Just Conflict

Summary worksheet for Patterns of Conflict and Critical Feedback

2013-03-03T02:55:03Z

Interview on BeliefNet

2010-06-03T20:10:53Z

In interview with me about the book has just been posted on BeliefNet. You can check in out at http://blog.beliefnet.com/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat/2010/06/resolving-conflict.html#preview

Review of the book on Dad of Divas

2010-03-22T14:58:07Z

We just got a new review posted. Much of it is the press release we issued so be sure to scroll to the bottom where the reviewer posts his own thoughts. You can read the review here.

Alternatives to Grounding

2010-03-19T02:05:54Z

I have been working on an article for parents of teens entitled "Alternatives to Grounding." It isn't finished but here is a pdf of a draft.

http://www.creativeconflictresolution.org/jc/Alternatives%20to%20Grounding.pdf

An interview about the central concepts in Just Conflict

2010-03-19T01:41:18Z

Where does this concern for conflict come from?

Working with men who have been clearly abusive to those they say they love the most, it became clear to me that they were very afraid of addressing conflict in their most significant relationships. I observed how their avoidance of conflict caused more frequent and intense conflicts. It became clear that the intensity of conflict for all of us is heightened by trying to avoid addressing conflict.

So are you suggesting that everyone is in conflict?

Yes, exactly. We are all experiencing conflicts all the time. We often don't name the issues as conflicts. We may not call them conflicts unless we don't know how to address them. But a conflict is essentially whenever another isn't who we want them to be or we are not as they want us to be. How often does that happen?

Doesn't your notion of conflict begin to feel a bit overwhelming?

It can. Especially if we believe we can't resolve the conflicts which arise for us. But we resolve conflicts all the time. We are actually pretty good at resolving the familiar conflicts. We have learned what to do to create what we need.

So what do you mean by "resolution?"

Well, that can be complicated. In general a conflict is resolved when we have been able to act in ways that create what we need without it being at the expense of another. In practice it can be very difficult to know what we need. We tend to jump to a tactic rather than figuring out what the qualities are that are missing and working towards creating them. But as I said, we all resolve conflicts all the time. Conflict resolution is what we do whenever we solve a problem--whenever we create something. Any act of creativity is a resolution of a conflict.

I think there are a lot of folks who have addressed conflict and didn't find it to be all that creative.

Not everything we do to address a conflict is going to resolve it. For most of us, though, the problem is not that what we do doesn't work, it is that we decide the conflict can't be resolved so we just back away and try to ignore it. What we have been doing hasn't worked so we give ourselves permission to quit by saying it can't be resolved.

Well, aren't there some conflicts which just can't be resolved?

No, every conflict can be resolved. Maybe not fully resolved right away, but there are always things we can do that will move us toward what we need. We don't know that we can resolve it because we have already tried all of the things we can think of to do which we believe will be helpful and they haven't worked. We have even tried things that make the problem worse. Frequently the very things we try to do to solve the problem create the problem. We are thinking about the problem in a way that guides us to act such that we create the problem.

How can the way we think about a problem create the problem?

When things aren't as we want them to be, we construct a way of understanding the problem that will guide how we will address it. But all maps are partial. They highlight some information and ignore other information. When we use a way of understanding that leaves out important aspects, we then make choices which don't respond to the whole situation.

For example, we often think that the way to get a conflict resolved is to get others to change. Most of us know we can't change others, but this information doesn't stop us from trying. When we are trying to get others to quit what they are doing, we put them in a really powerful position. All they have to do is to keep doing what they are doing and we will lose. We set ourselves up.

If we can't get others to change, how can we resolve a conflict?

The good news is that all we have to do is to change ourselves. Of course, as anyone who has ever made a New Years Resolution knows, that can be plenty hard to do. But at least it is possible. All we have to do--and I fully understand that this is difficult--is to know what we need (as opposed to what we want), and to know what we can do that will create those qualities, and then consistently get ourselves to behave that way. We can, on our own, create many of the qualities we need, and we can create relationships with others in which we work together to create what we all need.

This sounds like an awful lot of work. Is it really worth it?

It is an awful lot of work. It is the hardest work any of us ever does. But it is also the most satisfying work we can do. It is the work of identifying what we need and then creating it and creating relationship with others in which we work together to create what we all need.

As it turns out, life is not a zero sum game. When you create what you need you don't take anything away from others. When you create what you need you are also creating what everyone around you needs. This is the most satisfying work of all.

Review on 2 Wired 2 Tired

2010-03-08T00:35:43Z

We just got a great review from a blog called 2 Wired 2 Tired. The kids are too wired and the parents are too tired. Check it out at http://www.2wired2tired.com/book-review-just-conflict

Groundhog Day Release

2010-01-25T14:56:21Z

The publicity team for the release of the book Just Conflict is preparing for a large campaign to begin next Tuesday. As it happens, that is Groundhog Day. While the timing was not coordinated with this odd holiday by design, it has a kind of synchronicity which connects with the 1993 film by Harold Ramis starring Bill Murray.

In the film "Groundhog Day" Murray plays Phil Connors, a weatherman for a Pittsburg TV station, who once again is on assignment in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania for the February 2 festivities. He is not pleased. Indeed, very little seems to please Connors. He is a smart and funny but shallow and narcissistic loner who manages to alienate everyone he relates to.

Without explanation Connors has predicted that a big snow storm heading across the mid-west will miss mid-Pennsylvania. He is wrong. The blizzard hits and strands him and his team in Punxsutawney for a second day. Except it is the same day. He wakes up on what ought to be February 3, but it is Groundhog Day all over again. At least it is for Connors. For everyone else it is the first time they have had this day.

]]> Day after day it is Groundhog Day. No one changes but Connors, and it takes him a while to begin to adjust his own behavior. It is Day Four before he remembers to miss stepping in the slush-filled hole on his way to his moment on camera at Gobbler's Knob, the park in the center of town where Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow and predicts six more weeks of winter.

As it turns out, both Phil's are afraid of their shadows. In Connors' case it is not his physical shadow but his psychic one that scares him. He can't get close to others because he is not close to himself. The heart of the film is the exploration of his transformation, kicking and screaming much of the way, into a person who not only knows himself, but likes himself.

Along the way he does what we all do to avoid deep connection. He explores all manor of self-destructive behavior. He has the luxury and the curse of not having long-term consequences. No matter what he does today, he will get a fresh start tomorrow.

He also explores manipulating others for his own immediate desires. He seduces women, punches out an insurance salesman, robs an armored car, all with no lasting effect on his self-satisfaction. In the end he does succeed in breaking out of his predicament, but one of the marvels of the film is that it is not obvious what he did to release himself.

Considering what worked for Phil Connors makes Groundhog Day the perfect time to promote Just Conflict. We all share in Phil Connors' predicament. In one scene where Phil is describing his situation to a couple of town drunks with the lament that it is the same day over and over, one of them responds by saying, "Yes, I guess that about sums it up." We all, to some degree, have the same day over and over.

While there are many powerful lessons the film can help us learn, there are two which stand out. One is that it really is the same thing over and over. We can try to duck or ignore life's problems but they keep coming back. While these problems are not as obvious for most of us as they are for Phil Connors, we all have patterns of conflict and we will continue to have opportunities to address them. Avoiding these opportunities just keeps us stuck.

The second lesson is the one it took Phil the longest to learn but which finally, in my judgment, set him free from the rut of the same thing over and over. In the beginning Phil tried a series of strategies which would either exploit the advantage his predicament gave him (carefully planning an armored car heist by observing the security lapses) or which attempted to get others to do something which would save him from his plight (getting Rita, his producer played by Andie MacDowell, to spend the night with him so he was not alone when the day reset). What these strategies share is the hope that we will save ourselves by getting others to change.

We all know we can't change others. This was abundantly clear to Phil Connors. But it didn't stop him from trying and it doesn't stop the rest of us. It was only when Phil discovered that he couldn't make Rita love him--that he couldn't become so perfectly who she wanted that she would not resist him--that he gave up being dedicated to manipulation. Instead he decided to put the same dedication into being kind and considerate as he had put into getting others to do as he wanted. He dedicated himself to learning to play piano, not to impress others, but for the love of music.

When he transcends self-centeredness and becomes deeply centered in himself, he draws others to him. In the end, Rita falls in love with him because he is deeply connected with himself, not because he is who she wants him to be. This is a lesson we all need to learn. Deep and durable relationships come from authenticity. We can't be authentically ourselves when we are trying to make others love us.

Phil is able to effect this transformation in himself by practicing acts of kindness and practicing his piano playing over and over, day after day. It is practices for self-discovery and transformation which Just Conflict hopes to teach.

Gender Justice Roots for Just Conflict

2010-01-07T03:43:19Z

What might it mean for women and men to have deeply intimate and just relationships when, for so much of human history, relationships between men and women have been shaped by dominance, gender inequality, and violence?

This question arose for me out of thirty years of work in the domestic violence intervention community starting with my role as a volunteer on the staff of one of the first programs in the country to do intervention with men who batter. This program is RAVEN in St. Louis. I was the coordinator of counseling services there for over eight years in the 1980's.

]]> The parent group for RAVEN developed from the planning team for the 4^th National Conference on Men and Masculinity held at Washington University in St. Louis in 1977. That conference brought together men (and some women) who were interested in discovering how our understandings of gender shaped our relationships with other men, with women, and with our children.

The planning group continued to meet after the conference and formed what was first called Brothers in Change but which was later changed to the St. Louis Organization for Changing Men. We were a collective which allowed anyone who completed the training and volunteered at least three hours a week to be a member of the staff and to participate in the consensus decision-making process. That is, anyone who was male. Women were excluded from membership.

The broader organization had multiple goals and activities. There was a monthly public meeting that explored some issue of men's identity, often through a film and subsequent discussion. There was a group exploring the roles of men as fathers. And there was what we called the Childcare Collective which provided childcare at women's events. The intervention program working with men who batter was not originally an activity of the collective. It mostly arose out of a concern to figure out why men would physically assault their women partners. Some of the men on staff had themselves been violent in past relationships.

I took the training to join the staff in the fall of 1979 and started co-leading one of the groups for men who batter in January 1980. In June of 1980 I went to my first National Coalition Against Domestic Violence conference and discovered how controversial our work was. I saw us as allies with the women who work with battered women. It never occurred to me that there would be women who opposed what we were doing. Still I found that I had great respect for the women who were not impressed or encouraged by our work. Their indifference and skepticism gave me a very helpful lens through which to see what we were trying to do.

A central concern for feminism in the 70's (and which has continued to this day) is the problem of violence against women. Much of the activism of the day was about creating support services for the victims of that violence: victims of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence. The men who were attracted to Brothers in Change were primarily social activists who wanted to change the world. While we were not welcome to join the women in their work, we envied their zeal and the cohesiveness of their consciousness raising groups.

It was self-evident that the women who were victims were the victims of men. As men, it was our job to address those men, our brothers and at times ourselves, who perpetrated the violence. We saw ourselves as unwilling beneficiaries of men's violence against women and we committed ourselves to ending it. While we would have enjoyed women's thanks, it was clear we were not going to get applause for cleaning up the mess we were making.

So the Domestic Violence "Community" was actually two communities. There were the women who worked with women, and the men who worked with men. We didn't meet together routinely. From time to time there was occasion to each present at the same event and we knew each other socially, but there was a sense that our work was different and that there was little reason to collaborate.

As men we knew that our work depended on the work that women were doing. Indeed, there is no "problem of domestic violence" in those communities where there are no services for battered women. On the other hand women considered that we were at best irrelevant and at worst dangerous. We certainly weren't going the get the men to change and we might give their partners senseless hope which would lure them back into danger. There was no sense that we men were in a mutual relationship with the women. Some of us felt a sense of justice in this imbalanced relationship. We were atoning for thousands of years of patriarchal violence and oppression.

But by the 90's the politics started to change. It became more and more important to model gender equality and that meant having men working at rape crisis centers and women co-leading intervention groups for men who batter. As this shift happened it also became more critical that we have a clear notion of what just and equitable relationships between women and men might look like.

This clarity has not emerged in the communities of which I have been a part. We have a pretty clear sense of what we don't want, but we don't have a clear vision of what healthy relationships are like. It was my wish to describe just relationships in gender neutral terms that helped prompt me to develop the ideas I present in Just Conflict.

In order to envision what healthy relationships look like in the book we consider the nature of power, kinds of relationships, forms of agreements, and tools to create and recreate accountability. In every instance it is important to take into account the effects of culture on our expectations. Nevertheless, just relationships are not shaped by the demands of gender. We must take seriously the trauma of abuse and discover ways of establishing a radical level of accountability if we are to build relationships which do not mimic the oppression that characterizes much of what is considered normal in this culture.

My personal efforts to answer these questions have resulted in the practical framework which is the vision of Just Conflict.

The Obama Doctrine

2009-12-11T20:37:21Z

I have read and reread President Obama's lecture to the Nobel Prize committee and distinguished guests upon his award of the Peace Prize. I find it to be a powerful and important statement, not just of American foreign policy under this President, but of how we as humans might learn to address and resolve conflicts.

I have been working on an essay about the principles of nonviolence Martin Luther King used in his efforts on behalf of civil rights in America so I was especially sensitive to Obama's references. To have a President, especially one who is increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan, cite King (and Gandhi) as models to follow and to do so in a way that is coherent and carefully considered illuminates the reasons Obama got the award. That he received it saying so many things that so many of his liberal supporters find disagreeable makes it only more remarkable.

I myself didn't agree with everything he had to say. But my disagreement has mostly to do with his use of the term nonviolence in ways that, while consistent with popular usage, limits the meaning to "a set of tactics appropriate to actions taken by oppressed persons addressing grievances against an authority which is morally sensitive." If we limit the term in that way then he is right, it wouldn't have worked against the Nazis and it won't work with al Qaeda.

But if we are looking not so much at the tactics as at the philosophy that undergirds it, and think more creatively about how conflicts can be resolved, then we discover some important principles that unite Nonviolence and the Obama Doctrine. Among them:

We are all connected in a great web of care and concern. What affects one of us affects all of us.
Passivity or patience in the face of oppression is not only an abandonment of our moral responsibility but is also an invitation to greater violence.
The road to peace is through a process of relationship building with those with whom we disagree.
Justice is not simply about the rule of law but is also about the equitable distribution of rights and resources, but such equity is not possible without the rule of law.
We cannot allow the fact that others abandon righteous behavior to allow us to depart from the values we hold.

These are all examples of the kinds of principles which I hope to celebrate and promote through the promulgation of Creative Conflict Resolution and through Just Conflict. I welcome your comments.

Review from Rev. Fred Brandenburg

2009-12-08T21:47:54Z

Fred is a retired pastor in the United Church of Christ who was the pastor of the church in Columbia, MO for many years. Here is his review of Just Conflict.

General Review:
Just Conflict is a very thorough step-by-step approach to dealing with conflict, both intra-personally and inter-personally. It is a compilation of learnings and wisdom gleaned through years of working with the dynamics of conflict. It is obvious that Dr Robinson has not only immersed himself in his work, but had the presence of mind to organize his material into a useful tool from which anyone dealing with human conflict can gather understanding. His explanation of terms creates a clarity of presentation, and the book is chock full of useful information; one can return to it again and again.
Individuals, families and groups can gain valuable insight into their lives and conflicts, and how creative resolution can take place. It is an integral part of life's journey.
Fred Brandenburg
Pastor

Note from Dr. Roger Walsh

2009-12-07T19:01:52Z

I received a nice note from Roger Walsh today:

Dear Mark,

Thank you for sending a copy of your book & congratulations on writing it.

Relationships are the advanced yoga & you've thought a lot about harmonizing them.

All best wishes for the book's success.

Roger

Why I wrote "Just Conflict"

2009-11-21T00:06:09Z

In November of 1986 I flew back to St. Louis from El Salvador. High above the clouds as I peered out the window I had a startling revelation.

I had been in El Salvador as part of an American delegation observing the civil war that was tearing the country apart. The US government was supporting the Salvadoran government whose troops were terrorizing anyone they suspected of being friendly with the rebels. One day earlier I sat in a conference room in San Salvador and heard a woman give an eyewitness account of her pregnant friend being disemboweled by a government soldier while she watched horrified and powerless from the shelter of the surrounding woods.

Looking out the window remembering her vivid account I thought to myself, "How can anyone do something like that."

That is just the sort of statement we often make to ourselves when confronted with the horrific events of our lives. Then I heard again what I had thought, this time not as a statement, but as a question. "What is going on with someone who chooses to inflict suffering on another deliberately?" I realized that I know the answer to that question. Further, I realized the question itself is frightening. We are not curious about the intra-psychic dynamics of those who behave in such obviously harmful ways. We choose instead to believe that they cannot be understood.

At the time I was the Clinical Director of a program in St. Louis called RAVEN and was doing contract work for the Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program of the Masters and Johnson Institute. RAVEN was then a men's counseling collective which engaged in several programs for social change, among them doing intervention with men who batter and men who commit sexual assault.

The program at Masters and Johnson was targeted at families in which a parent (the father) had sexually abused a child and the non-offending parent (the mother) had hopes of reunifying the family. The question we were exploring was, "What will each part of the family system have to do such that we can be confident that there will not be a re-offense and that we have established such a momentum for healing that we are confident about the children's long term wellbeing." My job was to do therapy individually and in a group with the fathers. I was thus doing extensive clinical work with men who batter their wives and sexually abuse their own children.

As I looked out the window at the cloud cover over Mexico it became clear to me that the government soldiers were not all that different from the men I work with every day. Furthermore it became clear to me that the belief that we can't know why these people do these things comes not from our inability to understand them but from our unwillingness to face our own horror when we do.

As I work with men who batter and with men who sexually abuse, I commonly come face to face with colleagues who try to convince me that what I am doing can't possibly be effective. I have heard advocates for battered women assert that we shouldn't do intervention with the men because they won't change and we are only building unfounded hopes in their partners when we try. I have witnessed administrators of State programs for treatment of sex offenders dismiss therapists from the list of approved providers because those providers were too confident that the men they work with can heal. In effect I was told, "If you think you can help these men heal you are being naïve and they are fooling you."

Each of us wants to know that we are good. And we also know there are people who do bad things. It is more comfortable for us when we can believe that we are not like them. If we come to know them too well, we lose the ability to see them as essentially different from ourselves. If we can comfortably assert that they cannot change, then we don't have to understand them so deeply that we begin to identify with them. Nevertheless, they are not so different from us.

So, as I gazed out the window of the plane, I was aware that I knew why these guys did what they did and I could see that neither I nor anyone else is as different from them as we would like. Seeing that we all do things which are harmful to others and especially that we all do things that harm those we care about the most can help us to heal ourselves, our relationships, and those we care about. But we will not address a problem we say we do not have.

In the 23 years since that realization I have worked to know what goes on within us as we make choices which are abusive to others and to discover ways to talk about those interior dynamics such that anyone can understand them. My challenge was to make it simple enough that the men in my care could appreciate and use the perspectives I was offering to alter their behavior when they choose to harm those they say they love the most.

Both the harm and the healing arise out of how we address conflict. This is the clearest context in which to look at abilities and qualities for building healthy relationships. Time and time again it has been brought home to me that everyone and every relationship can benefit from greater self-awareness, a larger ability to care for ourselves, and a willingness to be fully accountable. If we are to create relationships which are just, we must use tools for addressing conflict which move us all into ways of being that construct what everyone needs. That is both the premise and the goal of Just Conflict.

"Just Conflict" is now available

2009-10-28T02:24:55Z

A little before six this evening UPS delivered 100 copies of my book. I went on Amazon and discovered that they have it listed. There is no image yet and they admit it isn't in stock, but you can order it. I am discounting the price if you want to come by for one and I will be taking them to the IFS Conference this weekend.

I will give a copy to anyone who will read the whole thing and write a review. You can pan it if you want, but I want a commitment to read and write about it. I will post your review on the web site, Just Conflict, and will invite you to post it to Amazon as well.

Now I get to promote the thing. I will be sending copies to anyone I think will want to interview me publically or will want to publish a review. I welcome your suggestions.

Poster Text

2009-10-22T02:48:32Z

Just Conflict: Transformation through Resolution

Everyone experiences conflict and, at times, feels overwhelmed. When we:

remain calm and centered,
see clearly what the conflict is about and where it is coming from,
address the conflict creatively and assertively, and
create what we need without expecting or depending on others to change,

the result is personal, relational, social, and spiritual transformation.

As we master the skills of conflict resolution this transformation comes more easily to us and we are able to support others in resolving their conflicts.

Just Conflict helps readers gain greater confidence about their capacity to name, address, and resolve whatever conflict arises so that, when they discover issues in any relationship, they are able to say, "Oh, it's just conflict."

These tools help the reader to become more adept at knowing what is missing for them when conflicts emerge and to make the choices which get all parties what they need. It is the ability to construct justice out of turmoil which makes conflict just.

Tank on empty; hair on fire

2009-10-16T12:42:45Z

I've been doing better in the self care department lately but when I think about what a mess I've allowed my life to become and alllllllll the areas that need attention, I feel overwhelmed.

How do I decide what to pay attention to? It feels like no matter what I do I have to let go of things that are important - things other people seem to manage just fine. I resent myself - knowing that this huge mess is a product of my choices. And I resent that my energy and motivation last for about... 30 minutes... When it will take weeks of concentrated efforts to get organized, clear out past obligations, etc.

I need a game plan....?

The best resource I have to offer is Discipline #5: The Self-Care Routine. [If you are not familiar with it you can learn more about it here.] It sounds as though you are close to overwhelm and that you are upset with yourself; not only are you running on fumes, you are fuming at yourself. We want to both fill the tank and put out the fire. Let's start with the fire.

So there are parts of you that want to do a better job of self-care. They are dedicated to your welfare and observe that there are other parts that are sabotaging your well-being. The "sabotaging" parts don't see it that way at all. They are just trying to relieve the sense of overwhelm by allowing for some r&r. They know you just need to chill sometimes.

So we have parts who want to work harder and parts that just want to "chill." These parts are in conflict and a part of what we are hoping to construct here is a way to reduce the intensity of the conflict between those parts.

At the same time we want to fill the tank; we want to do things which actually get us more of what we need... and there are a lot of things we need. If we are not careful our anxiety about all of the things we need will push us further into overwhelm. Remember, "Progress, not perfection." We can only improve what we are able to do; we will not become perfect at it. We want our expectations to be spot on with what actually happens. If we expect more of ourselves than we are actually going to be able to do, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.

So, do you have a plan? Is it a plan for doing things you can't or don't do, or is it a plan for doing better what you already do? What do you do when you don't follow the plan? What do you observe about yourself when you don't do what you decided was good for you to do?