Conflict Resolution Style

Aversive Communication Strategies

1. Discounting: The message to the other person is that his or her needs or feelings are invalid and do not have legitimacy or importance. E.g. : “You’ve been watching TV all day; why do you expect me to come home and do the bills?”

2. Withdrawing/Abandoning: The message is “Do what I want or I’m leaving”. The fear of abandonment is so powerful that many people will give up a great deal to avoid it.

3. Threatening: The message here is “Do what I want or I will hurt you”. The most typical threats are to get angry or somehow make the other person’s life miserable. E.g. : “Hey, okay, I won’t ask you to help me again. Maybe I will ask somebody else.”

4. Blaming: The problem, whatever it is, becomes the other person’s fault. Since they caused it, they have to fix it. E.g.: “The reason we are running up our credit cards every month is that you never saw a store you didn’t like”.

5. Belittling/denigrating: The strategy here is to make the other person feel foolish and wrong to have a particular need, opinion, or feeling. E.g.: “why do you want to go to the lake all the time? All you ever do is get allergy attacks up there.”

6. Guilt-tripping: This strategy conveys the message that the other person is a moral failure, that their needs are wrong and must be given up. E.g.: “If you don’t trust me, that tells me something is very wrong with our relationship.”

7. Derailing: This strategy switches attention away from the other person’s feelings and needs. The idea is to stop talking about them and instead talk about yourself. E.g.: “I don’t care what you want to do, right now I feel hurt.”

8. Taking away: Here the strategy is to withdraw some form of support, pleasure, or reinforcement from the other person as a punishment for something they said, did, or wanted. E.g.: John said, “I’m not really in the mood for hiking; it’s boring,” after his partner was unwilling to invest in a new camera.

Source: McKAy, Fanning, & Paleg, 1994)