Contention VS. Empathy

Contention (egotistical verbal defense, arguing for the pleasure of antagonizing, or purposefully ignoring others) ... whatever the flavor, contentious persons are frustrating to communicate with.

One of the most effective ways to combat an enemy, is to intercept their communication lines. This is shown throughout the history of wars with both the jamming of radio signals the efforts officers go through to write in code (in the event that their own communications are intercepted).  

If you understand this truth, then would it not stand to reason that one of the most important ways to build a friendship or other important relationship would be to tune-in and improve communications?

Empathy for another and for the self is healing and relationship-building. Empathy can look like patience, forgiveness, compassion, and connection. 

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Marshall Rosenberg, PhD, founder of The Center for Non-Violent Communication  promotes Empathy as the primary effective strategy for effective communication.

"Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. Instead of offering empathy, we often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being."

I strongly encourage the study of Dr. Rosenberg's approach for anyone that would like to improve their relationships, whether with a spouse, child, or other human with human needs. A compassionate perspective on decoding another's needs for the intention of finding ways to serve them is a skill that I have strived to implement most of my life. Practicing this relational skill has blessed me with many exciting opportunities to surprise another with acts of service and feel-good fuzzies for myself.

Non-Violent Communication presents an empathetic system for communication where understanding that the other person has human needs, and that decoding to help serve and fill their needs, likely will lead to improved trust and connection within the relationship.

"Nonviolent Communication is based on the principle of Ahimsa--the natural state of compassion when no violence is present in the heart." - Marshall Rosenberg, founder of NVC

"Nonviolent Communication is a way of being in the world that has the purpose to serve life and to create connection in such a way that everyone's needs can be met through natural care." 

Click here to learn more about the principles and process of NVC.

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Wendy Watson Nelson, PhD, a retired family and marriage therapist and university professor, shares her views on the damaging effects of contentious communication and heated arguments.

Wendy W. Nelson taught family systems nursing at the University of Calgary and Brigham Young University. Her research helped develop a theoretical framework for family systems nursing. She also co-authored a book on the subject, Beliefs: The Heart of Healing in Families and Illness. 

Watch her inspiring message here:

"If you will remove contention from your life, you will not only change your life, but you will help to change the world itself." -Wendy Watson Nelson

Book Review- "Mutual Radicalization"

Have you ever been in an argument where you start out thinking you have a good reason to disagree, and then 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or a week later you forgot why the argument started in first place?

Maybe this isn't you. But then, have you ever been in an argument, and then some time later the reasons for you holding your position no longer exist, but you you hold your position because you want to be 'right'? ...which ironically, would then make you wrong? but you choose to ignore this?

Maybe this isn't you either. But then, do you know someone who has this problem? 

The following is the result of two individuals or groups choose to engaging in Oppositional Defiant behaviors pitted against each other, when you pit yourself against another member of your team. 

"Radicalization is a process, and mutual radicalization takes place when the actions of one group trigger a more extreme response in a second group, and this triggers further radicalization in the first group. At the heart of mutual radicalization is irrationality, meaning that group members fail to correctly understand what they are doing and why. They become blind to their own motivations and actions. But they continue to behave irrationally because they support one another's worldview, confirming their correctness even as they are falling off the edge of a cliff. Although not all group members are irrational and buy into this warped perception of the world, they all end up falling from the cliff because they are tied to ne another....Mutual radicalization often becomes a self-perpetuating, automatic process, trapping two or more groups in a destructive cycle of conflict....

Fathali M. Moghaddam is a professor of Psychology at Georgetown University and editor for "Peace and Conflict:  Journal of Peace Psychology (American Psychological Association). In Maghaddam's book, "Mutual Radicalization: How Groups and Nations Drive Each Other To Extremes", he illustrates many examples of large-scale groups Not-so-politely perusing and prolonging disagreements.

"Imagine a gigantic snow-capped mountain with two groups of people living alongside one another in the green valley below. The two groups [or individuals] can live in peace in the valley [or home] if they agree on how to share water and other resources in a way that seems fair to both of them. However, in some situations members of one or both groups come to feel they are being treated unjustly. In search of alternatives, one group starts climbing the mountain in order to gain control of the sources of water high on its snow-capped peaks, and the second group does the same, each wrongly imagining that the solution to the problems they experience in their shared valley are to be found by gaining command of those water sources.

"The people in each group imagine that if they reach a higher level and position themselves above the other group, they will be able to become dominant and capture a greater share of water for themselves. The higher the groups climb, the farther behind they leave the agriculture in the valley and the more difficult it becomes for them to think clearly and act rationally. As they make their way higher and higher up the mountain, the thin air and increasingly harsh conditions result in the two groups becoming more and more irrational: They lose touch with the real reasons they do what they do and even become confused about what they are actually doing. They begin to confuse imagination with reality--to believe that the threatening phantoms they see are real. For each group, the other takes on an increasingly fearful shape. The imagined enemy casts a hideous shadow across the entire valley....The groups have become ensnared in a spiral, taking more and more extreme positions in response to what they imagine as the increasing threat from the enemy."

Although most of this book is written with examples of nations not cooperating with each other, the principles found in the final chapter, "Solutions to Mutual Radicalization" and subsection "Climbing Back Down the Mountain, can just as importantly be applied to more local groups, particularly the ones of which you and I belong.

Three Guiding Principles [for de-escalation]: Causes are unstable, Identity comes first [before conflict], Motivations are subjective (meaning that the factors leading to conflict have to be understood from the perspective of those engaged in conflict).

Climbing Back Down the Mountain:

1. Mutual Recognition of Mutual Radicalization (Regardless of how you got up the mountain, you have a part to play in getting back down.)

2. Imagine Peace as Beneficial to the Extended Ingroup (Where individuals move from seeing "us" and "them" [or "me" and "you"] to "WE", and coming to the realization that peace is more beneficial than conflict.) 

3. Mutual Motivation for Change Toward Constructive Relations (Changing the relationship from one of conflict to one of peace, and consciously repeatedly choosing peace again and again when tensions arise and the temptation to go back up the mountain presents itself again and again, until you are safely back in the valley.)

4. Mutual Superordinate Goal (i.e. goals that both groups want to achieve but neither group can achieve without the active participation of the other group.)