A couple years ago I was at Baskin-Robbins with my Gen Z kids, and when my milkshake came out so thick it was basically still ice cream, I asked the young woman behind the counter to thin it out. I asked nicely; there was nobody waiting in line, and I even tipped her extra, but my kids were horrified that I’d asked, and they looked at me like I’d just flipped over a table and screamed at her. I was shocked, and my first thought was, talk about conflict avoidance on steroids, but this shouldn’t even be called conflict avoidance, because there was no conflict here.
What my kids had was a low tolerance for discomfort, directness, and disapproval, so low that it made ordinary communication feel like a fight. And this isn’t just a Gen Z thing, because I see the same low tolerance for basic communication in 50-year-olds too. So today we’re going to talk about why direct communication feels so hard, how to tell what’s really a conflict and what’s just plain old communication, and my five steps to raise your tolerance so you can stop reacting and start connecting.
What Counts as Conflict and What’s Just Communication?
Communication is, of course, a two-way street. You just saying something to another person isn’t communication because your information, what you said, needs to be understood by the other person to call it communication.
Today isn’t about how to communicate so that others understand what you’re trying to convey. I’ve covered that many times before. Today I’m talking about communication as it relates to the issues people have with doing it at all.
Communication for today’s talk is about letting someone know what’s going on with you, which means what you want, what you’d prefer, how you feel, what you think, or what you noticed. Conflict is when two people’s needs collide, so that meeting one person’s need means the other person’s need won’t get met. Most of what people call conflict avoidance is avoiding communication because it feels like there’s going to be upset on the other side.
That means asking for what you want is communication, and so is saying no, telling someone they hurt you, disagreeing about whether a movie was any good, and giving or getting feedback. None of those ask anyone to give up something they care about, so no matter how the other person answers, both of you and the relationship come out fine on the other side. They can feel uncomfortable, sure, but feeling uncomfortable and being in a conflict are two completely different things, and the reason you avoid so much of what I consider “normal” communication is because you’re treating them like they’re the same!
The quickest way to sort it out is to ask yourself one question: am I telling them something, or do we have to decide something where one of us loses out? If you’re telling them something, it’s communication, even if your stomach is in knots. If it’s a true trade-off, like whether the two of you are moving across the country to be closer to his family, or whether you or your sister is going to be the one to move Mom in when she can’t live alone anymore, that’s conflict, and conflict is a normal part of every healthy relationship, because it’s just a problem two people need to solve together.
Back to my milkshake for a second, because there’s one more piece to this. For the record, the young woman behind the counter said, “Sure, no problem,” but let’s say she’d sighed and rolled her eyes a little before she fixed it, and you were wondering whether that turned it into a conflict. It didn’t, because a sigh is just her letting me know she’d rather not, which is a preference she said with a breath instead of her words. Other people are allowed to be a little annoyed with you, and their annoyance doesn’t turn your request into a fight. For people pleasers especially, that’s where all the fear lives, because the thing you’ve been running from all these years usually isn’t the request; it’s the possibility that somebody might be mildly (or wildly) irritated by it.
Why Does Asking for Something Feel So Uncomfortable?
Asking feels uncomfortable because your brain is reacting to its prediction of how the other person will respond, not to what’s happening in front of you, and that prediction tends to be way too pessimistic. There’s nothing that needs to be uncomfortable in the request itself, so all of the discomfort lives in your forecast.
There’s a great study that points to this that I mentioned recently on the show. When people asked others directly for help, they underestimated by as much as half how likely those people were to say yes. And the researchers figured out why: the person asking was focused on what it would cost the other person to say yes, while the person being asked was focused on how awkward it would be to say no.
In plain English, you’re standing there thinking, “I can’t ask her to remake it; that’s so much work for her,” while she’s thinking, “It would be so weird to say no to a customer, so of course I’ll do it.” You’re running the math on the wrong cost, and that’s why your forecast comes out so gloomy (and wrong).
But there’s another piece to this, and it’s how much we care about what other people think of us. A lot of us don’t just want the milkshake fixed; we want the person fixing it to like us while she does it, and the idea that she might be even a little annoyed with us feels unbearable.
And that worry has been growing. Researchers who’ve tracked perfectionism for decades have found that one kind in particular has been speeding up: the belief that other people are judgmental, that they expect a lot from you, and that you have to look perfect to win their approval. It held pretty steady for years and then, starting around the turn of the century, it took off. The same researchers point out that when you’re this sensitive about making mistakes, you tend to avoid situations where you might be judged and hide your imperfections from other people. That’s the milkshake all over again, where you skip the request so nobody gets the chance to think you’re “too much.”
You’d think social media is to blame for all of this (I feel like I want to blame it for everything), but the research shows otherwise (and this is why I always read the studies). That speed-up started before social media took off, and researchers think things like social media are amplifying pressures that were already there rather than creating them from scratch. What social media did do is put a number on approval. In one study, teenagers were more likely to “like” a photo when it already had lots of likes, and seeing their own photos with lots of likes went along with more activity in the part of the brain tied to reward. So now approval isn’t something you have to guess at; it’s a count you can check, and it’s sitting right there in your pocket.
I had a client, we’ll call her Kim, who spent three days rehearsing how to tell her best friend she didn’t want to go to the same Italian place again for their monthly dinner (her friend had originally found it and raved about it). She wrote out what she’d say, pictured her friend getting quiet and hurt, and by the time she finally said it, she’d built it up into something close to a breakup conversation. Her friend said, “Oh, thank God, I’m so sick of that place,” and that was the whole thing. Three days of dread, for a restaurant!
Disapproval is the fear underneath most of this, and it makes sense that it hits so hard, because when someone is upset with you, your brain reads it as a threat. The trouble starts when you tie your own happiness to whatever someone else is feeling, so a sigh, a short text, or a pause on the phone sends you spiraling.
I talked about this in my episode on what to do when someone is mad at you, but I’m going to take a moment and repeat a little right now. That threat signal comes from your limbic system, the part of your brain whose job is to scan for danger and keep you safe. The problem is that your limbic system can be a real drama queen (it’ll make you think a hangnail is cancer), so a sigh from the young woman behind the counter gets treated like a threat to your survival.
And if someone does get upset after you’ve said something honest, start by acknowledging how they feel, and don’t say a word about your intentions, because your intentions aren’t going to move the conversation forward. Acknowledging how they feel isn’t agreeing with them, apologizing, or saying you were wrong; it’s just creating some understanding. They might still be upset with you, and that’s about them, not you.
Remember, feelings are always valid, but they’re not always accurate. You’re not saying they’re right when you validate or hold space for their feelings.
How Did We Get So Bad at This?
We got here slowly, over decades, as one change after another made it easier to skip the small uncomfortable moments that used to be part of every single day, and social skills are like any other skill: they get weaker when you don’t use them. My kids, who are now 20 and 23, were in school during the pandemic (we’re still finding out the ramifications of that shit show) and have been a mostly immersed generation in social media and texting as their main way of connecting and communicating.
There’s a great term for this that comes from a scientist named Daniel Pauly, who studies fish populations in the ocean. He called it shifting baseline syndrome because he noticed that scientists who track fish populations treated whatever they found at the start of their careers as normal. As overfishing kept shrinking those populations, each new generation of scientists started from a lower number and assumed that was normal too. The same thing has happened with how we talk to each other: the amount of direct, face-to-face communication your parents considered normal isn’t what you grew up with, and what you grew up with isn’t what your kids (if you have them) grew up with, so every generation thinks its own baseline is just how people are.
Way back in 2000, I read a book called Bowling Alone by a professor named Robert Putnam, and he was already warning us about this. He showed that Americans were signing fewer petitions, belonging to fewer organizations that meet, knowing their neighbors less, getting together with friends less often, and even socializing with their own families less. He pointed out that more Americans were bowling than ever, but they weren’t bowling in leagues anymore; they were bowling alone. That’s fewer places where you had to make small talk, ask for things, and work out a disagreement with someone who wasn’t your best friend.
Then came texting. Sherry Turkle from MIT (yes, I talk about her a lot, yes, she’s a girl crush), who’s been studying how technology changes the way we relate to each other for decades, found that what people most wanted was to avoid the stress of face-to-face interaction, and to get away from feeling vulnerable, so people mostly turned from talking to texting. Texting lets you skip the face, the pause, and the tone of voice, which are the parts that feel scary, but they’re also the crucial parts where you learn how to handle another person’s reaction.
Jonathan Haidt, who wrote The Anxious Generation (among other amazing books), says that once teenagers got smartphones and social media, the time they spent with their friends plummeted, and it happened before the pandemic, which is why, in his words, the lockdowns barely sped up the decline because “Gen Z was social distancing” as soon as they got their phones. He’s also noticed that a lot of young people are very afraid to make a phone call because a call is live and awkward, and they’re used to texting, where nothing happens in real time. In other words, a lot of young people just haven’t had much practice talking to people in real time, so something like asking for a thinner milkshake feels like a much bigger deal than it is.
Then the pandemic hit, and we were all told to practice “social distancing.” I hated this term right away because I saw what was happening. And early on, one of the top health officials leading the global response explained that they were switching to the phrase “physical distancing” on purpose because staying physically apart didn’t mean we had to disconnect socially from our loved ones. But “social distancing” is the phrase that stuck, and I think that slip of the tongue did real damage, because for a couple of years we were told that being social was dangerous.
And now, as Turkle points out, we’re opting for even less risk by talking directly to machines. Every one of those changes made it a little easier to skip the slightly awkward moment, and every skipped moment is a rep you didn’t get. Most people have no idea how much direct communication they avoid in a normal week, so see how many of these you skip, put off, or hand off to a text:
- Asking for a thinner milkshake, or sending back food that came out wrong
- Canceling a haircut appointment
- Telling a friend you can’t make it to her party, instead of just not showing up
- Calling the doctor’s office with a question
- Letting a call go to voicemail, then texting “What’s up?”
- Asking a neighbor to turn the music down
- Returning something to a store, or asking for a refund when you’ve been charged twice
- Questioning something on a bill
- Telling your hairstylist you don’t like the cut while you’re still in the chair
- Asking someone to repeat their name after you’ve forgotten it
- Asking your roommate or partner to do the dishes they said they’d do
- Saying “no thanks” to the salesperson or the person asking for a donation
- Telling a date you’re not interested, instead of ghosting
If any of those feel like a big deal, it’s because almost nothing around you has asked you to practice these skills of direct communication.
What Is Avoiding Communication Costing You?
Avoiding all these opportunities for direct communication costs you a lot. First and foremost, it costs your self-esteem because you’re letting fear and avoidance rule and that never adds up to healthy self-esteem. You feel crappy when you avoid; you know you do!
It also costs you closeness because the hurts you never mention turn into resentment, and you never find out what the people you love are feeling. In fact, every time you swallow “that comment stung” or “I’d rather have Thai food,” you make a little deposit in a resentment account, and the other person has no idea the account even exists. Then one day it all comes pouring out over something tiny, and now you’ve got a real fight on your hands that started as one sentence you never said.
It may also cost you some of your health, because the research on social connection and how long you live is pretty startling. People with stronger social relationships, meaning they were more connected to the people in their lives, had 50% better odds of still being alive by the end of the studies than people with weaker relationships, and those studies followed people for about seven and a half years on average. That puts your relationships in the same league as smoking and drinking when it comes to how long you live, and ahead of being inactive or obese! In other words, your people are a health habit, right up there with working out, meditating, and eating healthy food.
And it isn’t only your closest relationships. They’ve found that for people who had just retired, belonging to social groups, like a book club or a church group, had an effect on their risk of dying that was comparable to physical exercise. So when I tell you to join the book club, I’m not only being your bossy Jewish mother (a role you know I enjoy), I’m giving you health advice that can change how long and how well you live!
How Can You Tell If Something Is a Conflict?
You can tell by using a little something I created that I’m calling the Conflict Ladder.
| Rung | What’s happening | Examples | What to do |
| 1. Request (communication) | You’re asking for something, and nobody has to give up anything they care about. | Asking them to thin out your milkshake; canceling a haircut | Ask once, plainly, without apologizing first. |
| 2. Preference (communication) | There’s a choice to make, and you say what you’d rather have. | “I’d rather do Thai tonight.” | Say it, and let them have their own preference too. |
| 3. Disclosure (communication) | You tell someone how you feel or that something bothered you. | “That comment at dinner stung.” | Say it while it’s small and recent, then listen. |
| 4. Disagreement (communication) | You see something differently, and you can both keep your own view. | “I didn’t love that movie.” | Say your view once. You don’t need them to agree. |
| 5. Clash (conflict) | Meeting one person’s need means the other person’s need won’t get met. | Whether to move closer to family; whose family gets the holidays | Move from the line to the triangle and use Collaborative Questions to find a solution together. |
| 6. Fight (conflict) | A clash has escalated into raised voices, shutting down, threats, or the same blowup on repeat. | The holiday argument that explodes every year | Pause, calm your body down, and come back to it as a rung-five conversation. |
It’s six rungs, going from one, which isn’t conflict at all and should be a pretty easy piece of communication on your end, all the way up to six, which is full-out conflict.
Rung one is a request: you’re asking for something, and nobody has to give up anything they care about. That’s asking for a thinner milkshake, asking someone to move their bag off the seat next to you, asking a coworker to resend an email, asking your partner to grab milk on the way home, or calling to cancel a haircut. At most, the other person is mildly inconvenienced for a minute.
Rung two is a preference: there’s a choice to make, and you say what you’d rather have. That’s “I’d rather do Thai tonight,” “Can we sit by the window?” or “I’d prefer the earlier flight.” The other person gets to have a preference too, and nobody’s need is on the line.
Rung three is disclosure: you tell someone how you feel or that something bothered you. That’s “That comment at dinner stung,” “I felt left out when you all made plans without me,” “I’m nervous about this trip,” or telling a friend you miss her. It’s information and not an accusation, and it gives the other person a chance to know you better.
Rung four is a disagreement you can leave unresolved: when you see something differently, and you can both keep your own view. That’s whether that movie was any good, whether your brother’s new girlfriend is a keeper, or how you each remember a family vacation from twenty years ago. You can each say your piece and walk away still seeing it differently, and nothing has to change.
These first four rungs of the ladder are all communication you want to be comfortable with. These all call for direct communication so, if you’ve been avoiding any of these situations, it’s time to put on your big girl/boy pants and practice, practice, practice. I’m not saying you shouldn’t sit up tall for these next two rungs; I’m saying that if you avoid these types of interactions, these rungs are the only two that could be deemed conflict avoidance.
Rung five is a clash: meeting one person’s need means the other person’s need won’t get met as things stand. That’s one of you wanting to move closer to family and the other one wanting to stay put, deciding whose family you’re spending the holidays with, whether to have another kid, or your mom wanting you to call every day when you need more space. Someone’s need is on the line here, so this is where real problem-solving comes in.
Rung six is a fight: when a clash has escalated into raised voices, shutting down, threats to the relationship, or the same blowup on repeat. That’s the holiday argument that explodes every year, the money fight that goes in circles, or the silent treatment that lasts for days. And just so we’re clear, if you’re ever unsafe with someone, this ladder isn’t the tool. You need to reach out for support.
No matter how big something feels in your body, your feelings aren’t a reliable guide to which rung you’re on, because (as I’ve said) feelings are valid, but that doesn’t mean they’re accurate! If asking for a thinner milkshake feels like a huge deal, it’s because this is a new skill you haven’t practiced much, and new skills feel uncomfortable at first.
So first, get yourself physically regulated with something like a double inhale. Take one deep breath in through your nose, and right at the top of that breath, take a second quick sip of air, then let it all go in one long, slow exhale through your mouth, and do that two or three times. Now you should be starting from a baseline and a brain that’s not hijacked.
Then check what you’re telling yourself, because you feel the way you think. This is Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Therapy (RET): it’s not what happens that makes you feel a certain way; it’s what you tell yourself about what happened. The story you’re telling yourself is why you feel a certain way about something or someone. If you’re thinking, “She’s going to think I’m a terrible person,” of course you’re going to feel like you’re about to start a fight. Ask yourself who said so, and what else could be true, like “She’ll probably just say sure, no problem” or “Even if she does get upset, that’s about her, not me, and I can handle it.”
Then figure out which rung it’s on by asking yourself a few questions.
- Am I telling them something, or do we have to decide something where one of us loses out?
- Is someone unable to get what they need, or are they just a little annoyed?
- Have they shown me it’s a problem, or am I predicting that they will?
- Do we have to resolve this, or can we both keep our own view? And
- Would a stranger watching think this was a fight?
When something is a true rung-five clash, that’s when you move from the line to the triangle. I’ve talked about this type of problem-solving before, and it applies directly here. On a line, you’re at one end and the other person is at the other, bargaining back and forth across the gap until somebody walks away feeling like they lost. You’re negotiating along that line. But if you think of problem-solving like a triangle, instead of a line, the two of you are at the bottom corners looking up at the problem together (the top of the triangle), and the question shifts from “which one of us gives in?” to “how do we solve this together?” To get to the top of that triangle, use collaborative questions like “If we could wave a magic wand and solve this in a way we’re both happy with, what would that look like?” or “Is there a way we can combine both of our ideas into something even better?”
Today’s free download is a list of Collaborative Questions to help you problem-solve like a triangle.
What does all of this boil down to? Most of what you’ve been calling conflict is plain communication, and communication is a skill you can practice. What you need to do is raise your tolerance for discomfort, directness, and disapproval so what should be normal communication feels, well, normal!
What Are the Five Steps to Raise Your Tolerance for Discomfort, Directness, and Disapproval?
You raise your tolerance the way you build any other skill, with small, regular practice that gets a little harder as you go. These five steps start easy and build on each other.
Step 1: Run the Milkshake Test
Biting your tongue is what happens when something matters to you and you say nothing: you tell the server “it’s fine” when it isn’t, you drink the milkshake you can barely get through the straw, or you let the comment slide and then stew about it for the rest of the night. The Milkshake Test is what you do in that moment instead.
Start by noticing the moment, because the cues are pretty easy to spot once you know them, like rehearsing a simple sentence in your head, or hearing yourself say “never mind” or “it’s no big deal.” Then take a double inhale so your body comes down a notch, and check what you’re telling yourself, because if your thought is “She’s going to think I’m rude,” ask who said so and what else could be true. Then figure out which rung it’s on by asking the main question: am I telling them something, or do we have to decide something where one of us loses out? Am I really just afraid that this person will be mad at me or not like me? Is that the only reason I’m not saying anything right now?
If it’s a one, two, three, or four, it’s communication, so say it, and keep it short and plain: one sentence, no apology up front and no long explanation, like “Could you thin this out a little?” or “I’d rather do the earlier time.” If it’s a five, it’s a real clash, so don’t blurt it out in the moment; set a time to talk and take it to the triangle.
Afterward, take ten seconds to compare what you predicted with what happened. Did she roll her eyes, or did she say, “Sure, no problem”? Every time the answer is “it went fine,” you’re collecting proof that your forecast was off, which is exactly what the research on asking for help found: people expect a lot more no’s than they get. That proof is what makes the next one easier.
Step 2: Do One Discomfort Rep a Day
Every day, do one small, slightly uncomfortable piece of direct communication on purpose, like sending back the wrong order, canceling an appointment, asking the clarifying question in the meeting, or telling your friend, “I’d prefer the earlier time.” Keep them tiny at first, because the goal is the rep and not the outcome. The discomfort you feel is just what practice feels like when a skill has been sitting on the shelf for years. It shrinks the more you do it, I promise.
Step 3: Say It Small and Soon
When someone hurts your feelings, tell them while it’s still small, ideally within a day or two, using my I Feel Formula. The formula is “I feel” plus a feeling, then “when you” plus what they did, then “and I need” plus what you need, so it might sound like, “I feel hurt when you make weekend plans without asking me, and I need you to check with me first.” It has to be a real feeling after “I feel,” so “I feel that you should…” doesn’t count, and keep the “when you” part brief and specific instead of listing every annoying thing they’ve ever done. You won’t always know what you need, so it’s okay to leave that part off, and if they come back at you with something nasty or try to pull you into an argument, just stick to the formula. The longer you wait, the bigger it gets, and what could have been a rung-three sentence turns into a rung-six fight a few months down the road.
Step 4: Ask the Question You’re Scared Of
Ask the people you love something like “How are we doing?” or “What did you think when I said that?” and then sit there and listen to the answer without defending yourself. This is where my Collaborative Questions come in, and the big rule is to ask a question instead of jumping in with suggestions, advice, or criticism, because questions invite a feelings conversation, and that’s where the closeness is. Hearing someone’s honest answer is uncomfortable, and sitting through it is the rep.
Get your free download of Collaborative Questions, so you have a place to start with these conversations.
Step 5: Get Back in the Room
Join something that meets in person on a regular basis, like a book club, a hiking group, a choir or a volunteer shift, whatever lights you up. Groups give you a steady supply of low-stakes reps, and remember they’ll keep you healthier and you’ll live longer! Call it biology or call it the Universe, but you’re built to be in other people’s company, and the more time you spend there, the less every little ask feels like a fight.
So, the next time you catch yourself about to bite your tongue, ask yourself what rung it’s on, because most of what you’ve been avoiding is one sentence, and sentences get easier with practice. And sometimes you’ll find a true rung-five clash where the fight underneath isn’t about the move or the dishes at all, it’s about who gets to decide, which is a power struggle, and that’s what I’m digging into next week.
Therapy-to-Go Bundle
- Collaborative Questions
- The Conflict Ladder: How to tell what’s communication and what’s conflict
- Milkshake Test Worksheet: Walk One Moment Through, from Biting Your Tongue to Saying It
- The Held-Back List: Say It Small and Soon, Before It Turns into a Fight
- The Discomfort Rep Tracker: Two Weeks of Small, Direct Moments That Rebuild the Skill
- Where I Bite My Tongue: A Map of What You Hold Back in Every Relationship
- Journaling Prompts: How You Got This Way
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References
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- Haidt, J. (2006). The happiness hypothesis: Finding modern truth in ancient wisdom. Basic Books.
- American Medical Association. (2024, September 16). Author of “The Anxious Generation” shares his views on social media and children’s mental health [Video].
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- Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316.
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