Do I Have to Choose Between Peace and Honesty in My Family?

Tina Gosney  00:06

Hey, have you ever felt like you have to choose between being honest about how you feel or keeping the peace in your family?

Tina Gosney  00:17

Welcome back to the podcast. I am Tina Gosney, family life educator, family conflict coach, I want to start with that question today. Have you ever felt like you had to choose between keeping the peace and being honest about how you really think and feel? I know for me, you know, there have been moments when it felt like speaking up would cause conflict and still, and so I stayed quiet, but I also felt like I was kind of giving myself away, like I wasn’t really showing up as my authentic self.

Tina Gosney  00:51

But there is this tug of war between peace and honesty, and that is exhausting. When we’re constantly negotiating that line. It leaves you feeling disconnected, no matter what you choose and no matter which way you turn. So a couple of years ago, I was with some friends, and they started talking politics. These friends are very they get into politics a lot. I actually don’t follow politics that closely. I don’t follow news that closely, but they started talking politics, and I could tell they were assuming that everyone that was there agreed with their political views,

Tina Gosney  01:30

and I wasn’t. I was not agreeing with their political view. So I spoke up, and I said, I actually don’t agree with you. And like I said, these friends pay a lot of attention to politics, and I don’t. So when I said that, they wanted to start debating me, and they wanted to start grilling me, and started like throwing all these questions at me. They didn’t feel like curious questions. They felt like accusing questions. And I immediately regretted speaking up. And I didn’t leave feeling great about them. I didn’t leave, you know, feeling like I wanted to get together with them anytime soon, actually felt like I wanted to leave right then, and just kind of wanted to call it a night. A

Tina Gosney  02:10

short while later, probably about a month later, I was with different friends, and the conversation turned political again. This time, I didn’t say anything. I could tell that they again, were assuming that I agreed with their political stance, which I did not, but I didn’t say anything because of that previous experience that I had had this time, I just kept my mouth shut. Actually didn’t feel great about myself because I didn’t say something.

Tina Gosney  02:36

I felt like I felt kind of yucky inside, like I have kind of betrayed who I was and what I believe. So today, I want to share why it doesn’t have to be either or this either or choice is a myth. Either I have to do this or I have to do that. Either I can connect with somebody and keep the peace, or I can be true and authentic to myself, we can there is a different choice. We can respond differently. I’m also going to walk you through a three steps, the simple practice that you can use the next time you get into a situation like this, maybe conflict shows up in your family. Okay, so let’s look at this myth about peace versus honesty. This is actually a myth, because you don’t have to choose between peace and honesty. But when emotions run high, it feels like you do, and that’s because your nervous system is taking over and it’s pushing you, and probably the people around you, into survival patterns. And when we go into survival patterns. It looks like either I have to fix everything that’s happening right now and calm everybody down so that I can be okay, because I’m really anxious when people are upset,

Tina Gosney  03:53

or it might, for some people, it might look like shutting down, avoiding withdrawing, just avoiding conflict completely. And for other people, it looks like standing up and defending and snapping and over explaining and trying to prove their point and making sure that they get the last word in and that they’re right. Okay, all of these are survival patterns based on our nervous system. These are all ingrained in us. It doesn’t mean that one of those patterns that I just described, no, no, one of those patterns is better than another pattern. All of them are just survival patterns. They’re not wrong. They’re just ways that our body tries to protect us. But the problem is they disconnect us like they disconnect us from other people. They disconnect us from ourselves, just like I described in those two interactions with two different sets of friends. So here’s the good news, there is a different way you can shift into a different way. We do not have to say peace.

Tina Gosney  04:59

Peace or honesty. We can have both peace and honesty when we learn how to stay grounded in ourselves during conflict and during difficult conversations. By the way, this is by learning how to manage and regulate our nervous system in the moment, and it takes practice. So I want to give you a simple three step practice that you can try. The next time you feel triggered, you feel pulled. It pulled into conflict, you feel like you need to fix the people around you, or fix the situation, or you just feel like disappearing and melting into the floor, like I did. Okay, so here’s the three step process. Step number one is ground yourself. Pause. I talk a lot about the pause because it’s so important. The first thing we need to do is pause and slow down. Feel your feet on the floor. Take one slow, deep, steady breath. You

Tina Gosney  06:06

know what happens when we get pulled into those survival patterns? Is our breath actually gets really fast and shallow, and it makes those our response, our physical response to those, to whatever is happening. It makes it exacerbated, and it feels like we don’t have a choice. It’s just a reactive pattern. When we slow our breath down, when we breathe deeply into our belly and we exhale slowly, it’s giving our body a signal that, hey, I’m safe. I’m not actually in danger. I’m not fighting for my survival. I’m actually safe in this moment, and it’s okay. Okay. Step number one, ground yourself. We can’t do anything until we are grounded. Anything that you do from an ungrounded place is going to be unproductive.

Tina Gosney  06:54

Step number two, name what you’re feeling. Name your emotion. Say to yourself, I’m feeling really anxious. I’m feeling attacked, I’m feeling frustrated.

Tina Gosney  07:08

Just name it, naming what happens in your brain. Naming it helps you to calm down. It actually moves what is happening and your ability to access what you want to do, it moves it from one part of the brain to a different part of the brain. It moves it to the thinking part of the brain, instead of the reactive part of the brain. So by naming it, we give ourselves more space. We give ourselves space to think. We give ourselves space to pause, to maybe ask for time, to be able to think more. We just give ourselves time. We need that pause. We need to pause, and we need to give ourselves some space. Have you ever been in one of these situations where it feels like you’re in a conversation, and you don’t even have access to your own thoughts that you are just getting dragged into. What are the the other person wants you to think or to believe, and you don’t have access to what you believe or what you think anymore. This is totally normal. This just means that you need to back up, pause and get get a hold of yourself. You have lost control of yourself. You’ve lost yourself in them. You’ve melded into them, if this is happening for you, okay? So you’re going to step two, you’re going to name the emotion. Remember step one got to ground yourself first. Okay, so ground yourself, name the emotion, give yourself space. And then Step number three is, respond calmly.

Tina Gosney  08:44

This takes practice. This is not easy. This is something we really have to practice, because we are so fast to be reactive. We are so fast to automatically respond in the way that we’ve always responded, because it’s a very practiced pattern, and in order to do something different, we have to practice a different pattern. So in the heat of the moment, we can choose a short, clear, concise response, for example, in that situation when I felt like my friends were attacking me because I didn’t know as much politically as they do, I could have said, Hey, I hear you. I need a moment to think about what you said, because I really don’t keep up on politics as much as you do. But I just know that something here doesn’t feel right to me. I’m not exactly sure how to tell you what it is yet, so I need a minute to think about it. I’ll get back to you. Okay, now that would have calmed things down. I know that would have, because I have respect for these friends, even though I was feeling attacked in the moment, I know that probably wasn’t their intention, and I know that if I had said it in that way, they would have been.

Tina Gosney  10:00

Respectful of that, so you can respond and ask for more time if you’re not ready to access your own thoughts, if you need time to practice getting a hold of yourself, if you need to go into a different room, or you say, Hey, let me get back to you tomorrow. Or let me you know I’m going to research that, and I’ll get back to you when I figure more things out,

Tina Gosney  10:23

it’s okay to ask for time. So that’s this, is it ground yourself? Name it and then choose a grounded response. Three steps, and you’re not going to do it perfectly. It’s okay. You don’t have to do it perfectly, but you need to practice. So every time you practice, you’re actually strengthening your ability to stay calm, and you’re strengthening your ability to hold on to yourself during difficult conversations. And you’re going to be able to do instead of the either peace or connection, you’re going to be able to do peace and connection. It’s the both. You can have both. You don’t have to choose between the two. When we have to choose between the two, we call that really black and white thinking, and we have a tendency in black and white thinking to be very rigid, and rigidity does not form a solid self. Doesn’t help you to to really form a solid sense of yourself. Also does not help you to connect to other people. So we want to be solid but flexible.

Tina Gosney  11:32

Want you to think about this. Here’s a just something you can reflect on this week. What pattern do you usually fall into when you get into a situation that’s difficult, when conflict shows up and you don’t know what to do. Are you one who likes to fix and people please and make sure that everybody is calming down and that we’re just gonna, like, let it go and like, let’s just stop this. I don’t like this right now, so just stop it. Are you one of those people? Do you avoid? Do you withdraw? Do you just not even have those conversations?

Tina Gosney  12:12

Do you defend and react? Are you trying to prove your point and prove that you’re right? What is your response? So this, there’s a reflection there for you, is to ask yourself, what is my response? And it could be that you have one response with one group of people and a different response with a different group of people. That would be totally normal. It just means that you have different ways of relating to different people, and you might feel just a sense of safety more with one group than another group. Okay, so after you have found your pattern, ask yourself, so what would it look like if I stayed calm and connected to myself and I responded in a different way and then just journal about it.

Tina Gosney  13:05

Just ask yourself, you know, maybe brainstorm some ways that that might have the situation might have looked different, how it might have gone differently, how you might things, different things you might have said, or different ways you could have handled the situation. So there’s just a reflection for you to do this week, and journal about it if you want to. I know some people don’t like to journal. My clients are about 5050, those that like to journal and those that don’t. So if you’re not a journaler, just, you know, sit down and do some pondering about that. So if this episode has resonated with you, then I want to let you know that I am having a class this week. It will be October 9, which is in just a few days. It’s called end family disconnection and rebuild relationships that last.

Tina Gosney  13:56

And in this class, we’re going to go deeper into, how do we do this grounding? How do I get a hold of myself? How do I pause? How do I then name what I’m feeling? How do I communicate clearly and grounded in it from a grounded response? How do I offer a grounded response? We’re going to talk about rebuilding relationships without having to fix anybody, without having to people please or defend and fight or walking away, or just, you know, withdrawing, or maybe even walking on eggshells. This is free. It’s an online class. I would love to have you join me. You can find a link in the show notes. So this is your chance to take a breath, get some support, start building the kind of connection you really want in your family. And if you are listening to this episode after October 9 of 2025 that means the class has already passed. And if that is the case and you want to come to this class, then get on my email list. I will let you know when the next.

Tina Gosney  15:00

Workshop is going to be because I will teach this class again. You. I don’t have a date for you right now, but there will be another day coming up soon, I promise. So get on my email list. You will be notified through your email when the class will be offered, and you can come to the next one, or you can just email me and ask me when the next one is too. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I want you to remember you do not have to choose between peace and honesty. You can have both peace and honesty when you learn how to stay grounded and respond from a calm, clear place of clarity.

15:42 Thank you for being here with me today. I’ll see you next time.