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Confrontation with Care
© 2009 by M. Dezelic & G. Ghanoum
When you think of confrontation, the things that come to mind are loud, violent, upsetting, aggressive, and pointing the index finger. Confronting means that you are not avoiding, but choosing to appropriately deal with the issue that is causing you pain or discomfort.
We can confront the difficult people in our lives with a caring and loving attitude, using “Care-frontation”- addressing the issue, while maintaining peace, strength and firmness.
There is a distinction between confronting a difficult person and confronting your spouse, close friends or family. With both, we need to practice “Care-frontation.” However, with the difficult person: Confront the situation with care, and place a firm boundary where he/she cannot cross to be a part of your inner circle of friends and loved ones, so that their destructive behavior does not continue to affect you. On the other hand, with our spouse, friends and family, it is very important that we confront the difficulties, because if we do not, small problems manifest themselves into much larger ones, and may cause an unwanted break.
Confronting another person's behavior is powerful- and can be dangerous, too. If all you are doing is pointing out faults, then you are criticizing and judging, projecting your own negative emotions. The purpose has to be to correct for the better, not to condemn. You need to ask yourself, "What is my motive in this? Am I correcting him/her for their benefit or mine? Am I trying to control the person or will there be a positive gain to our relationship and interaction?" Many times we want to correct people just because they are being difficult.
If you go through life and never know how to confront, you will never be happy, you will be investing your time and talents; you will be miserable and feel that people are controlling you.
Take some time to reflect and think about who is stealing your peace, that you need to confront, but have been fearful of doing so. Once you start putting into practice healthy “Care-frontation,” you will start experiencing inner freedom, enjoy a happier life and rewarding relationships, being able to choose peace instead of excuse negative behavior! You cannot change what you don’t confront!
It's important before you confront, to be ready for that conversation... Are You Ready to confront in order to change?