Healthy Ways to Navigate Conflict this Holiday Season
Navigating conflict is an irreplaceable social skill, contributing to more satisfying relationships and higher self-confidence. Still, with the holidays upon us, people tend to treat conflict like an elephant in the room. They can feel the anticipation of dinner table or living room conversations building inside them. Sometimes, people decide to skip gatherings or avoid relatives altogether.
Stress abounds in American families. For example, an Urban Institute study suggests more than 1 in 5 children grow up in a stressful family environment. While learning how to navigate conflict better isn’t a silver bullet, it can go a long way toward reducing collective stress levels. In fact, it could be just the New Year’s resolution that everyone can get behind.
What’s your conflict style? (And yes, you have one.)
Knowing how you approach conflict naturally is a great way to engage in it with more confidence, as well as busting the more common misconceptions. For example, many of us think that conflict is always a zero-sum game where someone has to lose, and are surprised when we learn this isn’t the case.
And when it comes to “avoiding” conflict, there’s really no such thing if we’re in a close relationship with someone. Avoidance means we bypass the chance to resolve it healthily and collaboratively, increase the chance that resentment builds, and make it almost inevitable that the conflict eventually bursts out into the open after building up over time.
The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument suggests there are five main conflict “styles”:
Competing, which is close to the zero-sum game, and often seen in business environments
Avoiding, which may work for superficial relationships or particularly delicate situations but often isn’t sustainable long-term
Collaborating, where both sides use constructive communication and active listening to reach a resolution
Accommodating, which is often where one side effectively makes concessions at their own expense to end a conflict
Compromising, which involves a “give-and-take” style of managing a conflict. Like avoiding and competing, it may work for some kinds of relationships and situations, but not for others
While everyone may have a “natural” style according to their personality, it’s often at your discretion to decide which style to use. For example, if the conflict stems from a topic of discussion at the dinner table, you might choose to accommodate or even avoid.
There’s also a difference between conflict management and conflict resolution. The terms are often used interchangeably, but aren’t necessarily so. Resolution seeks closure that everyone is satisfied with. Management tries to help the parties involved navigate repeated disagreements when they come up.
Think about conflict management as being applicable to problems that really can’t be solved, and the main goal is for some kind of a relationship to function. Resolution is for problems that can be solved, where harmony between people is what is desired.
Decide which priority is most important according to the situation. Around the holidays, you might consider that you only see someone you don’t get along with a few times a year. In this case, is function more important than harmony – even if it means sticking to the superficial? That’s up to you.
Management can also work in close relationships, especially if you know a repeated conflict will come, like a financial disagreement over holiday budgets with your spouse or partner.'
What we get wrong about conflict
Most people have at least some sense of how they approach conflict. On one polar end, some people dive into it head on. Others avoid it as much as possible, to the point of placating other people and/or ignoring their own needs. Many of us are somewhere in between, not necessarily backing down from defending ourselves, but usually expressing the desire to “keep the peace” or for everyone to “just get along.”
Regardless of the generation we grew up in, children are normally socialized to expect quick fixes to conflict on the playground or in school: they apologize, if grudgingly, and make up within minutes. The parents’ and teachers’ intentions behind this were usually good – and after all, fighting over a toy truck in the sandbox is fairly low stakes.
But an unintended side effect is that we’re often well into adulthood before we realize that most situations, and in turn most conflicts, are usually pretty complicated, no matter how simple they seem on the surface.
The bottom line: As human beings, we’re wired to seek to get our basic needs for survival and belonging met. And because everyone sees the world at least somewhat differently from other people and processes situations in their own way, it’s inevitable that we’ll often be at odds.
With that in mind, conflict is actually healthy. It isn’t so much whether or not it happens, but how we handle it.
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Written by James Benjamin, Communications and Social Media Associate at The Mental Health Emergency Fund, Inc.
Check out his work at www.james-benjamin.com
