4 Psychological Needs Help Deal With Conflict
We’ve all been there. You're in a spat with a co-worker or your significant other, and you're itching to get back at them and hurt them like they've hurt you. We are all guilty of the impulse to retaliate when we feel wronged, but it's important not to ignore the danger that retaliation can cause.
That's why we've put together this post outlining four psychological needs that might help you deal with conflict more effectively, complete with detailed explanations of each need and how it can help ease negative feelings like revenge when they come up.
The four psychological needs are: Satisfying Deficits, Self-Esteem, Hope and Revenge.
Let's look at the first one: satisfying deficits.
Satisfying Deficits
When dealing with conflict, it is extremely useful to realize that part of the reason you feel so angry is that there is a gap between what you have and what you need (or want). This is not only a good overall strategy for dealing with conflict, it can also help to 'cool down' your anger by showing you where the root of your current frustrations lie. In other words, it makes the point that anger is often linked to a sense of deprivation. The following exercise will help you identify your deficits.
Take a few moments each day to write down things you wish you had. Having a list to keep track of your needs will help you gain consciousness of them. Make sure that your list contains at least 3 items and is based on what you value and need from life, not how well you get along with other people.
Then, when you are angry with someone, ask yourself: "Am I feeling angry because of this particular situation or is it really because I am missing something in my life, something that I haven't gotten?"
This way you will be able to see anger as an indicator of the fact that you are missing something that is important to you. Or put another way, anger is often a message from our subconscious telling us that we need to change things up to get what we want.
Don’t worry about being too hard on yourself. The point of this exercise is not to punish yourself for not doing enough, it is meant to show you what you are missing in your life.
Self-Esteem
Anger is also often a sign that your dignity has been violated or that you feel threatened. Your anger comes from a feeling that you cannot control the outcome of the situation, and this feeling makes you come up with strategies that are uncomfortable to deal with, but if successful will give you back some sense of power in the situation. That's why it's useful to check what really matters to us and how we can protect it when we perceive a threat coming towards us.
It's important to realize that curing your anger and resolving the situation doesn't mean you need to let go of your dignity. Instead, it means that you need to hold on to what matters even in the worst situations. This is where your self-esteem comes into play, because it is a way of communicating with yourself that you can handle the situation and won't be destroyed by it.
The following exercise will help you identify your self-esteem and how you can use it as a survival tool.
Think about three things in your life that are very precious to you, such as family members or possessions that have been very meaningful in some way for a long time. It is important that you select objects and people that are meaningful in a positive way to you, not just 'stuff,' but things that are personally valuable to you.
Then, when you are angry with someone, ask yourself: "What is most important to me? What part of myself would be hardest hit by the negative outcome of this conflict?"
This way you will be able to see anger as an indicator that your self-esteem needs to be protected in some way. It gives you a direction on how best to resolve the conflict while maintaining your integrity so that you don't have to make significant changes in your life.
Hope
Another important concept to keep in mind is hope. Hope is about trusting that things will get better and that you can get through this situation and 'move on' with your life. The underlying idea behind hope is that if you don't think you can handle it, then it's best to move on so you don't set yourself up for a blow to your self-esteem or work on a situation that might have lasting negative consequences.
Hope can also be an extremely useful tool when dealing with conflict because telling yourself that everything will be okay sounds like a lie and causes us to feel anxious. But if we realize that this feeling is a sign that we need to be open to other options, it helps us trust that things will work out. And when we feel like things won't work out, it can help us realize it's time to give up and move on.
The following exercise will help you identify your hope and how you can use it as a survival tool when dealing with conflict.
Think about a situation where you had hope for something but the thing didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. Then, when you are angry with someone, ask yourself: "What is the judgment I just made about this situation? How might it be related to my hope?"
This way you will be able to see anger as an indicator that your hope needs to be protected in some way. It gives you a direction on how best to resolve the conflict while maintaining your integrity so that you don't have to make significant changes in your life.
Revenge
Revenge is another useful tool in conflict situations. Revenge is actually our means of taking care of ourselves when we are wronged and need support.
Conclusion
Before we conclude, I want to point out that you may have been inclined to suggest that anger is always a bad thing and that it's not healthy for you to feel angry. That may be true in some situations. It can be especially harmful when your anger motivates you to take action against someone who actually has the power to change the situation. In other words, if your anger is channeled into actions that have little chance of changing anything, then using it will only make things worse for you.