And sometimes you're going to have to stand your ground. Put them on a task with someone else, and a "vicious cycle" of perceived insult and responses is likely to form, which can lead to arguing. We hear it often from teenagers: “My parents won’t let me be who I want to be. One is that it fails to deal with deeper aspects of reality.

And why does it leave us feeling so glum afterward? Only when we dig underneath self-made and socially imposed identities do we discover who we really are. They cannot, therefore, be the primary bases on which to build a lasting peace.Once upon a time, and in some places today, the social group, be it tribe or community or state, defined a person’s identity.

By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Business Insider Localize, Don’t Globalize. And at the core of who we are is a being made in the image and likeness of God.

Research suggests that humans are actually at their most reasonable when they're arguing, picking positions that are easier to defend from criticism and thinking over each choice and word more carefully. Cindy Ord/Getty Images for FOX There are benefits to this approach. We may try to reconcile the differences between groups who have been placed or place themselves in easily defined categories. Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters Even if you were to take steps to change the way you go about your life so that you're perfectly in tune with your needs and the needs of others around you, you're going to run into people who don't take those steps. A study that looked at couples in a laboratory found that when even one partner had gotten too little sleep, both partners were less likely to act warmly toward one another or resolve problems, and more likely to get into fights. Dylan Martinez/Reuters Under the surface lies the bulk of the problem: a mosaic of hidden motivations, unexpressed emotions, and covert influences, each of which makes the task of understanding the dispute more difficult.Of course not all identity conflicts are that pernicious. Naturally, we have to learn to deal with aggression at work. Upgrade Membership Subscribe All it takes is a little know-how.One problem is that people value different aspects of their “identity.” Some people identify primarily with their ethnic group, others with their political party, still others with their occupation.That’s easier said than done. Let’s start with the first category. That is, your capacity for being kind to yourself and taking heed of your own needs and desires. So why not except each other for who they are. Know the latest in healthcare industry with our Healthcare newsletter.

• Taming the Wolf is a 501(c)(3) • Which is why the other answer, the one we prefer, is to look at identity from a deeper standpoint, from the point of view of Saint Francis. Fortunately there is a way to manage conflicts and mitigate the damage.At the most basic level, most disputes fall into a few broad categories:Indeed, for a Franciscan peacemaker, there’s something deeper than identity.

Subscribe It merely says that those identities represent neither the whole truth nor the most fundamental truth. Our minds seem to deploy reason as a weapon, and a way of defeating another person, and it can blind us to the the truth.But it turns out too much rationality can actually make us more likely to argue with one another, not less. Fights happen. Indeed, most of us have some experience with identity conflict. Only when we start from that point of common ground do we see the true path to peace open up before us.A Franciscan Peacemaker’s Guide to Power and PossessionsThat’s what made Saint Francis’ approach to peace different than so many of the quick, technocratic fixes we see today, fixes that often exacerbate rather than alleviate conflict. But sleep seems to play an important role in arguments as well, even when you weed out the effects of related issues like stress and anxiety. Have you ever got into a minor fight just for fun? Identity speaks to the core of our being. So how does one deal with a concept so vague, so amorphous, as identity?Franciscan peacemaking doesn’t discount identities; it doesn’t say they’re irrelevant or imaginary. Email Preferences Which is why the other answer, the one we prefer, is to look at identity from a deeper standpoint, from the point of view of Saint Francis. Once we identify the type of conflict, we can then dig deeper and figure out what particular web of influences make our conflict unique.One of the first steps in the dispute resolution process is figuring out what the fight is all about, which means uncovering the underlying factors–the actions, words, emotions, motivations, and influences that led to the conflict in the first place.© 2020 Taming the Wolf Institute. To see the divine in another is to understand who and what they are at the deepest level.We all know the most prominent examples, the ones that scream at us from the headlines: ethnic wars, genocides, race riots.