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(…continued from last week)

Getting Resourceful

When dealing with a difficult person it causes us to become more resourceful. You have to figure out new and innovative ways to manage the situation and deal with them. In many cases it will cause you to become a better communicator, to be able to think on your feet, to manage the situation, and to try new things you’ve never done before.

Not all parts of dealing with a difficult person are bad, though there is a dark side to the conflict that you deal with.

When people are in conflict they often times say things that they don’t mean, and they mean things that never get said. Rarely do we communicate at the deepest level what we really mean, what we honestly feel and what really is being thought. Rarely do people expose their most vulnerable parts.

In a conflict we find that other people frequently don’t hear us. Why do people fall into this trap? Why is it so hard to do what we need to do and to manage the situation with this difficult person in an honorable way? Why do buttons get pushed?

Sometimes when dealing with a difficult person there is a subtle criticism that comes through. It might be a look, tone of voice, the way they behave what they do or what they refuse to do. So, having that negativity, that difficult person in front of you often times feels like getting criticized and it has the power to mesmerize us into believing that there is no other way out than to do battle with them.

Conflict poses a very dark, engaging, destructive power in many cases. It’s the power of attachment when it’s time to walk away, it’s the power of resentment when it’s time to let it go and move on, it’s the power of speaking when we ought to be silent or to listen. It begins to both fuel and exhaust our energy and in many cases it can just freeze us in our tracks.

We have to step up to a higher level functioning to deal with a conflict right when it comes up. The problem in dealing with the difficult person is that all too often that part of us that wants to be on top is more than willing to step up and do battle. When we receive negativity, when we are in conflict, when criticism comes our way, our emotions very often become enormously powerful and in some cases can become overwhelming.

Feelings Are Powerful

When you experience strong emotions they truly feel limitless, unstoppable, irresistible and all defining. In many cases part of the seduction of that strong emotion is first, it encourages you to define yourself and what you want in very absolute terms. Second, it makes you identify with the seemingly infinite power of your feeling and third that strong emotion wants you to surrender your self control into fight or flight.

Once when doing therapy with a gentleman for anger issues, one of the most difficult parts of that process was that he liked feeling angry. When he got angry it made him feel powerful.

Think about it for a moment. When you get angry you feel absolutely justified in your position. You will never see an angry person who doesn’t feel like they are right—it goes along with the territory. So when you see somebody who’s angry, they feel like they are justified in holding that position and being angry. They feel like they deserve it and believe they are right.

That’s what’s interesting about watching two people who are angry having a disagreement. They both feel they are right. They both think that they have the answer and in most cases it’s not true. The difficulty is that they need to be able to move through the problem so that they can listen to the other side.

This person who I dealt with liked the feeling of power that anger gave him. He liked the feeling of being right, of being in control, of having an opinion that other people couldn’t contest. He was one of those people who would argue about anything for a very long time.

I remember him saying one day “I wonder if that’s why I never had a relationship that lasted more than about a year.” Well think about it, if you were around somebody who always thought they were right and no matter what they said, they had to win the argument, how would that be? Is that really attractive? I don’t think so. They are choosing to focus on only their side of the equation and they don’t listen to what’s going on around them.

So the dark side of conflict, the dark side of dealing with a difficult person is in many cases that they dig in their heels and feel that they have the answer. When that happens we have a difficult time moving them forward.

Owning Your Part in the Interaction

Surprisingly, large scale change and development can be achieved through fairly simple actions. To do this requires you to take responsibility for your part of the situation and your part of the conflict. There really are no magic wands but there are many effective tools, techniques, methods, approaches, questions and mental states that we will be talking about that can make a difference for you.

What matters is that you are willing to search for and take time to dig out what the payoff is for the difficult person you are dealing with. When you understand that, your life will get easier and dealing with them becomes significantly better.

You really need to make two commitments to yourself. First, you must make a commitment to listen and to learn. You need to understand the problem or the perspective they are holding. Now it doesn’t mean that they are right but you need to understand their perspective. You need to understand the facts of the situation as they see them. What the real facts are and what the facts are as they see them may be worlds apart. But you must listen and learn from their perspective.

When you do this, when you internally pay attention to your internal dialogue and what’s going on in your mind and the perspective you are holding and you listen to them you will have a deeper understanding and be able to manage it more effectively.

Part of the problem of dealing with this is you’ve got to manage yourself. You have to grab ahold of your brain, slow it down so you can listen to your own dialogue.

If you think about a situation when you’ve had a conflict with someone, what is the normal thing to do? As they are talking you instantly are creating a rebuttal in your mind. When you listen to that other person you’ve got to get your own biases out of the way. You have to overcome that internal prod to rebut what they are saying. You will get your time but you need to really hear them so you can understand their perspective. You need to listen and learn.

The second thing you need to do is to change the way you react. It’s essential to explore options without bias and to separate problems from people. You need to explore reason’s for resistant or defensiveness and to act with honor and commitment.

You need to make certain that you move some of your biases away and you don’t just react. All too often when conflict comes up people say things they don’t mean and they respond in ways that are not beneficial to them or the situation. You need to ensure that you are listening to your own mind. You are managing your biases, you are thinking about what the payoff is for them doing what they are doing and you are also listening and learning and giving feedback on the situation. All of this will begin the process of managing the difficult person more effectively.

(to be continued…)

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