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Interpersonal Conflicts

By : Monaliza Sultan Ali

Interpersonal conflicts are the part of life. It occurs when each or both side of the parties disagree on one point. "It is a struggle that occurs when two people can not agree on a way to meet their needs".  (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 1999, p.248).  Each day we have conflicts on even smaller things, like what to eat, where to sit, which channel to watch and so on. However these conflicts can become a big deal and it reaches to an extent that people get separate from each other and do not see even the faces of those people for life time. There are many factors which lead a relation to the edge of the conflicts. There is a very fine line between the relation and the conflicts, if not taken care of, can lead to the end of the relation and even the end of the life at some point in time. In addition these conflicts pass through generations which are the common cause of prevailing violence.

There are many factors which lead to create clash among people. Major factor leading conflicts in personal relation is the lack of understanding. The basis of the sound relation is the understanding among people. No matter how older the relation is if it lacks the mutual understanding, the result will be the conflicts. Besides, the other factor is the surroundings and environment of the person. If the person is brought up in an environment where people are keep cunning and bad feelings for other and keep on fighting, he or she turns into a pessimistic personality which makes that person hot tempered. In addition the continuous failure is also one of the causes of conflicts among people. Furthermore, financial crisis, work place burden, ego, over burdened and overwhelming studies can also some times cause the interpersonal conflicts.

As mentioned earlier that the conflicts can occur with anyone and it’s not the abnormal act, however the important thing is how an individual manage his/her anger and prevent a small clash turn into a life long conflict. Although dealing with interpersonal relation is a complex subject but there are several strategies which are found to be successful in order to strengthen the interpersonal relations. The most important thing over here is to explore your own self. Once you will able to understand what kind of personality you are you will make your life easy. Explore that why people always get angry with me? Am I too aggressive? What makes me relaxed when I am overwhelmed with the problems of life? The next important step comes when you start dealing with other people. Identify and get to know each other. Although it is not fast process and is also very difficult to explore the nature of the people. But the important thing is that you take time and think about others as well. Ventilation of feelings plays a vital role in evading the interpersonal conflicts. One should try to verbalize his/her feelings of frustration in front of a person who is closer to him/her.  One important thing should be mentioned over here is that the anger is a normal emotion and every one encounters it as the life is full of stressors. If the person does not get chance to take out that anger, it may convert into aggression. Aggression further causes deviation of the personality and makes that person a psychologically disturbed and ultimately leads to mental illness. This shows the importance of the ventilation of feelings. One more strategy to overcome this problem is the confrontation. If this conflict is between the members of group, each person should be asked about their point of view and each person should identify points of agreement and disagreement. The interpersonal relationship can only be resolved constructively if both the party stand on a point to resolve the problem and to gain something from that decision rather than fighting just for the sake of their own ego.

In conclusion problems and difficulties are part of life and each individual have their own capacity to handle them. Some individual manage and cope easily however some diverts towards maladaptive coping. This leads to cause interpersonal conflicts. These clashes could turn into conflicts of the life time if not treated and managed through proper strategies like knowing to own self, knowing to other, have control on self, verbalization of feelings and some other constructive behaviors.