Part I: Conflict Awareness
Alternate Definitions of Conflict
Below is a variety of alternate definitions of conflict derived from different theoretical perspectives [1].
- Conflict arises wherever there is a failure of connection, collaboration, or community, an inability to understand our essential interconnectedness and the unity of the human spirit.
- Conflict is a lack of acceptance of ourselves that we project onto others. It is a way of blaming others for what we perceive as failures in our own lives. As people accept themselves more fully, they experience more acceptance of others and conflict diminishes.
- Conflict represents a boundary violation, a failure to value or recognize our own integrity or the personal space of others. When we respect and recognize our own boundaries as well as the boundaries of others, we experience less conflict.
- Conflict is a way of getting attention, acknowledgement, sympathy, or support by casting ourselves as the victim of some evil-doer. When we get the acknowledgement we need, we have no desire or need to seek conflict.
- Conflict is a way of opposing someone who represents a parent with whom we have not yet resolved our relationships. Often someone reminds us of a family of origin member and we act out our issues with them rather than with the real person.
- Conflict represents a lack of listening, a failure to appreciate the subtlety in what someone else is saying. Listening for metaphors and hidden meanings moves us to true content, thus having less counterattacking and defending.
- Conflict is the voice of a new paradigm, a demand for change in a system that has outlived its usefulness. Change always announces itself in the form of conflict. When the needed changes are made in a family, relationship or organization, the conflict disappears.
- Conflict is often a fearful interpretation of difference, diversity, and opposition, which ignores the essential role of polarity in creating unity, balance and symbiosis. As we see difference and disagreements as sources of potential unity or strength, conflicts tend to disappear.
- Conflict is a result of our inability to learn from our past mistakes, our failure to recognize them as opportunities for growth, learning, and improved understanding. Conflicts are often simply requests for authenticity, emotional honesty, acknowledgement, intimacy, empathy, and communication from others – they flow from the desire for a better relationship.
- (Cloke, 2001, p. 6 – 8) ↵