I have some thoughts on the terms resolved or unresolved, whether in individuals, relationships, or in groups (including humanity in general) , so I thought that I’d give them a bit of an airing here.
In Individuals
Unresolved: What is meant by unresolved is that memories, traumas, experiences are buried deep in our minds and bodies and they have never been explored, opened up for reflective examination, or worked through therapeutically.
A trauma that is unresolved will often manifest in the same destructive (including self-destructive) behaviour pattern repeating over and over again with little or no change over many years or even decades.
Frequent self-medication to dull the pain of the unresolved trauma is common, as is denial of its implications, i.e. the suffering caused to self and others.
Resolved: Obviously, resolved means the opposite – that is – memories, traumas and other experiences are worked through to satisfactory integration in a trusting environment over time (time being very important) and the root foundations are allowed flourish.
Parking is a resolution of sorts. It involves people realising that they have reached an equilibrium that they are happy with, and they are willing to park, or bracket issues that are bring too much emotional pain to be resolved. An outside observer might perceive them to be stuck. (The technical term for this is homeostasis, a term borrowed from biology). While it is not perfect resolution, it is often good enough.
In Relationships
Many people associate the terms resolved and unresolved with issues between people in relationship. An unresolved issue is one that goes on and on forever and bubbles up unpleasantly every so often, usually causing harm to the relationship. This could be in couples, families, or larger groups of people such as staff teams, or clubs, associations, etc. etc.
If we think about it, in such a situation the people who want to resolve things usually want to do it because the non-resolution is bothering them. Allied to this is their belief that resolution will advantage them in some way. The people who don’t, on the other hand, can live with the non-resolution, and/or might feel that resolution would be disadvantageous to them.
Now most practitioners would deem that people who want to resolve problems are stronger and more emotionally-healthy.
But perhaps it’s the other way around!
That is, the more emotionally-healthy people may be the ones that don’t appear to display as much interest in the resolution, and can live with the conflict – that mostly – others would deem to be dysfunctional.
Just a thought…….
Solving Problems
In this Sub-Chapter I pondered on what were hard and easy problems for humanity. I argued that most of us, generally speaking, find it a lot easier to solve a technical problem than an emotional problem.
It might be good to read this post if you have not read it already.
It might be helpful to remember the different meanings in respect of solving problems when we speak about unresolved, resolved etc. in the world of emotions and relationships.