conflict

Conflict is the experience of disagreement, friction, or competing needs between people. In therapy, it is treated as a normal and necessary part of close relationships rather than a sign of failure, and the focus shifts to how conflict is engaged and repaired.

Healthy conflict allows differences to be named without attack, contempt, or withdrawal, and ends in understanding or negotiated compromise. Unhealthy patterns include stonewalling, defensiveness, criticism, explosive anger, silent treatment, and conflict avoidance, often rooted in families where disagreement was unsafe or humiliating. Clinicians help clients slow reactivity, identify underlying needs and fears, practice repair, and rework the attachment-level beliefs that make ordinary friction feel catastrophic.