Many people avoid conflict because, in some group where raised voices once cost something, keeping the peace became their job, and the job has followed them into every room since. A disagreement anywhere may seem yours to settle. That's a pattern, not a flaw. Where someone frightens or hurts you, though, staying quiet may be what keeps you safe, and that's another matter.
Four bars into the bridge, the guitarist stops playing and says it's too fast.
The singer says it's fine. The bass player says it was too fast last week as well, and nobody listened then either. Inside a minute, three people are talking over each other in a rented rehearsal room in Al Qusais, egg-box foam on the walls, and nobody is playing anything.
Behind the kit, Matthias taps his sticks together four times and counts out loud. "One, two, three, four."
They come back in on the next beat. Nobody mentions the tempo again that evening.
It's what he does, in this band and most other places. When voices go up, he counts everyone back in, or suggests a break, or makes a joke about the air conditioning, or says the mistake was his. The others call him the glue.
Packing up, the singer catches his eye across the cymbal stands. "Too fast or not? You're the one keeping time."
Matthias has played that bridge forty times. He must have a view on it somewhere. It won't come.
"Whatever you lot decide," he says, and zips up the cymbal bag.
The tempo question goes home with all four of them, unanswered.
Why do I avoid conflict?
Often because keeping the peace became your role somewhere, and roles travel. Yours still turns up whenever a disagreement starts, in a meeting, among friends, at the next table, and gets to work: a quip, a new topic, a quick "my fault". The room settles. The disagreement doesn't end. It waits.
First, where none of this applies. If you keep quiet around someone because speaking up could bring threats, harm, or being watched and controlled, you're not looking at a pattern. You're looking at something that keeps you safer, and nothing here will ask you to drop it. If it's happening at home and you're in the UAE, dial 800111 for the Dubai Foundation for Women and Children (free, 24/7). Outside the UAE, find out which domestic abuse services work in your area. Wherever it's happening, if there's danger right now, phone your local emergency services, and bring a doctor or someone you trust into the picture.
If disagreements leave you shaken for days, or bring panic, low mood or broken sleep with them, get yourself seen by your doctor or a mental health professional. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
Answering questions about yourself can bring up more than you'd guess. If it does, leave the quiz for now and reach out to someone you trust or your doctor. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. A quiz, Who Did You Become to Survive?, is built around a question close to this page's: which role are you still playing? Its result needs your first name, an email and a phone number, so think twice if anyone else reads your messages. Or read on.
What does the peacekeeper do when voices rise?
It turns the volume down, with whatever is closest to hand. A joke, timed well. A sudden interest in ordering food. Agreeing a little with both sides. Owning a mistake that belonged to somebody else. Counting the band back in. Every one of these works, in its way: within a minute the room is quiet again, and so is the peacekeeper.
None of them settles anything, though. A count-in is a fine way to stop an argument and a poor way to finish one. The tempo question in that rehearsal room didn't go away. It went home, and it'll be back.
There's one voice the peacekeeper turns down first, every time: its own. Matthias keeps time for the whole band, so his view on the tempo may have been the most useful one in the room. It never came out, because giving it would have meant picking a side.
Where it's safe to disagree, two people at odds are often just seeing the same thing from different sides. The peacekeeper treats a rising voice as trouble to handle now, wherever it happens, which is why it steps into arguments that aren't its own: two colleagues across the office, two friends at dinner, two strangers in a queue. If raised voices have ever come before harm in your life, wariness of them is sense, not a pattern, and what applies is the section on safety near the top.
Where does a peacekeeper come from?
Nobody applies for the post. It tends to be handed out in a group where raised voices once had consequences: a team, a shared flat, a workplace, anywhere at all. In a group like that, whoever could cool things down was useful, and sometimes safer for it. The role worked, so it stayed, and it came along to every group after.
Where you're safe today, what matters more than where it began is that it's still working shifts for groups that never hired it. You are not broken. You are buried. A habit can be the right one in the wrong room; what is unlearning looks at habits like that, and it leaves alone any habit that keeps you out of danger now.
What does keeping the peace cost?
Where it's safe to disagree, mostly the things a disagreement would have brought out.
Your own view, for one. The peacekeeper seldom says what it thinks while voices are raised, and after long enough it can lose track of what that was. Matthias had forty run-throughs behind him and came up empty when asked.
Then there's the answer itself. In a group where disagreeing is safe, a disagreement is often how it finds out something true: that the song really is too fast, that a plan won't hold, that two people want different things. Smoothed over every time, the same disagreement usually returns.
Not every disagreement deserves airing. Many don't, and letting a small one pass is often the wise call. Where speaking up isn't safe, staying quiet is right, full stop. Where it's safe, the one thing worth noticing is whether the quiet was your choice.
For readers whose replies come out sharper than they intend, I've written how to respond instead of react as well.
Can you watch characters disagree without stepping in?
First, the limits. Nothing here is therapy or medical care, and neither is my work, so if you have a doctor or therapist, they stay your first port of call. Stepping away from treatment, medication or support is never part of this, and if you're working a recovery programme, it carries on untouched, people and all. This exercise has no place near alcohol, drug use or self-harm, or near anyone causing you fear or harm; for those, see a doctor, call a support line or confide in someone you trust. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. Nobody else takes part in this. You won't speak to, challenge or confront a soul.
You'll need a scripted disagreement on a screen: two characters in a film or a series who can't agree over something minor. Switching off at will is allowed, and so is never starting. If a scene starts to feel like something you've lived through, turning it off is exactly right, and you can tell someone you trust, your GP or a counsellor about it, whenever and however you like.
- Pick something light and scripted. Two flatmates in a sitcom at odds over the washing-up, say, or two travellers in a film who can't agree on a route. Leave out anything with shouting, cruelty or violence, and anything close to your own life.
- Watch for as long as you like. Pausing, skipping and switching off are all allowed.
- Notice what you'd want to do while they disagree. Change the channel, make a joke to whoever's nearby, will one of them to give way. Just notice it. Whatever you do next is fine.
- If you saw it through, see how it ended. Someone changed their mind, they agreed to differ, or the scene simply moved on. Jot down a line if you like.
- Come back to it only if you want to. Once is plenty, and so is often.
A scripted disagreement belongs to its writers, and it ends however they wrote it.
What makes the quiz a reasonable first step?
As a first step, the quiz Who Did You Become to Survive? suits a peacekeeper on three counts.
- It's about a role you took on. Its title asks who you became.
- Changing anything isn't part of it. "No fixing. Just seeing," as its page has it.
- Your phone and inbox are your own. As mentioned above, the result needs your contact details, so hold off if that isn't true for you yet.
Should any of its questions hurt, stop and go over it with your doctor or a person you trust. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. When all three hold for you, and you're in a place where taking it is safe, start it now.
Small talk and I've agreed to differ.
My book, through Safae's eyes, on Amazon.com: "This is a different way of seeing life, of seeing ourselves and of living."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. Not sure the peacekeeper is you? The quiz's title asks the broader question: who did you become to survive? If answering it hurts, put it aside and ring a helpline or your doctor. Show me who I became