Conflict while stuck at home? Empathy is the start to problem solving.
About a year ago I discovered the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions approach to addressing challenging behaviors and conflict. The Lives in the Balance website outlines this approach very clearly, and the information can be accessed through videos, podcasts, or books. I read Raising Human Beings, and it has changed my family, relationships, and work in multiple ways.
When you are dealing with a situation and you think to yourself, “well, I have tried all the behavioral management tricks I know, what the f&$k do I do now?” Collaborative and Proactive Solutions may open some doors. Like “No matter what I do, my kids keep fighting all day long.” Or “no matter what I do my kids won’t even touch work from school.” Or “no matter what I do, my kid keeps harassing our cat.” Etc etc etc. When the problem starts with “no matter what I do,” chances are there is something really in the way of the problem getting solved.
Before you can get to the part in the CPS method where you work on solving that problem, however, you have to start with empathy.
Especially now.
When your kid is refusing to do anything you ask them to do, instead of fighting them, you can stop, relax your body language, slow your breath, and say “it’s ok to be upset, I love you, and you are important.”
When your partner is making you crazy by not seeing what needs to be done, or by demanding that you do more than you are capable of, you can stop and say “it’s ok to have a hard time, I love you, and your needs matter.”
When you are angry at yourself for not being perfect, or for losing your temper, you can stop yourself and say “It’s ok to be struggling, I love myself, and I am enough.”
In the Lives in the Balance approach, this step can lead to two immediate outcomes. One is you decide to let go of the expectation that caused the problem in the first place — for example, the night I wrote this, we all ate buttered noodles and cinnamon buns for dinner, because I let go of the expectation that I cook dinner.
But if you can’t just let go of the expectation, Collaborative and Proactive Solutions offers another path. You work to understand and define the problem you want to solve and then go through an evidence-based process that helps you solve it collaboratively, making sure that the concerns of everyone involved are heard and addressed.
What I’ve found in my own life is that the empathy step is most important.
It is what breathes life into the relationship involved — whether it is parent/child or between two adults — and creates the space for the problem solving to happen. Sometimes the empathy step is enough on its own, because sometimes the problem is just pain that needs to be felt and acknowledged.
I’ve had to stop a few times in the last two weeks and just hold my kids. Or peek into their blanket fort and say: “I love you, I see that you are trying so hard, and it’s ok to feel whatever you are feeling.” They have needed to see me cry, because it is really hard for them when they feel super emotional but see the adults acting calm. There are times when I’ve lost my temper and I had to give myself a reality check, be compassionate with myself, and apologize for being a jerk.
I think the last one is the hardest, because opening yourself up to self-compassion when you have been harsh, controlling, or mean, means acknowledging that you are not always in control, and that is vulnerable. But I think that type of vulnerability is ultimately a great source of strength, because it is vulnerability that allows us to build healthy relationships, grow past our self-destructive patterns.
I believe that if we can start with empathy for our children, partners, parents, friends and relatives, teachers, bosses, and ourselves the next steps will show themselves.