{"id":41921,"date":"2014-09-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/too-much-or-too-little-conflict-creates-stress\/"},"modified":"2014-09-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T00:00:00","slug":"too-much-or-too-little-conflict-creates-stress","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/too-much-or-too-little-conflict-creates-stress\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Much or Too Little Conflict Creates Stress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Danish health survey asked almost 10,000 people between ages 36 and 52, &quot;In your everyday life, do you experience conflicts with any of the following people&mdash;your partner, children, other family members, friends, or neighbors?&quot; Eleven years later, 422 of them were no longer living. That&#39;s a typical number. What&#39;s compelling, the researchers noted, is that the people who answered &quot;always&quot; or &quot;often&quot; in any of these cases were two to three times more likely to be among the dead. (And the deaths were from standard causes: cancer, heart disease, alcohol-related liver disease, etc.&mdash;not murder.)<\/p>\n\n<p>The researchers concluded, &quot;Stressful social relations are associated with increased mortality risk among middle-aged men and women.&quot; That&#39;s why they recommended that we develop what they called &quot;skills in handling worries and demands from close social relations as well as conflict management.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>But in case you think that all conflict is bad, people who said they &quot;never&quot; experience conflict from social relationships had a slightly higher mortality rate than those who &quot;seldom&quot; do. In other words, perhaps a little conflict is good for your health.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[405,410],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3666,3668,3796,3811,3822,3989,4425,4751,4792,5086,5087,5304],"tax_ctp_topics":[388],"class_list":["post-41921","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-conflict","tax_ctp_tags-conflict-management","tax_ctp_tags-discontent","tax_ctp_tags-disunity","tax_ctp_tags-division","tax_ctp_tags-fighting","tax_ctp_tags-marriage","tax_ctp_tags-quarreling","tax_ctp_tags-relationship","tax_ctp_tags-stress","tax_ctp_tags-strife","tax_ctp_tags-worry"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Too Much or Too Little Conflict Creates Stress - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/too-much-or-too-little-conflict-creates-stress\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Too Much or Too Little Conflict Creates Stress - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Danish health survey asked almost 10,000 people between ages 36 and 52, &quot;In your everyday life, do you experience conflicts with any of the following people&mdash;your partner, children, other family members, friends, or neighbors?&quot; Eleven years later, 422 of them were no longer living. 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