No Appetite for Drama

I first started writing this blog because I had been going through a period of intense stress at work and I had felt that sharing was the best thing to do. Bringing some feelings into the open was hard at first. This is not an online journal, and the first challenge you are faced with is writing in a way that appeals to the reader. Experiences need to be a bit de-personalized. This is not only my little life experiences I am writing about; it is general little things that we all see in our lives. Sometimes we notice them, sometimes we do not, because we are caught up in our own little webs. Then, I imagine, my picturing them helps the others remember and look up to their lives with more vivid eyes than they had previously done.

Writing this blog has helped me communicate at a different level with people who thought they knew me; they found a different me. Some criticized the open style I use; some thought I was making up. Some understood and for that I am thankful to them.

Enough about reasonings, though. My mood tonight is influenced by the U2 I have been listening to in the past days. A very dear friend upset me a lot and all I could do was to withdraw in music and work. Being so upset, I put on an artificial mask and carried on with my daily work (another GoLive due in 2 weeks’ time and still a lot to do). What got me totally down was their refusal to communicate anything. Bringing conflicts into the open and dealing with them is a base stone for every training on this issue that I delivered. And yet I was not able to do this myself without getting emotionally involved in the process. This is where theory will fail – if it will not take into account the feelings behind what is happening. Even if the conflict will be brought into the open – that is, we will discuss and analyse what happened, without blaming or bringing the other one down – I wonder if our relationship will be the same. We both learned about another side and will perhaps adjust accordingly, thus taking away some of the authenticity of our relationship. This is what most often happens in business relationships, where the level of interpersonal trust is generally reduced and thus will suffer no big modifications. In personal relationships however, where the trust level is higher, non-communicative situations may disrupt it, as well as the emotional balance of the participants in the conflict. A way to deal with this is taking an own “silent mode” and postponing communication. This is the wrong option, however – any silence in conflict only postpones and deepens the analysis of causes, which leads into a vicious circle that can endanger the relationship altogether. Another way is to push for communication and conflict resolution; this can lead to a faster resolution but may no work if one partner is unable / unwilling to respond. The third way I can think of is through a conflict mediator – less recommendable, because it can often spark other results than expected (a sub-conflict with the moderator, blocking the communication altogether etc).

So which path did I choose? I promise to tell you in the next blog :-)