WHAT CAN WE DO?

It’s getting worse.

I don’t have a solution either. But I would like to offer some ideas that may reduce our anxiety about this reality.

Why are conflicts so difficult to resolve? How are they eventually settled?

To appreciate the difficulties and what’s needed to solve things, we must understand the nature and dynamics of conflict. First, not every dispute is a conflict. Disagreeing about the “best basketball team” is not a conflict because a conflict involves intense negative emotions: anger, hurt, incompetence, distrust, feeling attacked, defensive, and guilty, among others.

However, a dispute about basketball can quickly become a conflict once it goes beyond statistics and becomes PERSONAL. Once we feel attacked, belittled, maligned, the focus suddenly shifts from the issues to defending ourselves. And often we defend by attacking the other, making things even worse. “How can you be so stupid as to think that such and such is the best? That’s absurd.”

Immediately our minds shut down to the information needed to understand each other and find resolution, and we focus instead on winning, on protecting our self-image, often by injuring the self-esteem of the person who threatened and attacked us. Trust, openness, and flexibility are gone. Hostility, aggression, and belligerence take over. Eliminating the required emotions and attitudes for resolution–understanding, agreeing, compromising, admitting error, granting points, turning down the heat, and looking for common ground. Imagine the stakes when the issue is not basketball but basic worth, survival, preserving something sacred.

Why do even the most kind, cooperative, and compassionate sometime respond that way? Because we’re programmed by nature to defend ourselves. It’s an automatic reaction, not a character flaw. And one of our most vulnerable properties, one we defend instantly, is our self-image. How we see our place and value in society, is one of the most precious assets we possess. It can provide comfort and security or anxiety and anguish. And that protection typically involves some predictable assumptions about us and the other side. First, it’s comforting to assume that we possess the COMPLETE TRUTH about the situation while our adversary is completely wrong. This gives us the delusion of a bulletproof, beyond reproach position. So there’s nothing to learn from them. How could there be when they’re completely wrong? Our role then becomes INSTRUCTING them. Which, as you can predict, insults them, increases tension, and blocks resolution. Next, we also assume that the other side is TOTALLY TO BLAME for this conflict. We did nothing wrong and have operated under the highest of motives. So THEY must make changes to resolve things while we dictate the CHANGES NEEDED. Once again, our role is to demand something of them, forcing them to take responsibility. While we totally absolve ourselves. How much cooperation would this attitude produce in our opponent? Finally, we assume that their INTENTIONS are MALICIOUS. They are not merely misunderstanding things; they are deliberately acting with pernicious intent to harm us. We “just” want to show them the “error of their ways”; they want to injure us.

Rarely do any of us have the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”, because we routinely engage in selective attention. Especially during a conflict, we “select in” the parts of the story that make us look good and “select out” the parts that would not look so good. That’s exactly why we need to listen and learn from each other. To effectively solve the conflict, rather than just “paper over” the problems, we must have a clear and specific understanding of what must change. To put it more bluntly, what we BOTH must do differently to change the current sources of the problems and actually create the conditions that enable us to get along better. Essentially, we must see and accept OUR PART in the problem, just as we need them to see and accept THEIR PART. Where do we find OUR PARTS? In the concerns of the other side. They will identify our contributions, just as we will identify their contributions to the problems. But, as we have seen,

our assumptions deny us that understanding. Again, when we believe we hold the “whole truth” and, therefore have nothing to learn from them, we don’t listen and learn. And we remain blind to the keys to a solution.

Again, rarely, if ever, are people in conflict aware of the assumptions they make about themselves and each other and the negative impact those beliefs have on any possible resolution. But tactful interviewing after the conflict is resolved often reveals such destructive, conflict intensifying beliefs. If people can go to “war” over basketball, imagine how negatively they see each other-and how blind they are to their part-in a battle over prized ideals, visions, futures, and how rigidly they hold onto those beliefs.

We are almost asking the impossible of them to resolve things. They both need to acknowledge the truth possessed by the other and the errors committed by themselves. They both must acknowledge their own CONTRIBUTIONS to producing these problems. And they must see that each others’ intentions may not have been malicious.

Fundamentally, we both have caused the conflict. (Yes, we may have made different levels of contributions to its origins.) So to solve it in a sustainable way, we must BOTH change our behavior, do something different in the relationship.

Do you see how self-image is key to resolution. Each must feel safe from derision, respected and seen as having worth and integrity, deserving of dignity. Safe enough to own our part without being shamed, confident that the good in us will be seen. But how do we get them to grant those necessities to each other? To resolve, EACH must GIVE and EACH must GET those emotional needs met. How is that accomplished? An example.

All day, every day people are solving conflicts without the help of a mediator. One or both wants to end the animosity and distance the conflict has produced. They want things to get back to “normal”. So one or both offers a RECONCILIATION GESTURE: a pleasantry, a kind word, a sofened stance, maybe even a sincere and effective apology. The other responds with a reconciliation move of their own. So continuing the dispute no longer feels like it’s worth the discomfort and antagonistic feelings it caused. They move on, feeling greatly relieved.

In cases where the parties have been unable to resolve on their own, a skilled marriage counselor would set the stage by talking about HOW to talk to each other to resolve things. First obtaining agreement about ground rules: no attacks, no deliberate insults, no interruptions. They are encouraged to try to fairly summarize each others’ views. Taking turns explaining what happened and what they feel. Hoping that by reducing the tensions, and maybe listening for the first time, they will begin to see each other and themselves differently. Hopefully, they will SOFTEN toward each other, dropping the hardened stance of battle. The counselor helps move things along by asking them to see the pain each other feels and the kindness extended. Gradually, they find some value in each other again and some incentives to resolve. A married couple has many incentives: their history, the kids, their shared possessions, their buried but hopefully not destroyed positive feelings about each other, their future.

During arguments, we feel vulnerable to attack, exposure to being wrong, the embarrassment of losing. A common defense is to dig into “black and white”, extreme thinking. “My position is beyond question because it’s correct in all ways and motivated only by the highest of purposes. While the other side has only ridiculous points and evil intentions.” This gives us the illusion of safety but actually increases the danger of prolonging the conflict. Under this delusion we feel justified to use any and all ways to prevail: extreme, unfounded accusations, distortions and even lies, becoming more aggressive-maybe not just verbally but also physically. The end, winning, justifies any means. This thinking makes us feel safer when we go into battle but increases the pressure on the other side to successfully break through our defenses by increasing their aggression.

The counselor is looking for opportunities to slow things down, get them to really listen, point out common ground, soften their emotions toward each other, correct misunderstandings, and narrow the distance between them, and most importantly begin to EMPATHIZE. The ultimate goal is to find a mutually agreed upon plan of action that will address the important concerns of both sides. Making both sides feel seen, heard, understood, and treated with respect.

Successful marriage counseling is extraordinarily difficult to carry out with just 2 people. Imagine how much more difficult resolution is when the conflict involves large groups who may not know or talk to each other- or have any positive history. Like different political, religious, racial, interest, or activist groups, let alone nations. Listen carefully to both sides in some national conflict and I promise that you will see those 3 damaging assumptions operating. Our leaders and national figures may be highly esteemed. But they are still human after all.

The challenge faced by lawyers and diplomats, for example, is far more difficult and complex than marriage counseling. But many of the psychological aspects explained above still operate in the humans involved in larger scale conflicts. There’s little if anything that most of us can do about the myriad of conflicts tearing our society apart. But hopefully, these principles can help you have more peace in your personal relationships, in your small part of the world where you do have much control.