My Emotions in Conflict

Throughout most of the conflicts in my life, I usually display the same emotions and feelings. How strongly I display them depends mainly on the situation and whom I am in conflict with. When I experience conflict with my family, roommates, friends, or work, the most common emotions that I exhibit are irritation, frustration, and passion.

The main conflicts in my family used to be between me and my brother. For example, when we were both in high school, I would get angry when he would be allowed to do something that I wasn’t allowed to do. Or when he got a car and I didn’t. Granted, my brother is two years older than I am so I really didn’t have a right to get upset. Other conflicts that arose between us were due to the fact that I’m a “daddy’s girl”, so he believed that my dad played favorites at times. No matter the conflict or the reason behind it, I would get frustrated and have no problem showing it. My family knows me very well, so they always knew which buttons to push in order to make my frustration grow. My brother was always sarcastic and would antagonize me just to see me get even more frustrated. This would then create the emotion of irritation.

Irritation is not an unfamiliar emotion to me. Unfortunately, it does not take much to get me irritated. I really do wish I didn’t get irritated so easily because I tend to tune out the people surrounding me. Those people then get the idea that they are the reason for my quiet and irritated attitude. Conflicts in my dorm room have grown due to this; my roommates took my attitude personally and thought I was angry with them. Although it wasn’t a huge conflict, it did cause a problem between us. Getting irritated easily definitely isn’t one of my greatest qualities.

Recently, I have had a couple conflicts at my new job. I just began working on campus at a tutoring center. I was told it would take a while (maybe a couple weeks) to get me in the system for payroll, but it took much longer than that. The payroll department finally had me processed into the system but then they said something was wrong with the direct deposit. Long story short, I didn’t get paid until about two months later and I was extremely confused and frustrated during the whole process. Although this conflict made me extremely stressed out and frustrated, I did not show my emotions. If something like this happened between myself and a family member, I definitely would have shown my frustration and I would have argued with passion.  

With people I’m most comfortable with, I don’t have a problem showing my anger because I know they won’t take it personally. In other settings, such as at work, I don’t think showing my emotions—no matter how strong they are—is appropriate. Nor will it resolve anything. I believe that there is a time and place to display certain emotions and a time and place to not display certain emotions.