I know it's basic. But every time git throws a conflict I get this little jolt of panic that I'm about to destroy someone else's work. I've read the docs, I get rebasing in theory, but under pressure I still second-guess every <<<<<<< marker.
Did this ever fully click for you, or did you just do it enough times that the fear wore off? Any mental model that made it less scary?
Six months in and same — then I forced myself to actually understand what a conflict marker is instead of panicking at the red. Once you realize it's just git saying "two people touched these lines, you pick," it gets way less scary. Pro tip: git merge --abort is your undo button, so you can always bail and retry. Make a couple of conflicts on purpose in a throwaway repo to fully demystify it.
The fear wore off once I really internalized that nothing's destroyed until I commit and push — I can always git merge --abort and walk away clean. Making a throwaway branch and causing conflicts on purpose to practice resolving them helped a ton too. Low-stakes reps kill the panic.
