Interpesonal Comunication and Conflict

When I find myself in a conflicting situation I don’t always use the same style to solve it. I use different methods when facing conflicts with my family than my friends. If you ask someone from my family about how I deal with conflicts they will say “ she get’s mad easily, and blames us for everything. Moreover, she never listens to what we say and she always wants to have the last word.“ However if you ask some of my friends you will hear a completely different answer “she is always peaceful and an empathic person who rarely gets mad.” In any case, I make unhealthy choices when solving my problems with both of these behaviors. After reading the “Interpersonal conflict and effective communication” article I would say that I use the empathy approach to resolve my problems when I am dealing with my friends but the denying and blaming approach when I am dealing with my family.

When I have a conflict with a friend, I tend to place myself in his/her shoes to understand him/her. I also try to use the ‘I’ statement to show them that they may be right and that I was wrong. When I try to understand the conflict from my friend’s perspective it helps me to open my mind and to respect his/her point of view without getting angry. Sometimes I just let him/her “win” to avoid the situation, using the defusing technique. However, sometimes I just avoid or deny conflicts with them instead of trying to address them and that tends to create problems in the future. Most of my friends think I never get mad and that everything is fine because I always try to avoid conflict. However, the problem still exists and I just keep it bottled up until I explode and I become angry, sometimes blaming the wrong person.

Something really different happens when I am dealing with someone from my family. Believe it or not, sometimes my behavior is the opposite when I am dealing with a conflict within my family. With my family I use to be the person who never listens to anyone, always getting mad and blaming everyone else. I used to lose my temper with them more often than my friends.

This article helped me understand a lot more about my behavior and how to deal with people in different situations. First of all I would try to balance my behavior between my family and friends. This way I will not bottle up my feelings and I will be able to solve conflicts in a peaceful way. One of the solutions I will try to use from the article is the mutually accord with the people I have a problem with. This would work well because I will try to trust and respect him/her, as well as have a positive, constructive attitude to be able to solve my problems in a peaceful way.