MENTAL COMBAT: 6 Things Most People Fear About Conflict

What Most People Fear about Conflict

Losing
Nobody likes to lose. The greater the potential loss the more inclined a person is to avoid those situations in which they believe they could potentially lose something. Most people need some form of self-assurance that they can and will win. There are ways that you can intensify the other person’s uncertainty and heighten their remembrance that they just might lose. One thing that may increase this uncertainty is your apparent confidence that you will not or cannot lose.

Pain
I won’t say that nobody likes pain because some people actually do. But very few like pain or the possibility of pain especially if the pain may also be associated with losing something that they value.

Injury
Pain and injury may go hand in hand but they are separate fears. Pain can be suppressed but an injury causes you to be less than whole. An injury often results in a person being unable to do something or unable to do it as freely as before. This is a separate fear and something that most sane people will avoid. Sometimes the realization that great injury may result from their own actions may be enough to change the mind of one who would stand in your way or pose a threat to you.

Attention
The fear of attention is usually only coupled with other fears such as fear of reprisal, retaliation or ultimate loss. There is also a sinister aspect of many people that actually thrives on and is inspired by the attention that conflict can bring. This form of attention is cheap and simple to get so unless the consequences of the attention are negative the other person may even be turned on by it rather than intimidated by it, understand this.

Going to Jail
The worst thing about jail, to most is that it is part of an overall loss of freedom. Also the confinement and for some, the negative associations that jail forces upon a person. Because jail is often not seen as an imminent threat the criminal element often suppresses this fear and also deludes themselves into believing that their actions will not culminate in loss of freedom. They may need you to remind them of this possibility.
Sometimes just casually pointing out why they will definitely get caught may be enough to make them reconsider.

“Uh...I don’t know if you noticed but the security camera’s saw you come
in here.”
“Umm...now you know that your fingerprints and DNA are all over this place ...should it become a crime scene.”
“Well I told some friends that I’d be with you tonight, they have your address ...if they don’t hear from me soon they’re going to start to worry.”
“You know... my friend wrote down your license plate number.”

The Unknown
This is perhaps one of the greatest fears of all. Fear of the unknown. As you’ll see later, the people whom you may fear the most have probably spent much more time sizing you up (and people like you) than you have ever spent truly psychoanalyzing them. They think that they’ve got you pegged already. This gives them confidence. The possibility and sudden awareness that they just may have judged you completely wrongly can be intimidating to them and can buy you a moment to turn the situation around and take back some control.[u]