The key to effective interaction is the belief that
conflict is a natural and inevitable part of life, and the realization that it is
primarily our actions and reactions to these challenges that
determines whether the situation will have constructive or destructive results.
Real freedom is the ability to pause between a stimulus and a response
and in that pause, choose. Rolo May2
In stress, we all regress to our earlier learnings, and since defensive conflict behaviours were often learned in fragmented, distorted fashion from experiences of high anxiety and tension, they may be our least functional behaviours.
David Augsburger3
Conflict Cycle Application
Our individual experience with conflict tends to follow a self-perpetuating cyclical pattern made up of several distinct phases. This pattern can be healthy or problematic. If used as a map, this cycle can help us to understand how conflict operates in our lives:
Other questions consider:
§ What did you do in this situation that the other party would have seen as being irritating or unhelpful?
§ How did the other party respond to your actions? What does that tell you about his/her beliefs about conflict or about you?
§ What other response could you have chosen? What do you suppose the consequences would have been?
A person who becomes aware and exercises the self-discipline to
choose alternative actions can affect a whole interaction cycle.
1 Pathways and Patterns (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 229-58.
2 Rollo May, Psychology and the Human Dilemma (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1967), 175.
3 Augsberger, Conflict Mediation Across Cultures, 24.