Monday, May 10, 2010

Stress, conflict and the wrong way of keeping the peace




Recent research has shown that our bodies are intertwined with all our emotional states. Having constant stress means that we are faced with the need to find peaceful surroundings.

What happens when you look for peace and love at home, and you find too many squabbles? You are searching for refuge and find instead constant quarreling with your spouse? Wouldn’t it be healthier to be able to go home and find loving companionship? This kind of home will give your health a boost, and make your heart sing with joy.

We need to say that couple fights are inevitable given that both parties, male and female need to start a fight sometimes when in need of refreshing the connection and companionship, and to keep the relationship growing. But fighting without skills can do a lot of damage to your health and your relationship. It’s the quality of the fighting the factor that matters in preventing unhealthy consequences.

There is the special case of marital conflict when one partner shows passive aggressive behaviors, where a supposedly mature person behaves in a way that pushes their own share of responsibilities to their partner’s side.

And if the partner tries to redress this issue, the response they get is not a good conversation about “what do we need to do now to improve”, but blaming, accusations, bad temper and either sulking or complete withdrawal. Then, women retreat.

When women make the decision to be silent, they are choosing the short way out to protect themselves from a sad situation, and it also signals that they have given up the hope to be treated with respect. Giving up your right to be respected is so stressful that affects women making them more vulnerable to heart attacks.

Now we know more about the price women pay for “keeping the peace by self-silencing”: studies led by Dana Crowley Jack , a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., have linked the self-silencing trait to numerous psychological and physical health risks, including depression, eating disorders and heart disease.

The quality of the interaction hinges on the mutual respect parties can show for each other, even in the heat of an argument.

Knowing this, there has to be a way to learn how to create a safe environment where both spouses can equally communicate with respect, and this is the area of fair fighting skills.

These are a set of skills that help partners to clarify the situation, allow both sides to recognize their needs and provide a way to find a solution without violence.

Women due to their ignorance of methods to fight fair and assert, find themselves being more attacked, hurt and put down. That is the reason women need fair fighting training! Do you want to learn the necessary skills to be more assertive? Do you need training in fair fighting techniques to deal with any passive aggressive partner in your life?

Here is the way to emotional healing.

1 comment:

Richard Rice said...

Disputes are normal in marital relationships. I agree when you said that women should be assertive and not passive just to maintain peace at home. If a spouse is having a passive-aggressive behavior, being silent would mean condoning such behavior. I've read in a marriage counseling book that a partner becomes overly dominant because the other half continues to be silent. The silence actually enforces dominance because tokens of resistance are not present to counter the aggressive behavior.

There can be a lot of approaches to achieve emotional healing. Women can turn to marriage counseling books or group therapies to understand their own relationships. Talking to other people who have the same problem can also be helpful to come up with ways to resolve disputes inside the family.