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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?