Why Do I Act so Childish During Conflict?
If you’ve ever had the thought “geez, my partner acts like such a child when we fight,” you’re correct. AND the truth is, so do you. And so do I.
And so do all of us, unless you’ve done A LOT of work to heal your Adaptive Child. Our Adaptive Child is the part of us that shows up when we feel we need to go into survival mode, the part that gets triggered by tension/disagreement and reverts to “you and me” thinking instead of focusing on the relationship and what it means to be an “us”. When your Adaptive Child is present, you are no longer in the here and now, and you start reacting to things from the past. Except that you are actually in the present, so it’s confusing to you and your partner.
I’ve seen clients turn into their Adaptive Child right before my eyes, and that's great in couples therapy because I know how to work with it and actually help the person heal. But it’s not great when people are out on their own, engaging in their relationships. The good news is that with work and therapy, people can actually heal the trauma that formed their Adaptive Child.
You may think you never experienced trauma growing up, and I get it. You probably didn’t have a huge obviously disruptive traumatic experience that would be right out of a movie (or maybe you did?), but everyone experiences relational trauma in one way or another. Because none of us had perfect parents or perfect lives, we’ve experienced abandonment, pain, intrusiveness, lack of boundaries, overprotection, neglect, etc., and our brains and bodies have found ways to adapt.
That adaptation stays with us, tucked away as we grow into our adult bodies and find other ways to deal with things. But when we’re triggered, in fear, and scared, we literally re-live our trauma. We don’t remember it or see it playing out like a movie, we experience it. And because we are having a conflict that brings us back to something from our past, we act out the coping strategy we developed as children.
When my Adaptive Child shows up, she’s mean. She goes into self righteous indignation and can be stubborn, not backing down from anything. Some adaptive children are defensive, harsh, rigid, relentless, tense in their bodies, stonewall, shut down, evasive, and/or perfectionistic. We need to learn how to soothe and eventually heal our Adaptive Children by shifting into our Wise Adults. Your Wise Adult is realistic, forgiving, flexible, nuanced, warm, humbled, and relaxed in their body. The Wise Adult is emotionally mature, and knows just how to take care of your Adaptive Child.
Your Adaptive Child is responsible for your automatic response to conflict/trouble, it’s your knee jerk reaction. You experience your Adaptive Child viscerally, in your body, and seemingly this shift is out of your control. But you can learn and practice having new responses and different reactions as you decide to live more relationally instead of individually. Instead of sitting in our fight, flight, or fix initial reactions, we can stop, breathe, and think our way into operating differently.
Your Wise Adult is just that, wise. It understands that relationships and interactions are not as simple as they seem. It understands there’s nuance and flexibility in how we can express our needs, how we show our partner love and compassion, and how we assert our desires clearly all at the same time. It understands this is possible even when we’re upset, angry, and hurt. The good news is, you probably already have many of the skills needed to do this, you just can’t access them because your Adaptive Child gets in the way.
Mindfulness, breath, mantras, pauses, corrective experiences, healing- this is what we need to do something different, to change our responses during conflict. This may all sound simple, but it’s truly a different way to think and engage in relationships. What would it be like to stop seeing your partner as your enemy, someone you need to change or prove wrong, and instead see them as your teammate in learning how to live meaningfully as an “us”? Do the work, go to therapy with your partner, learn how to be a loving and intimate couple, because you’re worth it, because there is love in your marriage, and because you choose it.