This is a piece I have been thinking about a lot lately given the nature of my job as a program specialist. I do a lot of mediating IEP meetings and trying to help teams of parents and educators resolve differences of opinion about the needs of a child and services the school should provide to meet those needs. I hope you like it as well as I do.
TEN REASONS WE GET STUCK IN CONFLICT
By Kenneth Cloke
[From Kenneth Cloke, Into the Heart of Conflict, Janis Publ, 2006]
There are undoubtedly thousands of reasons we become stuck in impasse and unable to end our conflicts. Here are my top ten, to which you can add your own:
First, conflict defines us and gives our lives meaning. Having an enemy is a quick, easy source of identity, because we are whatever they are not. By defining our opponents as evil, we implicitly define ourselves as good. Our opponents’ apparently demonic behaviors allow us to appear -- if not angelic by comparison -- at least poor, innocent victims who are entitled to sympathy and support. Yet identifying ourselves as victims leaves us feeling powerless to resolve our disputes and encourages us to spiral downward into an abyss of fear, pain, anger, and self-righteousness from which it becomes more and more difficult to escape. It makes our opponents seem worse and ourselves better than we actually are. It causes us to lose perspective, resist learning, and hold onto unrealistic expectations.
Second, conflict gives us energy, even if it is only the energy of anger, fear, pain, jealousy, guilt, grief, and shame. We can become addicted to the adrenaline rush, the flash-point intensity, and intimacy of combat. Yet this energy is ultimately debilitating, providing a quick stimulus that dies just as quickly, in place of the healthier, longer-lasting energy that comes from compassion, collaboration, and honest, empathetic communication. This negative energy keeps us stuck and deepens our suffering, causing us to pay a steep physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual price in deteriorated health, peace of mind, anxiety, and unhappiness.
Third, conflict ennobles our misery and makes it appear that we have suffered for a worthwhile cause. Without conflict, we may feel we suffered in vain, and be forced to critique our choices and regret the wasted lives we’ve led. Yet the effort to assign higher meaning to our suffering encourages us to justify its’ continuation, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own abusive behaviors serve some higher purpose. It causes us to get angry at people who suggest alternatives, and encourages us to hold on to our suffering rather than learn from it, let it go, and move on to more collaborative, less hostile relationships.
Fourth, conflict safeguards our personal space and encourages others to recognize our needs and respect our privacy. For many of us, conflict seems the only way of effectively declaring our rights, securing the respect of others, restoring our inner balance, and protecting ourselves from boundary violations. Yet conflict also creates false boundaries, keeps out those we want to let in, substitutes declarations of rights for satisfaction of interests, secures respect based on fear rather than personal regard, and creates justifications for counter-attack and continued abuse. It erects walls that separate and isolate us from each other and prevent us from collaboratively negotiating the use of common space, being authentic, or finding out who we, or they, actually are.
Fifth, conflict creates intimacy, even if it is only the transient, negative intimacy of fear, rage, attachment, and loss. Every two-year old knows it is better to be noticed for doing something wrong than not to be noticed at all. Yet negative intimacy is ultimately unsatisfactory because it prevents us from finding positive intimacy in its stead. Many relationships are sustained by invalidating, insulting, conflict-laden communications that simultaneously bring us together and keep us apart, frustrate our efforts to get closer and undermine the lasting intimacy we really want based on positive regard, mutual affection, trust, and shared vulnerability.
Sixth, conflict camouflages our weaknesses and diverts attention from sensitive subjects we would rather avoid discussing. It is a smokescreen, a way of passing the buck, blaming others, and distracting attention from our mistakes. Yet doing so cheats us out of opportunities to learn from our mistakes, makes us defensive, diminishes our integrity, and reduces our capacity for authentic, responsible relationships. It impedes our willingness to address real issues, and diverts our awareness from sensitive subjects, falsely magnifying their importance and effect.
Seventh, conflict powerfully communicates what we honestly feel, allowing us to vent and unload our emotions onto others. Many of us assuage our pain by externalizing it and passing it to others. While venting allows us to reduce our own emotional suffering, it increases stress in others, fails to communicate our respect or regard for them, and does not encourage either of us to take responsibility for our choices or address what got us upset in the first place. Venting communicates disrespect, encourages defensiveness and counterattack, escalates underlying conflicts, and does not accurately express what we are capable of when we are with someone who is genuinely listening and caring.
Eighth, conflict gets results. It forces others to heed us, especially faceless bureaucrats, clerks, and “service representatives,” who only seem to respond to our requests or do what we want when we yell at them. But yelling turns us into angry, insensitive, aggravated people and adds unnecessary stress to the lives of unhappy, alienated, powerless, poorly paid employees who are compelled to pointlessly accept our wrath. It turns us into “bullies,” and gets us less in the long run than we could by politely requesting their assistance and eliciting their desire to be helpful. It discourages us from being genuine and open, and produces outcomes that undermine what we really want.
Ninth, conflict makes us feel righteous by encouraging us to believe we are opposing evil behaviors and rewarding those that are good. Our opponents’ pernicious actions justify us in giving them what they “rightly deserve.” Yet righteousness is easily transformed into self-righteousness, and good and evil are far more complex, subtle, and nuanced than we are prepared to admit. (For a discussion, see Chapter 11.) Engaging in conflict reduces our capacity for empathy and compassion, and allows us to cross the line from punishing evil to committing it ourselves. It makes us haughty, judgmental, and superior, and less able to be humble, accepting, and egalitarian in our relationships.
Tenth, conflict prompts change, which feels better than impasse and stagnation. Many changes only take place as a result of conflict – not because it is actually necessary to achieve a given result, but because people’s fear and resistance make it so. Yet conflict also prompts resistance to change, which can be more successfully overcome through inclusion, collaborative dialogue, and interest-based negotiations. Adversarial conflict stimulates a backlash dedicated to minimizing its gains and polarizing those who might otherwise become its supporters. Worse, as a means, it undermines the ends to which it is dedicated. While the deepest and most consequential changes actually require conflict, understanding this requirement allows us to design strategies to transform criticisms into suggestions for improvement and increase our skills and effectiveness as change agents.
Thus, while there are many excellent reasons for engaging in adversarial conflicts, there are even better ones for resolving them and collaborating with our opponents in informal problem solving, unrestricted dialogue, and interest-based negotiations. While adversarial conflicts produce beneficial outcomes, they also result in alienation, defensiveness, counter-attack, and resistance. Worse, they create a quality of energy and attitude that give an appearance of strength, while actually sapping it. This weakness makes it more difficult to solve common problems, engage each other constructively, and learn what our conflicts are trying to teach us.
There is really only one great, constructive use of adversity, and that is to open our eyes and ears, minds and hearts, and force us to pay attention to what is happening within, around, and between us. Our conflicts are our teachers and liberators because they invite us to wake up and become aware of what we have not yet learned or transcended. They expose our internal myths, assumptions, antagonisms, misunderstandings, emotional triggers, false expectations, and hidden weaknesses. They direct our attention to wounds we desperately need to heal, and problems we urgently need to solve. As Carl Jung presciently wrote, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
Conflict is therefore simply the sound made by the cracks in a system, whether the system is personal, familial, relational, organizational, social, economic, or political. It is a warning light pointing at something in our environment or character that is not working for ourselves or others. It is an opportunity for rethinking and innovation. It is the birth-pang of a new way of being that is waiting to be born. It is a reminder of our interdependence, of the skills we need to improve, of what is most important in life, of what we need to do or let go of in order to escape its’ orbit and evolve to higher levels of conflict.
The principal difficulty with conflict is that it defines us, usually in the wrong ways; that is, for ourselves and against others, rather than for ourselves and with others, against our common problems. It deprives us of deep, profound, heart-felt relationships that can only develop through dialogue, problem solving, and collaborative negotiation. It traps us in ancient, profitless, destructive stories that cannot resolve, transform, or transcend what got us into conflict in the first place.
