101

People who meet me often say I am “so calm,” “so soft spoken,” “so chill.”

It's always funny-not-funny to me.

Calm is not something that I am.

I am someone with big feelings.

Proper big ones.

I have invested thousands of hours writing painting reading walking, trying different types of therapies etc, basically keeping my shit together so I don't blow up at underserving passerbys. Or, even realer: so I don't disintegrate from within. Most of the time it's a success. Not always, clearly, I've lost friends too. Point is: everytime I hear that, I am both flattered and feel my leftover anger slowly simmer.

Maybe I wouldn't have to put so much work in staying calm if more people did just a little more thinking about the coherence between their values and their actions. If empathy was given more seats at decision making tables, maybe.

Now, I know there are plenty of skills I lack, and that the beauty of the collective is that we all bring different skillsets together. I understand that me putting more emotional work in general is just me doing my part and benefiting from other people doing theirs.

Maybe the anger is that I've been doing this work mostly unpaid. Or that all this time invested is time I could've chilled and had more fun, or slept more. Maybe I'm mad because nobody actually asked me to do this and I keep using up precious lifetime to invest in something invisible. I mean, I'm not a victim here, I do think this stuff is super interesting and I'm glad to invest time in it, I'm just yeah, just like everyone I guess, grieving about the state of the world.

Let me cut to the chase: I am no longer interested in giving conflict resolution skills trainings in the way I used to, but I know they had value and there is a blatant lack of these skills going around; and I do want to have the next level conversations with people interested in investing their time to turn conflicts into more love, you know. So I'd like to have some place I can point people to for a quick glance at the basics. Because it's still important even though I no longer want to spend too long on it, so I'm thinking: might as well put it here.

First, let me acknowledge the valuable parts of day long trainings that a relatively short written piece cannot replace, (maybe you can arrange to find those ingredients in other ways):

Witnessing first hand the variety of understandings people have of what conflict actually means, and how they experience it. If you can conclude from the questions being asked in a group setting that everyone understands what constitutes conflict differently, you start to get a sense of the mine field of misunderstandings present even in the most ideal of scenarios: where two people in a conflict both make a conscious decision to address it together.

Now, you just read this and it sounds stupidly obvious, but if you had heard a unique human being, perhaps a participant who put a lot of care in the way they dressed that day, such as a long green leather skirt with some sturdy heels that make a noise that keep distracting you every time she gets up and goes back and forth from her desk (yes I'm describing someone sitting across from me in the co-working space I'm in today); if you heard that person blurt out something that sounded exactly like what your father would say, for example; it might make you look at the arguments you've had with him in a new light.

Or if you were listening somewhat impatiently to an older member of the group that you'd unintentionally and silently been judging from the moment they walked in, and suddenly they say something you relate to in a way you couldn't have said better yourself, like this would have taken you years to properly articulate; it might make you listen a little differently to that older colleague of yours that had been getting on your nerves for the past few weeks, sipping their tea so loudly.

This kind of experience might help to install a sort of emotional processing airbag between you and the next misunderstanding you have with someone: the shielding space of seeing how it might not be fully personal, the understanding that you never actually know what's been going on in their minds. We are social animals and our memory likes to have human experiences to tie directly to theory.

The good thing with reading is that, if you let it, it does gives you time to retrieve relevant past memories to attach to theory. Let's get to it.

Basics of transformative mediation (the book The Promise of Mediation Baruch Bush & Joe Folger, is basically the theoretical source here(1)): conflict is a crisis in human relations. When in this crisis state, we act like kids, it's a state of being, not a permanent personality trait, and nobody enjoys being in that state. Because we trust that nobody likes it, we trust that they will do everything they can to get out of that state if we can just be present in a supportive way, a way that helps them see the grips they can grab to climb out. Because human beings like to like others and be liked by them too. Relational worldview.

How to be present in a supportive way as a mediator is one question that is answered differently by different mediation schools of thought. A mediation context is a very specific context where two or more parties agree to spend some time to work through their issue(s) with a third party, impartial to said issue(s).

I often used the metaphor of a mirror and comb, in trainings about the transformative approach. As in: they're not tools that are going to tell you how to do your hair, but they'll help you feel a little more confident about what you're doing. Similarly, transformative mediators are “non-directive.”

I'm not trying to give you the basics on how to become a mediator here though, I'm trying to give you the basics of the CR skills trainings my mentor had adapted from this theory. I'm going to skip the conflict styles stuff, even though it is very interesting, especially in group settings, to hear how different people have very different innate reactions to tense relational situations, and in itself this is often a pretty enlightening moment for people. I'll go straight to the empowerment and recognition part.

Remember when I said being in conflict makes us act like kids? It's that danger mode the brain gets into: it focuses on very short term survival of your own human enveloppe, makes you loose track of the bigger picture of what may be going on inside other human enveloppes around you. In TM language we talk about a state of weakness and self-absorption. The theory is that in order for you to get back to a state where you can listen to other people again, you need to first feel like you are being heard.

The way I understand it is that if you have proof that someone out there is actually listening to your concerns, you are no longer alone with them, thus you can start to feel a little safer, to relax, and to re-access these other parts of your brain that are designed for relating to others in a cooperative way. That's the main thing a mediator focuses on doing, really, and if you are aware of it (as you now are, so no excuses), you'll know that if someone seems unable to hear you, they feel like they're not being heard. Solution: prove to them that you did hear, if you did.

How would you know for sure if someone listened to you?

Easy one is if they're able to repeat it back to you, and not just the last three words huh (you know who you are). That's one way. Of course there are practicalities: we're not trying to become parrots who can't even fly: we're trying to get the whole picture, mindful of key words, of especially charged content, etc.

Then, you have to understand that you don't just go from one state to the other like flipping a switch. It can take some time. In TM we talk about micro “shifts.” In order to make sure we're on the right track we look for two kinds: empowerment shifts and recognition shifts. That's actually the focus of transformative mediators: not whether a settlement is reached, even though it can be a nice by-product, but whether the interaction dynamics have shifted. That's the part they're seeking to “transform.” The idea is also that experiencing such a dynamic shift first-hand, and being an active participant of it, increases your CR skills going forward as well. Better world for everyone.

It turns out I am talking to you about how to become a mediator a bit, in the end. I do think it's helpful to notice what's going on even inside of you, which to me is part of the basics of handling conflict: being aware of what state you're in, where you're engaging from, and what you can do to help yourself/get help to get out of there.

Empowerment shifts are signs that the person is getting clearer: on what really happened, on what they want, and how to get what they want, essentially. Recognition shifts are signs the person is able to see the other person's perspective again, is able to appreciate the fact that they've been challenged too, and to start seeing them as a person they can solve the problem with rather than the embodiement of said problem.

These shifts reinforce and amplify each other: the clearer you get the more you can hear the other, the more the other recognizes you as a person the more you can engage with them as a person, and vice versa in all directions. Which takes us back to one of the time investment I mentioned in the beginning: reflective writing.

Though writing never fully replaces talking or other forms of expression, it is one way to hear yourself out. The more you've heard yourself out, the more space you've now got to hear others, the more you hear can hear others, the more they can hear you.

Pretty simple, right?

Of course it's never “that simple.” It always plays out differently, conflicts are extremely layered, we all come with baggage, etc, but if you can get on with this 101 principle, you're set to be part of the solving team.

I wonder if the team will grow big enough one day that I can feel calm for real.

PS: the illustration is one I did back ten years ago for the Conflict Resolution skills trainings, it meant to show the question mark as a sculptor’s chisel, the kind of sculptor who says the stone told it what it wanted to be…

(1) for a more thorough walk through of the same book: Transformative Mediation | Beyond Intractability