Runaway stories and effective interpersonal conflict resolution are like oil and water.
Runaway stories are the experience of telling yourself a tall tale about the person you’re in conflict with. You catastrophize the situation, or project your own stuff onto them, or amplify their less commendable traits in the story you tell yourself. And the more you tell yourself the story you’ve made up about them, the more you believe it. The more you believe it, the more like The Truth it becomes. The more it feels like The Truth, the harder it is to unlock the interpersonal conflict because it’s hard to change The Truth, right?
Trouble is, runaway stories are just fabrication. A runaway story may feel like The Truth, but it began with a story you made up because you let your thoughts and assumptions run ahead of you.
The legend of Rhonda Brickman [Read more...]
So much conflict is about what happened and the pain of the past. So much workplace conflict resolution is about what will happen from here forward. It’s unfortunate that we so highly value the past and the future at the expense of the present.
