How to Deal with Family Conflicts

Hello everyone, welcome to the Said in Therapy Podcast. Have you ever considered going to therapy and you ended up not going? My question is why? In my humble opinion, I believe everyone can benefit from therapy. In fact, I believe everybody should go at least once in their life.

My name is Iman Tohami, and I'm a psychologist. This podcast tells you all about everyday cases with everyday people who have everyday problems and difficulties, and sometimes they carry around really deep wounds. These are their stories.

So in my defense, as you can still hear from my voice, I'm not fully recovered yet. I don't know some of you truly followed me on Instagram and saw that I was hit by COVID, even though I was um or I am fully vaccinated.

So it came as a shock. And I think it's important to say that you should get vaccinated anyway. Um all the variants going around, and well, I think it's the only means for protection. Anywho, I don't want to go into a vaccination debate.

Welcome back to Said in Therapy. I'm glad that you're here. It's so nice to talk to you again, or yeah, me talking to you again. Um, I know I've been absent for a very long time, and I'm not treating this podcast very well, even though you know I really love it.

So I should get behind it again more and more. So, yeah, anyway, today I want to discuss something with you that I've been asked about plenty of times, uh, not only in therapy, but also on my socials. People reach out to me asking about this specific thing in many variations, and that is how to overcome conflict within the family.

You know, the problem is that I see or that I feel that people actually think that there is like this key to how to be a happy, conflict-free family, but this doesn't work like that. Because, you know, I don't know if you grew up watching um soap operas or watching TV shows, and you see this very happy family dynamic where yes, they have problems, they fight about it, but it's nothing really deep, and they get over

it by sitting around the dinner table talking about it or going to bed, or before going to bed, have this resolving conversation. And in many cases, that's unfortunately not the case. So, real families, and I say this with full confidence: real families have real problems, and the reason for that is actually very simple.

You have the couple, so in normal circumstances, you have the couple that are the parents, right? And then those parents have children. So, in many cases, the parents have their own set of problems. So there is this couple dynamic, and they have children, and each child has different problems that they have to deal with, and then it becomes a family dynamic.

So there are many dynamics within the family that we need to look at. Maybe you don't get along with your sibling, maybe you don't get along with your father, maybe you don't get along with your mother. There are so many things that you need to look at when we talk about family contact um conflict.

So I think it's very important to understand that there is no one size fits all solution. Every little every family has their own set of problems that need to look that we need to look at individually. You know, as a mother, as a sister, as a daughter, I know firsthand how difficult and disruptive conflict can be, especially when you are younger and in some sense you are still under the protection of your parents, and there's so

many underlying things that you cannot really address. May it be because of culture or religion or you know, just expectations that aren't met. There are so many layers to it that you growing up maybe never learn to talk about.

And as you grow older, not talking about it will manifest in different ways because you know, unresolved issues will just become mad, they will remain unresolved issues without communication, and also you cannot dictate communication. So if you have a problem with one of your family members and you want to sit down and talk to them, they also need to be, you know, willing to receive what you have to say to them.

And in you know, if you're very lucky, you have this one family member you have problems with, and they will actually try to understand you. But in most cases, people will start it off by becoming very defensive. Think about it when someone is addressing you with an issue that is maybe years and years and years old, and they come back to you with an intense conversation about something that happened to them when they were a child,

or when they, you know, something that wasn't even on your mind anymore, and that you perceive it not as not so important and not as I don't want to say important, but not as urgent, and it's a totally different level of perception and feeling about the situation itself.

So, in most cases, even we can get very defensive because we don't connect to the issue and we don't understand it, and we don't understand the feeling or the aggression or the sadness that they're addressing us with. Well, it would be great if we could all solve all family conflicts with a few easy steps.

But in real families, as I said before, some conflicts can just not be resolved easily. Serious issues involve dangerous, you know, involving dangerous or violent situations require really professional help. Fortunately, there are so many therapists that work with the systemic approach where they, you know, try to understand what are the roles, different roles in the family, who is doing what, and you know, who is filling different roles.

You know, a lot of people come to me being, let's say, the good child, you know, and they have to compensate for everything they sibling did wrong, for example, or they are the bad child, and they have, you know, this perception of themselves that now that are now they are bad because they have caused so many problems within the family.

And when we look at the problems closely, we will maybe understand that they stemmed out of it stemmed from a lot of pain that was not addressed in the right way and also not you know caught in the right way.

So there are so many things that you need to look at from an individual level, but also from the from the point of view as the family itself, because the family is a system, and if the system is disruptive just by one family member, a lot of things go wrong.

You know, my father used to say, we were a family of five, and he used to say, if each finger is trying to fight a battle alone, they will not be able to fight it, they will not be strong enough.

But if each finger comes together and forms a fist, the family becomes much, much stronger. So I always like this visual of you know a family, you know, standing up for one another. But also, this requires, again, serious conversation and serious communication, even about the things that are not so well.

So I don't know, I still want to give you a few things that you might take as tips with you, where you can think, okay, you know what? Actually, um, I understand my own role in the family. I understand there are a lot so many things that went wrong.

Again, this is the circumstance that I'm describing as not where there where there is not a lot of violence or mental or physical abuse, where just conflicts within the family are not resolved because you're simply not talking about it.

So I want to give you a few tips and tricks where you maybe can give yourself a better perspective and maybe an action plan where you can approach your family problems from with a different lens. So the first thing that I want to say, and it's actually very, very important for all of us, by the way, is to understand the conflict.

Because sometimes we are fighting about something, but you we don't really understand what we are talking about or fighting about. So you will always understand your own perspective, but you will never understand the perspective of the other person if you're not listening.

And if you're not trying to understand what the other person is trying to tell you. In dealing with difficult family conflict, the first thing you need to do is to identify what the ongoing conflict is. Sometimes we fight about silly things, but the underlying issue is actually something much, much bigger.

And this is the thing that you need to work on in order to not fall back to the pattern of fighting about silly things, for example. So sometimes it's like, you know, when I see a mother and a daughter, or father and son, or whatever the constellation is, locked in a constant conflict over behavior, it is first important to understand why this behavior is reoccurring and why is the issue here.

So sometimes it's very helpful to understand the tension point. And once you identify the tension point, you actually can work on diminishing it or eliminating it. And in that, the conflicts actually grow or not grow, decrease and become smaller and smaller and smaller.

Also, you know, the second thing is it's always very important to keep inside what's actually important. You can't win a fight, you know, with full force and at the same time protect what you love. When conflicts are very intense and ongoing, I think it's sometimes important to step back and stop the fighting and understand, okay, what is it that matters to you?

So if you find yourself constantly fighting with one of your parents, um, with your sibling, maybe it's just important to understand, okay, I actually love this person, but we don't get along. Sometimes you love a person and now hear me out, but you don't like them.

So this is especially something that I have found in the relationship with siblings. So let's say you have an older brother or an older older sister, younger sister, and you find yourself constantly fighting with them over silly things.

And after a while, you actually realize, okay, you know what? I love my sister, I love my brother. However, in real life, if we weren't related, we wouldn't even be friends because our points of view are so far away from each other, there is no way to actually get along and you know, have normal conversations about stuff that you deeply care about, or she or he deeply cares about.

And I think sometimes it's it's very important to understand that only because you love someone deeply, it's not always you know, this ticket to conflict a conflict-free life, because in so many circumstances family is connected deeper in the core, but sometimes the thought schools are completely different.

And in that way, you also need to teach yourself to have compassion for the other person. Just because they don't understand you on the level you want them to understand you, you also don't understand them. So work on the relationship, see what's really important to you.

You love this person, maybe, just maybe, you can find common ground differently, not on the topics that you thought you need common ground on. I think the next step is also important that you need to realize you have to limit the negative focus.

If you constantly think about the things that go wrong in the family or in the relationship with certain family members, the conflict will always be ongoing. You need to put more effort into what is good in the family, in the relationship, rather than what is going wrong.

Something as simple as making a list of good things can actually remind you that long-term goals within the family, you know, are still on track, or maybe you know, you enjoy the same things, or maybe you like the way they do certain things.

And if you focus on that, it takes away the focus from the negative things that actually annoy you so much. The other thing is, and I talked about this briefly, is find common ground. Sometimes, you know, as I said, thought schools are not the same.

Maybe you have different political um points of view, maybe you have um just you know, in a worldly sense, you will have disagreements. That's normal, even in a partnership, even with your own child, from generation to generation, but also from you know, different um friend circles, there are so many um variables that you need to put into consideration to understand that even if you have a twin sister or a twin brother, you will not always be

on the same page, you are not identical in terms of character and needs and ambitions. So find common ground differently. Maybe you enjoy the same kind of movies, maybe you enjoy the same kind of sports. There are so many ways to bond.

And if you can repeatedly go for this way of bonding and cultivate that, the relationship will become better. I think, you know, one of the very, very important aspects is also agree to disagree. Putting your foot on the ground, you know, and say this is how things are supposed to be, is only a short-term solution because you will move on from this conflict and then you will go on to this next conflict and to the next

conflict and to the next conflict. Sometimes we just need to allow ourselves and others to have more independence and allow them their own journey of growth. Even if that means, you know, the tension points for you when you see things that trigger you in a certain way, um, that these things will not go away.

Now, I understand that the situation is a little bit more difficult if you are, for example, a child living with parents who are very strict. And this requires a lot of negotiation in negotiating skills in order to get things in a certain way.

Um, negotiating smartly. Maybe this is something that I need to talk about later on, especially from the perspective of a child who is in a household where they are not allowed to do much, or they are expected to do a lot, or show a lot, or be ambitious in a certain way, or they want, they are expected to achieve a lot of things.

This is something that needs I need to talk about, I think, on a different episode uh in a different episode, just to make sure that this is not always the easiest solution. But again, back to the point, agree to disagree.

Sometimes it's just important, especially if you are a parent and you don't agree with what your children are doing, or if you are a sibling and you have a brother or a sister and you don't agree with what they're doing, just make sure that you know you don't always need to be on the same page in order to love this person.

And I think last but not least, move on. This is probably the hardest step in dealing with ongoing family conflicts. It requires beginning of the pro, it requires, you know, to begin this process. It requires for you to forgive each other, but sometimes you will not be able to forgive fully and you need more time to process.

But at the same time, set the moving on process in motion by choosing that you actually can't resolve the past, but you can work on the present and you can possibly make the future better. And as I said, focusing on the relationship and what is good in a relationship is an investment.

You never know how it's going to be five years from now, 10 years from now. If you're living in a household with, you know, your core family, what I mean is father, mother, sister, brother, whatever, this life constellation will change.

And maybe distance over time will give you more freedom to explore yourself and more freedom for them to explore themselves and to see themselves outside of the family setting. I know this is very upsetting to say, but patience in these circumstances can go a can go a long, long, long, long way.

So, yeah, I hope this was helpful. I know this was not a super long episode, but as you can hear, my voice is still not um 100%. And I'm still struggling with an ear infection. So, yeah, I don't want to bore you with all the things that are going on in my life, but I'm also here to tell you I have not forgotten about this podcast.

It's still existing, it's still going on, and it's I will still record a lot of episodes, and I still have you know a long list of patients who are actually willing to record with me. I just met meet, you know, to sit down and plan ahead.

So thank you so much for your patience, and I really appreciate you. And thank you so much for interacting with me, especially on my socials. So, yeah, if you want to reach me, you know how. Take care. Hey, thank you so much for tuning in, and hopefully, you will tune in again next week.

It will be another episode talking to or about clients of mine, and you can find us on social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. The handle is always @saidintherapy. Thank you so much.