Address Conflict In Relationships Stephen Weaver, LMFT

Stephen Weaver, MSEd, LMFT

Hi. I’m Steve with Crosswinds Counseling. I’m a therapist here and one thing that I wanted to talk with you about today is this concept of yielding to win. This is an Aikido concept from the martial art, Aikido which is about de-escalation basically more than it is about escalation.

So I talk about this a lot in terms of conflict with my couples, and with families, and with everyone really is this concept of yielding to win. So I can illustrate it by the use of my finger trap here. This is a Chinese finger trap, and if you see the more I pull against it and try to get out of it, the more tension it has on my fingers, and the more I move towards it, the more I get comfortable and I can let go. It’ll let go of me. 

So this is kind of analogous to our relationships. So here’s an example, a wife can say, ‘You never say I’m beautiful.’ Well, this can be met with, ‘I always call you beautiful. I did it 10 times yesterday.’ So that’s a push, and that’s not as fulfilling. It doesn’t lead to more understanding in the relationship. It kind of disconnects us.

So here’s an example of yielding to win. Let’s take the same situation. ‘You never say I’m beautiful.’ So that can be met with, ‘Yeah you’re really concerned. You really want to be valued in your life, and by hearing this more it will give you the sense of you being valued by me. I get it. I’ll work on that definitely.’

You can see how one is more of like a push that kind of breaks us down. It kind of breaks the more I pull on that. The other one’s more of a push and an understanding. It’s freeing basically in our lives and it’s more fulfilling because now we’re creating an environment of mutual understanding rather than just being understood.

So again to summarize yielding to win in a relationship, in conflict pushing towards understanding leads to more fulfilling lives.

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