Daniel Livingston
HCOM214
Blake Rodger
3/5/15


A Conflict Memory (Blog Response #1)

       The most recent conflict that stands out to me happened about 3 months ago over winter break. It was me and my best friends hanging out playing a game of monopoly, when the topic of depression came up. We recently found out one of our friends was depressed, and while one one friend thought depression wasn’t all that serious, I thought it was. “Its just something that weak minded people have” was the argument that my friend had, and that really took me back, because i strongly disagree with that. I know for a fact that severe depression is an actual illness, so when i heard that it really caused a conflict. This argument went on for quite some time, and while neither of our minds would really agree on anything, we basically stuck to our same stand points. Mine being that depression is a very serious issue dealing with a chemical imbalance in someones brain that causes sadness, and my friends being that it is something that you can control.

       My emotional response was that i was personally offended and pretty angered by it too. From second hand experience with depression with family members, it really got to my nerves that he would think that. Our verbal responses got pretty heated as well, and even though we are very close friends, it got a little bit hostile. Exemplified through this conflict, i get very emotional when on topics like these. I usually tend to take a more emotional and anecdotal standpoint, and use facts and statistics as more of a secondary reasoning source. My way of handling these discussions is definitely getting everything out into the open because, as i said before, this is one of my best friends, and we know we will still be friends afterwards, so we feel it best to say everything we want to say.

       Eventually, at the end of the conflict, we basically still kept to our own opinions, and even though we still felt strongly about it, we just stopped and got back to our monopoly game. We laughed about it afterwards, and it in no way negatively affected our relationship. I think the reason this conflict ended so well is because we got everything out into the open and didn't hold back.