My personal blog this week is referencing a personally conflict that I have endured that has come with a cost greater than I would have liked. Using Steward Levine’s 10 principles of new thinking, it somewhat allowed me to review my personal conflict differently, but has not had a direct impact on the conflict, itself. My personal experience relates to my childhood and my dysfunctional family dynamics. Dysfunctional is a major understatement to my family conflicts, which still occur today. In order to understand the conflict, I must outline the setting.

I was born in the early 1970’s with parents that were high school dropouts, very young, and struggled to parent throughout my entire childhood. My mother had a happy soul and filled her life with fun, and did not have a mean approach about her. My father was the total opposite who has lived an unhappy, bitter life, and continuously strives to wreak havoc on everyone in his path, no matter the topic.

I am the only girl out of four children, and second in the line-up. I have had ample amount of resentment toward my father due to the years of child abuse and lengthy visits to foster care. However, I have always tried to look at the glass half full verses leaning on the negative feelings to drive what kind of person I being.

My final personal conflict began almost two years ago, when I had enough of the family defamation that my father does whenever we get together. This conflict was hard for me because I don’t like confronting the past and dealing with drama. I tend to avoid all family dramatic situations. However, I stood up to my father and have paid the emotional price since the conflict.

When it comes Steward Levine’s 10 principles, I reviewed my thinking ability with logic, and winning as the major factors that apply to our family conflict. Secrecy, however, is the root of the conflict over the years.

Secrecy

The family has a large history of secrets that no one talks about, but those secrets randomly appear when there is a conflict. My family does not participate in family reunions, and we only get together when there is a funeral, which is sad. In Levine’s ten principles of new thinking, the ability foster resolution with collaboration sounds great and realistic. I have often tried to take the higher road and minimal conflict in conversation by trying to remove myself from the situations. At the same time, it demonstrates a coward approach when I feel I need to be a leader and help rid all the nonsense. The process does wear me down, as I feel we can never get to solid ground in the communication.

Winning

In our family conflict, it always appears their needs to be a winner. My father is like the family bully who likes to push everyone’s buttons, especially if you do not agree with him. In Levine’s principle of being open, one must reprogram oneself to be open. I can honestly say that I often use things I have learned in the critical thinking modules to just listening to the feedback prior to provide an input into the conflict. The hardest part of being open is the feeling that the received words are more of an attack than a discussion.

So my conflict two years ago happened at the zoo. My small family and new grand baby were meeting up with my father and his new wife. The first conflict occurred is when I secretly purchased a hotel room for my father. My father had been on down on his luck and lost his job. I thought I was doing a helpful thing, however it was a complete embarrassment to him and he threw a fit like a small child. My father expressed that I was showing off how much money I made and didn’t need my help. After talking to his wife, he didn’t need help as he was late arriving at the zoo because he had to stop and gamble.  I let that go and just ignored that I was a horrible child, and then round two started, this time in the zoo.  My father was not happy with how the elephants were being treated, as they needed water. After being told about three times to tell the zookeepers, I snapped. I let him know, in the park, that he is an adult and he can tell the zookeepers about his dissatisfaction. Because I stood up to the family bully, my father did not take to me for over a year and a half. I was like really, all because of elephants. It was deeper than the elephants and it had to do with winning.  It had to do with 42 years of never standing up to my father.

The valuable lesson I did learn is relationships are not a game. As Levine talks about the truth circle as being important to winning the conflict, I reflected back on that day at the zoo thinking about why I thought it was important to set my father straight.

Logic

When it comes to logic and trying to understand the dysfunctional dynamics of my family, one has to be creative.  I have reflected several times in the last few weeks since a family member passed, wondering how I was lucky enough to be different. I do feel I have had the opportunities that have broadened my perspective over the years. Being a parent myself, having the military discipline structure, and the educational background has given me the tool sets to look at things from a very different lens.  My altitude toward my childhood used to be very hidden as it was an embarrassment, whereas now I consider it the main driver in my successful journey. I am a firm believer that you cannot change the past, but you are the driver of the future.

Conclusion

Although my conflict is not personally resolved with my father, I am aware of how to approach the situation differently in hopes of getting a different result. I know in many of our courses we have talked about positive and negative feedback, which works very well in a business setting, but not on a family conflict. It is very hard to foster positive relationships within the family as it seems everyone has a need to win, use of creative logic does not exist, therefore we remain in secrecy waiting for the next family event to relive the opportunity. At the end of the day, I enjoyed reading the principles of new thinking as there are some ideas I can use when the family meets again.  I do avoid conflict, therefore if I applied a bit more effort in resolving conflict there could be a different result.

References: 

Levine, S. (2009). Getting to Resolution: Turning conflict into collaboration (Vol. 2). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishing, Inc.