I normally keep a notebook where I right down notes and quotes to go along with my reading. But my notebook is downstairs [I'm on the third floor] outside of the building, out in the parking lot, inside my car. So.. I guess it wouldn't hurt to put it here for now. These are notes from Braiker's The Disease to Please:
If you won't acknowledge or engage in any conflict, your issues and problems have very little chance of getting solved.
The ill feelings that unresolved problems generate will spread insidiously throughout your relationship. Eventually, the relationship itself, strained under the weight of recurrent and unresolved conflict may end...and end badly. [161-2]
[This one I liked mostly because she actually mentioned IM conversations! How many writers or psychologists would be that up-to-date as to include, or even credit, IM conversations as a method for dealing with relationships?]
In contrast, destructive conflict bears the earmark of decreased information flow. This means that during the conlfict, one or more parties withdraw from the discussion or withhold verbal input.
This would occur when one individual refuses to talk about a problem unilaterally, delays or procrastinates the discussion, hangs up the telephone, leaves the scene, disconnects from an online conversation, or imposes "silent treatment." Whatever the choice of method - or combination of tactics - the indicator of destructiveness is that the overall amount of disclosed information decreases during, and as a result of, the conflict. [167-8]
The main purpose of a constructive conflict is to learn from experience as a way to prevent future recurrences of the same issues, not to point the finger of blame that focuses attention only on the past.
In contrast, destructive conflicts are repetitive, unsafe, hurtful, and counterproductive. They are most often left unfinished and unresolved. The lack of closure produces residual hurt feelings, resentments, and stewing anger. The parties to a destructive conflict, lacking effective solutions or agreements, will very likely argue over the same or very similar issues in the very near future.
Instead of being confident and proud, people who have engaged destructively emerge feeling wounded, upset, immensely frustrated, angry, and stuck in recurrent patterns of provocation, accusation, and blame. They feel alientated and estranged from one another instead of developing the closeness and intimacy that constructive conflict resolution generates.
Destructive conflict is such a negative experience, it can cause individuals - especially people-pleasers - to become convlict avoidant, developing a fear of fighting. Gun-shy about raising problems for discussion in the future, their relationships lack the vehicle for effectively redressing problems and for correcting what is broken. [170]
*note: I have now completed my step-by-step tour around the three sides of the Disease to Please triangle. So tomorrow I am ready to embark on Braiker's "21-Day Action Plan for Curing the Disease to Please." Reading this book, although slowly and sporadically, has had the effect of making me feel inside-out. Hopefully this Action Plan will patch things up.
Almost like emptying an old box of treasured memories, laying the items scattered all over the floor.. and now I have to reorganize each item, deciding which things to get rid of, which things to keep, which things to repair and make better..
Ah, my spring cleaning.. :)
LJ