Wellspring is a Calgary based cancer support group that provides services to patients and caregivers in the city and surrounding area.

Deborah Sword is a volunteer with Wellspring and a conflict manager, who'll be talking about the issue Monday at the High River Cancer Centre.

She says it's important to not react to unintended insensitive comments.

"It's talking to people about how to not react, but take a step back and talk about what you're going through in a way that people can actually hear and not feel defensive and not feel criticized and judged," she says."We're not looking to resolve just this one conflict, we're saying 'what are the triggers and patterns, what are the things that hit your hot buttons to create conflict again in the future."

She says conflict competency applies whether a person has cancer or not, it's just another complication to already overly complicated lives.

Sword says the inherit nature of relationships change with a cancer diagnosis and a lot of intimate friends and family members don't know how to talk to the person going through it and that person doesn't know how to explain what they're going through. And if someone backs away because they don't know what to say there's sometimes a feeling of abandonment.

She says conflict competency is important for anyone, not just those going through cancer.