Judgments, Defensiveness, Undercurrents, Festering & Fairness

JUDGMENTS, DEFENSIVENESS, UNDERCURRENTS, FESTERING & FAIRNESS
By
William Cottringer, Ph.D.

Sooner or later conflict occurs in any relationship. A particularly difficult conflict is when one person thinks or acts one way about something that is diametrically opposed to the other person’s point of view. This is often the situations where one person perceives and judges something to be negative, while the other one sees the same thing as positive. Both think he or she is right and the other person is wrong and of course the issue is important enough to fight over who is right and who is wrong.

Usually the reasons behind the perceptions and judgments go unexplained while the emotions get warmed up and make the rational justifications more difficult to express without defensiveness, which always makes the conflict worse. This type of conflict seems to yield some questions about a person’s basic character and degree of likeability or unlikeability, which adds more emotional fuel to the fire. And such conflicts certainly push the two people into a corner as to how they prefer to deal with such conflict.

Although the positive vs. negative flavor difference is always a conflict waiting to happen, there is usually much more to this situation that the judgments, defensiveness, undercurrents and festering will bring about when the potential conflict is not discussed openly, honestly and assertively and be done so sooner rather than later.

Last night I didn’t sleep because my mind was involved with a self-discussion about this sort of conflict that I have experienced before, but never effectively resolved. I think it is the type of conflict that the more two people talk about, the deeper in feelings they get which clouds any real understanding of what is going on or why. There are so many relevant, unknown factors that go unspoken but always get wrongly interpreted and added to. And there are so many things to learn about yourself and the other person in these situations, that is often missed.

The conflict that kept me awake last night had to do with an interview Oprah was doing with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the best-seller Eat, Play and Love. I immediately disliked the lady and was harshly vocal about it (without giving my many reasons of course), and then made a critical mistake by adding, “I certainly hope you can’t identify with this wandering, confused lady” to my wife.

Of course, her assertive comment to me was “Do you think I would tell you after that remark?” That shut me up but then the defensiveness, undercurrents, and festering began on both sides! And they will always continue to grow into a major problem if not dealt with by the two people with open communication, with permissions to think and speak without any fear of further judgments or tangled emotionality. Fortunately this one was discussed the next day and at resolved with honest ownership of wrong interpretations and reactions and of course more relevant information to explain the judgments.

A big part of this type of conflict is that when we make a judgment based on what we think are sound reasons (especially the personal experiences we can relate to!), we don’t want to be challenged that we are wrong. The greater the intimacy of the two people and the stronger the investments each has with the issue and the preferred conflict outcome, the higher the emotions run and the more difficult the communication becomes. This is when a sound foundation of good communication helps when the really difficult conflicts come.

This type of “I am right about this for good reasons and you are wrong about it for bad reasons” conflict involves many different scenarios but the growth lessons we can learn are similar. Here are some heavy heart lessons learned from having the courage to explore such very core, emotionally-charged conflicts:

1. It is much easier to do everything but what works in these potentially lose-lose, volatile arguments, such as becoming combative and aggressive, sulking and walking away, or going underground and responding in a passive aggressive way. All these approaches just build more resentments and keep the conflict going. The only thing that feels good is when both people communicate openly, honestly and assertively—in other words perfectly! We all know that is easier said than done, but we still must keep trying. The real trouble is once we have taken things too emotionally personal, it becomes hard to talk about them unemotionally and impersonally, which is essential for a win-win outcome.

2. Although you really may not have that much control over having impulsive judgments, especially the negative ones you are fairly certain on, you can become more sensitive to how you express them. You can do this by learning how to communicate these emotionally-charged judgments with as much rationality as you can muster, while avoiding the things that typically turn the climate to a defensive one, making the situation worse. The things to try and avoid are flavoring the conversation with superiority, one-up judgment about the judgment, over-certainty, dishonesty of any sort, insensitivity or close-mindedness.

3. The smarter you get, the more certain you become about things you have experienced firsthand or even thought about with any degree of serious effort. However, a humble realization that takes the edge off of appearing to be an expert know-it-all, is that we often find out what we think we know isn’t always so. We easily over-embrace beliefs that oddly remain quite resistive to compelling evidence to the contrary. When two people are equally sure they are right in what they are thinking, they both are probably a little wrong and missing something important. Acknowledging that reality is often the smartest thing you can do to use your intelligence wisely.

3. Another good realization to have is that it’s not as much what you think you know that counts as how you feel about what you think you know. Sometimes, when you can reduce the temperature of the feeling, you may find out you really don’t know as much as you think you do and open up to learning something.

4. Any relationship has a “leader” at any given time, and this switches frequently. Thinking it doesn’t is a mistake. A grave responsibility for the leader at the time of one of these emotional conflicts, is not to create more of a problem than need-be, just to apply one’s own understanding of the problem and solutions he or she is sure will work. With these types of conflicts it is probably best to take a tentative approach to understanding what the conflict is really all about and then create the solution together.

5. Knowing what you are doing wrong or not doing right to aggravate the conflict is certainly better than not knowing at all. Knowing and owning your part in the conflict dynamics is very essential and is over half the solution in most cases. Learning how to be assertive in such emotional situations, where your selfhood, way of thinking in truth, or special area of expertise is being challenged, is not an easy thing to do. It takes practice.

6. The thinking person eventually comes to the conclusion that there really is no “fairness” in life, at least within our understanding. But this presents a challenging paradox, because you really can’t get along with other people unless you play fair, giving and taking, talking and listening and being right and being wrong. This is one of those few inconsistencies between truth and reality that is worth dealing with, up close and personal.