Have you ever had a conflict with someone that left you feeling angry, hurt, or betrayed? Maybe it was a family member who wronged you, a business partner who cheated you, a neighbour who annoyed you, a landlord who mistreated you, or a contract that was broken. Whatever the case, you probably felt a lot of negative emotions that affected your mood, your productivity, and your happiness.

Unresolved interpersonal disputes can have a serious impact on your mental health. They can cause anxiety and depression, as well as other psychological problems such as moral injury, victimization, and low self-esteem. Moral injury is the damage to your sense of right and wrong that occurs when you experience or witness something that violates your moral code. Victimization is the feeling of being powerless, helpless, or oppressed by someone who harms you. These feelings can erode your trust, your confidence, and your sense of justice.

Unresolved disputes can also affect your cognitive abilities, such as your working memory, your problem-solving skills, and your attention span. According to David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, unresolved issues create “open loops” in your mind that drain your mental energy and distract you from your goals. Open loops are anything that you have not completed, decided, or acted upon. They can be as simple as a phone call you need to make, or as complex as a lawsuit you need to settle. Allen argues that open loops create stress and anxiety, because they constantly remind you of what you have not done, and what you might lose or miss out on.

So how can you close these open loops? Allen suggests that you need to capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. Capture means to write down everything that is on your mind, from your tasks to your worries. Clarify means to identify what each item is, what it means to you, and what you need to do about it. Organize means to sort your items into categories, such as projects, actions, waiting, someday / maybe (a list of items that you can perpetually defer, making the list a licence for guilt-free procrastination), or trash. Reflect means to review your system regularly and update it as needed. Engage means to take action on your items.

By following this process for interpersonal disputes, you can acknowledge when there is a problem, an injustice (or just a feeling of injustice) that clutters your mind, thereby capturing the dispute (that is, acknowledge by writing it down). Once you capture the dark, formless feelings of injustice or scattered thoughts of wrong into a paper, you can look at it, in its entirety. Then you can clarify what it is exactly. Is it a real injustice, or now that you are looking at it on a piece of paper, is it really just a preference or expectation that was broken? Is the dispute with someone meaningful, or just a loudmouth shouting at you from a moving car one random, strange day? Will this situation continue?

From the clarity obtained, you can then organize the interpersonal dispute. If it was an unspoken expectation broken by someone important to you, maybe your next action is to plan a coffee with that person, and communicate how their behaviour makes you feel? If your neighbour plays music obnoxiously loud, but you are renting for another two months before your new house is completed by the builder, perhaps this could be trashed (or put on the someday / maybe list, so that you actually review the dispute, and deliberately defer it). But maybe your right has been trampled on, it has cost you a lot of money (and therefore that lack of money is a situation that continues), and your next action is to book a consultation with a lawyer to find out if your “right” was actually a legal right.

Once organized, reflecting on your now identified and written-down disputes can help keep these off your mind if, when clarifying and organizing, you ultimately decided to make it a “someday / maybe”, or if you already performed the action and you are waiting for a response.

But a dispute that gnaws at your mind and needs to be resolved requires engaging with it. You have looked at it, you have put it into perspective, but you can’t walk away from it. You have an open loop, and you need closure. Bringing a dispute to court is not something that should be rushed into, but it is not something that should be inaccessible. Put in the perspective of open loops and mental health, bringing your interpersonal dispute to a judge and receiving the resolution you need is a basic human need.

By resolving your disputes, you can also improve your mental health and well-being. You can heal your moral injury, by restoring your sense of right and wrong. You can overcome your victimization, by reclaiming your power and agency. You can also enhance your mood, your productivity, and your happiness, by closing the open loops that cause you stress and anxiety. Just by closing the loop, even a negative decision can help close the chapter and move on.

Unresolved interpersonal disputes can be a source of anxiety and depression, but there are ways to reduce, and in some cases eliminate, the dispute. By applying productivity principles (such as Getting Things Done) and putting the dispute into perspective, you can close the open loops in your mind and resolve your conflicts. By doing so, you can boost your mental health and enjoy your life more.

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At Access Law, David Miksha is a seasoned professional who understands the unique challenges middle-income Canadians face. As an affordable lawyer in Calgary, he is committed to providing professional legal services with the utmost care, focusing on achieving the best possible outcomes for you. Let him help you focus on what truly matters. Book your consultation with Access Law today!