Date: December 19, 2024
Times: 6:30pm- 8:30 pm Eastern (Find the time for your location)
Instructors: Carol (Corky) Becker PhD & Bob Stains, MEd
Location: Live on Zoom (synchronous).
Free Event, no CEUs available
“Who did you vote for? Who are you? How can we get along now?”: How to Change the Conversation to Build Bridges Over Troubled Waters
In the midst of tension caused by deep differences -about their vote for president, or their position on abortion for instance- partners and family members often fight with the other whose vote or beliefs seem wrong-headed and even dangerous. Even if people are not actively fighting with each other, differences in values can cause significant distress and distance in relationships. This free workshop will offer ideas to help people who are struggling with these challenges by offering a different question to frame the interpersonal dilemma. Instead of paying attention to and engaging with what people are fighting about, we will help you ask “What are you fighting for?” Reframing the fight in this way allows for the emergence of increased understanding and connection despite polarizing differences. We will discuss several conversational resources you can use to help people speak and listen with greater empathy and complexity. The foundational idea is to encourage dialogue rather than debate, allowing people with opposing viewpoints to share personal stories and build understanding through deep listening, rather than trying to change each other’s minds or win an argument.
This workshop will introduce ideas that help couples, families, and communities who are in conflict due to polarizing differences. The ideas we share about how to create a context and conditions for dialogue across difference were originally developed from family systems strategies taught at the Family Institute of Cambridge which became TTB. The Public Conversations Project, which has become Essential Partners, has used these ideas for decades in many community contexts including schools, universities, and religious institutions to help people live, work, worship and learn better together.
Carol (Corky) Becker, PhD
Carol (Corky) Becker, PhD, is a Founding Associate of Essential Partners. She is a clinical psychologist, family and couple therapist, family therapy supervisor, teacher/trainer and consultant. Her private practice focus has been transforming conflict into dialogue. The highlights of her work with Essential Partners (previously known as the Public Conversations Project) included the development of the approach to dialogue with pro-life and pro-choice participants in the early 1990’s, work on Population and Development for the UN summit, dialogues at Randolph College transitioning to co-education, training at the Chapin school, Intra Jewish dialogues on the Middle East, and dialogue with Zen teachers. Her workshops included work on interviewing to prepare for dialogue, neuroscience of arousal and how our approach addresses those dilemmas for participants and facilitators. She collaborated with IFS therapists to develop approaches to dialogue that incorporate Internal Family Systems ideas. Corky taught in TTB’s Intensive Certificate Program in Family and Couple Therapy for over 20 years. She developed and facilitated TTB’s Master Series in Couple Therapy for 10 years.
Bob Stains, M.Ed
Bob Stains, MEd, is a Senior Associate at Essential Partners, having previously served as Senior VP for Training. He designs and facilitates dialogues the US and other countries that help people divided by identity, religious and political differences to connect and become more human to each other. Bob trains other senior practitioners in Essential Partners’ Reflective Structured Dialogue approach and provides conflict engagement coaching to academic, civic and religious leaders in the US and abroad. Bob was a Visiting Researcher at the Tom Porter Program on Religion and Conflict Transformation of the Boston University School of Theology 2018-2021and consulted to the Harvard Negotiation Project for 15 years. He has served as adjunct faculty at Harvard Divinity School and schools of law at Pepperdine and Mitchel-Hamline universities and has also taught at Baylor and University of Washington schools of law as well as Hebrew College. Bob is an active member of Mediators Beyond Borders International, a co-founder of The Family Dinner Project and was one of the original mediator trainers for the USPS REDRESS program, the first national program in Transformative Mediation. In addition to his work with Essential Partners, Bob maintains a private conflict transformation practice in Danvers, MA.