When Conflict or Silence Feels Like Love: What Fighting and Avoidance Say About Your Family

Episode 191 - When Conflict or Silence Feels Like Love: What Fighting and Avoidance Say About Your Family

Is your family stuck in conflict—either yelling and arguing or avoiding everything in silence? In this episode, family relationship coach Tina Gosney explains how conflict styles shape marriage, parenting, and your relationship with adult children—and how to move from destructive patterns to constructive conflict and emotional safety.

 In this episode of Coaching Your Family Relationships, Tina Gosney, Family Life Educator and Family Relationship Coach, breaks down the hidden conflict styles that shape your marriage, your parenting, and your relationship with your family.

You’ll discover:

• Why yelling, arguing, or “unfiltered honesty” can feel like love and connection in some families
• Why silence, sweeping things under the rug, or avoiding tough conversations can feel like safety in others
• How destructive conflict, conflict avoidance, and constructive conflict each shape your family relationships
• What happens when highly religious families label conflict as “sinful” and shut it down
• How parents—whether raising kids or relating to adult children—set the emotional tone for the whole family
• Why fighting doesn’t always mean connection, and silence doesn’t always mean peace
• Practical steps to create emotional safety, better communication, and genuine connection at home

Whether your home has been marked by explosive arguments or cold silences, this episode will help you understand your conflict style and begin practicing constructive conflict that leads to healing, intimacy, and lasting connection.

Join Tina Gosney’s live workshop on October 9th: End Family Disconnection and Rebuild Relationships that Last. Learn how to change the emotional climate of your family—even if no one else changes first. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:06

Hey, what if I told you that yelling and arguing feels like love to some people, like it's the only way that we can be alive and we can be connected and that we can be in each other's lives. And to other people, silence feels like safety. It's like this heavy blanket that keeps the chaos down, even when it leaves us cold and distant. This is the coaching your family relationships Podcast. I'm Tina Gosney, a family life educator, a family conflict coach. I help families resolve conflict and create more connection. Most families are going to fall into two camps, the ones that argue it all out really loudly and say, I call it verbal vomit, the ones that have everything come out, and other families who just shut everything down. They want to keep everything under the rug, sweep it under the rug, both families, both camps, think that they are the normal ones. Today, we're going to dig into why some families feel like conflict is their fuel, like this is our the emotional part that just keeps us connected, and why other families run from it like fire. So both approaches can sabotage your relationships with your family. It's really common in highly religious homes to view conflict this way, as evil or sinful. So if you have conflict, you're sinning, you have to shut that down. It is not okay. There's no space for healthy disagreement or because any you know, any sign of tension is just seen as this moral failing or a sin. So I'm going to go out on a limb here, and I'm going to offer you something. If this is your home, conflict can be a good thing. Conflict is normal.

Tina Gosney: 7:51

Now, what you do with it that says a lot. You can manage it in a healthy way. Conflict does not have to be chaotic, it does not have to be hurtful, it does not have to be sinful. It can be a way like a doorway to deeper understanding, to some deep healing, because we heal in relationship to each other, it can be the doorway to real intimacy and connection, if you have learned how to deal with it. Well, let's go back to school here for a minute. We're going to go to conflict styles. 101, so we're going to break this down, okay, conflict avoidance number one, looks calm, feels tense. Nothing gets resolved. It only gets buried over time. It leads to emotional distance, frustration and resentment. Okay? Number two, destructive conflict feels like a battlefield where you are armed and ready to go to battle. It's driven by blame and shame and control and needing to be right. You're focusing on who is at fault, not what you really need. And then conflict style number three, constructive conflict. This is rooted in curiosity, not in control. It involves listening, not just reacting and trying to be heard. It prioritizes the relationship over being right. The hope is that no matter where you are now, and no matter what kind of family you grew up in, you can learn a new way. You can practice constructive conflict, even if no one else has ever modeled it for you. If you grew up in a home that was avoidant or conflict driven, you can practice a different way. And as parents, there is no more important relationship between the two of you, and no more important role in your family that that creates the emotional tenor of the home. So whether your kids. States are fully grown, or they are still with you in the home. You are the leader of the emotional tone in your family, your words, your tone, or your silence or your outbursts. Your family absorbs all of that. They respond to it even when they're adults. So if your kids are grown. I do not want you to believe the lie that it's too late to do anything about this. Your shift can ripple things out. You just have to start with you. You can model grace and integrity and groundedness and responding instead of reacting in hard conversations when you do, you invite everyone else in to a new kind of relationship with you. Now, if your kids are still home, if they're still raising you're still raising them, and this is your chance you still, you know, have time when they're still young to create a home where conflict is not scary and it's not silenced, where emotions are welcomed and brought in, and when repair can happen. When things go wrong. This is, you know, it's a legacy. You get to shape it. No matter what stage of life you're in, you can begin to shift a legacy that starts with you. I think there might be some pretty heavy disagreements in your in some of your minds right now, as you listen to this episode, I'm just imagining what might it some of you might be thinking like, you know, this is just how we are. My family has always been this way. My parents were this way. Their parents were that way. There's nothing wrong with it. We're just this way, and it's fine. It works for us. Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is, you know, we're not hurting each other. We just argue. We just get everything out on the table. That's totally normal. That's another way to look at it. Another way to look at it is, I'm not avoiding conflict. I just hate drama. I do not want the drama, I can't take it well, those patterns, they're all protective, and they all at once really, probably really served you, and that's why you created the pattern in the first place. It probably served your family, and that's why you've been repeating the pattern through generations. But what if silence is not protecting your family. Now, what if it's just slowly disconnecting you? What if your defensiveness is not strength, but it's actually fear in disguise? I'm not here to criticize you or where you came from, or what the conflict styles are in your home. I'm just here to offer you a little light in the darkness, to offer some freedom to grow beyond what your experience is right now, I'm here to help you show up as the grounded, wise, emotionally mature parent that you want to be fighting does not always mean that you're connected and silence does not always mean that you're safe. Real connection looks like this, sitting at the same table on the same team, grounded present, especially when it is uncomfortable, it's choosing curiosity over control, Compassion Over defensiveness and presence over distance. If you have been feeling just you know that ache when you're disconnected from your family and your heart just hurts. Have you been feeling that lately? Or have you been feeling like you're just there's so many things that you want to say, but you can't say them because it's not okay, and you're just kind of tiptoeing around different subjects, like you're walking on eggshells. You ever feel like that? Or are you just tired of yelling and getting nowhere?

Unknown: 13:57

And if this is you, I want you to come to my live workshop. It's on October 9. It's called end family disconnection and rebuild relationships that last. In this workshop, you're going to learn how to change the emotional climate of your family without needing anybody else to change first connection does not start with you controlling things. It does not not start with being heard or understood. It starts with you staying open and steady and grounded. That's where it has to start from that place you create space for every member of your family, and when you have that space, you invite connection, you invite open communication with respect and boundaries, you invite every member of your family to find their worth as you find your own, and you can all learn how to relate to each other in a different way.

Tina Gosney: 15:01

There's a link in the show notes, and I would be honored to see you.