How to Resolve Family Conflict: 7 Strategies That Can Help

By Brenda Kendziera, LCPC

All families argue. What matters is how they handle it. Explore the common causes of family conflict and the research-backed strategies that can help you work through it and repair the connections with your family members.

Families can be difficult when it comes to living in close quarters or navigating different personalities, boundaries, wants, and needs.

Each family system operates differently, but conflict situations arise no matter the family structure.

However, sometimes the conflicts stay unresolved or become repetitive, leading to perpetuating arguments or building feelings of resentment.

Common Sources of Family Conflict

Conflicts that many families experience surround themes of:

• Money management
• Communication
• Parenting
• Household chores
• Technology use
• Obedience challenges
• Picky eating
• Unresolved feelings from past experiences
• Political and/or religious differences

It can feel impossible to maintain healthy, positive relationships with family members when these differences are so vast or lead to repetitive arguments.

However, there are evidence-based strategies that can be useful when attempting to keep relationships with family members. 

7 Proven Strategies for Resolving Family Conflict

1. Invest in positive interactions

Make time to create positive moments in your relationships. This may entail sharing appreciation for each other, such as:

• “Thank you for taking time out of your day to drive me to my friend’s house”
• “Thank you for always making dinner. I really appreciate that you’ve taken that role”
•  “I appreciate you for getting [insert chore] completed when I asked.” 

It can also involve saving time in the days or evenings to spend quality time with one another. This can take the form of enjoying breakfast/dinner together, reading a book at night, watching a movie together, or taking 15 minutes to catch up on life.

Investing in positive moments helps build affection, connection, and a sense of recognition and value. 

2. Focus on repair

Life is full of miscommunication, misattunement, and mismatches. This leads to inevitable ruptures in relationships. Although ruptures disrupt feelings of connectedness, they are also essential for strengthening our relationships.

One study found evidence that repair is an important aspect of relationships, especially when focusing on the parent-child relationship. This study found that parents and children who engaged in reparative discussions following conflicts built intimacy and resulted in more positive feelings toward one another. This may involve apologies, taking accountability, and problem-solving.

These same results have been found in relational studies among couples and families, emphasizing that the repair process takes things to the next level.

For children, it helps them build coping skills, resilience, and conflict resolution skills that are necessary for developing healthy relationships.

For adults, it keeps them engaged with one another and keeps them on a forward path.

If you notice a misstep, try circling back sooner rather than later. Normalize requests for reconnection, such as asking “Can we have a redo?”, and being intentional about actively listening, accepting another’s perspective, and taking accountability for your role/actions. It can be monumental in your familial relationships. 

3. Manage your own stress

Stress adds an extra layer of challenges when resolving conflict. Naturally, your heart rate is more elevated, you have less thinking space, and your ability to regulate emotion is more compromised under stress.

This results in you feeling more irritable, impatient, and apathetic because of the physiological mechanisms that persist when feeling stress.

Finding ways to reduce stress saves physical, mental, and emotional space for navigating family challenges.

This can include:

• Reducing workload
• Delegating tasks to others (friends, family, co-workers, etc.)
• Taking mental health days
• Deep breathing
• Journaling
• Talking to a friend
• Volunteering
• Exercising
• Engaging in an enjoyable activity

Take a moment and map out the next week. Try looking for time or space to reduce stress, even if it’s only a short amount of time. 

4. Build your emotional IQ

When we have trouble communicating our feelings or understanding why someone feels the way they do, it may be a sign to build your emotional IQ.

This involves reflecting on questions like:

• “What am I feeling?”
• “What caused me to feel this way?”
• “What about this situation/action leads me to feel this way?” 

Emotional intelligence involves having an awareness and understanding of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. It also involves having awareness and understanding of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of others around you. This involves accepting the fact that we all have a perspective.

Validating your emotions while validating that someone may hold different emotions in the same situation is an important step in resolving conflict and maintaining connection with your loved ones. 

5. Practice empathy

Leading with empathy does not equate to enabling unwanted actions from others. Leading with empathy supports your ability to cope with difficult emotions.

Empathy is having an understanding that people behave a certain way due to their own experiences. Somewhere along the way, they’ve learned ways to survive and protect themselves from their own critical parents, bullies, abusers, difficult times, or other experiences.

Leading with empathy allows you to see your family members as humans who are learning life for the first time and separate yourself from their mistakes and barriers to growing.

Empathy paired with boundaries are ingredients for conflict resolution. It may sound like, “I can hear you’re angry, and I get it. I just ask that we talk rather than yell or criticize each other.”

6. Change your focus (focus on their strengths)

Our brains naturally focus on negative experiences as a protective mechanism. This is a well-known survival instinct called the negativity bias. This may be effective in avoiding negative experiences, but it can harm your ability to maintain relationships with difficult family members. 

Changing your focus to highlighting the strengths of your family members can be a small step toward building connections.

It also serves as a reminder that people are not one thing. We have many traits that represent strengths and weaknesses. Where your family member may be weak in one area, they may thrive in another.

For example, your caregiver (parent, guardian, grandparent, etc.) may be defensive, and they may have provided for you in a way to support your dreams and endeavors. 

7. Limit expectations and practice acceptance

Just like leading with empathy, practicing acceptance for your difficult family member (or family members) does not equate to accepting harmful behaviors. When you choose acceptance, you limit unrealistic expectations.

Holding unrealistic expectations for the change you wish to see may reinforce feelings of disappointment and anger when that change does not occur. However, when we accept people for who they are, we open ourselves to new possibilities in the dynamic of our relationship(s). 

Acceptance may look like choosing to accept that your family member will not make better choices. The boundary may be that you will not save them from their harmful choices because you accept that they are a person who makes their own choices over their life. 

Knowing When It’s Time to Let Go

This question requires consideration in several areas and may be best discussed with a professional.

Therapy is a safe space to explore these thoughts and identify a decision that best fits your needs, lifestyle, and ideal visions for the future.

If you’re ready to work to resolve your family conflict, we’re happy to help. Feel free to reach out to us or get started with a free phone consultation here.

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