What is peace really? It's not a thing so much as it is a lack of a things. It is the elimination of the emotional stress reaction to inner or outer conflict. Many days, peace of mind seems harder to achieve than world peace. Peace is not indifference, nor is it ignorance. Peace is feeling in control, feeling calm, and not allowing anxious impulses drive your life.
When you are experiencing conflict, it's easy to get caught up in the strong emotions that stress triggers for you. It is completely natural for those thoughts and feelings to arise when you feel unsafe physically or emotionally, but it is what you do with those natural instincts that determine whether you allow the situation to disrupt your peace. This is NOT a simple matter, because we are wired for "fight or flight" response against physical threats, which is not always helpful for the many emotional, situational, and/or interpersonal driven stressors we face today.
First, recognize that you are having a stress response. This moves you from feeling out of control to being aware. In the moment, try to become aware of your breath, breath in through your nose, notice your belly rise and fall with the movement of your breath, and intentionally slow down your outbreath. Counting your breath may help you slow it down.
Second, resist the urge to respond immediately, as you instead focus on your breath. Unless you are in physical danger, the fight/adrenaline response can result in you saying or doing things that you don't intend, perhaps even behaviors that put yourself or others at physical or emotional risk. Not responding is a valid choice when you feel under an external threat, or keeping your responses short and factual to avoid escalating the conflict. This is INCREDIBLY difficult in the moment but worth it.
Third, if you need to recollect yourself, it is okay to put some physical or mental distance between yourself and the stressor. If the stress comes from another person, your intent to step out should be communicated as politely and neutrally as possible; you are not doing this to ignore the stressor or invalidate another person's experience/feelings, but to cool down your emotional response so that you can come back and deal with the situation with a more focused mind.
Fourth, determine what things about the situation are within your power and what things are outside your control. For things outside your control, accept that the resolution of those items will have to wait and go through the due process required to resolve them (if they are resolvable). For things within your control, try to take a practical problem solving approach. This may require coming back to it at a later time, or sleeping on it, and make sure there is calm and clear communication and understanding of a desire to resolve the conflict but that it may not necessarily be easy or fast to resolve, while acknowledging that the stress or conflict does exist, but that fear or worry about it does not need to drive you to blind or hasty decisions or to be too quick to speak and escalate the problem further.
While some matters can be dealt with in a completely practical problem solving way, other conflicts and stresses require a more layered approach as the human mind and human relationships are as complex and unique as the humans involved. We must hold onto hope that we can heal and learn from most conflicts and stressful situations over time.
For those of us of faith, we believe that God is in control and provides us that hope that peace awaits us if we just keep moving forward relying on him, living a life of peace as much as depends on us and not allowing ourselves to be government by fear, anger, resentment, vengeance, despondence, hopelessness, worry and/or anxiety. Regardless of your faith, no one is beyond reach, no one is such "damaged goods" that they are without hope of healing and peace. When you know you're struggling with stress and conflict, don't be afraid to seek help and peace of mind even if it means you might have to filter through some unhelpful stuff - you are intelligent and may discern what and who around you is helpful for you and work on using that to rebuild your confidence and peace in your life.
Remember, you are a person of value and dignity. Your environment does not define who you are; you and you only define what your environment and the situations you find yourself in mean to you. While I am not advocating being a doormat, I urge you to focus on the positives as much as you can, deal with what you do have control over, try not to let what is beyond your control consume you, turn your energy towards more productive pursuits, and finally look beyond yourself. There are people around you that you can be there for in a meaningful way, even if they may not be not brave enough to ask you. In getting outside of yourself and focusing on how you can be a part of other peoples' lives even in the small ways such as a kind action or smile, you may find yourself lifted and happier with your life.
Be grateful, be well, and may you reach the inner peace you so long for!
