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In counternormative communities where we cultivate soul-level connection, we find and share a powerful sense of belonging. When harm unfolds in relationships where so much hope has been ignited, there can be a deeply traumatic impact.
How do we deal with conflict, while we go on making a world where our differences can be welcomed and delighted in? We want to attend to harmful impacts, and do the work of ongoing repair. But conflict involves nervous system arousal, just like eros. With arousal, we are likely to feel driven by autonomic nervous system responses. When injury is experienced, or harmful patterns get revealed, our danger-sensing impulses guide us to fight, flee, appease, freeze, or dissociate. We’ll tend to ruminate obsessively, act dismissively, and/or mobilize enemies against each other.
The map I use for conflict engagement is shaped by my familiarity with the arc of arousal, and years spent learning to grow fear into excitement in my erotic life. It has some shaping values.
Cherish uniqueness.
Trust your own irreplaceable uniqueness. Cherish the uniqueness of each relationship. Rather than reaching for rules and norms to indignantly rebuke someone who has done harm, stay curious about what feels right in this particular unfolding. Rather than convincing someone to “take your side” in a conflict, get support to stay in your soul’s longing and learning.
Acknowledge the uniqueness of your own neural learning zone. Keep discerning the neural learning zone of the one(s) you are in conflict with, and the community in which you are embedded. How much friction can we bravely welcome?
Trust the arc of arousal.
Rather than trying to calm down prematurely, create containers where you can get brave, stay with strong body sensations, and welcome surprise. Let feelings grow bigger than shame and blame. Let longing, heartbreak, rage and agony exist. Let complex personal and historical resonances emerge. Let transformative learning occur. Figure out how to harvest all this, as a form of climax.
Savour peace.
After each climax, savour and integrate. People get caught in an “addiction” to the neurochemistry of conflict-generated arousal, if they don’t consciously cultivate extended periods of contentment, and grateful rest.
The great thing about these principles is that they allow us to keep on holding one another in goodwill, by recognizing the uniqueness of each person’s neural learning zone as they navigate autonomic responses. Where one person might need to rupture relationship, and walk away with their righteous indignation, another will get stuck pandering to every dysfunction, as they compulsively try to keep connection. But we can use the same tools we use to empower erotic well-being, including the Wheel of Consent, Vagal Fitness practices, Thanking the No, understanding the Neural Learning Zone, and constructing personal and community rituals, as ways to keep on learning, and expanding our embodied capacities for generative conflict. We can be disappointed, and disappointing, and still choose love.
The map above is a guide to traversing an imaginary space where conflict happens between equals. There is no such space, and so the work of being responsible to power dynamics becomes integral to any generative conflict process. We can honour the authentic vulnerabilities of all involved with attention to privilege and precarity. How are we learning to use any privilege we hold in the service of what we care about? We are biophysically incapacitated in different ways by precarity. Conscious navigation of inequalities is essential.
Soul Mapping, as described in Caffyn’s book Ecstatic Belonging, is a process is envisioned as a support to engaging in Generative Conflict. We also want to know and grow our Soul’s Relational Matrix. Who supports us in being who we want to be?