There are no living, meaningful relationships without conflicts, disagreements and different points of view in the family is a sign of life, but conflicts need to use correctly – how, says psychologist Ekaterina Burmistrova.
Photo: Mikkel Vang / Gardena
- “The family crazy not together but one at a time”
- Modern family: no one promised it would be easy
- “When I asked where dad, mom was done like this.”
- Reconciled with the children before bedtime and don’t sacrifice yourself
- “I hate you!” and other angry phrases your child
A typical conflict – our favorite “rake”
What do we know about the conflict, about what gives unpleasant feelings and sensations? Because it is very important to understand how the conflicts in our family so it was emotionally easier to be around those who are dear to us.
In conflict situations there are many strong, negative emotions, and they always interfere with understanding – we don’t react like you want, not the way we think is right, and so, as can being under the influence of emotions.
Ekaterina Burmistrova
Often in a relationship that is in conflict, we feel very lonely, there is a feeling that lost contact with loved ones. Negative emotions contribute to reactivity, affect, misunderstanding.
A huge number of normative conflicts occur in the first years of family life. Not only because it happens when kids grow up, when, for example, go to school. Can be a typical conflict of the day or on the day of receiving the salary. Perhaps your family has a typical conflict associated with the arrival of someone from older relatives or can I go to visit someone from the adult one.
Very often, conflicts are predictable, but we do not seem to want to understand that, now again everything will be repeated.
Normative conflict is easy to predict, it is our “favorite rake”, which we are coming. It’s repetitive conflicts we know about them, but for some reason are unable to get them.
The spot or thrown socks can be a trigger
A trigger is a trigger of the conflict, the last straw, little situation that triggers a much greater emotional response than we expected. It can be bread crumbs on the floor or the book is not put into place or not put there. A speck on the toilet, or the infamous socks thrown the wrong way, or call someone from older relatives – all this can also be a trigger.
Within one family all triggers understandable, but if you move slightly away and look at the situation from a different distance, each trigger in the family’s own story. A forgotten promise once could be absolutely safe in the relationship, but gradually, due to repetitive situations, misunderstanding and lack of discussion, it triggers a painful trigger, which is like a callus as it peels the scab.
Every family has its own set of typical triggers. For example, in the family always was very nervous and shouting when he crashed something from the dish. Or always been made to solve the financial difficulties emotionally, sharply, relentlessly. It is the triggers that came in the “chest inheritance”.
To determine your own personal triggers – that breaks, explodes, ignites, ignites, and triggers you as a couple, or relations “parent-child” is a very big step. I think that the very right to begin to change the weather at home by identifying the main triggers.
In different periods of family life triggers, of course, different. Most of the easy triggers occur in the first years of marriage, at the time of lapping. Family is just starting out, there is a huge love and lots of positive emotions, but there are a lot of misunderstandings due to domestic, economic, financial, role-playing situations. As a rule, after two-three years of marriage, if people do not leave, the level of these triggers goes on the wane.
Wife loves flowers, but something makes him ignore it
Sometimes the trigger is the basis of conflict, which later becomes a global misunderstanding. But if you take the core of the conflict and to understand what, in fact, so much deprive of balance, can become a little easier.
What is interesting is that usually after two or three years of marriage, the man knows very well the things that can ruffle the middle, he knows his triggers. Much worse the average person knows what he himself brings balance is one of the features of family life and intimate relationships: a period of life we begin to see another better than ourselves.
Knowledge of these triggers can be used as a benefit because understanding that can unbalance the middle, able to reduce the number of conflicts. But sometimes you want to strike a painful blow at a vulnerable point, to use my knowledge of the Achilles ‘ heel of a husband, wife, older relative – press on the sore spot.
For example, a typical trigger men. He knows that his wife loves when she presented with flowers, and if he forgets to bring her flowers on some marked day – Valentine’s day, March 8, in the wedding anniversary – wife. He knows that there will be a feeling of distance, but something causes him to ignore this knowledge, and the trigger presses the trigger, which launches the wife accusing reaction.
Trigger entering the patient’s point – it’s a sniper’s story, which can be used in a relationship. No one can hurt as a man with whom live a few years.
It seems to be okay, but if you constantly press on the sore spot, the relationship will inevitably deteriorate. I am absolutely convinced that knowledge about triggers can be used for good, to improve relations.
It is not clear, but annoying
Maybe it’s unclear why one of the household chores causes irritation or distress – for example, Ironing, wiping dust, cooking a particular dish. People don’t understand why he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t have the actual memories, at what point he became so offensive.
But if you focus on what is not clear, but is annoying, it is almost always possible to remember those moments when this situation started. Let’s say you were Ironing clothes, thought, got distracted and burned the shirt, and someone in your family has reacted sharply, accusing, an unpleasant emotion, which are stuck together by law of the Association with the process of Ironing. And the sooner this story was, there are more irrational may be an aversion to a particular activity.
Unfortunately, the regulatory, the recurring conflict for married couples is to refuse physical intimacy. This is a fairly common situation, much more common than people think. The husband initiates the intimacy, the wife refuses, it would not respond. He is offended, she pulls away even more. With such a conflict to do?
And have the knowledge on normative conflicts and triggers can help. Before thinking that the love is gone, think why this situation repeats itself with amazing frequency, in a particular circumstance?
Maybe the rejection of proximity occurs when in another sphere of life has accumulated some dissatisfaction, a sense of remoteness, or is it just physical fatigue? Typically all these unpleasant interactions and are perceived as a lack of love or lack of heat, have their own history.
The emotional temperature of a marriage
All families are different, and each happy family is happy in its own way, but you can define a typical point of failure, puncture, heat loss, energy interaction. “Emotional temperature” marriage is about the fact that your pair is normal and what is failure.
There is incredible family, they don’t even understand where the triggers where normative conflicts, they just live. It’s like a bright Italian cinema – a lot of emotions, raised voices, violent gestures, and acute experience. But if people are so agreed, if both it is ideal if the emotional temperature of the relationship was such from the beginning, maybe for them it is normal, for them it is not a failure. And there are families where even raising the intonation of a semitone, or raised eyebrow are already a demonstration of the conflict.
“Emotional temperature” marriage in which you are comfortable, which you might have been looking for, is not suitable to anyone else, it is only yours, but it is important that it will suit you and your partner.
I suggest to make a table of observations, in order to understand what triggers work and what regulatory conflicts derive your marriage from a normal temperature range, any conflicts you have repeated with enviable regularity.
For most people filling this kind of table is very useful. Need to make a table where columns are days of the week and the line is hours, the cells must be large enough. You can use any kind of planner – I in this case, especially in the first week of observation, like paper and write out your differences: “At 9 am, had a falling out over the fact that I didn’t buy bread. At 7 p.m., silent is not good due to the fact that it is not decided who will test the lessons with the son.”
Great if you don’t do it alone, and to the observation of normative conflicts connect all who are willing – it can be all adults and children older than 9 years.
There are families in which the tables seem too boring. You can use other ways of fixing conflicts. Let’s say you choose five colors and colored sticky glue leaves to the refrigerator every time when there is a conflict of a particular type. It turns out bright, colorful, very impressive calendar conflicts. You can, of course, to do this electronically.
For some it’s a sad idea, so around solid film, and then there’s conflict record. The horror! I responsibility I can say that generally the dynamic observation works is that after a week, write nothing.
How to brake on a yellow
How to behave at different stages of the conflict, when you only learn when you do not know how to stop them? Understanding that in certain periods of time you happen recurring conflicts, quite a lot gives. You have the opportunity to prepare, regroup and not fall into complete bitterness, frustration, or aggression.
I have in one of the books – “Irritability. Methods of overcoming” – is the metaphor of a “traffic light of emotion”: the green light is a calm state, the red light is an emotional explosion, emotional, flash, and yellow light is something in between, when there is no peace, but there is no loss of control, emotions have not overwhelmed.
Once you learn to observe where these conflicts you wait, in what moments of life you can try to stay in the yellow zone, not to fall into irritation, frustration, depression or aggression. This is how to slow down on yellow, not to slip further. This is how to use the demo version of the conflict and not go to the full version.
In order to stay in the yellow zone and not to be in the field of normative conflict, it is important to try not to forget that the person you entered is a complex interaction, not the enemy and not the enemy.
Indeed, in the period when the triggers work, when we get into the field of action of regulatory conflict and negative interactions, we begin to see those close to it. Remember, a great metaphor of Andersen’s fairy tales “the snow Queen” when the trolls were carrying a mirror high above the ground and then it broke and the shards hit someone in the eye, someone in your heart someone in the head.
Conflict acts as valid a piece of the Troll mirror in the Andersen story. When a splinter enters our eyes, and we are not held in the yellow zone, we begin to speak is not what we usually think and feel about your spouse, child or the employee – even the words of others and the tone is different. It is very important to try to understand what kind of text you think or say – who he is, where he’s from, what period of your personal life, your biography, or “chest inheritance”?
Many things can’t be turned off, not realizing where they come from, how they started in your life. The text in the conflict has a voice and someone’s intonation. It’s not you, when you start talking to a hysterical tone, as the hero of a movie or the heroine of some novel.
If you remember adolescence, many girls begin to behave like the characters, as Scarlett O’hara from the novel gone with the wind is the identification with the characters and repetitions of the text. But the most important characters are our parents, those with whom we grew up, what their intonation we reproduce in the conflict.
Three steps to overcome conflict
Step 1. Be aware of what normative conflicts present in your life. To stop using the policy of the ostrich.
Sometimes, in order to make themselves appear successful in the eyes of the people look like a beautiful couple, like a picture from a glossy magazine, we themselves and to others do not admit that there are conflicts. Thus, we regulatory conflicts are given a serious weapon.
Step 2. To give the conflict a name and to discuss the implications of this type of conflict.
For example, the conflict over the verification of the lessons familiar to families who have pupils – the school system is now such that parents are heavily involved in it, and a standard of normative conflict for many is associated with academic performance. If you can to this conflict to give a humorous title, all will become easier. It might be “another two” or “Evening meeting”, or “Rooks have arrived”.
As soon as something is named, charged as soon as the situation is fixed, it immediately becomes less scary. Sometimes people’s names are difficult, not all are easily called kittens, dolls, children, but conflicts can be numbered. For example, “card no. 17” – came a grandmother, and then at a neutral time to discuss how the “card no. 17” affects our relationship.
Step 3. To talk at a neutral time, not seeking to blame.
During the conflict says it all erased, not perceived as information. As is the lack of Internet – not a picture, bad sound, and there are generally no communication. When work emotions when people are in conflict interaction, no connection. Information is not just perceived, it goes to spam.
Often, the best way is to break contact and interaction for the sake of the relationship.
The plan of salvation
If nothing happens, if you read all this, but there is no possibility to implement it in life, what to do? What could be the plan of salvation? We are not robots, and we can’t immediately begin to apply all the tips. Emotional training and re-training, in fact, not fast, energy-intensive, it happens to back out, but it’s absolutely possible.
Until you learn, until you change, until you are using certain practices to resolve conflicts, you can use the “Plan of salvation”. The oxygen mask yourself first, get into the feeling yourself, return yourself if you are not in a green zone when you are absolutely calm, at least in yellow. And again: try to remember that your neighbor is not your enemy.
It is very difficult to help another if you yourself are not in the resource or in the red. It is very difficult to think about the middle and support if you yourself are practically de-energized, motivation or knocked out one or another normative conflict.
Sometimes the number of conflicts is increasing not because it is bad in a relationship that was love, but because the husband or wife is just going through a rough period of life. Sometimes it’s the women’s post-partum depression, sometimes in men is depression associated with career, work and amount of responsibility. Sometimes it’s age transition, one of the crises of adults.
The most important thing is not only a conflict analysis, and the organization of comfortable communication in the family, the organization of the oases, moments of respite. If you only think about conflicts, it may be a feeling that everything is hopeless and not move.
Sometimes we can not understand the trigger, I can’t immediately unpack the normative conflict, then you need to start with the other side to think, at what times and periods you can be good when you are great together, when do you rest, when you feel that the middle is not an enemy, and he whom you have chosen once at the start of the relationship, and with whom you are well.
Read more about how family life and how we can build, given its own characteristics and desires, in the basic online course Michael and Catherine Burmistrov “Guide to a harmonious family life”