Healthy Ways to Handle Conflict

Last week's post was about fear of conflict. This week, let's look at healthy ways to communicate during disagreements.

In the movie "War of the Roses," Danny DeVito plays a divorce attorney named Gavin D'Amato. DeVito's character spends the movie recounting to a young colleague the story of an acrimonious -- and ultimately deadly -- divorce. "When a couple starts keeping score, there isn't any winning," D'Amato tells a young colleague. "There's just degrees of losing." How can we let go of keeping score and instead handle conflict in a healthy manner? Here are some tips: --We can agree that each of us will share about our own feelings, perceptions, and actions during the conflict. This means starting sentences with "I" -- not "you." It means talking about our experiences of the conflict, and accepting that those things belong to us, and us alone. It means respecting that other family members may have different experiences and perceptions of the conflict; it means being willing to hear those differences. This approach doesn't involve reciting a litany of the wrongs that we perceive our partner or child has committed against us. The Golden Rule is key; we can do our best to treat the other person as we would wish to be treated during a disagreement. --We can own and share how we contributed to the conflict or disagreement. In an argument about how a couple spent last Christmas, for example, spouse 1 might acknowledge having booked the couple for two weeks with in-laws without a spousal discussion of the matter. Likewise, spouse 2 might share that he or she did not express his or her utter unhappiness with the idea at the time, but just went along with it and pouted and glared during the entire trip. --We can commit to avoiding criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling in our disagreement. These four actions cause the most harm to relationships, based on decades of research by Dr. John Gottman and his colleagues. Gottman calls these behaviors "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," because frequent use of them between arguing couples is correlated with a greater likelihood of divorce. --We can take timeouts when either person in the conflict feels overwhelmed. The family member who calls the timeout is responsible for coming back to the other family member within 24 hours to set a date and time for a calmer discussion of the issues at hand. If you are feeling a little uncomfortable, anxious, or nervous after reading the above list -- or if you want to laugh in incredulity! -- that is understandable. Responding to conflict as detailed here takes courage. It requires a willingness to be vulnerable. If you and someone you care about are struggling with conflict, reach out to a counselor for help. Working with a counselor can help you learn to handle conflict in healthy ways; a counselor can also help you identify and work through underlying issues that may be exacerbating the conflict you are experiencing.

Lea McLees, MS, NCC, LPC, is a workshop facilitator who offers pre-marital, pre-parenting, and parenting workshops, as well as wellness workshops, throughout metro Atlanta.