A Class for learning Creative Conflict Resolution
Creative Conflict Resolution is a set of attitudes, understandings, and
behaviors that lead to the healthy resolution of conflicts in intimate
relationships and with our families, in our relationships at work, and in our
relationships with ourselves. The class will teach participants a set of
disciplines or practices that, when diligently applied, become a lifestyle that
resolves conflict and creates justice in all of our relationships.
Some of
the issues that we will address include:
- Understanding and preventing abuse: We define abuse as any use of power over another to get our needs met at the expense of another. We are all perpetrators and we are all victims. Abuse is what makes relationships unhealthy. We have to begin by ending abuse.
- Genuinely getting what we need: We have a right to get what we need. When we are trying to get what we need by getting others to change we are abusing them. When others are getting their needs met by trying to change us, we are getting abused. In order to appropriately meet our own needs, we have to define what we need in ways that don't require the other to change.
- Healing damaged relationships: Events in the relationship may have caused damage. In order to heal the damage we have to be able to be very clear about whose choices created the event, who was damaged and in what way, what can be done to clean up, and what patterns of behavior we need to change to be sure that the damage doesn't happen again.
