Avoid This Common Trap When You Encounter Conflicts or Contentious Issues
Posted on September 07, 2023 by AJ Lester, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.
If you fall into this common trap when contentious issues arise, you'll have a hard time resolving them. Learn what the trap is and how to avoid it.
In the world of relationships and communication, there’s a common trap that just about everyone (including me) has fallen into before.
And that trap is attempting to discuss or resolve conflicts or other contentious issues using text communication.
By text communication, I mean anything in text form at all. Most often that means things like SMS, messenger and email messages, but it can also include hardcopy letters and even notes.
Instead, I always suggest using verbal communication any time you want to discuss and resolve a conflict or contentious issue.
And by verbal communication, I mean any format where you’re interacting by voice in real time, which can include in person conversations, phone calls or video calls.
As you may have already seen from your own experiences, it’s very difficult to get a constructive outcome when communicating in text form.
Think about it – you never hear anyone say “this big drama came up between Sam and me, and there was a lot of emotion and anger and resentment, but then we had this chat by email, and we totally sorted out the whole thing and now we both feel great."
If you hear people telling you about how they resolved a conflict or issue (including the painful emotions that go with it), they always did it by having a solid verbal conversation . . . not by sending messages back and forth about it (and of course, not by ignoring it either).
So let’s have a closer look at this.
WHEN TEXT COMMUNICATION WORKS . . . AND WHEN IT DOESN’T
Technology has made communicating in text form an extremely common and automatic go to for most people.
And there’s nothing wrong with text communication in itself. It’s very useful in many situations, and for short, simple communications, it’s often the best tool for the job.
However, there are many other situations where it’s absolutely the wrong tool for the job.
And in my view, the key distinction is all about emotions.
When you’re discussing logistics, objective facts and other straightforward topics that don’t have any major emotional content, then text communication can work just fine.
However, whenever there are any painful emotions associated with what you’re discussing, that’s when using text communication can be a trap that actually makes everything worse.
The original issue and emotions don’t get resolved properly, plus new issues and painful emotions can come up and escalate due to the communication format, and everything can spiral out of control.
Here are some key problems that can make it a trap to use text communication to discuss conflicts and contentious issues.
PROBLEM 1: TEXT COMMUNICATION ISN’T GOOD FOR CONVEYING EMOTION AND MEANING
As you may have heard, the words themselves represent only very small proportion of any communication, and the rest is made up of nonverbal elements such as voice tone and body language.
When communicating in text form, those nonverbal elements are missing, making it much more difficult to read emotions and underlying meanings.
That’s a major problem when discussing contentious issues, since there’s often a lot of emotion and complexity involved.
Therefore, text communication makes misinterpretations and misunderstandings much more likely in those situations, which is the exact opposite of what you want.
PROBLEM 2: TEXT COMMUNICATION IS INEFFICIENT FOR CONVEYING INFORMATION IN GENERAL
When you communicate in text form, you can only cover a small fraction of the detail that would be possible if you spent that same amount of time speaking verbally.
For example, let’s say it takes you 20 minutes to type up an email . . . if you spent those same 20 minutes having a verbal conversation instead, you would cover far more ground, and with less potential for misunderstanding.
That difference is becomes huge when contentious issues come up, because it often takes a lot of discussion to resolve them properly, and mutual understanding is always critical.
PROBLEM 3: TEXT COMMUNICATION MAY NOT HAPPEN IN REAL TIME
With text communication, one person sends a message, and there’s always some amount of delay before they get the other person’s response.
Sometimes it’s only seconds, and sometimes it’s hours or days. Either way, while they’re waiting, anxiety and other painful emotions can escalate.
There’s also more time and potential for each person to make incorrect assumptions and conclusions.
That’s especially true since it’s more difficult to check and confirm that the other person understands, and to clarify when needed.
Not only that, but it’s also easy to get distracted by other things when waiting for a reply. That can cause each person to keep switching their focus back and forth over and over again, instead of staying 100% on the discussion.
Plus, from a practical perspective, those delays also make it take much longer to move toward any resolution.
PROBLEM 4: TEXT COMMUNICATION IS IMPERSONAL AND CAN HAVE A DEHUMANISING EFFECT.
When you’re discussing a contentious issue in text form, you’re focussing on a screen or page, and you can’t see or hear the person you’re communicating with.
That creates artificial barriers and makes it easier to forget you’re talking to a real human being who has a beating heart and their own feelings and vulnerabilities.
As a result, it’s easy to lose empathy and connection, which are essential for resolving contentious issues and their related emotions.
Text communication also allows people to feel comfortable saying insensitive or inappropriate things and treating other people poorly in ways that they would never do if they were speaking with them verbally.
If any of those things happen, it just makes everything even worse.
PROBLEM 5: TEXT COMMUNICATION ISN’T GOOD FOR RESOLVING PAINFUL EMOTIONS
One of the things I teach my clients is that when a contentious issue arises, it’s important to resolve not only the conflict or issue itself, but also the painful emotions that have come up as a result.
And it’s especially hard to resolve painful emotions using text communication (partly because of some other problems I mentioned – it’s hard to convey emotion and meaning, and it’s easy to forget you’re talking with a real human being).
So even if it is possible to resolve the issue itself using text communication, that’s only half of the result – and often the less important half.
No matter what you’re able to achieve with a text discussion, you’ll be able to get a much, much better and more complete outcome with a verbal discussion instead.
Of course, verbal communication doesn’t guarantee success all by itself – there’s more to resolving conflicts and issues than just that!
But at least if you speak verbally, you’ll avoid all of the problems I’ve mentioned and you’ll have the opportunity to get the best possible result.
SO HERE’S WHAT TO DO
With all of the above in mind, here’s a summary of what I recommend:
Firstly, always consider the emotional content of the topic to help you decide which communication format you’re going to use (or continue using).
If the topic is likely to bring up any painful emotions for you and/or the other person, avoid using text form to discuss it in the first place.
Instead, always use verbal communication to discuss and resolve conflicts and contentious issues.
If you’re having a non-emotional text discussion and a conflict or contentious issue comes up along the way, shift to verbal conversation straight away (and keep it there until the issue is resolved).
If you’re already in the middle of discussing a contentious issue in text form and it’s going badly, remember that you can still get yourself back out of the trap at any time.
All you need to do is stop the text conversation, switch to a verbal format, and take things from there.
By using verbal discussion whenever conflicts or contentious issues come up, you’ll be in the best position to fix the issue, dissipate the painful emotions, move forward constructively and feel great.
If you’d like to learn more or get help to resolve a conflict or issue of your own, please contact me any time about personal coaching.
I have so much more to share with you that will blow your mind and totally change the game for you – get in touch now and see for yourself :)
AJ Lester
UnleashAwesome.com