Chapter Six
Calming the Family Storm

It's easy enough to escalate conflicts without meaning to, but it's possible to de-escalate them as well. This chapter covers common conflict patterns with an eye to calming family storms. This assumes that the conflict in question doesn't involve an extreme situation like an active predator. Those are deep-rooted problems, not temporary flare-ups. Someone who is addicted to crack or alcohol will not listen to reason or negotiate in any meaningful way. This chapter focuses on less toxic issues.

This chapter will be useful for learning how to deal with: These techniques are not designed to cover: Family Triggers

It's all too easy for things to go wrong when you call or visit your folks. What you'd hoped would be a pleasant conversation goes bad, and you both come away with mixed feelings of anger and self-pity, somehow combined with guilt. You may also be mystified at how or why your call or visit went so badly so fast.

You probably touched on a family trigger. Remember, it's normal for people's behavior to move up and down on the Conflict Continuum. Triggers spark the shift. Unexpected triggers appear in the best of families; we will never be entirely free of them. Instead, the goal is to become aware of common triggers in your family and to work around the trip wires. Rather than just react when things go wrong, you want to be ahead of the game.

Primate Signals

You may have an elderly relative, perhaps your grandmother, a tiny woman, who can walk into an argument and quiet the crowd with a glance. Or you may have a soft-spoken uncle whom everyone respects, and who never has to raise his voice to be heard.

These are people with natural authority. They have a presence, a certain confidence that makes other people respect them and consider their opinions. They can interject a note of sanity and calm into contentious situations, and do it without even having to breathe hard.

How do they do it? And more to the point, how can you learn to do it, too?

These quiet authority figures may have uncommon good sense and courage, but they transmit their calm by means of signals that date all the way back to our primate ancestors. Gorillas and chimpanzees don't use words, but communicate by using body language. That language has been passed down to us; we respond to it instinctively. In fact, if there's ever a contradiction between what you say and what your body language conveys, your gestures will be believed while your words will be discarded. It's like someone who snarls, "All right, I'm sorry!" It's certainly not taken as an apology. The tone of the snarl says it all.

Did you ever tell your 3-year-old niece she had to behave, only to have her run right over you? Ever insist that your brother had to listen to you, only to have him brush you off? Odds are you said the right things with the wrong body language.

Excerpted from 'Going Home Without Going Crazy: How to Get Along with Your Parents & Family (Even When They Push Your Buttons)' by Andra Medea. Copyright © 2006 by the author and reprinted by permission of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.