Tag: conflict

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How to Fight Fair

  • We want you getting through your disagreements with as little pain as possible.  Avoiding these 8 “don’ts” is the first step to getting there. 
  • Avoid disrespectful communication. This means: no name calling, derogatory language, hostility (i.e trying to intimidate the other party or yelling), expressing your negative feelings in a physical manner (i.e. hitting, breaking, throwing etc). If it’s not “OK” to do at work, it’s not “OK” to do at home. 
  • Avoid a dismissive stance. You’re not going to get through to someone if you are judging them, using sarcasm, interrupting them, rolling your eyes, or engaging in other behaviors or gestures that indicate you’re not taking the perspective of the other person seriously. Even if you think someone is not being reasonable you can communicate that without these tactics.
  • Avoid counter-complaining. Don’t bring up your own complaint in response to someone else’s.  This means you don’t respond to “you never do the dishes” with “you never do the laundry”. This deflects the conversation from the concern being addressed. If you have a related concern think of that as a separate issue for a separate conversation.
  • Avoid dumping. Don’t bring up numerous and unrelated concerns at a time.  If you’re bringing up the problem, bring up one problem. You will overwhelm the other party if you bring up too much at once. All topics of concern are important, and so to address them effectively you need to pace them.
  • Avoid rehashing. Leave problems you have previously resolved in the past. Sometimes old problems are related to current ones, and while that can be acknowledged respectfully, you will run the conversation in circles until a point of exhaustion if you have to re-resolve old issues whenever a new one comes up. 
  • No character assassination. This means talking about the entirety of someone’s personality, rather than a specific problem you have with them or what is happening. This means no “you’re lazy”, but instead, “I’m upset at how often you don’t participate at times when we have a lot to do”. 
  • Be careful about words like “always” and “never”, very few things actually ALWAYS or NEVER happen, and it’s a quick way to shut the other party off if you overgeneralize about the frequency of an issue. We often do this as a way of trying to make our point when we feel dismissed, but even if the other party is taking a dismissive stance, this tactic is often an exaggeration and often leaves other party to feeling even more entitled to dismiss us.
  • Don’t force resolution. Do not put pressure on yourself or the other party to resolve issues prematurely, or only on one person’s timeline. This means: no chasing someone around and continuing to talk if the other person has asked for a break, no putting off the conversation indefinitely because one party doesn’t want to deal with it, and no “resolving” the issue if you’re not ok with the resolution but just want to “make up” and make it go away. These are recipes for disconnection and rehashing.

Conflict is inevitable in relationships, especially close ones, given no two people bring to their relationships the exact same values, priorities, concerns, and needs at any given point in time.  Even the most compatible people will have conflict at some point, which is a clash in what one party needs or wants with what the other party is willing to authentically offer, provide, or agree to. Conflict can mean fighting, but doesn’t have to; it may help to think of “conflict” more like a conflict of interest between the involved parties. 


For most of us, when we hit a point of disagreement between ourselves and those we are close with we communicate in ways that are familiar and intuitive for us, often shaped by what was modeled for us, and what we have done in the past. What is intuitive or familiar may not, however, be effective. 


For our relationships to go well, we need to deal with conflict in a manner that helps us resolve the issue while still holding respect for our relationship and the other party; both parties need to feel considered and as though their needs, priorities, concerns, and desires are taken seriously. This means when one person has a problem, both people have a problem. Taking on this attitude of acceptance will help strengthen the relationship and keep your connection strong.


As a couples therapist, one thing I pay attention to is how couples communicate with each other when they have a disagreement.  If they don’t have the tools to work through conflict productively important topics don’t get adequately addressed. Over time, relationships can erode because of the hurt created by the conflict itself, in addition to the inability of the couple to resolve issues between them. 


The first step to taking care of your relationship while you address a concern is getting the communication “don’ts” from this post out of the conversation. Getting rid of these tactics can  help you move through conflict and may help improve your relationship and feelings of closeness and connection.


A future post will cover the “dos” for resolving conflict. For now, see what ways you can come up with to eliminate these “don’ts” from your conversation and your mindset.

Notes:

  1. A helpful tip – removing the “don’ts verbally may not be enough. Truly try and challenge yourself to remove the “don’ts” from your mindset and perspective as well. In relationships, even if someone isn’t saying it, we can feel it when someone isn’t taking us seriously. 
  2. Some conflict can be resolved in a single conversation or two. Some conflict is about fundamental differences between the parties involved, and will be revisted again and again. This does not necessarily mean that the involved parties are incompatible, and getting the “don’ts” out of the conversation can help us better live with our differences. 
  3. Further notes on disrespectful conversation: If you don’t communicate with respect, you will create a problem while you are trying to resolve a disagreement. When we communicate disrespectfully it is usually a way of expressing anger, which, while valid to feel, needs to be handled respectfully so as not to derail an otherwise productive conversation. Sometimes, when we’ve grown up around conflict that includes disrespectful communication we can have trouble recognizing it – calling someone “stupid” or their thoughts or beliefs “ridiculous” is a version of disrespectful communication.
  4. We often counter-complain when we are in a defensive state of mind, meaning we use the counter complaint as a way to rationalize, deflect, and justify our perspective and actions at the detriment of understanding, connection, receiving feedback, or accepting the impact of our actions. Often times we are more prone to defensiveness when we are focused on how we are “right” or when we are focused on our intentions (rather than our impact).  
  5. Want some more tips on “fair fighting” for couples? See this post about how the way we fight can effect the stability of our relationship.
  6. Do you find you have trouble accepting the validity of other’s concerns? See this post to help you understand the power of validation (even when we disagree), and this post to help you accept even if you dislike or disagree.
  7. Do you generally find you have trouble balancing taking care of yourself, others, and what you want or need in relationships? It is a tough balancing act. See this post for tips.
  8. Judgments can be tough to identify, but I’ve got prior posts covering how to identify a judgment and how to reshape them.
  9. Does the idea of not resolving conflict quickly leave you feeling uneasy?  See this post for more information.
  10. Do you want help with addressing conflict or connection in your relationship, but are on the fence about whether it’s “too soon” for couples therapy? See this post to help you decide whether it’s time.
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Displacement

  • Our feelings are harder to access in environments where they are not welcome. This can be with certain people who we feel shut us down, and it can also be with our internal world if we believe certain feelings are bad, unproductive, or unacceptable.
  • When we can’t access and process through our feelings directly we may find ourselves prone to using displacement. When we “displace” we focus our energy, attention, and conversation around something other than the core issue at hand.
  • Displacement can be an indirect way of addressing an emotionally charged / intense topic or a topic we can’t find an accessible entry point into discussing or feeling our way through.
  • Example: you’ve had a bad day at work and take out your anger on your family once you’re home. Perhaps you’re feeling angry about work, and simultaneously feeling like you can’t change that environment / express yourself there and maintain professionalism (i.e. you can’t find an accessible entry point at work to handle your concerns in a direct way).
  • Although you don’t want to be irritable at home, you may (consciously or unconsciously) rationalize to yourself that your family is “stuck with you” and so you release your frustrations at home. In this scenario the person has displaced their anger at work onto their family members and in an environment where they feel their negative emotions are more tolerated.
  • Sometimes displacement of this nature can happen even when we don’t consciously *feel* angry. So yes, this means you can have a feeling, not register that you are having it, and then direct a release of it toward some other topic or person in your life. 
  • The trouble with displacement is we focus our attention, energy, and conversation around the focal point, at times without acknowledgement or awareness of the underlying issue(s) at hand. 
  • Unfortunately, even if we can “resolve” the displaced issue (in this example the conflict with our family), we haven’t resolved the core issue (work) and the recipient(s) of our displacement often leave the interaction(s) feeling like the other has been unreasonable.
  • If we are regularly displacing in our lives we run the risk of resentment in relationships, having the same fight repeatedly, believing our internal world is unreasonable, and feeling confused by or untrustworthy of our reactions. 
  • More in today’s post and comments about how displacement can creep into relationships and decrease our ability to solve problems in our lives. Also, tips for how to find displacement and what to do about it.

When we “displace” we focus our thoughts, communications and/or reactions to a “stand-in” person / object / situation as opposed to the actual person / situation we are having a reaction to. When someone says they feel treated like a punching bag, often they are describing being the recipient of someone else’s displaced feelings. 


Displacement can happen in lots of ways, imagine you and your spouse are in a fight about how the dishes are loaded in the dishwasher. More often then not those types of fights are a displacement of a different, larger, and more emotionally overwhelming topic. Instead of facing that topic head on, we can displace onto something more accessible and concrete, like how the dishes are loaded. In this scenario the intense emotions about a larger dynamic (could be anything, perhaps how heard one party feels) are displaced onto a smaller dynamic (how the dishes are loaded) that comes to represent the larger one.

Sometimes we can displace as a way of protecting ourselves from feelings we don’t want to have or believe we shouldn’t be having. At those times we can be fully wedded the the notion that we are having reactions to “the dishes” rather than some larger problem we don’t want to be true of our relationship or in our lives.


Other times when we displace, we may feel aware that the strength of our reaction doesn’t totally make sense. A helpful way to get to core of an issue when you suspect displacement is at play in yourself or others is to ask (in a collaborative, non-judgmental, and accepting manner):

  1. Can you articulate why there is so much emotion or heat around this topic?
  2. Does it feel like this type of thing happens in other ways we may not be discussing?
  3. What else happened today or recently that this reminds me of that I might also be having a reaction to? 
  4. Does it feel like we might really be talking about something or someone else here?

Until we can get to the core of the issues we face we are at risk of having the same underlying concern or conflict around “stand-in” topics. With curiosity and introspection we can work to understand and know ourselves better to catch displacement in the act, and get to addressing core underlying concerns.

Notes

  1. One of the reasons that therapy is effective is that a skilled therapist provides a space for someone to feel their feelings without judgment. The relationship becomes a safe place to release your emotions, and it’s not uncommon for patients to find themselves surprised by what comes out in a session. If this has happened to you in treatment this is often a great sign that you feel safe in your relationship with your therapist and they are helping you access, process through, and release what is already there and needs room to come out.
  2. Once we’ve gotten good at recognizing the signs of displacement in ourselves and can recognize when we’re displacing from one topic to another the displaced topic itself can become a helpful entry point into conversation. For example, “I’m noticing myself feeling angry about the dishes but as I think about it, I’m realizing it’s not just the dishes, it’s more that the dishes are one example of how I feel like I ask you to do something and it doesn’t happen. I think we really need to talk about this because I can tell I’m getting resentful”. 
  3. Affairs in relationships can happen for many reasons, but one avenue for thinking about them (and there are many others) is through the notion of displacement. If you are having an affair one of many questions you can ask to build introspection and awareness is what need aren’t you getting met from your partner or your life that you have displaced into this other relationship? 
  4. I mention in the post that sometimes we can feel like our reactions don’t totally make sense for the situation we are in. Sometimes this is because we are displacing, but all feelings are valid even if they are about numerous situations at the same time. See this post on the cumulative nature of emotions as well as this post on how our brains make associations for a deeper dive into that topic.
  5. I mention in the post that our feelings are harder to access in environments where they are not welcome including our internal world if we believe certain feelings are bad, unproductive, or unacceptable. See more here for how to approach your internal world in a way that won’t shut it down .
  6. I mention in the post that we can have an emotion and not register we are having it. It’s true. For more about how this works see this post on emotional blocking.
  7. Alcoholics Anonymous groups talk about displacement too, though they use the phrase “Coming out Sideways” to discuss how emotions or reactions can come out “sideways” to a focal point other than the core issue, problem, concern, or person. 
  8. Our insight into our use of displacement can vary even if we are otherwise self-aware and reflective. We can be very self-aware in some categories of our life and in some relationships, as less so in others. Further, we can displace more around certain types of issues than others. Our insight can vary based on a variety of factors including whether we’re in our window of tolerance, or when we’re operating outside of our limits.
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