Becoming an emotionally mature peacekeeper

Explore when keeping the peace is self-destructive and when it's an emotionally mature decision to protect your well-being.

Are you someone who tries to keep the peace? Always sacrificing your needs, withholding your opinions, and suppressing your emotions just so someone else doesn’t erupt? If so, chances are you’ve taken on the role of peacekeeper in your relationships. Which I find is often quite misunderstood.

Acting as a peacekeeper looks like smoothing conflicts and tensions and maintaining harmony. While constantly putting your needs, feelings, and opinions aside is self-destructive, the role of peacekeeper is much more nuanced than that. It’s a fine line between pleasing others and protecting your own well-being. Sometimes, withholding your opinion, needs, or feelings is the more emotionally mature response when interacting with poorly emotionally regulated, immature, and explosive personalities.

In this article, I want to explore the dual nature of being a peacekeeper. On one side of the spectrum, being a peacekeeper turns into self-destructive behavior, causing loss of identity, emotional burnout, and enabling dysfunctional relationship dynamics. On the other end of the spectrum, taking on the role of peacekeeper can also be a sign of emotional maturity and self-preservation. That’s when peacekeeping becomes a strategy to create mental and emotional boundaries while staying connected to ourselves.

It’s about understanding when peacekeeping hurts us and when it’s a strategy to protect ourselves mentally and emotionally.

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Are you someone who tries to keep the peace? Always sacrificing your needs, withholding your opinions, and suppressing your emotions just so someone else doesn’t erupt?

Then, it would be best to learn the difference between self-destructive and emotionally intelligent peacekeeping. I’ll help you understand how to navigate peacekeeping without giving yourself up. Instead, I will teach you to use it to set emotional and mental boundaries in tense situations or with difficult people without losing yourself.

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As this article is paid, I want to leave every subscriber with some value. If you noticed that you’ve taken on the role of peacekeeper, ask yourself the following self-reflection question and see what comes up for you:

Self-Reflection: What does peacekeeping look like to you, and what are your beliefs making you take on this role?

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The Self-Destructive Side of Being a Peacekeeper: