Perhaps you recently received a conflictual text message or an unsettling email that ended on an unresolved note. You step away from the message and start driving your typical commute home from work. You have stepped away from the conflictual message, but your mind continues to play conflictual scenarios over and over again, like an annoying song that gets put on repeat. In your mind, you argue back and forth with someone, and that other person actually answers you. No, you’re not experiencing an auditory hallucination, but if you’re honest with yourself, you are having an entire conversation with a fictional character that your mind created. The person that you are speaking to in your mind is not really a person at all. That character is a figment of your imagination that disguises itself as another person, although it actually is just another part of yourself. You are having a conflict with yourself, but a part of you thinks that the scenario is happening in real life. It feels so vivid. Your emotions are activated. Pause, take a breath, it is only a dream. This blog post will help you wake up from that fantasy and live in reality, so you can continue and reduce your suffering.
The first step to wake up from an imaginary conflict is to simply notice that the imaginary conflict is taking place. That brief moment of awareness is the power of mindfulness. After noticing the imaginary conflict, a variety of skills can be used, including the STOP skill. Nevertheless, using a technique to stop oneself from drowning in rumination is only effective when the individual is willing to take steps to decrease their imaginary conflicts. The imaginary conflict itself feels addictive, making it a challenging habit to break. Adrenaline and dopamine are released during conflictual interactions, especially when a sense of dominance or victory is felt in the conflictual interaction. These biological factors perpetuate the conflict, making it more challenging to break the cycle.
Therefore, in the case of imaginary conflicts, it is critical for the person to realize that the conflict is not real, but instead that the imaginary conflict is created in part by the emotion centers of the brain. There are several ways to increase one’s ability to come to the realization that the conflict is not real. One option is to think back to the prompting event (i.e, the message that triggered the initial emotional response), and to remind oneself that the content delivered in the message was real, and anything created beyond that last interaction is imaginary. Another option is to ground oneself in the present moment by noticing what it feels like to breathe, to sit in your chair, and to smell the nature around you. This process reminds a person that the thought content about the future or past is imaginary, and that reality is in this present moment.
One additional technique to wake up out of an imaginary conflict is to talk with others in one’s life in the present moment. Social connection is a powerful way to overcome other addictive tendencies because social connection is a deep-seated human evolutionary necessity. Rather than talking with others about the conflict, one might benefit from telling others about one’s tendency to have imaginary conflicts and the process of waking up to be present with other people. Deeply engage in meaningful conversation, fully participating, and allowing the attention to have a solid break from thinking about the conflict. This state of awareness will decrease the intensity of the imaginary conflict, thereby improving the future in-person or virtual interaction when it finally does take place. Thus, conflict is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Peace is more likely to be achieved when it is expected and embodied in one’s step-by-step approach to life.