Conflict: Getting Mad, Getting Even and a Healthy Option…. Part 2

Conflict: Getting Mad, Getting Even and a Healthy Option…. Part 2

Let’s briefly review what I discussed in the last article on conflict. 

We all have beliefs about ourselves, others and how the world is. Some of those beliefs we have accepted from our parents during our upbringing and some are through lived experience. As we live, we reinforce and/or update our beliefs. In doing this, we sometimes do not have all the information at hand to make a realistic or relevant observation and thus are born contaminated beliefs. For instance a 4 year old girl may believe, ”All strangers are bad because the neighbour shouted at me”, though she may miss that she was in danger of being bitten by the dog. These messages are received, interpreted and stored by the subconscious mind. Like the submerged part of a glacier, our subconscious impacts our perception and interaction with the world without our direct awareness.

Our primary caregivers (parents most likely) have grown up similarly so they may pass on useful (relevant and realistic) beliefs to us, like the belief that the Earth is round, or “I can use thinking to solve problems”, or “It is OK to feel sad/happy/angry”. They may also pass on not-useful beliefs to us (irrelevant or unrealistic), for instance that the Sun revolves around the Earth, or “Drinking alcohol is useful when dealing with stress because that’s what mommy does” or that slavery is just. Our own lived experience and our inherited beliefs serve as our reference for interacting with the world. When we encounter someone who has different beliefs, we may experience conflict. Often their beliefs threaten our worldview, our existence as such, and we may feel we need to persecute these people. 

In the first article I left you with the invitation to observe your own beliefs and you may have noticed some already. The invitation was to observe your beliefs and ensuing dynamics with others without attributing judgement or meaning to these and it may have taken some letting go to allow these realisations of self!

The eventual outcome of this practice is an aware experience of life based upon realistic beliefs which are relevant to the situation in each moment. This process of observation and gradual change is ongoing. So where does one turn when one notices beliefs which may be unrealistic or irrelevant? How do we change something which may be so fundamental to our perceived being that we may in fact be partially blind to its ineptness? You might imagine this as trying to pick yourself up by the shoelaces! Perhaps then the shoelaces are not the place to start. 

By noting the unhelpful, irrelevant or not-useful beliefs, we have made the unconscious conscious. We afford ourselves more choice, authentic power and enjoyed experience by unloading the massive iceberg of the subconscious contaminated beliefs. We may work with a professional who can draw curious attention to these contaminations in a safe and trusting space, we are empowered to take control of our lives and free ourselves of suffering. Meditation is another means of this practice.

There are many ways of going about this process and each has its own merits. Professionals using an appreciative approach inspire one’s creativity to imagine/create desired reality and then pay focused attention to one’s being and beliefs in this new reality. 

It is like stepping into new shoes more suitable for the terrain!

A simple exercise you can do yourself is to recall two conflict experiences, one which was well resolved and another which could have gone better. Taking one scenario at a time, focus on the emotions, physical experience and thoughts all going on in the encounter. What were you expecting the outcome to be in each? What past experience justifies this expectation? What physical phenomena and pattern of thoughts can serve as markers you are about to go down a ‘one way street’ to unresolved conflict? What beliefs and expectations were helpful in resolving conflict?

Fundamentally what you are doing is noting recurring patterns of thinking, feeling and behaviour. Which ones are helpful and which ones not? The trick is to notice each and reproduce the helpful ones. It may take some time, but employing the helpful patterns in awareness when one encounters conflict is a start to truly taking control of your life.

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Conflict: Getting Mad, Getting Even and a Healthy Option…. Part I

Whether it is dealing with a moody family member, personal trauma or countering a danger to one’s country, we are faced as individuals and communities with many daily risks to our safety, patience, frame of reference and emotional harmony. 

Current global unrest serves to demonstrate continued thinking, feeling and behaviour when dealing with conflict, that if one is threatened one must retaliate. Often our paradigm is one of looking into the past to justify this behaviour, a question of “who started it?”, “who threw the first punch?”, “who didn’t accept an apology?” Often people use illogical beliefs about others which are handed down culturally or from our parents and preceding generations in attempting to cope. Some irrational beliefs about conflict and those who pose a ‘threat’ to us may be so entrenched in our subconscious that we fail to recognise them. This is due to having either accepted these beliefs as truths, from our parents, or having employed contaminated logic when making sense of a lived experience. The psychological lens through which we see the world may thus contaminate our behaviour, which then reinforces the stereotypes we have of others, in a cycle of negative feedback. 

It may firstly be useful to ask “why should I change my worldview or approach to conflict?”, as often we are so sure of our position and ‘comfortable’ in our paradigm that we aren’t aware that our beliefs are not serving us. There are a number of reasons for changing unhelpful conflict behaviour, ranging from improving our experience of life to our impact on humanity as a collective. It is easy to get philosophical on this, and in the interests of pragmatism let us maintain our focus on the real world experience of conflict and our responses to it. Conflict causes stress and prolonged, unresolved conflict causes chronic stress, which we obviously want to avoid. Resolving conflict efficiently and healthily impacts us directly and also feeds back into society in that we model positive and useful behaviour to those we engage with, who are thus invited to employ the same thinking and behaviour, and so on. One might imagine this process being passed from person to person in a positive feedback loop. 

So how do we objectively see those parts of ourselves, which in reality do not serve us? You might imagine this akin to looking in the mirror and seeing yourself differently! A useful start is recognising when we find ourselves facing the same problem repeatedly without change, that we are using out-dated and/or non-relevant thinking. We are then likely using thinking and beliefs which were once useful to us but are now redundant, or which were never useful to us in our lives but were passed to us from our forebears. Our beliefs are not necessarily learned or employed in awareness. Their presence can be noted when we react to stressful situations and use words like “typical”, “always” and “never” in the heat of the moment. It is impossible to cover all flavours of contaminated or irrelevant belief, but if we observe a recurring pattern in our relationships and interactions with others during conflict, it can be a strong clue that we are not thinking or acting from a place of useful awareness. 

A common pattern is reacting critically or angrily when experiencing a threat or making a judgement of someone. Unless the other party responds from a place of awareness and objective thinking, we may enter a negative feedback loop with them, a cycle of punishing and being punished. 

So how do we escape harmful patterns? 

As with many unhelpful behaviours, recognising their existence is a great start. Recognition however is not judgment as this is in itself punitive, merely another form of unhelpful thinking within the same paradigm. Recognition in this sense then is being aware of the dynamic between oneself and the other without judging or assigning meaning and value to it. This non-judged observation of the dynamic is useful in that we are unlikely to employ the same beliefs (in defending our behaviour or criticising the other’s) which we are aiming at shifting. 

In order to invite you to take ample time to observe your dynamic/beliefs/thinking, without judgment, I will address the next step in an upcoming article. You are also welcome to visit www.lifecoachcapetown.com for more info on how coaching can help you.