From ghosting to quiet quitting, we’re avoiding conflict. That’s not healthy.

Social media and Covid-19 contribute to ghosting, quiet quitting and other conflict avoidance. Instead we need face-to-face contact and hard conversations.

Of the topics that most chafe my college students when I teach my seminar Leading Lives That Matter, family relationships tops the list. Unfortunately, the usual way my students deal with these difficulties is through dreams of estrangement. As one of my students recently said: “I can’t wait until I’m financially independent enough that I can leave my family and their baggage behind.” 

This perspective is symptomatic of a growing trend of conflict avoidance that manifests itself across the spectrum of interpersonal relationships, from ghosting romantic partners and friends to “quiet quitting” (and “quiet firing”) in the workplace. In cases of abuse and other extreme circumstances, such disconnection can be the only safe option. But too often, this behavior is an excuse for avoiding the mucky work of maintaining relationships, both personal and professional. 

Many managers and employees want to escape the unchecked animus they experience online, preferring the workplace feel like a safe cocoon.

Contrary to the sense of empowerment we might momentarily experience from blocking a social media profile or our relief at dodging a potentially fraught work meeting, avoiding conflict can compromise our resilience, mental health and productivity in the long term. This year we should all work to reverse the trend and lean in to conflict — and conflict resolution — instead. 

During research for his 2020 book, “Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them,” Cornell University psychologist and gerontologist Karl Pillemer conducted a national survey that found that 27% of Americans 18 and older had severed all contact with at least one family member. And increasingly, ghosting is the way these breaks happen. As the magazine Real Simple put it in offering advice for handling such fissures, ghosting is “the thoroughly modern way to exit someone’s life.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ghosting-quiet-quitting-re-avoiding-conflict-s-not-healthy-rcna64709


Post ID: 52a05000-28bb-4b9b-b534-80722c38df6f
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Updated: 1 year ago
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