Conflicts: It’s All About Approach & Avoidance

Posted by Arsene Hodali in Personal Development & Identity on April 30th, 2010 | no responses

Conflict occurs whenever a person must choose between contradictory needs, desires, motives, or demands.

Choosing between school and work, marriage and single life, or study and failure are common conflicts. There are four general forms of conflict.

Approach-Approach Conflicts

A simple approach-approach conflict comes from having to choose between two positive, or desirable, alternatives.

Choosing between coconut-mocha-champagne and orange-marmalade-swirl at the ice cream parlour may throw you into a temporary conflict. However, if you really life both choices, your decision will be quickly made. Even when more important decisions are at stake, approach-approach conflicts tend to be the easiest to resolve. When both options are positive, the scales of decision are easily tipped in one direction or the other.

Avoidance-Avoidance Conflicts

Being forced to choose two negative, or undesirable, alternatives creates an avoidance-avoidance conflict.

A person in an avoidance conflict is caught between “the devil and the deep blue sea” or “between a rock and a hard place” (hey, I tried). In real life, avoidance-avoidance conflicts involve dilemmas such as choosing between an unplanned pregnancy and an abortion, the dentist and tooth decay, a job you hate or poverty, or welfare and starvation.

Well, what if I don’t object to abortion? Or what if I consider any pregnancy sacred and not to be tampered with? Well, like many other stressful situations, these examples can be defined as conflicts only on the basis of personal needs and values. If a woman wants to end a pregnancy and doesn’t object to abortion, she experiences no conflict. If she wouldn’t even consider abortion under any circumstances, there really isn’t a conflict.

Avoidance conflicts often have a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” quality. In other words, both choices are negative, but not choosing may be impossible or equally undesirable. When faced with two equally unpleasant choices, it is easy to see why people often freeze, finding it impossible to decide or take action.

Indecision, inaction, and freezing aren’t the only reactions to avoidance-avoidance conflicts. Since these conflicts are stressful and rarely solved, people sometimes pull out of them entirely. This reaction, called leaving the field, is another form of escape. It may explain the behaviour of a friend I once had who couldn’t attend school unless he worked full time (and couldn’t work full time if he attended school). His solution after all the conflict and indecision he went through? He joined the army.

Approach-Avoidance Conflicts

Approach-avoidance conflicts are also difficult to resolve. In some ways they are more troublesome than avoidance conflicts because people seldom escape them.

A person in an approach-avoidance conflict is “caught” by being attracted to, and repelled by, the same goal or activity.

Attraction keeps the person in the situation, but its negative aspects cause turmoil and distress. For example, a high-school student arrives to pick up his date for the first time. He is met at the door by her father, who is a professional wrestler- over 2 metres tall and 150 kilograms (or so it seems to the poor, scare guy). The father gives the boy a crushing handshake and growls that he will break him in half if the girl is not home on time. They go on the date and he has a great time! He finds her attractive and fun. But does he ask her out again? it depends on the relative strengths of his attraction and fear really. Almost certainly though he will feel ambivalent about asking her out again, knowing that another encounter with her wrestler father awaits him.

Ambivalence (mixed positive and negative feelings) is a central characteristic of approach-avoidance conflicts. Ambivalence is usually translated into partial approach. Since our guy is still attracted to the girl, he may spend time with her somewhere else instead of coming back to her house all the time. But he may actually not date her again (even though it’s sooo worth it ). Some more realistic examples of approach-avoidance conflicts are dating someone your parents strongly disapprove of, wanting to be in a play or dance but suffering from stage fright, wanting to buy a car but not wanting to make monthly payments, and wanting to eat when overweight (and on a diet). Many of life’s important decisions have approach-avoidance dimensions.

Aren’t real-life conflicts more complex than the ones described here? Yes. Conflicts are rarely as clear-cut as those described. people in conflict are usually faced with several dilemmas at once, so several types of conflict may be intermingled. The fourth type of conflict move us closer tor reality.

Multiple Conflicts

You are offered two jobs: One has good pay but poor hours and dull work; the second has interesting work and excellent hours, but low pay. Which do you pick? This situation reflects most of the conflicts we usually face in life. It offers neither completely positive nor completely negative options.

It is, in other words, a double approach-avoidance conflict, in which each alternative has both positive and negative qualities.

As with single approach-avoidance conflicts, people faced with double approach-avoidance conflicts feel ambivalent about each choice. This causes vacillate, or waver between the choices. Just as you are about to choose one, its undesirable aspects tend to loom large. So what do you do? You swing back toward the other choice. If you have ever been romantically (or sexually… it’s so hard to tell the difference sometimes, isn’t it?) attracted to two people at once- each having qualities you like and dislike- then you have probably experienced vacillation. Another example that may be familiar is trying to decide between two areas of study, each with advantages and disadvantages.

In real life it’s common to face multiple approach-avoidance conflicts in which several alternatives each have positive and negative features. On a day-to-day basis, most multiple approach-avoidance conflicts are little more than an annoyance. But when they involve major life decisions, such as choosing a career, a school, a mate, or a job, they can add greatly to the amount of stress we experience.

One common multiple approach-avoidance conflict faced by many young people concerns the decision to become sexually active (in layman’s term- to fuck around a lot). the perceived advantages- getting closer to the other person, strengthening the relationship, and satisfaction of sexual desires- may be offset by the possible disadvantages, such as the risk of unplanned (and usually unwanted) pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (oh, the good old STDs), or disappointment at failing to live up to one’s religious, family, social, or moral values (you don’t want to be labelled a whore). One way to deal with this situation that’s common with many younger teens is to outright avoid making a decision and to “just let it happen” (you know it’s true).

Managing Conflicts

How can I handle conflicts more effectively? Here are some things to remember when you are in conflict or must make a difficult decision.

Slow down. I’ll say it again. Slow the f**k down. Take time to collect information and to weigh pros and cons. Hasty decisions are often regretted (trust me). Even if you do make a faulty decision, it will trouble you less if you know that you did everything possible to avoid a mistake.
Try out important decisions partially when possible. if you’re contemplating between going to college or being an entrepreneur and doing it all on your own, spend some time at the college first and see if it’s for you, if it’s not then try the other (I did). If you want to buy that car of your dreams, rent it first. If you want to quit your day job and do something you love, try to do both for a short period, then if you can no longer do both, quit.
Look for workable compromises. Again it’s important to get all available information. If you think that you have only one or two alternatives and they are undesirable or unbearable, seek the aid of a family member, friend, mentor, etc. You may be overlooking possible alternaties these people will know about.
When all else fails, make a decision and live with it. Indecision and conflict exact a high cost. Sometimes it’s best to pick a course or action and just stick with it, unless it’s very obviously wrong after you’ve taken it.

And don’t worry.

Conflicts are a normal part of life. With practice you can learn to manage many of the conflicts you’ll face.

Written by Arsene:
Hey, I'm Arsène. To sum everything up briefly I'm a krump dancer/teacher, mixed-media artiste, social media manager, writer, ex-ubervegan, ex-polyphasic sleeper, and a genocide survivor (yes, that's the brief version). If you must label me, call me "fool" or "revolutionary". I don't mind, I've been called both countless times. Find me working on my current project over at Quotes-Clothing.com <--- Quotes can change the world.