{"id":1206,"date":"2023-02-20T13:19:37","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T13:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onelifeonly.net\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2023-03-06T11:14:11","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T11:14:11","slug":"how-to-be-successful-in-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/how-to-be-successful-in-conflict\/","title":{"rendered":"How to be successful in conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Nathan Chua<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have heard it said before that couples who don\u2019t fight, don\u2019t talk either.\u00a0 The same thing can be said about families and friends.\u00a0 We can be so averse to conflict that we often opt out of talking about them.\u00a0 I often hear couples demand that their partners should have as similar wants as they do.\u00a0 My partner should already know what I want and asking for it will make me look pathetic.\u00a0 In our culture, it is quite common to see couples come to seek therapy due to the long periods where there have been so many bottled up emotions.\u00a0 In this article, I will share with you some things you can try to help you prevent conflicts that can either drive you apart because of a major fight, or make you imperceptibly drift apart.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tune in to your feelings\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In contrast to what most of us might believe, conflict can actually be healthy in close relationships.\u00a0 It\u2019s really how we handle them that can make a difference.\u00a0 One way to avoid escalating conflicts is for us to tune in to the deeper feelings that are hidden in our efforts to protect ourselves from exposing our vulnerabilities.\u00a0 In many challenging situations, we are often unaware that we have mixed emotions.\u00a0 A good example to use is when we lose someone in death.\u00a0 Most of us believe that the only legitimate emotion that we should feel is sadness.\u00a0 Yes, that is true.\u00a0 Sadness would most likely be first on our list.\u00a0 But some of us end up unable to accept the grieving process believing that we are somehow defective for having other feelings like guilt, anger, or even relief at the idea that the burden of caretaking has been lifted out of us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In relationships, it is legitimate to feel anger or irritation with our loved ones. Tuning into ourselves involves discovering the other feelings that we might be missing.\u00a0 Are there other feelings involved here?\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">See for yourself if showing just one side of you to your partners is helping you come to a resolution.\u00a0 If not, maybe it is time to let your partners see those other sides of you.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For some, the angry side is what the loved ones want to see.\u00a0 Maybe our indifferent attitude has made them think that they don\u2019t matter.\u00a0 At least seeing our anger tells them they matter.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In case you lose it\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then there might be times when you just couldn\u2019t help but go back to your old ways of handling the situation.\u00a0 You very well know that you\u2019ve gone away from what you would like to be in the situation.\u00a0 Listen to your senses, if it doesn\u2019t feel like you like yourself in those situations, then waste as little time as possible and make amends.\u00a0 Begin an open and honest conversation about it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One thing I help couples to realize in the counseling room is that the work they do does not guarantee that they will never make mistakes.\u00a0 It is impossible to expect near perfection.\u00a0 They can accept that these are tendencies that the relationship will probably evoke in each of them when there are major challenges and changes.\u00a0 Couples and relatives can ask themselves one thing to recover from such ill-fated arguments.\u00a0 Has anything changed in what they value?\u00a0 Have their deepest aspirations for themselves in their relationships become different?\u00a0 Chances are they have not.\u00a0 Their values remain the same.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I recall one of Dr. Steven Hayes\u2019 analogy of how we are in times of challenges.\u00a0 He reminds us of what we were like as toddlers.\u00a0 Toddlers fall down countless times experiencing, at times, excruciatingly painful wounds just to learn how to walk.\u00a0 Well, we\u2019ve all been toddlers before.\u00a0 We can remind ourselves that before we had language, we kept on standing up when we fell.\u00a0 There were no rules that told us what we can or cannot do.\u00a0 The only thing we instinctively did was to stand up again and walk toward what matters to us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Say you\u2019re sorry and do it over again.\u00a0 We are all a work in progress.\u00a0 Perfection is not what we were built for.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why we are all called simply, to be human. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Nathan Chua I have heard it said before that couples who don\u2019t fight, don\u2019t talk either.\u00a0 The same thing can be said about families and friends.\u00a0 We can be so averse to conflict that we often opt out of talking about them.\u00a0 I often hear couples demand that their partners should have as similar &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/how-to-be-successful-in-conflict\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How to be successful in conflict<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3,8,6,7,10,38,43,42,9,59,41],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-counseling","tag-counseling-manila","tag-counseling-philippines","tag-counseling-quezon-city","tag-couples-counseling","tag-couples-therapy","tag-face-to-face-counseling","tag-in-person-counseling","tag-marriage-counseling","tag-marriage-counselor","tag-online-video-counseling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1212,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/1212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}