Emotions in Conflict

Kelsy Harris

Normally when I think about my emotions during conflict, or how I handle conflict in general, I tend to generalize and say that I handle everything one specific way. But when I read the prompt and say it ask me to think about the four areas (family, roommate, work, and romantic), I realized that I have a separate way of handling things for each area.

For example, when I'm dealing with conflict with family, I either hold back tremendously in an attempt to keep things calm and everyone happy OR I let it all loose. When I have conflict with family, I tend to have the same two emotions: anger or disinterest. I tend to act disinterested when the conflict happening doesn't have a reason for happening, or if it doesn't involve me. Even though the way I go about acting disinterested may make the conflict worse at times, it usually helps calm the conflict down because it helps everyone realize that there's really no purpose in having the conflict in the first place. If/When I get angry during a conflict, it's usually because I see a plausible solution, but no ones using it. I'll usually start to get loud and probably start to use my hands a lot more while talking when this happens.

Now, with the roommate area, that's as little more difficult to hone in on. I've had two roommates already this year, and my way of handling conflict with both is very different. My first roommate and I were like best friends, sisters almost. So if we ever had a conflict, we handled it pretty well; just casually bringing it up and came to a solution together and that was that. No hard feelings. No raised voices. No eye rolling (unless we did it on purpose jokingly). But with my current roommate things are a little different. We don't have the same bond as my last roommate and I so if there's a conflict, it's almost kind of awkward. She's not someone who particularly enjoys conflict so she tends to avoid it when it happens by giving short, neutral responses and giving strange looks. Whereas I will be pretty blunt and straight up with what my issue is, because that's the only way to get my point across. Unfortunately this tends to come out pretty rude and like I'm pretty annoyed (which I probably am annoyed so that's fine) but again, it's the only way to get my point across with this roommate.

In the workplace is where I feel I handle conflict best. Mostly because I have to, but you get the point. When handling conflict in the workplace, I'm a lot more professional and level headed, and I keep my cool A LOT better. If something happens that I don't like, I manage to stay calm and express what I think/feel in such a way that it comes across that I'm obviously not okay with what's happening, but not in a way that's going to worsen the situation.

And then there's the romantic area but all I really have to offer for that are hypothetical situations on how I would most likely handle conflict with the other person.