Edited!
Going through 21 years of my life, I have experienced many emotional ups and downs situations that make me feel that encoutering interpersonal conflict with people is often a suffocating and tedious process. This is because I could not directly voice out my grievances or just let go of my anger.
When I was younger, I always thought that being straightforward was equivalent to being truthful. I often speak without going through the thinking process as I feel that I should speak my mind freely. When I was in secondary school, my friend had a crush whom she fancied alot. She asked for my opinion about that guy. Straightaway without much thought, I said she has bad taste. For these two words, bad taste, our friendship was terminated as quickly as the speed of my response. This was quite a painful lesson learnt as I began to lose my friends gradually as that friend began to influence the rest to "anti-Adeline". When I tried to speak to them, they would ignore me and moved away. They would whispher ear to ear whenever I was nearby so that I would not be involved in their conversation in any way. The feeling was hurtful as I did not think that the recupersions would be so serious. Even though I have apologised to that friend for being inconsiderate to her feelings, she continued to bad-mouth me in front of the others. Till today, I still have not reconcile with her. However, I have learnt to speak tactfully and consider others' feelings since then.
Sometimes, the impact of a conflict would be so great that it can make me so upset that I would lose my focus. My thoughts were disrupted abruptly by that particular conflict and I would reflect countless times of how it began. Sometimes, I would even fall down and injure myself without feeling the physical pain. As I grew up, I came to understand that losing one's cool would only aggrevate the interpersonal conflict and make communication even more difficult. I have faced several unpleasant interpersonal conflicts, both at work and at school. There are many causes to those conflicts, mainly misunderstanding and people having preperceptions of me. I shall describe a constant conflict that has been going on between me and my father. My father has dibetes mellitus type II and recently had to undergo a toe amputation. He is very stubborn and refused to heed the doctor's advice to control his diet. On a fateful day, 29 November 2010, my dad fell down and injured his toe. However, he refused to heed advice and beliving he was able to heal himself. His leg was swollen and he was running a fever. Yet, he could use a needle to poke his swollen leg so as to reduce the swelling. I could not stand him hurting himself unknowingly and wanted him to go to hospital. My advice went deaf ears to him. He delayed treatment till the middle of the night that the pain was so excuriating that he finally decided to go to hospital. However, it was not the end of the problem. It was the time to choose the ward type he should stay in. He was so insistent in staying in a higher class ward such as B1 as he felt that lower class wards were for lower class people. But for my stand, I felt that he should be admitted to a cheaper ward so that he would be able to afford the medical expenses incurred. He was so unreasonable and shouted at me. Initially, I controlled myself and tried to convince him to accept my stand. But it did not work out and we ended up having an heated arguement over this issue at the hospital with many eyes on us. After that, I felt embarassed and hurt. To make me feel worse, he also blamed me for his plight that I did not put in much efforts in convincing him to go to hospital earlier. Even though he had his toe amputation, he continued with his old ways of living, eating chinese new year goodies (pineapple tarts, chocolates, seafood). Whenever I intervented to stop him, he would lose his temper at me and ask me to mind my own business, its his leg and health, not mine. But what really frustrates me is that, he does not appreciate my concern for him and he has been very temperamental to me. I realised that using the direct approach of convincing him is not effective at all. Hence, I have recently adopted reverse psychology hoping that it will make him change for the better.
