Gudrun Frerichs, PhD

Identifying Personal Responses to Conflict Situations

When it comes to dealing effectively with conflict situations, knowing about your own conflict style will come as a great help. Everybody reacts differently to conflict. Basically, how we react to conflict, what triggers conflict, and what constitutes vulnerable areas to could lead to conflict depends very much on a person’s history and his/her formative experiences in childhood. For example, growing up in a family where conflict often led to violence might cause a child to grow up dealing with conflict either by acting violently or by avoiding it altogether.

March Against ACC-Cuts

From October 27th, survivors of sexual violence will only be eligible for ACC funded counselling if they are first diagnosed with a mental illness.

Firstly, you don’t need to have a mental illness to need a few counselling sessions after going through a traumatic and disempowering experience. Why should a survivor miss out on services because he/she is not considered to be victimised enough?

Secondly, it shouldn’t be necessary to prove a mental state before being allowed access to services. Mental health diagnosis is not an exact science, particularly not with just the short sessions given for a psychiatric assessment. How many survivors will even feel comfortable talking about their abuse with a stranger from ACC whose only interest is seeing whether they have to fork out the cash?

8 Steps To Successful Conflict Resolution

I mentioned before that conflict arises when a person’s needs or expectations are not met. However, conflict does not just rest on a difference in needs but also on the negative meaning that people give an action or behaviour. Thus our perception and interpretation of a situation plays a large part in conflict.
Your partner comes home later than expected without calling you. You feel disappointed and hurt and are getting angry because you consider his actions disrespectful; he obviously doesn’t care about you; he can’t be bothered. You make a scene and accused him of all the things you just thought.

Conflict As An Opportunity Of Growth

Conflict is a normal occurrence. Whether you think of personal intimate relationships, friendships, or workplace relations, you can anticipate that conflict will happen sooner or later. It is unrealistic to expect that people have always the same needs, ideas, intentions, or plans. By finding constructive ways navigating through times in which you have a different position to your ‘partner’, you will be able to

• grow as a person
• arrive at a deeper understanding of any given situation
• learn about the other person and his/her needs
• will gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your important needs.

In a way, conflict can be understood as a result of resistance to one’s planned path of action or expected needs. Yet, rather than seeing it as a negative phenomenon, resistance has a life giving side to it. Life would be impossible without resistance. Indeed, resistance is not an impediment but the driving force for any progress and forward movement. Without resistance people cannot blow-dry their hair, cars don’t move, and people would slide off chairs.

When you experience resistance, you are given the opportunity to grow stronger within yourself as well as strengthen your relationships. Read on in the next post that explores “How to fight fair”.

What is Conflict?

Most people have a clear idea what conflict is. Most people don’t like conflict. In most cases conflict is difficult and hurtful for all parties involved.

Social theorist Axel Honneth explains the significant role conflict plays for a person’s healthy sense of identity and individualisation as follows: Individuals learn about who they are through interactions with others. Thus they derive a sense of self and identity through social processes of approval and recognition. 

Any forms of disrespect, for example rudeness, insult, humiliation, the withholding of care or support, the withholding of rights that are enjoyed by other members of society, discrimination, marginalisation, the lack of appreciation or acceptance for one’s way of life, abuse, rape, or torture cause a threat to a person’s integrity and self-development and could bring the whole identity of a person to a collapse.