Communication and Resolving Conflict

What Can Be Hard About Living in Community?

People often ask what the hardest thing about living in community is. While you might be able to imagine a dozen woes or hardships, the thing that lies at the root of most trouble and is one of the hardest challenges of life in community is communication and resolving conflict.

Living so closely day to day with so many people will inevitably bring up conflicts. Some will be small (dirty dishes, or being late for an appointment) and some will be major (differences in core beliefs, or deep emotional hurt). Many of us have learned to avoid conflict because it can bring up so much pain. We have learned skilled avoidance techniques to try to by-pass the issue or to avoid letting it get to us.

How We Relate to Conflict

At Dancing Rabbit, however, we strive to work with conflict in a manner where we don't shy away from the issues. Instead we take the time to talk things over and work them out. It's not always easy and we often don't handle things as we'd ideally like to, but we do make a real effort to bring up feelings when we have them and to address them with the people involved.

We try to make a space that is safe for people to bring up issues that are effecting their lives. Sometimes this is done informally through social networks of support, sometimes with mediation, and sometimes through more formal processes that have agreed-upon formats.

Processes For Helping to Resolve Conflict

Examples of more formal processes that have existed or do exist at Dancing Rabbit include:

• A Nonviolent Communication study group
• An Emotional Experiencing group
• A Women's Empowerment circle
• A weekly Sharing Circle, and
• A weekly Interpersonal Meeting

The issues addressed through these processes can range from conflict with another person in our community, to deep emotional pain connected to experiences and beliefs from childhood.

These processes are great community builders, and are an important part of enabling us to live and work together to create the world of freedom and abundance that we all want.