Mapping Your Conflicts

1. Mapping Your Conflicts Chapter 7

2. Have you ever asked yourself – How did this conflict happen? Or what happened in this relationship?

3. System Dynamics • We are interact within larger systems of relations

4. Systems Theory • Full assessment of a conflict can best be accomplished by • Assessing the workings of the overall system an how those connect • Recurring communication patterns inside the system

5. Conflicts as interlocking sequences • Wholeness – look at entire system • Organization – what is the overall situation • Patterning – what are the patterns of behavior

6. Family Systems • Family as a mobile • One cannot not affect the other members of the system • All systems are characterized by circular causality – each one affects the other

7. Email

8. When you are a conflict party it is a stretch to move out of blaming the other, and describing how your behavior and the other’s behavior trigger one another

9. Labeled into a Specific Role • Labeling serves an explanatory function for the entire group • Most labels keep people from changing

10. Cooperation Needed • One person cannot sustain a conflict • Healthy systems are morphogenetic • A conflict that avoids genuine change is morphostatic

11. Triangles • Triangles tend to form when the relationship is close and intense • If you have a conflict with John and you talk to Julia about it, there is a triangle • When people perceive they are in a low-power position • You want to form a coalition or gather support for your position

12. Types of Triangles • Toxic Triangles – relationships that are poisonous, dangerous, and potentially devastating to the relationship • Normal, healthy communication style does not result in a toxic triangle

13. Triangles • People feel more empowered when communication is direct

14. System Rules • Systems develop rules that are sometimes unwritten, but followed nonetheless

15. Conflict Serves the System • The conflict may be subsituting for intimacy and connection, or may serve as a launching pad for problem solving

16. System Wide Patterns • Conflicts never occur in a vacuum • Everyone is affected by everyone else • The impact of conflict itself, as well as the way it is enacted, differs depending on the relational type • Conflict is energy producing and energy draining

17. Four Types of Couples • Type I – Nonintimate-aggressive • Couples are aggressive without enjoying benefits of emotional closeness • Type II – Nonintimate-nonaggressive • They do not have to contend with escalating conflict • Type III – Intimate-aggressive • Intimate behavior with aggressive acts • Type IV – Intimate-nonaggressive • Use small amounts of attacking or blaming behavior but maintain intimacy

18. Coalitions • People form coalitions in order to • Share topic information • Get support and understanding • Have a sense of belonging • Gain power • What coalitions are you a part of? What significance do these coalitions have on relationships?

19. Coalition Building • Once formed, they become self-justifying • Isolates, after a certain point in time, resist joining and take pleasure in being “different”

20. Heavy Communicators • Those who are central to passing and receiving messages from people • Typically heavy communicators – • Resist being moved out of a central role • Complain about all their heavy lifting

21. Isolates • Complains he or she is not included in communication actions • Resists coming into the communication flow

22. Microevents • Repetitive loops of observable interpersonal behaviors . . . With a redundant outcome • Descriptive not prescriptive behavior • Interactions that give information about other interactions • Serves to define the conflict because it “embodies themes of stability and change within the family system

23. Application 7.6