Tag: low level

The Confusion Between Conflict Resolution & De-escalation, Part II – Gershon Ben Keren

In last month’s article, I looked at the times when deescalating aggressive situations is an appropriate solution i.e. when the aggressor you are facing is involved in a “spontaneous” act of violence – one that they haven’t planned or orchestrated; but have become aggressive and potentially violent due to your actions or behaviors, whether real or perceived e.g. you have, or they believe you have, spilt a drink over them, jumped ahead of them in a queue, taken a parking space they were waiting for, etc. This is contrary to premeditated assaults, such as muggings and sexual assaults, where an aggressor has planned the incident and knows what they want to achieve/get out of it – they have a defined goal. Because in spontaneous situations there is no defined goal or specified outcome (the person you have spilt a drink over doesn’t know what will make the situation right for them), you may have the chance and opportunity to get them to consider non-violent alternatives that might resolve the conflict/dispute. However in order to do this, you must first take some of the emotion out of the situation so that they are able to consider these alternatives – this is the purpose of the de-escalation process.

To understand how this process works, we must first gain an appreciation for the way that people think, and interpret your actions and behaviors when emotive and aggressive. As you are reading this article, you are using your brain’s reasoning capacity, however if you were to become angry, this would start to shut off and you would start to process information using your limbic system brain. Your limbic system brain doesn’t understand reason and rationale, it is used to understanding disputes and conflicts at the social level, as a dog or a wolf would. Dogs and wolves are social creatures (bereft of reason) who resolve disputes through posture and submission e.g. one growls, snarls and makes themselves look big, whilst the other roles over and exposes it’s neck in a display of submission (conflict resolved).

When a person becomes emotional and aggressive, they start using brain functions and paths which are more animalistic – dog-like. They stop using their reasoning brain to process information, and start to see conflicts in a more dog-like way, with the person they are dealing with either posturing to them, or acting submissively. If you have ever told an angry person to calm down, you have probably been met with the response, “I AM CALM!” Instead of interpreting what you said in the spirit it was meant, they can only see and hear things from the perspective of them being either an act of posturing or submission; when you tell somebody to calm down, stop shouting etc., you are telling them what to do, and so they posture back to you – this escalates rather than de-escalates the conflict.

If they are extremely emotional, they may be using their reptilian brain, rather than their limbic system/mammalian brain. Their reptilian brain will interpret everything as being either fight or flight – reptiles are not social creatures in the way that dogs are and so their interpretations of threats, conflicts and disputes are much more basic; they either disengage or they attack (they can give warning signs, but these are different to acts of posturing, as only disengagement – flight – rather than acting submissively will avert and attack).
The goal of any de-escalation process should be to get an individual to stop working with their limbic system or reptilian brain(s), and start to use their reasoning brain again. If you can get an aggressor to start using and applying reason and rationale to a situation, rather than emotion, they will be able to consider alternatives to violence.

One way to get an aggressive individual to start using their rational/reasoning brain, is to recognize and inform them of their emotional state. Saying something like, “You seem really angry”, can be one way of doing this. Feelings and emotions, are not the same thing. Our emotional state is the physical state we are in, such as being adrenalized, our feelings are the conscious interpretation of that state, such as feeling angry or scared, etc. When we are highly emotional, and our reasoning brain shuts off, we are not able to “feel” our emotional state, we are just in it. By pointing out how an aggressor is “feeling”, such as being angry, will often cause them to register their emotional state; something that they have to use their reasoning brain for. A common response to this statement is, “Of course I’m angry, you spilt a drink over me!” This is a good starting point, as the emotional individual is now starting to process what has happened to them, and the reasoning brain has been engaged, even if it is not in full control of that person’s actions and behaviors.

To keep the person processing the situation from a rational perspective, you can follow up with the question, “what can I do to sort this out?” This question forces an aggressor to start using their reasoning brain to consider different alternatives, which would potentially satisfy them in the situation. The emotional limbic and reptilian brains, are unable to weigh up the pros and cons of different outcomes, and so have to hand over this decision making process to the reasoning brain. It may be that the individual responds that you can buy them another drink and pay for their dry cleaning. The fact that it is the aggressor who has determined the solution to the situation is important, as it allows them to posture in a controlled and directed manner, which means by accepting their solution, you are acting in the submissive role – in the animal kingdom – or when people are processing information – this submissive response will end the conflict.

If you were to make the suggestion that you should buy this individual another drink and pay for their dry-cleaning, it is likely that your idea would have been interpreted as you posturing to them, i.e. telling them how the conflict will be resolved – you setting the terms. There may of course be individuals who make preposterous and ridiculous demands e.g. you can buy drinks for them and their friends for the rest of the night, etc. In such cases, you can still keep the person engaging with their reasoning mind by saying something along the lines of, “I’m sorry but I’m not able to do that, can you think of anything else that might resolve this situation?” As long as they can keep on track, coming up with alternatives, their reasoning brain is engaged.

In some cases, usually when a person is working with their reptilian brain, they may be so emotional that de-escalation isn’t an option. The clearest signal that somebody is about to assault you, in a spontaneous act of violence, is when they lose verbal control and reasoning. When a person meets your statements or questions with silence, garbles and jumbles their words (“you drink my spilt!”) and/or simply keeps repeating the injustice over and over again, faster and faster e.g. “you spilt my drink!”, “You Spilt My Drink!”, “YOU SPILT MY DRINK!” these are clear warning signs that they are unable to understand or process what you are saying and they are in fight or flight mode; more likely fight. This is the time when you need to ditch your de-escalation process and prepare to respond physically either by creating distance for yourself, or by attacking pre-emptively; the time for talking is over. I have heard many people in the security and self-defense industry talk about other warning signs, such as changes in a person’s complexion, etc., and whilst these do occur, they can be hard to notice and identify, especially if lighting is low-level, such as a in a nightclub or bar, or if the person has been consuming alcohol. Checking a person’s ability to reason verbally is a much better indication of their emotional state.
Whenever you attempt to de-escalate a situation, you should do so in a non-threatening stance, with your hands out in a placating fashion, so that your body language and posture reflects what you are saying (see photo). With your hands out in front of you, in the international language for both “stop”, and “I don’t want any trouble”, you will be both confirming your desire to de-escalate and resolve the conflict as well as putting yourself in a good position to both defend yourself and attack pre-emptively; in any crisis negotiation you should be prepared to respond physically if necessary, even if this isn’t your primary goal.

Conflict Resolution in Families – Vivek Patel

The way we communicate with our children, both in good times and difficult times, sets up a pattern that will follow them most of their lives. So it is in our best interest to communicate with them and deal with conflict in the most effective way possible. Effective both in how we resolve the conflict in the moment, as well as the long term effects that we are creating.

The environment that a child is immersed in as they grow and develop profoundly affects the way they see the world. It informs them about what their place in society is, and how they deserve to be treated by others.

When a moment of conflict occurs between you and your child it can be a source of pain, stress and distancing between the two of you. Or it can be an opportunity for teaching, growth and actually bringing you closer together.

#1 – Re-defining the Role of the Parent

The way it goes is largely dependent upon the perception you have of your role as a parent. It is so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day stresses of life and forget we are responsible for creating a foundation for our children to be successful and happy as they grow into adults.

Controlling and modifying their behaviour is not the main goal in parenting. That is an old school idea that was created when children were supposed to be “seen and not heard”. Kids were property; they were not generally seen as precious little humans. Let alone brilliant spiritual beings.

This created an authoritative model of parenting where the kids had to obey the parent, be quiet, act respectful and not get in the way. They certainly didn’t have an equal voice in the family.

Re-defining the role of the parent as a guide, an educator, a foundation builder and a source of inspiration brings a whole new view to the family dynamic and by extension on how to deal with conflicts.

If You Don’t Control Them, They’ll Control You

The common view on how to deal with an argument is that as the parent you have to win this argument or at least not allow your child to control you.

If they win the argument, or if you soften your position and allow them to dominate then they will get the idea that they can control you anytime they want. Be firm, be consistent and make sure they know who is in charge.

I profoundly disagree with this perspective.

Your Family Is a Community

The way we structure family should be after our ideal concept of community.

Do you feel like you have a concept of an ideal community?

Well I highly advise it. It is something worth thinking about because it forces you to create a philosophy of how you want to live with yourself and other people. If you can work at creating the conditions in your family that match the concept of your ideal community then you will soon find amazing transformation happening in your home.

You will find a greater joy and harmony in your family than you ever imagined.

And it won’t be an accident, it won’t be because your individual personalities just happened to get along. It will be because of the work you and your family do in order to coexist in harmony and in the upliftment of each other.

Conflict Resolution Is Vital To Community

Part of any really solid community is their ability to deal with conflict.

Conflict, disagreement and arguments can lead to growth or it can lead to destruction.

When two people have a disagreement, the way they deal with that disagreement makes a huge difference in their relationship. It also affects everyone else in the community.

Even when we have a disagreement about something as small as doing dishes or the arrangement of furniture in your bedroom or picking up your socks from the floor, it’s not really about those things.

There are always deeper levels to each issue.

There are always things under the surface that make situations difficult.

If we pay attention to them and work with them intelligently,

they can also make situations glorious!

Looking Beneath the Surface

The thing is how much attention do we pay to what is going on beneath the surface of things?

This is really where we must focus our attention if we want to learn to deal with conflicts with our kids and in our families effectively.

It may not be natural for us to always be looking under the surface when we are dealing with people. And yet this is a vital skill to develop. For when we are dealing with the surface we can only have an effect upon the surface. But if we look to the core, we can affect the core.

And this is one of the key elements in effective and long-lasting conflict resolution.

To get at the core of things.

If we keep practicing looking deeper we can make it a habit.

When this happens you will no longer be instantly affected by impending conflict with your kids. You will see the issues that are brewing and address them with love. This will often stop a conflict before it has time to begin.

#2 – Laying a Foundation

One of the things I am suggesting is to create an environment conducive to peaceful conflict resolution from the beginning. This will cause you to have minimal conflict in your family, and be prepared to deal with it well when it does occur. This work is done before any arguments even happen.

In fact it is often the work you do together between any moments of conflict that sets up how things go when conflict does arise. I would call this laying down a foundation.

A Communication Foundation

A Relational Foundation

A Practical Foundation

Once these different foundations are laid, when a difficult time does come around there is something in place to deal with it, to buffer it.

Create a Love Buffer

In chemistry a buffer is a solution that resists change when an acid is poured into it. If you pour hydrochloric acid into water it becomes very acidic. If you pour hydrochloric acid into a buffer solution the buffer absorbs the acid, not allowing it to make the water acidic. When the acid is poured in, it does have an immediate effect, but the buffer soon absorbs it and the long term effect is very small.

Creating a buffer in your family is much the same thing. If you have a consistent habit of treating each other well, building trust, listening and respecting each other and if your kids feel real confidence in you then you have created a Buffer. When  the acid of conflict is poured into the solution of your family, this buffer of love you have will absorb it and it will have very little long term effect.

This means that you cannot take any moment for granted because every interaction you have is affecting how you will deal with difficult situations in the future. Paying deep attention becomes standard operating procedure.

#3 – Building Trust

So far we have looked at re-defining the role of the parent. Seeing conflict as an opportunity for learning, growth and the enhancement of your relationship with your kid.

We have looked at creating an atmosphere of respect, communication, trust and love with each other in your normal interactions, day to day. Setting a foundation for dealing with conflict when it does occur.

Another aspect of dealing with conflict in the family is building trust. I know I mentioned it earlier as part of creating the foundation, but it’s so important that it needs its own section.

Believing in the good intentions of the other makes a huge difference to how open we are to resolving a conflict. Most kids and teenagers that I know do not inherently trust their parents to have good intentions. It takes a lot of work to make this a reality.

Traditional Parenting Does Not Inspire Trust From Our Kids

This should not come as a surprise to you if you think about it at all. If you spend a lot of time with somebody and you feel that there is a good chance they will block your desires or that they will try to control your decisions, your actions and your freedom, it is hard to really trust their intentions.

So when faced with this person telling you they want to resolve the conflict

it’s very likely the average teenager will instead think:

“They want to talk to me so they can get their way.”

“They want to talk to me so that I will see that I’m wrong.”

“They want to talk to me so that they can express their disapproval.”

or on the more extreme end

“They want to give me a consequence or punishment.”

But regardless of how extreme or how gentle is the control, the control is the point. The kid who experiences this, and most of us went through that ourselves, loses a certain trust in their parents intentions. And to be honest this lack of trust isn’t completely unfounded.

Becoming Trustable Is a Priority

So one of the major pieces of work we have to do is to live our lives in such a way that we are very trustable to our kids. We want to create a condition so that when we say we want to resolve a conflict their response is,

“Oh that means I’m going to be okay.”

We want them to feel that when you say you’re going to resolve a conflict that they know they will feel uplifted by that experience, that they can trust you to take their needs into account being as important, if not more important than your own.

How different this is from the traditional expression of conflict in the family. If they can trust you with these things they can relax into the process of conflict resolution. They can relax in the process of developing relationship with you. They can relax even into their own negative feelings so that they don’t explode, but have a healthy and safe place to be expressed.

When we can acknowledge and feel safe with our feelings that’s when we can really get into the heart of conflict.

Create An Atmosphere Of Trust

It is up to the parents to create that atmosphere of trust for their kids.Our kids naturally want to trust us and they want to be trustable. It’s us that have learned manipulation as survival method over the years.

Then we pass that on to our kids…

“Thank you very much for the gift mom and dad. I appreciate it!”

Let Go of Manipulation and Control

The only way not to pass along the idea of manipulation to our kids is to not manipulate our kids. That doesn’t sound like a very complicated concept and yet you would think I was speaking a foreign language a lot of the time when I share this idea with other people.

It seems really insane to people to share responsibility, to share authority, to share ownership and to share respect with their kids. Sharing respect means it has to be earned (by you) not expected.

Expected respect is no respect at all.

How Trustable Can You Be?

So that’s number 3 – being trustable. Proving that you’re trustable. Demonstrating that you are trustable over and over and over. Demonstrate it in the most difficult of situations and the most tense moments.

When your own emotions are boiling over, ready to explode can you demonstrate how trustable you are to your child? Can you rise above the very things that are trying to control you and have been all your life? They were implanted into you when you were a child and now the wounds of your own childhood are inhibiting you from being open, free and trusting with your own child.

Parenting is a Hero’s Journey

It is like a hero’s journey. Honestly parenting is a hero’s journey because we have to overcome all of our history to be fully present, accepting, open and loving with our children now.

#4 – Relational Well-Being

We have been talking about being trustable. We will now look at the wider implications of that.

Being trustable is one aspect of the larger concept of relational well-being.

Relational well-being is caring for the health of your relationship between you and your child. Of course we care about our relationship in general, but we don’t always base our decisions on how it will affect that relationship.

We are more likely to base them on behaviours, manners, rules and (if we’re honest) our own emotional response.

And yet the way we relate to our kids, the love, respect, safety and freedom, as well as the trust we develop, affects how open they will be to our guidance and influence. This means making the relationship between you and your child a major priority in your parenting decisions.

Look For Every Opportunity To Deepen Your Relationship

When you have a priority of developing your relationship with your kid then a lot of things that we’re used to doing have to change. The key is to make all your day to day interactions relationship focused rather than task or obedience focused.

For example, saying no to your kids on a regular basis is damaging to your relationship. Every time we say no to our kids it pushes them just a little farther away. It lets them know that we believe we have authority over them. As parents we can get so used to saying no that it becomes a habit.

If we can monitor how often we say no, and only say it when it’s really necessary then our kids feel we really support and accept them. The more we create an atmosphere of YES the more they will feel our respect rather than our authority.

An Attitude Of Authority Creates Distance Between You

How can one have a free and open relationship with somebody who has authority over them? There are always going to be bits of ourselves held back. I realize that in life there we always keep pieces of ourselves from others, but in the closest relationships there is lot less held back. I believe this is a desirable state to have with your kids, that they feel they can really be themselves with you.

So I encourage you to start to make a habit out of saying yes. I have written an article about the difficulties and benefits of saying yes. I recommend when you finish this article popping over there and reading that one on my blog because a lot of questions about saying yes are answered in that article.

But generally I want to encourage you to look for all the times that you can say yes to your kid that aren’t going to kill you or them. There’s always a reason to say no, but if we resist the temptation we can bring a transformation to our families.

I’ll give you a really good example:

Your kid comes to you and says “I don’t want to brush my teeth tonight, is that okay?”

How can you reasonably say yes to something like that?

They have to take care of their teeth. It has to become a habit. If we say yes then two days and three days and five days will go by and they won’t brush their teeth. It’s going to cost me money if anything happens to their teeth. So there are lots of good reasons to say no.

When we put our relationship with our children as a priority, the difficulty is all those other reasons have to become a secondary priority. All of them.

This is what I mean when I say it is very difficult.

If your kid comes to you and says I don’t want to brush my teeth and anything else is a priority before your relationship you can say “No you gotta brush your teeth.”

Your Response Changes When Your Focus In On Relationship

But if your focus, your priority is on your relationship then you need to say “Yes, it’s okay.”

Because they’re asking for autonomy over their own bodies.

They are asking for you to trust them and to believe in their decisions.

And if you say “NO, you don’t have autonomy over your body. NO, you don’t have that freedom and you don’t have my trust.” then there is significant damage done to how they view you and how free they can be with you.

When I was a kid there were times I didn’t want to brush my teeth and my parents always made me. So just stop asking them. I would go to the bathroom and fake brush. I knew they would check up on me so I would wet my tooth brush and smear toothpaste on my mouth so I would smell of it. And I didn’t brush my teeth. There were times weeks would go by and I wouldn’t brush my teeth.

Freedom Teaches Lessons And Creates Responsibility

It would have been better to have given autonomy over my body and at the same time taught me about the importance of brushing my teeth. Include acknowledging and accepting that there are times I didn’t want to brush my teeth, I wouldn’t have gone weeks without brushing my teeth. I would have missed the occasional day.

It is because I never learned those lessons, because I didn’t develop the ability to self-monitor, and because I was rebelling against the imposition on my freedom that caused me to not brush my teeth for so long.

True freedom, true independence and true respect can only be created in an atmosphere of freedom. So look for all the ways you can create this atmosphere of freedom in your family.

One of the primary ways is to become yes focused. When you are looking for ways to say yes and opportunities to say yes then your mindset changes, their mind set changes and the whole energy in your family will change.

Just to be clear, because it always comes up when I talk about saying yes, it’s a good thing to say no when your child is about to eat poison, run into a busy street, touch a hot stove or any number of Danger situations. It’s also sometimes necessary to say no when unavoidable scheduling issues arise. Like you have to get to work or you’ll lose your job.

It’s just that these moments are in the vast minority of our total interactions.

The rest of the time there are so many opportunities to say yes.

I hope these ideas will be helpful to you.

I honestly suggest trying them, even if they’re very different from how you already parent.

Try them for a short while and see if any results come.

Conscious Conflict Resolution Brings A Family Together

Wouldn’t it be lovely to reduce the amount of arguments that you have?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if moments of conflict brought you closer to your kids?

Wouldn’t be lovely to be best friends with your kids and they respected you and trusted your wisdom? That sounds like a pretty damn good combination to me.

I invite you to come and read more about these kinds of positive, involved, life skills and relationship building ideas that I call conscious parenting on my blog. I am sure you can find something meaningful to you. www.meaningfulideas.com

I wish you all the best on your parenting journey.