When We're Not Fine: Energy and Well-Being in Conflict
- Kimberly Best
- 21 hours ago
- 9 min read
I walked into Dr. Amey Aubry's office at a wellness retreat I was at with my daughter, sat down for what was supposed to be an introductory acupuncture consultation, and immediately started sobbing.
I had not planned this. I did not know this woman. I had come for the euphoric experience the brochure promised. Instead, the moment she opened a space for me to be honest, all of the stress I had been carrying about being an entrepreneur, a mediator, a business owner, a person trying to hold a lot of things at once came out of me sideways. I cried and she held that space. No judgement, just patience.
The mediator part of me was watching the whole thing happen. Watching her, watching me, watching what she had done in that room without saying very much at all. And what I recognized was that she had created the same kind of space we create in mediation. Safe. Non-judgmental. Open enough that truth shows up before you mean to say it.
I have spent some time since then learning from her. This post is part of a conversation we had recently for an audience of conflict professionals, called When We're Not Fine. But what we talked about isn't only for mediators or HR pros or healthcare workers. It's for everyone. All of us hold space for hard conversations somewhere in our lives, and all of us are shaped, before we say a word, by the energy we walk in carrying.
Why Does the Energy You Carry Matter?
Because the space we hold for other people depends on the space we hold for ourselves. Because how you are feeling is the energy you give off – no matter how well you think you’re hiding it. And the most important part: what we get back is often the result of the energy we’re putting out.
I know that sounds like a wellness platitude. It isn't. In Chinese medicine, Amey explained, there is a concept called yiand qi. Qi is the energy, the vital force present in everything. Yi is the intellect, the thought. The teaching is that thought precedes energy, and energy precedes physical reality. What you focus on becomes the energy you bring, and the energy you bring shapes what happens in the room.
We feel this whether we name it or not. Walk into a tense meeting, or a hard conversation at home, with hope and quiet steadiness, and the room shifts toward that. Walk in carrying yesterday's argument, last week's stress, this morning's traffic, and the room shifts toward that instead. The people across from us aren't reading our minds. They are reading our state. They always have been.
This is why before every mediation I have a ritual. I ask for grace, for wisdom, and to stay out of my own way. I am the person who gets in my own way the most. My self-talk. My pressure. My fear. If I do not interrupt those before I walk into the room, I am not actually neutral. I am a person carrying my stuff into other people's stuff, and that is not what I am being paid to do. The same is true for any of us walking into a conversation that matters.
What Does "Not Fine" Actually Look Like?
It looks like momentum. Amey gave the clearest example of this I have heard.
You take out the garbage and the bag breaks. Now there's a mess. You start berating yourself for not double-bagging it. Or you start berating your partner for the way they tied it. Within five minutes the conversation has moved from a broken garbage bag to a relationship problem. Within ten minutes it has moved to "you are a bad person, I am a bad person." The original mess was never the issue. The momentum was.
This happens to all of us constantly, and we often don't notice. A difficult call. A hard conversation. A colleague who pushed back. A family member who said the thing. By itself, none of it is the problem. The problem is what we add to it with our self-talk in the next twenty minutes. By the time we walk into the next conversation, we are carrying all of it, and the people in front of us pay for that without knowing it.
Blame, as usual, is not a solution. It does not matter whose fault the garbage bag was. That tunnel has no outcome. What matters is whether you can interrupt the spiral early, before the bag becomes a referendum on your worth or on someone else's.
How Do You Interrupt the Spiral?
You start with self-talk, because self-talk is where most of us live. There is a question I learned years ago and still ask my clients: would you talk to your best friend the way you are talking to yourself right now? Almost always, the answer is no. Almost always, what we are saying to ourselves is harsher than anything we would say to someone we love.
Amey adds something practical. Try a sentence that feels true to you, said gently, for thirty seconds. I appreciate myself. I did valuable things today. What I bring matters. That is not affirmation theater. That is interrupting a feedback loop that, left alone, will keep building.
A few things any of us can practice in the moments we are not fine.
Notice the body. Tight chest, clenched jaw, breath up in the shoulders. The body knows before the mind admits anything.
Pause before the next thing. Five seconds before the meeting, before the call, before sending the email. The momentum can be interrupted faster than you think.
Talk to yourself the way you would talk to someone you respect. Not the way the harshest voice in your head wants to talk.
Let the emotion be a wave, not a permanent location. Laughter doesn't last an hour. Neither does anger. If we let emotions move, they move.
Build a small toolkit and keep it close. It does not have to be elaborate. Five minutes of breathing. A walk. Qigong. Meditation. Tapping. Whatever actually changes your state.
This is what Amey calls a well-being toolkit. Not one perfect practice. A small set of things you actually use, that actually work for you. She does five to seven minutes of Qigong every morning before her work begins. "It is like setting my dial for the day," she said. It's about taking time to be purposeful in choosing who we're going to be instead of reacting to what happens. And we can do that every day.
What I have learned is this intentionality and purposefulness makes all the difference in the world to the experiences I have on most days.
Where Does Defensive Certainty Show Up in This?
Have you ever been in an argument when you are 100% certain you are right and the other person is wrong? When we are triggered, our certainty often gets loud.
There is a feeling I now recognize as a warning sign in my own conversations. The feeling of being one hundred percent sure I am right, and needing the other person to see it. The intensity of needing to prove it. I used to think that feeling was confidence. I no longer think that. I think it is a signal that I have put on blinders, that there is information I am not letting in, that something about the conversation feels threatening to me even if I cannot name what.
You can read more on that in When You're Sure You're Right: The Hidden Signal in Defensive Certainty. For this post, the point is smaller and more practical. When you feel that locked-in certainty rising, whether you are a mediator, a manager, a clinician, a parent, or a friend, treat it as data about your state, not as proof you are right. It is usually telling you that you are tired, scared, or threatened in some way you have not yet named. Get curious about that first. Get even more curious about what the other person is saying. The defensive certainty is a sign that there is more information to learn.
Trust the Process: Where Mediation and Energy Work Meet
The phrase I grew up on as a mediator is trust the process. I had no idea what that meant for years. I do now.
In mediation, the rule is to have no agenda about the outcome. If you take care of the process, the outcome will be what it is supposed to be. You cannot control what people decide. You can only control how you show up, what kind of space you hold, and whether you stay in your seat when things get hard.
Amey said the same thing in different language. Most of us tie all of our good feeling to the result. We will be happy when the deal closes, when the conflict ends, when the family agrees. But the energy of the process is what determines the energy of the result. If you spend the whole journey controlling and tugging and forcing, you cannot then arrive somewhere peaceful, because peaceful is not what you were practicing on the way there. Wherever you go, there you are.
This is freeing for any of us. We are not responsible for outcomes. We are responsible for the energy and the state we bring to the work. That is enough. That is also plenty.
Don't Fight Darkness. Bring Light
The most practical sentence in our entire conversation came near the end. Amey was talking about how trying harder to feel better rarely works, because effort itself is closing possibilities. It was ironic, that this quote had shown up on my phone only moments before our conversation:
"Don't Fight Darkness. Bring the Light and the Darkness Will Disappear."
There is no switch for darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. When we are tired, frustrated, locked in, depleted, the move is not to push the bad feeling away with more effort. The move is to bring something gentle. A breath. A walk outside. A kind sentence about yourself. A few minutes of stillness. The light is what does the work. The darkness moves on its own when there is somewhere lighter to go.
Key Takeaways
The space you hold for other people depends on the space you hold for yourself.
Thought shapes energy, and energy shapes outcomes. The energy you walk in carrying lands before you say a word.
Momentum is sneaky. The garbage bag becomes a relationship problem becomes an identity crisis if no one interrupts the spiral.
Self-talk is where most of us live. Talk to yourself the way you would talk to someone you respect.
Build a well-being toolkit small enough that you actually use it.
Locked-in certainty is data about your state, not proof you are right. Get curious about the state first.
Trust the process. You are responsible for the energy you bring, not for what other people decide.
Don't fight darkness. Bring light. Light can often look like a different perspective in the story we're telling ourselves.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the energy you carry matter in conflict? Because the work of any hard conversation is shaped by the state of the people in it. Thought shapes energy, and energy shapes outcomes. If you walk in depleted or carrying unprocessed stress, you bring that into the room, and it affects what happens before anyone speaks. Tending your energy is part of conflict skill, not a side project.
What is a well-being toolkit? A small, personal set of practices you actually use to interrupt stress and reset your state. It might include breathing practices, movement like walking or Qigong, meditation, self-talk reframes, time outside, or anything else that consistently shifts your internal experience. The point is that it is small enough to use daily, and yours.
How do I recognize when momentum is building? The body tells you first. Tight chest, clenched jaw, breath that sits up in your shoulders, racing thoughts, the urgency to fix or prove something. Once you learn to notice those signals, you can pause before the spiral takes you somewhere bigger than the original irritation deserved.
Who is this for? Everyone. The framework applies to anyone whose conversations are shaped by the energy they bring: mediators, clinicians, leaders, HR professionals, coaches, teachers, parents, partners, friends. Anywhere your inner experience shapes what other people experience, energy and well-being are part of the work.
About Amey Aubry, PHd
Amey Aubry is a well-being mentor and mind-body integration practitioner with nearly twenty years of experience in acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and energy work. She helps people release stuck patterns, build personal well-being toolkits, and reconnect with their own clarity and capacity. She works with clients one on one and offers workshops and a free clarity call for anyone curious whether the work might be a fit. Learn more at ameyaubry.com and cultivatewellbeingeveryday.com.
Ready to Take Better Care of the Person Doing the Work?
The conversations you're avoiding may be costing you more than you realize, and the energy you're not tending is part of that cost. Best Conflict Solutions, based in St. Louis and serving clients nationwide, helps families, healthcare teams, and organizations find their best way forward through mediation, conflict coaching, and training.
There aren't people problems. There are skills gaps. Tending your energy is one of those skills.
About Kimberly Best
Kimberly Best, RN, MA, is the founder of Best Conflict Solutions, based in St. Louis and serving clients nationwide. She is a Missouri and Tennessee Supreme Court listed civil and family mediator, a FINRA arbitrator, and an adjunct professor at Lipscomb University Institute for Conflict Management. Drawing on decades as a critical care nurse, Kimberly helps families, healthcare organizations, and businesses find their best way forward through mediation, conflict coaching, and training. She is the author of How to Live Forever: A Guide to Writing the Final Chapter of Your Life Story and the creator of the Best Conflict Conversation Cards. Learn more at bestconflictsolutions.com.
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