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Five with Fry
Think of this podcast as your go-to for tackling the hard stuff with clarity and confidence. On Five with Fry, Dr. Jen Fry breaks down the rules, challenges the norms, and dives deep into the tough conversations that shape our lives—conflict, culture, family, sports, tech, and everything in between. This is where you learn to rely on yourself, embrace the messy, and come out stronger on the other side.
Five with Fry
29: You Were Never Taught How to Fight Fair
Why Didn’t Anyone Teach Us This?
Most of us were never taught how to handle conflict. We picked up habits by watching family or just winged it. And now we're out here navigating disagreements, tough conversations, and daily tension without real tools.
In this episode of Five with Fry, I’m sharing why building conflict skills is essential—not just for your relationships, but for your mental health, boundaries, and self-worth. I even tell a story about a nail salon mishap that used to leave me silently fuming. Now? I advocate for myself calmly, clearly, and in the moment. That shift didn’t happen overnight. It came from real practice.
I talk about how conflict shows up everywhere, why so many of us feel unprepared, and how we can start handling these moments in ways that feel more aligned, more powerful, and more you. It’s the exact reason I wrote my book, I Said No: How to Have a Backbone and Boundaries Without Being a Jerk. You deserve practical tools that help you navigate hard conversations without blowing things up or selling yourself short.
Pre-order before August 1st to get exclusive goodies (think: candles, fun stuff, and even a chance for personal coaching time with me).
Let’s change how you show up in conflict!
Friends, welcome to Five with Fry, where five is the magic number, whether it's five minutes, five questions or anything that fits in five. I dive into the big topics that matter, sometimes alone and other times with a friend, from navigating sports conflict to family dynamics, travel, tech, hard-hitting issues and even politics. Nothing and I mean nothing's off the table. This is where curiosity meets conversation, and we always sit at an intersection. I'm your host, dr Jen Fry, of Jen Fry Talks. Let's get into it. Hey friends, welcome to Five with Fry. I am Dr Jen Fry, your hostess with the mostess, and today we're going to talk about skill building related to conflict. One of the things that I have realized as I have developed through the last few years is I was woefully, woefully unprepared to deal with conflict in all the different types of variations it came with. Because, newsflash, we aren't taught how to navigate conflict. We watch how our families do it, we watch how our friends do it, we are involved with conflict with them and we just mimic it, or, in some cases, we try and do the very opposite of it. But at no point do we really have skill building sessions on how to navigate conflict, and that is why I wrote the book, I said no, how to have a backbone and boundaries without being a jerk. And I wrote it because I felt like getting skills navigate the conflict is so critical to being a whole, healthy human. Because we are going to be navigating conflict all the time, big conflicts, small conflicts. There's always going to be conflicts. We're going to be navigating, and if we do not have the skills to navigate them, it's just going to keep affecting us in different ways, whether it's our mental health, whether it's our view of ourselves, whether it's not going after promotion, not setting boundaries, not advocating for ourselves any of those things we are not going to do. And so I want us to understand how important building skills within conflict is, because my goal for people is that, as they keep building those skills, that they are starting to get into situations where they're proud of their reaction and they can say the old me would have handled something completely in a different way than how I'm handling it now because of the skill development I've created. And so that's really one of the reasons why I have this book is to give people the opportunity to grow in areas that they didn't think were completely needed but, as they are growing, realize that they are completely needed.
Dr. Jen Fry:And I think about myself whenever it comes with, I'll say, maybe small slights. Things like my nails are done badly. I don't know a slight of the food at a restaurant is prepared incorrectly and in some cases before I would just have them finish it and just be mad and that doesn't help anything. And so in one way it's developing these skills has helped me is advocate for myself in a very calm manner. So I know a few weeks ago I was at the nail salon and the color that was being put on I don't know if it was old nail polish but, baby, it was bad. And if you get your nails painted you know it'll be thick, clumpy, it just isn't done well. And an old me would have just sat there fuming inside, waited for them to get done, said thank you, paid, left and then went immediately to another salon to pay for my nails to be done again. The me who's been working on my conflict skills said that's not the right way. So I'm able to advocate for myself in a calm way and say this color isn't being put on well, can you please take it off and reapply it. And to say it in a calm manner so that no one's being disrespected or yelled at. But I'm getting my point across and that's only because I've been working on myself and working on my conflict skills and that vocalizing something in the moment is important, not just being upset and then complaining about it later. So my hope for you is that you're able to use this book to build up the ability to vocalize for yourself in the moment and to get whatever you need fixed so that you are not just upset and consistently paying more money when it could have been handled in a very easy and respectful way. The book is going to be coming out August 1st, so you still have a few days to pre-order it, to get into the raffle, to get some time with me, to get a gift which are some amazingly smelling candles and some other little things, some knickknacks that we're going to be giving to folks. So if you're sitting there saying I need this book, well, it's time to go and pre-order it to also get one of those gifts. Friends, get it on the website.
Dr. Jen Fry:Well, friends, that's it for this episode of Five with Fry. Your dose of five insights, ideas and inspiration. If you love what you heard, don't forget to head over to where podcasts are played to subscribe, share and leave a review. Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop us a message. We'd love to hear from you. You can come follow me on IG, twitter, the TikTok at Jen Fry Talks, or join me on LinkedIn. Look for me at Dr Jen Fry. Until next time, stay curious, stay bold and keep the conversation going. See you on the next Five with Fry.