The Quiet Work of Recovery
by Trista Schoonmaker
Two weeks ago, I spent a full week in bed with influenza—which has made me a walking advertisement for getting your flu shot early this year.
The fever lasted only two or three days, and because it was the clearest sign that I was really sick, I found myself watching it closely. When it finally broke, I had that familiar sense that I must be turning the corner. I was improving, technically. But the rest of my body seemed to have a much slower definition of recovery.
The cough kept going and my throat still hurt. I had almost no appetite, and even small things seemed to take more energy than they should. The fever had been the most obvious signal, but it turned out not to be a very complete measure of how much capacity I actually had.
That distinction stayed with me because I think we often do something similar after a conflict.
We look for the most visible sign that things are getting better. The argument stops. Someone apologizes. A difficult meeting ends without another blowup. Two people who have been avoiding each other start speaking again. A decision finally gets made. Those things matter, and sometimes they do mark an important turning point. But we can also give them too much weight because they are easy to see.
One of the first moves in the Conflict EQ Compass is Notice the Signals. I usually think about that in the middle of a tense interaction: noticing a change in tone, tension in your body, a shift in someone’s energy, the urge to withdraw, defend, or push harder. But that week made me think more about the signals that come after the most obvious part of a conflict has passed.
They’re often quieter.
For example, someone who used to challenge ideas becomes more hesitant in meetings. Or a colleague starts choosing their words more carefully. Two people are cooperating again, but they’re no longer asking each other for help. Maybe a topic that once came up freely has somehow disappeared from conversation. The relationship looks functional from the outside, but ordinary interactions now seem to require more effort.
None of those things tells us exactly what’s happening; quiet caution does not automatically mean lingering hurt or damaged trust. There may be many explanations, including ones that have nothing to do with the original conflict at all. Noticing the signals is not the same as deciding what they mean.
But it does mean resisting the temptation to declare the system recovered simply because the most visible symptom has disappeared.
That temptation can be strong. Once a conflict has been talked through, there’s often an understandable desire to be done with it. If tension lingers, we may start telling ourselves that someone is holding a grudge, refusing to move on, or making too much of what happened. And maybe that’s true. . .but maybe what we are seeing is actually the residue of the conflict itself: depleted energy, greater caution, uncertainty about what will happen next, or trust that has not yet had enough evidence to rebuild.
My fever was gone, but my body was still working hard to recover. It took another full week, and I couldn’t make that process move faster just because I wanted to be finished with it.
Conflict can work that way too, with lingering effects even after a good first conversation. Often the real repair happens through what people do next: whether they include each other, follow through, check in with each other, speak directly, ask for input, or make room for disagreement again.
The point is not to keep searching for symptoms. It’s to keep noticing what the system is actually telling us about its capacity to function. The signs of repair are often quieter than the signs of rupture. Influenza gave me a very literal reminder that recovery needs more time, even after the most obvious symptom disappears.