shark or teddy?
How to recognize your own conflict style
© Ionescu Bogdan / Adobe Stock
We all have conflicts, but how we resolve them varies greatly. What we can learn from our conflict styles.
Close relationships with people, whether family or friends, can bring us so much joy – but inevitably, a close bond with other people also involves potential for conflict, betrayal, remorse and resentment. And just when we actually have a deep, loving relationship with another person, a destructive argument can feel insurmountable and terribly painful.
But conflicts are unavoidable in the course of a lifetime – just as it is unavoidable that we accidentally hurt, get angry or get into a fight with people close to us. The aim should therefore be to learn how we (can) behave in a conflict and not to completely avoid friction with our fellow human beings. And for this it can be helpful to know your own conflict style.
Attachment injuries affect how we deal with conflict
Why are we sometimes able to remain calm in a conflict and other times we get emotional, personal and unfair? Why, for example, do many people get much more upset about statements and actions by their parents than about similar statements and actions by their friends? Psychologists Judy Makinen and Susan Johnson came up with a term for this: “attachment injuries“. This means the wounds that arise when we feel betrayed, abandoned, or mistreated by those close to us.
Such wounds are particularly painful in that they cause us to question loyalty, dependability, and general relationships with those very people. They trigger a variety of different emotional responses, such as aggression, resentment, fear, avoidance, or an unwillingness to forgive. These reactions do not come because we “like” to be aggressive or because we generally want to avoid conflicts – rather they are a protective mechanism of our psyche, they are the reaction to the injuries, they are supposed to protect us from greater pain and are deep in our personal history and personality rooted.
And this is exactly where the problem with attachment injuries lies: sometimes they happened a long time ago, for example in childhood – and yet they still have an effect years or even decades later, influencing us in present-day situations.
The conflict styles – and what we can learn from them
In his research, the social psychologist David W. Johnson has identified various “styles” that summarize the typical ways in which people react to conflict. His argument: In the event of a conflict, we try to reconcile our own concerns (goals) with those of the other parties involved and with an attempt to maintain the relationship. In doing so, he outlines five conflict styles that attempt to perform this balancing act.
- The turtle: She withdraws and gives up her own goals as well as the relationship. The result: usually a deadlocked, unresolved conflict.
- The shark: This conflict style has a rather aggressive, energetic attitude and wants to protect its own goals at all costs. You are more inclined to attack, intimidate, and overpower during a conflict.
- The teddybear: People of this style want to keep the peace and smooth things over as much as possible – in doing so they completely ignore their own goals and sacrifice themselves for the good of the relationship.
- The Fox: The compromise-ready style of conflict that is intent on both sides making sacrifices. They tend to see concessions as solutions, even if that may not lead to an ideal outcome for either.
- The owl: Such people see the conflict as a problem to be solved, while being open to solutions that provide a way for both parties to achieve their goals and keep the relationship alive. They are willing to endure the effort and time that this approach requires.
studies showed that our bonding history and our personality significantly influence the style of conflict we have – For example, someone who has learned through earlier bonding experiences that their own feelings are unimportant tends to adopt a style of conflict management that downplays their own needs (“teddy bear”). Furthermore, a conflict style is more or less deadlocked, like studies revealed. This means that a teddy bear may have the potential to develop conflict management traits, but is unlikely to become a shark.
Anyone who knows their own conflict style can better recognize which (and whose) needs they tend to give too little or too much weight in a conflict. At the end of the day, however, learning to forgive should be one’s goal: we are all fallible – including ourselves – we have all suffered in our lives and it shouldn’t be about who suffered “more”.
Rather, the goal should be empathy, taking responsibility (also to what extent we had our own contribution to our suffering) — and when in doubt, distancing ourselves from people who have caused us injuries that have irreparably damaged the relationship.
Sources used: relationshipinstitute.com.au, theconversation.com, sciencedirect.com, onlinelibrary.wiley.com, dlib.bc.edu