high triglyceride and insulin levels. Could they agree on him looking at his relationship with alcohol?
This structure may look simple on paper, but in real life, it requires practice, something our students repeatedly experiment with in their personal and professional relationships.
Step 4: Repair the rupture
Surprisingly, conflict itself does not damage relationships; it is the emotional distance when a conflict is unresolved that breeds this damage.
Repair restores emotional safety after strain. It may involve acknowledgement, responsiveness, or simple reconnection. Here are some examples:
- “When I said/did ___, I imagine it may have felt ___.”
- “What I really needed was ___.”
- “What’s important to me now is ___.”
In Sara and Suresh’s case, repair can look like:
- “When I see the blue line absent again, it makes me feel bereft. I imagine you must feel heartbroken also”
- “What I really need is to know that you are committed to having a family.”
- “What is important to me now is to know that you will be making changes to your lifestyle to make this happen.”
- “What canI do to support you?’
Remember, relationships remain resilient not because conflict disappears, but because repair occurs.
As part of the Year 1 curriculum, our students apply this approach to relational conflict at home, at work, or even (dare I write it?) at The New School. They try the practice a few times and reflect on their experience.
In other words, the theory becomes lived experience.
When differences remain
Let’s consider a different kind of recurring conflict in relationships.One partner prefers to talk through problems immediately and really appreciates closure. For them, conversation reduces anxiety and restores connection.
The other prefers time alone to think before speaking. Having an immediate discussion feels overwhelming and painful. Both interpret the other’s instinct as threatening:
“You’re avoiding me.”
“You’re pressuring me.”
The difference itself is not the problem. The meaning attached to the difference is.
When the pattern is understood as two different ways of regulating, rather than as rejection, the couple can pause, reassure, and repair. The difference remains, the distress reduces.
Understanding these patterns is often a turning point for people.
When conflict cannot be fully shared
Living in the real world means conflict can arise between people with different power dynamics, such as in a work setting. Sometimes the goal shifts from mutual understanding to working with what is possible or boundary-setting, or, as appropriate, applying truth to power.
And in situations involving coercion or abuse, clearly, the framework changes entirely. If you are in an unsafe environment, the task is no longer one of relational repair but of protection and exit. Understanding this distinction is essential.
I can’t fix you
People often focus on changing the other person. At The New School, we sometimes sing the slightly reworded song by Coldplay from ‘I will fix you!’ to the slightly catchier and more honest version ‘I can’t fix you!’
We now know that conflict resolution begins when attention shifts to internal awareness.
- Can I remain regulated when this issue reappears?
- Can I sustain curiosity when certainty feels compelling?
- Can I communicate clearly without escalating the threat?
- Can I repair quickly when a rupture occurs?
Working through conflict can be cultivated over time and through practice, and it predicts relational stability far more reliably than simply believing the problem will magically disappear.
This is precisely the kind of inner development work that sits at the heart of our training.
Relationship maturity is the ability to repeatedly move through regulation, mentalisation, expression, and repair across months, years, and decades.
Train with us, in this exciting space of integrative nutritional medicine and psychological coaching
If this resonates with you, it may be because you are beginning to see that health is not just about protocols,supplements, or lab results. But about understanding people, their core beliefs, their nervous systems and their relationships, to name a few. And learning how to work with the whole person.
At The New School of Nutritional Medicine, this is exactly what we train you to do.
We do not just teach nutritional medicine, we train practitioners who can think, observe, and respond at a deeper level, integrating physiology, nutrition, psychology, and coaching into real-world practice.
If you are ready to train with us:
When you understand what your physiology is responding to, you begin to change the way you live, relate, and heal.
To health and curiosity!
