Intimate Combat: Conflict Resolution Skills For Couples

After working with many couples and others in my private practice as a licensed psychologist, I have found they have trouble resolving their conflicts. The two most prevalent reasons I have found are these:A lack an understanding of how past unresolved conflicts and unhealed traumas “bleed through” and make it more difficult to resolve their current conflictsA lack of skills in conflict resolution.This book provides information and skill training that addresses these two issues for anybody who is experiencing a conflict. Without addressing these two problems, people usually avoid resolving their conflicts at all costs. This often leads to an escalation a conflict into violence, including mass shootings. If you get triggered by memories of past conflicts or by self-medication (think addictions) you know there is something more to learn, related to these earlier conflicts. Without addressing these issues, couples either do not stay together for long, or they live lives of “quiet desperation.”Specifically, this book provides numerous self-assessment exercises and step-by step Worksheets to help couples and others resolve four different types of conflict:Conflicts of Wants and Needs. These conflicts are often the everyday variety, including conflicts about division of labor, how to keep their place clean, handling joint finances, personal care and hygiene, or behavioral habits.Conflicts of Values and Beliefs. This kind of conflict often focuses on differences in religious values and beliefs, political views, parenting approaches and spending habits.Repeated Conflicts With No Resolution. These are “frozen conflicts” where the resolution requires an understanding of how elements from previously unresolved conflicts or traumas are “bleeding through ”and interfering with the resolution of these current conflicts.Betrayal Conflicts. These conflicts involve “soul wounds” that are the result of some betrayal of trust in your relationships. Infidelity is only one of them and the book describes many others as well.This trauma-informed approach to conflict resolution involves four truths that couples and others need to embrace to resolve their conflicts:The natural learning style of humans is to repeat anything that was a conflict in the past.You are never upset for the reasons you think you are.When you can name it, you can “tame it” or change it.You will get “triggered” by memories of past unresolved conflict and trauma, only when the relationship is close enough and safe enough for these memories to show up.If you understand that any conflict you are having, either inside of yourself or with others, is an opportunity to learn something new about your life and experiences, then welcome conflict into your life. You need not be ashamed, if you get "triggered" and overreact to something someone said or did. This is your body telling you there is something more to learn. This book provides you with all the tools you need to learn everything in your life that, for whatever reason, you didn’t learn earlier in your life. You are never too old to learn something new.The pandemic has put tremendous stress on everyone as they had to cope with new challenges that they never had to face before. Often, the additional contact, often under very stressful conditions, naturally brought up more conflicts. Anyone without effective skills to resolve these conflicts, found themselves doing and saying things that often escalated their conflicts. I dedicate this book to those noble souls who tried their best to resolve their conflicts, living under very adverse life-stressors, with the tools they had. If you read this book, you will never have to fear conflict again. You will have at your disposal, all the information and tools you need to resolve your conflicts in a healthy way.