By René Nyberg
Lifetime Counseling Center
“Turn that down.”
“We don’t have enough money for that.”
“I didn’t touch your stuff.”
“Did you take your dog out? She peed on the floor again.”
“I’m trying to work in here!”
Does that sound familiar?
A lot is going on right now, as we are all staying at home with COVID-19.
There’s always something we can complain to each other about, but conflict in the home during COVID-19 adds a whole lot of new stressors and extra people in your home. Many have few outlets to go to and few places to escape to right now, and it can really make things a lot more difficult with different types of people in your home. You could have several different generations, grandparents, adults, children, adult children moving back in, parents, pets, extra pets, all different types of conflict.
We have normal everyday conflict going on, but now with COVID-19, maybe there’s more conflict going on in your home – things like trying to find space, rules, noise level, privacy, maybe there’s not enough food, money – and managing expectations for each other. The most important thing to remember is COVID-19 is the enemy, not each other. I would like to share some helpful coping skills to manage conflict in the home.
I’ll be using the letters in the word TOGETHER to outline some strategies that may help.
T – Tell how you’re feeling
It’s really important to be able to express how we feel to others in a healthy way. People can’t read our minds. We can’t read other people’s minds. So we must be able to tell how we feel.
O – Organize your space in the home
There might not be a lot of space in your home right now. So try to find a place that you can each kind of call your own and organize that area to feel more comfortable, to be able to breathe in that space.
G – Give of your time to listen to each other.
If we’re going to tell our feelings then we have to make sure we’re giving our time to really listen to how others feel.
E –Empathize with one another.
We might not really understand how the other person is feeling. So by being able to put ourselves in their shoes, see things from their perspective, see what their stressors are, we can get a better understanding.
T – Talk about solutions.
It’s really not going to help much if all we do is complain about problems. Try to focus on finding solutions; that will help decrease the stressors.
H – Help when and where you can.
If something needs to be picked up, pick it up. If something needs to be thrown away, throw it away. If someone needs their laundry done, pitch in and do it. If someone needs a meal made, help them. Helping each other will really help reduce the conflicts.
E – Everyone’s feelings matter.
Everyone. We all need to make sure we are listening and sharing our feelings.
R – Realistic expectations.
And how do we know what those real expectations are? We have to be able to express them, tell each other, this is my expectation for you, or this is my expectation for what’s going on. And they must be realistic so that we can be able to solve those conflicts together.
So that spells TOGETHER, and together we can exercise, take walks, encourage each other, support each other, stay safe, pay the bills, do schoolwork, be creative, make new recipes, learn more about each other, play card games or board games, be considerate. We can love each other more.
Keep adding onto this list to make your own phrases, starting with, “Together we can…”
Rene Nyberg is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Outpatient Services Manager at Lifetime Counseling Center in Cocoa, Florida. Here’s a link to a video she did illustrating this concept: