Everyone, everywhere goes through conflict. You might be a leader, a family member, in school, where ever, doesn’t matter at some point, at some time you will have to face conflict with someone. It’s unavoidable unless you don’t deal with people. Now, everyone, depending on how they were brought up handles conflict differently, I want to spend the next few blog posts here at Live love diving into conflict because it is a part of everything we do, all of our relationships and many people are hurting because we don’t understand it, we avoid it or we simply think we have a handle on it, when we really don’t.
There are three ways I see people dealing with conflict, the first is implosive. Perhaps in their home no one spoke up, no one really expressed their feelings openly or they weren’t allowed to so they carry around this learned behavior too. The implosive person does not like conflict, they avoid it at all costs, every time any of their relationships have any type of tension they choose the path of least resistance, choosing to carry the burdens internally, hurting themselves emotionally but also hurt the other person because they don’t tell the other person how they really feel, at least not yet!
The second is explosive. Perhaps this person had a loud family, everything was aired out verbally, often, no matter what it was, it was said, loud and proud so they learned this behavior. The explosive person doesn’t avoid conflict, they engage in it and will seek it out if they even sniff tension between them and someone else, sometimes they might instigate a situation just to get the conflict going because to them tension and verbal conflict is how problems get solved. They need to tell you how they feel, openly, loudly, with time, if not controlled and tamed this behavior can be very abusive and hurtful causing many relationships to be distant or shallow.
The third is simply passive, balanced and mature, very rare, quiet most of the time, will speak when they have to but not concerned with winning an argument, more concerned with solving the problem. As John Maxwell says, “You don’t get rid of conflict you just help people get through it”
How do you deal with conflict? Share your thoughts.
