Insight Mediation Working Paper #3:

Setting a strong foundation for a learning conversation in Insight mediation:

The power of asking about hopes for an imagined better future

Cheryl Picard and Marnie Jull, September, 2023

Introduction

Mediators use a variety of communication skills in their work – such as paraphrasing, curious questioning and validating - to help conflicting parties address their differences and interact more peaceably. A mediator’s choice of an intervention skill is based on their understanding of how conflict begins and changes. Asking about hopes for an imagined better future is a specific strategy used by mediators using the Insight approach because of their understanding of conflict that is quite different from other mediators. Their interventions are based on the understanding that conflict is enacted through people’s behaviours. Conflict behaviour is what people do - when they discern some kind of threat and decide to defend - with behaviours like aggressive fighting, silence, avoidance or even placating appeasement. People enact those conflict behaviours when they believe they need to protect against different kinds of threat – including a risk to a practical interest or a concern about justice and fairness in systems.[1] 

Other mediators, for example, may understand conflict to be the result of unmet needs so they would use questioning or paraphrasing skills to help the parties explore their needs as well as to consider ways to satisfy those needs in less conflictual ways.[2] A different mediator might understand conflict to be an expression of competing narratives and power-related discourses, so the aim of the mediator’s questioning or paraphrasing skills would be to help the parties to recognize and change those narratives in such a way as to alter the parties’ interactions with each other.

What is distinct about Insight mediation is the recognition of the truncating impact of threat on people’s ability to listen and learn as well as the connection between a person’s sense of threat and their defend-conflict behaviours. The impact of threat on cognitive functioning is to truncate curiosity and focus attention on defending and protecting in ways that are often habitual or rash. Insight mediation is a way for parties to change their conflict behaviours. Using a range of strategies and communication skills, a mediator using the Insight approach helps parties expand their curiosity and counter the truncating impact of threat, which enable the parties to reassess their assumptions and interpretations shift their behaviours. An Insight-oriented mediator thus facilitates learning conversations by helping the parties become more curious and discover new possibilities in their interactions with the other. They do this through five overlapping and non-linear activities: 1) Attend to Process 2) Broaden Understanding 3) Deepen Insights 4) Explore Possibilities and 5) Make Decisions[3].

In this short essay we explore the theory and practice of the activities that take place before and in the early part of a mediation session to help a mediator and the parties create the foundation for a learning conversation. We begin with a brief introduction to “Convening”, sometimes referred to as pre-mediation or intake, that happens before the joint sessions, along with an explanation of the activity that “Attends to Process”[4]. The remainder of the paper will focus on “Broadening Understanding”, with particular attention to the purpose and value of asking the parties about their imagined hopes for a better future, known in the Insight approach as the “hope question”. To help us illustrate these activities we explore a simulated conflict named, “What to do with Mom”.

The conflict revolves around two sisters – Adrianna and Carla - who disagree on how best to look after their mother, who is 87 years of age and living in the large home where she raised her family. Carla (who is divorced, has no children and a good job) lives in a small apartment. Adrianna (who does not work outside the home and is married with three children and two pets) lives in a large house. Although each sibling has concerns about their mother’s ability to look after herself, they disagree about what to do. Adrianna thinks Carla should move in with their mother in the family home. Carla thinks her mom should move in with Adrianna. The sisters’ arguments have reached a stage where they are no longer talking to each other, and neither one wants to upset their mother, who is not aware that these conversations are taking place. Their mother wants each daughter to be happy, does not want to be a bother to either one, and considers herself well enough to look after herself, despite a number of minor incidents that indicate she is having some challenges. Carla emailed Adrianna to suggest mediation. Adrianna agreed.

Convening a Mediation and Attending to Process  

In separate sessions held prior to any joint sessions being held, the mediator talks with each sister in such a way as to set the stage for learning to take place during the mediation. In these one-on-one conversations, the mediator introduces herself and describes Insight mediation as an opportunity for each sister to listen and be heard so that they can discover new possibilities for action. Through these convening conversations, the mediator also assesses whether the situation is appropriate for mediation and if the parties are sufficiently motivated to participate.

During the convening, pre-mediation or intake session, the mediator is attentive to helping the parties set the stage for learning from each other in the joint sessions that will follow. This involves strategically asking questions to prompt each sister to reflect on what matters to them as well as the certainties and patterns of interaction that prevent the two of them from agreeing or discovering their own solutions. Having this conversation with the mediator, without the other present, can help each sister engage her curiosity toward herself and possibly her sister in a way that may have not been accessible before.

The mediator also emphasises their role is as a facilitator rather than a decision-maker, and discusses responsibilities for decision-making as well as confidentiality with each sister. The mediator also welcomes questions about the mediation process, and asks each sister to consider what they might need in the session to feel comfortable and be able to listen or feel heard by the other. Once questions have been answered and there is agreement to proceed with joint sessions, a time, date and place will be set for the mediation.

The mediators’ goal in the first joint session, because they recognize that a sense of threat inhibits the parties’ capacity to listen and learn, is to help settle participants into the space and the conversation so they can be ready to engage. In our case study, the mediator takes some time to welcome Carla and Adrianna, and review their understandings of roles, responsibilities and process that were discussed in convening. The parties are not the only ones to benefit from this opening phase: the mediator can also use this phase as a way to settle into listening and learning. 

An Insight mediator “attends to process” rather than “introduces a process” for several reasons. Their role is to attend to process (i.e. the parties’ interactions and the flow of dialogue) throughout the mediation, not just in the opening phase. “Introducing a process” conveys an impression that the process belongs to the mediator, while “attending to process” is a task that can be shared by the parties and the mediator, who are co-responsible for how the mediation process evolves. An Insight mediator does not provide “ground rules” but can help co-create guidelines with the parties. Being seen to establish rules can put the mediator in an authoritative role of referee rather than facilitator of a process that belongs with the parties. Instead, the mediator may say something like:

Let’s start by talking about what the two of you understand about mediation based on what we’ve talked about in our meetings. That way if there are questions or different understandings we can talk about them to ensure we have a shared understanding of what will happen today. Next, we may want to talk about our roles - how I see my role and what you see as your role, along with what you need from each other, and from me, to make this a safe and successful dialogue. Remember, you are here to learn what really matters to each other and in the process you are likely to discover more about what really matters to you. Learning how conflict behaviours are linked to protecting what you each value is often the door through which you will discover new ways of interacting with each other and making decisions that will be less painful and more productive.

Using an elicitive and interactive learning process right from the start helps ensure the parties and the mediator agree on important aspects of the mediation such as roles, confidentiality, timelines, authority to make decisions and other process issues.[5] Furthermore, interacting with the parties in an inclusive manner enables the mediator to observe how willing, or capable, they are to engage with each other this early in the process. These observations of the parties’ relative openness to listening and learning thus helps the mediator orient their strategies toward unblocking the flow of curiosity that can help the parties have a learning conversation.

              After the sisters are settled into their process, the mediator asks each of them to talk about their hopes for a better tomorrow by choosing to attend mediation. This begins the second phase of Insight mediation.

Broadening Understanding through the Hope Question

Asking each party about their vision for a better tomorrow aims to reveal a different and less accusatory narrative from the one parties are used to hearing from each other. It intentionally avoids asking “what is the problem you want to resolve” or “what are the issues you have come to talk about”. Opening comments are seen as an opportunity for the parties to articulate their purpose and hopes in coming to mediation rather than to inadvertently regurgitate their disagreements, defend their viewpoints or reinforce their conflict behaviours. We will repeat this important point, considering that it may be a new idea for non-insight trained mediators.  An Insight mediator does not invite the parties to make opening statements about the problem or issues to be discussed. These kinds of opening statements are often accusatory narratives (what an Insight mediator might call “defend stories”)[6].  An Insight mediator understands these blame-filled stories are likely to elicit a sense of threat and reciprocal conflict behaviour (such as shutting down, interrupting, or counter-accusing) which further block curiosity and learning. Instead the Insight mediator begins by asking each party to talk about how they hope their lives will improve after talking to each other in the mediation.

 “Asking the hope question” is more than simply asking about a hope. It involves a series of communication techniques that reveal and clarify the parties’ hopes, motivations and visions for how changing their situation today will improve their lives tomorrow. Using our case study, “What to do with Mom”, the following dialogue exemplifies the strategy referred to as “asking the hope question”. 

As I discussed with you in the convening session, I am going to begin the mediation by asking each of you to talk about how you hope opening up the dialogue between you about your Mom will make your lives better tomorrow and in the future. This is a question about your motivation for coming to mediation today rather than what you want to see in terms of an outcome. I will give you a moment to think about this, then ask who would like to go first?

Carla offers to speak first:

Ok, Carla, what are you hoping will be better for you tomorrow if you are able to talk to Adrianna today about the things that are concerning you? Once we are sure we understand your hopes Carla, I will ask you, Adrianna, to share your hopes for how today’s mediation can lead to a better tomorrow for you. 

Although mediators who do not identify as Insight practitioners may ask questions about hopes or reasons for coming to mediation, they likely have different intentions. For example, a mediator whose goal is to help the parties discover and negotiate interests may use a question about hopes to reveal negotiable entry points. The goal and strategies of an Insight mediator are quite different. Because an Insight mediator wants to help parties unblock or release their curiosity so that they can learn and discover new possibilities for themselves, a mediator uses the hope question to shift a party’ attention away from their own certainty of threat and a repetition of their defend story.

Parties coming to a mediation session have come with their certainties and habitual behaviours. Some may be prepared to fight for what they feel they need or deserve, while others feel stuck. Most parties feel they must convince the mediator that they are right, or that they are the “wronged” party. In these truncated states, the parties are unlikely to be able to verbalize their hopes even after they are prompted by the mediator to think about this before they arrive to mediation. It is very common when a mediator asks about hopes for a better tomorrow that parties answer with disguised demands or vague generalities. “I want an apology”; “I hope she’ll stop micro-managing me”. Other parties may be quite vague, “I’d like things to be better between us.” “I’d like some respect.”

Insight mediators spend time discovering the root of the parties’ answers to the hope question as a way to make known that which is often unknown to the parties themselves. Reflecting more deeply on their own, as well as the other’s, hopes for the mediation can itself generate a more hopeful environment. Sparked by the mediator’s authentic curiosity, this process of discovery and reflection on what really matters offers the parties another opportunity to become less truncated by threat and more open to learn. Hearing another party’s hope for a more desirable future in lieu of the unwelcome present can inspire a sense that engaging in the difficult conversations ahead could be worthwhile. Furthermore, because the mediator ensures that each party hears and understands the other’s person response to the hope question, it provides an opportunity for the party to shift their own attention away from preparing for rebuttal.

Being transparent about their intentions[7], Insight mediators help the parties articulate a specific, concrete or imaginable response to the question about hopes for a better tomorrow. This helps the party more clearly express their valuing or meaning-making about what matters to them; something that their threat-defend pattern of interaction very often prevents them from realizing. To help the party articulate a concrete response, the Insight mediator uses the communication skill of asking “layered questions”, whereby they ask a series of questions that each follow from the answer to the previous question.

Let’s continue with our case study dialogue to demonstrate this skill. We enter the dialogue after the mediator asks Carla about her hopes for a better tomorrow to which she blurts out:

I just want Adrianna to do what is best and right for our Mom and stop being so selfish!

The mediator then asks a question that follows from this answer:

You want what’s best for your mom. And if Adrianna were to do what you think is best for your Mom, how would this make tomorrow better for you?

With exasperation Carla answers:

Well for one thing, Mom would not be alone and then I wouldn’t have to worry all the time about her falling and hurting herself!

The mediator asks a layered question that follows from Carla’s answer to the question before:

You are very worried about your Mother’s safety and you don’t want to worry all the time. So you’re hoping that this conversation will make things better for you in what way?

Carla responds,

Well, I wouldn’t have to call and check up on her three times a day, or wonder why she hasn’t called me back. I’d be able to focus on my own life and deal with my own problems for a change.

The mediator uses this information to note that a learning conversation may be possible between the two sisters when their sense of threat is sufficiently diminished:

So one of the conversations you are hoping to have with Adrianna today involves how to ensure Mom is safe from harm. And that would give you greater peace of mind so you can focus more on your own life. I’ve made a little note for us to come back to that at some point. Before we do that, however, it is important that we hear from Adrianna about what her hopes are for a better tomorrow if we can talk about what matters to her today.

Before continuing the simulated dialogue between the mediator and Adrianna about her hopes, it is worth noting a few aspects of layered questions. Asking layered questions involves more than asking a sequence of questions (which can sometimes feel to a party like an interrogation rather than an authentically curious conversation). Layered questions usually include a short paraphrase and a targeted question. The short paraphrase helps the mediator verify their understanding of the party’s response, and the targeted question aims to expand or elaborate on the party’s thinking about what they said. Layered questions help the parties “peel back the onion” of their own knowing, valuing and deciding. These kinds of questions ensure the mediator is following the parties’ listening and learning, and not their own. For it is not the mediator who needs to know the answer to the questions; it is the party, whose truncated curiosity has prevented the discovery of their own better options.

A second aspect of layered questions is that the strategy of paraphrase and targeted question enables a mediator to explore respectfully a party’s concern while recognizing that a party may feel too threatened or truncated to verbalize their hopes. The mediator’s goal is to notice and support more curiosity rather than question the parties in a way that could further shut them down. Such is the case with Adrianna in the dialogue below.

The mediator turns toward Adrianna and asks:

What are you hoping will be better for you Adrianna, if you are able to talk to Carla today about the things that are concerning you? This question is about what motivated you to choose mediation rather than a solution you think would work. Feel free to take a moment to think about this before you answer.

Adrianna in a frustrated way says:

Well I hope that Carla will come to her senses and see there is really only one workable option here. She needs to move in with Mom. It just makes good sense given that Mom is adamant she is fine on her own, but we both know she has taken some spills and needs help. I just don’t see the problem! There is plenty of space for Carla in the house, and if she moved in with Mom she would not have to pay rent, which would mean she would no longer worry about having enough money.

The mediator asks a layered question:

For you the solution to the problem seems obvious, which is that Carla move in with your Mom. If this were to happen how do you envisage your life being better?

Adrianna responds:

It would be better because I would not have to deal with all this ridiculous bickering and stress. (Still being accusatory and defensive.)

The mediator asks about hopes once more:

And if that stress were no longer a part of your life, how might that improve things?

Adrianna, still somewhat closed and defensively, says:

I am not sure what more I can tell you. Clearly if Carla is living with Mom I would worry less about her.  And who knows, maybe I would get to see my sister laugh instead of bicker!

The mediator recognizes that Adrianna feels frustrated with continuing to be asked about hopes, so does not ask an additional question.  

In addition to being worried about your Mom, it sounds like you would like to have some fun time with your sister.

Having heard from each party what they hope will be better, the mediator has a clearer sense of how to engage the parties in a learning conversation.

Clearly, Mom’s safety is of concern to you both, and you have different ideas about how to support her, and who should do what. You each have a sense of how the future could be better, and my job is help you work through what gets in the way of having a productive conversation so you can move closer to that better future.

In Closing

Asking about hopes for an imagined better future early in mediation is an important strategy in Insight mediation because it expands the parties’ ability to think about the preferred future they would like to work toward rather than the unwelcome future they are trying to prevent. In this way, an Insight mediator intentionally uses the opening stages of a mediation to set the foundation for a learning conversation that will generate new insights and ultimately change behaviours.

Instead of inviting parties to make opening statements that are likely to provoke defensive interactions (based on the parties’ truncated certainty about the other as threat), an Insight mediator uses layered questions to elicit concrete and specific descriptions of a better future. The parties’ responses help the mediator assess their openness to engage with each other as well as their motivations for undertaking mediation. With this assessment, the mediator can help the parties have a different kind of conversation that encourages further curiosity towards themselves and the other. Once their flow of curiosity is released, the parties become much more capable of having a conversation to discover what was previously unimaginable.

In future working papers, the remaining three Insight mediation activities (Deepen Insights, Explore possibilities and Make Decisions) will be examined in order to point out some of the more distinct and key insight skills and strategies and their relationship to Insight theory.

 Books for Further Reading

Melchin, Kenneth and Cheryl Picard, Transforming Conflict through Insight. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2008.

Picard, Cheryl A. Practising Insight Mediation. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2016.

[1] For simplicity, many Insight mediators call these threat-to-cares.

[2] Picard, Practising Insight Mediation, 2016:52-56.

[3] Ibid. p 58.

[4] Ibid. 2016:60-72.

[5] For a comprehensive discussion of the process-related areas see Practising Insight Mediation pgs.60-72. 

[6] Practising Insight Mediation pgs.27-33.

[7] Ibid., pgs. 134-135.

Insight Mediation Working Paper #2: Exploring Expected Futures

by Cheryl Picard and Kenneth Melchin, July 24, 2023

             Insight Mediation offers mediators novel tools and strategies for helping parties transform conflicts by gaining and verifying insights about themselves and others. In this “working” paper, we illustrate an important Insight mediation strategy highlighting how it might differ from what other mediators may have learned in their mediation training. To this end, we include an example of a short interaction between the Insight mediator and two sisters, Carla and Adrianna, who are in disagreement about how to support their aging mother. We pick up the conversation at a point during the process of “deepening the learning conversation” where the mediator is using an Insight strategy known as “Exploring Expected Futures.”

             Exploring Expected Futures is used in situations where the mediator notices parties are remaining locked in their defense-attack behaviours leading to an awareness of the need to shift the pattern of the parties’ conversation. The insight mediator knows that the parties are blocked by feelings of threat and an inability to listen and understand what each other is trying to say. In particular, they are being blocked in their ability to “learn” anything new about each other. To mitigate this, the mediator responds with the intention of generating new insights as a strategy to deepen the learning that is a prerequisite for conflicting parties deciding to change their conflict behaviour.

             In our example of the use of this strategy the mediator’s efforts are directed at facilitating a conversation with one sister about what is important to her in such a way that the other sister becomes able to listen without feeling threatened. He does this by probing the threat, not with the intent of remaining focused on the threat, but to help elicit what the sister is protecting as a result of the threat. With this in mind the mediator’s questioning and listening is structured to move the conversation so that Carla can listen to Adrianna without feeling the need to defend herself. In other words, the mediator helps Adrianna move through the threat and out the other side. When this happens Adrianna is able to talk about her own hopes and cares in relation to her own expected futures.

             When Adrianna talks about her hopes and cares in relation to her own expected futures, Carla, the listener, is less likely to feel attacked or criticized given that the conversation is no longer focused on attacking her. It has shifted to focus on Adrianna’s expected futures in light of her own experiences. As a result of noticing this, Carla’s current understanding of the conflict is less likely to be blocked by threat feelings enabling her to begin listening with curiosity. As the mediator is moving through this conversation with Adrianna, he is also paying careful attention to Carla, looking for body language that indicates a shift from a defensive posture to a curious one. After moving through the numerous interventions that form the strategy of Exploring Expected Futures with Adrianna, and verifying that Carla has indeed understood what Adrianna has been saying, the Insight mediator will shift attention to Carla to establish a similar conversation to help her talk about her hopes and cares in relation to her own expected futures, this time with Adrianna listening and coming to feel less attacked or criticized. Once parties are able to have a few experiences of listening and learning without being blocked by threat feelings, they often become able to take over the conversation themselves to pursue novel paths forward. Let’s examine the interactions between the insight mediator and the disputing parties.

 Noticing the Mediator’s Focus

As mentioned previously, our case example involves a conflict between two sisters, Carla and Adrianna, who strongly disagree about how to deal with their aging mother. The mediation has already been going on for a while, and attempts by the mediator to shift the attack-defend dialogue between the sisters have not been successful. They continue to speak and respond to each other with attitudes and behaviours that dismiss each other’s views. Some of what the mediator is noticing are repetitive explanations of what each party wants, raised voices when they talk to each other, snarky remarks, and other verbal and non-verbal dismissive behaviours.

 If you are a mediator trained in another approach, we suggest you pause at this point and consider the situation from the perspective of your prior training. Before proceeding, ask what you would be thinking if you were the mediator. You have already been working with the parties for a while, so you may be feeling some frustration. Perhaps you would want to remind the parties that they agreed to listen and not interrupt each other. Beyond this, you know you need a strategy for moving forward. What strategy would you select? If you were to select a strategy based on your prior training, can you name it and what would it entail? Once you have formulated an answer to this question, read on to see how it would differ or overlap with an Insight Mediator’s strategy.

 In this paper we focused our attention on only one specific Insight mediation strategy to enable us to better describe and teach the strategy. After noticing the parties continuing to engage in ongoing patterns of defend narratives, the mediator learned that the parties needed help to deepen the learning conversation and decided to respond by using the strategy of Exploring Expected Futures. This strategic choice was due to having observed that both Carla and Adrianna continued to feel threatened through their interactions, and as a result they exhibited little curiosity about what the other was saying verifying that their ability to learn from each other was blocked and that the line of questioning needed to change. Instead of exploring what is important to each party about helping their Mom, the mediator shifted his questioning to focus on their expectations about the future; more specifically what the sisters are trying to prevent from happening in the future. What worries the sisters is exemplified in the mediator’s dialogue below and the discussion that follows.  

Entering the Dialogue

After noticing the parties are stuck in on-going defend narratives the mediator enters the conversation and says:

Clearly it is hard right now for either of you to listen to what the other thinks would be best. This is not uncommon in situations where family members are concerned about another family member’s welfare. In fact, this difficulty is why you asked for help through mediation. Let me shift the focus of the conversation a bit to see if we can discover what is so threatening and what is making it hard for you to listen to each other. If you are going to be successful making decisions about how to deal with your aging mother it will be helpful to learn what each of you is worried about.  Who would like to start?

As the older sister, Adrianna offers to begin. The mediator turns to her and says:

Adrianna, talk a bit about what you would expect a supportive and helpful person or friend would do if you were to share with them your worries about your aging mother.

Discussion: The Insight mediator begins the strategy of Exploring Expected Futures by asking Adrianna a question that invites her to shift attention away from the current narrative about the conflict events and problems. She deliberately asks a question that focuses her attention and the attention of Carla, the listener, in an area that takes the conversation away from events that implicate or blame Carla. Instead, she asks Adrianna about how she imagined the conversation would unfold from her experience of talking to others about things concerning her.

             What the mediator does not do is stay in the problem-saturated narrative, as this will sustain parties defend patterns of interacting. Nor does the mediator simply ask what parties care about right now. Instead he directs attention to future expectations because this is where the deeper, most pressing cares and threats generating the conflict are to be discovered.

             Let’s continue with the conversation and our analysis. If Adrianna provides new and potentially less accusatory information in response to this question, then the mediator follows up with a question to Adrianna that adds a further layer onto this information. The mediator here is using the micro skill of “asking layered questions”[1]. Layered questions involve the mediator asking the party an open curious question about the answer that was given to the question that was asked before. Notice in the mediator’s paraphrasing below that he avoids attaching blame to Carla for not being supportive of her sister, but instead follows up with a question about her interpretation of perceived lack of support.

You expected the person to trust your thinking on how to deal with your mother at this point in her life, and to be open and supportive of your ideas. What do you hear a person telling you when you are not given the support you expect?

Discussion: This layered question begins to deepen the learning conversation by asking Adrianna about the threat she feels when she does not receive the support she expects. Even if the question focuses attention towards a negative expectation, the focus remains on something within Adrianna and not on something that explicitly implicates Carla. This gives Carla “space” for paying attention to what Adrianna is saying without feeling personally criticized or attacked.

             If Adrianna provides information about a possible threat that could be fuelling the conflict, the mediator follows up with another layered question to Adrianna that builds on the first two and deepens by exploring her expected dire future. Notice that the mediator “paraphrases[2]” what she heard before proceeding to ask another layered question. This skill of paraphrasing first and asking second is what Insight mediators refer to as “bridging”[3].

Clearly there is something quite worrisome for you when you encounter this apparent lack of trust (this is the mediator’s interpretation of the party’s response to the prior question). What are you imagining will happen if this continues?

Discussion: This is an extremely important question because it provides Adrianna with a way of speaking about her feelings of threat in a way that relates, not to Carla, but to her own future expectations. Insight mediators know that usually these future expectations have roots in the party’s own past, and she is inviting Adrianna to speak about events in her own past that lead her to expect this dire future outcome. Once again, this places Carla in the position of observing and listening to Adrianna speak about her own threat-to-care narrative. The mediator purposefully does not yet bring Carla into the conversation because she wants to make sure Carla does not feel she has to defend against Adrianna’s interpretation of events. Before inviting Carla to speak she wants to allow Adrianna to finish talking about her own fears.

             If Adrianna provides information that is expansive rather than contractive, then the mediator once again asks a layered question to deepen further. Asking layered questions to deepen understanding are not simply additive, they intend to provide insight into the essence or core of the threat interpretations leading to defend responses.  Recognizing the conversation with Adrianna is at an important junction, the mediator invites Adrianna to speak directly about Carla.

There is something important about Carla trusting you, Adrianna, that you care deeply about and that you are trying hard to protect. Perhaps you could speak directly to Carla and tell her what is it about your relationship that matters to you so much and what you are afraid of losing.

Discussion: With this question, the mediator is giving Adrianna the chance to formulate the positive value that is at the centre of her feelings of threat—the care she feels she is protecting. Through deepening we have learned that this is all about protecting her future relationship with her sister. With this question, the conversation remains detached from blaming Carla in two ways. First, Adrianna’s response is an exploration of her own life narrative, a narrative that does not accuse, blame or attack Carla; and second, the question asks about a positive value held by Adrianna rather that a negative disvalue that could be taken as a criticism of Carla.

All through this questioning with Adrianna, the mediator has not only been noticing and listening carefully to her, she has also been carefully observing Carla’s reactions. She is interested in knowing whether Carla’s body language reveals that she is responding to what Adrianna is saying with attention and curiosity. If so, she may be shifting away from her ongoing stance of attack-defend, and is learning something new. If Carla’s body language reveals openness and curiousity, the mediator will shift attention to the other party, in this case Carla, and begin Exploring Expected Futures. But, before this happens, it will be important for Carla to verify that she has heard correctly what Adrianna has been saying. The mediator turns to Carla and says something like this:

Carla, you have been listening attentively to Adrianna talk about what matters to her. It is important for you to share your understanding of what matters to your sister so she can tell you if you have this right, or correct what you have misunderstood. What is your understanding of what matters most to Adrianna?

Now that we know you understand Adrianna, perhaps you would talk about your ideas on how best to deal with your Mom, being sure to let Adrianna know what matters to you and what you are afraid will happen given that the two of you have not been able to agree on your mother’s care. So, let me ask you: What would you expect a supportive and helpful person or friend to do to help you find the best way to deal with your Mom’s situation, and if that didn’t happen what would you think?

Discussion: The mediator continues along this path of deepening the learning until both parties show some genuine interest in what the other is saying. Once both parties become curious about each other they will begin asking questions to expand and deepen what they know and they will stop contradicting each other or dismissing each other’s ideas. At this point, the mediator becomes more confident that the parties have, at least for the present, shifted out of their attitudes of attack-defence. They have opened their minds to allow for curiousity and learning from each other. The mediator can now feel relatively confident about engaging in new lines of inquiry that explore possibilities and decision-making for dealing with the parties aging mother.

To help readers reflect on their understanding of the strategy of Exploring Expected Futures we summarize below the progression of the mediator’s interventions moving the parties from their defending behaviours to curious wondering. Two points need highlighting.  First, the progression is based on the mediator responding not prescribing, which in Insight mediation is referred to as “responsive intentionality[4]. This behavioural outcome reminds the Insight mediator to be responsive to the parties using theory-informed intention to both the situation and the individual. Our second point underscores that it is questions that lead to insight and learning. And, while the structure of the question matters, the more important aspect is what the question asks about. Whereas some mediation methods focus attention on the discovery of interests or needs, the Insight approach seeks to reveal the threats behind conflict behaviour. Insight mediators engage parties in conversation about whether their feelings of threat are deliberate attacks on what matters to them.

Recapping the Use of Layered Questions during the Strategy of Exploring Expected Futures

The series of layered questions below are numbered to show the progression of the layered questions asked by the mediator during his deepening conversation with Adrianna.  We want to point out that the questions are not formulaic; they are a “dynamic pattern of responses that follow the parties own storytelling”.

1.  The Insight mediator began by asking Adrianna a curious question that went something like this: “What do you expect that a supportive or helpful person would do in this particular situation?”

2. When Adrianna provided some new information in response to this question, the mediator followed up with a curious question to Adrianna that added a deeper layer onto this information: “What do you think a person is telling you when she does not give you this help or support?”

3. When Adrianna talked about information that the mediator understood as a threat fuelling the conflict, he followed up with another layered threat-based question, again to Adrianna, that deepened on the first two questions by exploring future expectations of threat: “What is the worry or dire future that you expect to happen when you do not get this help or support?”

4. Once again, when Adrianna provided information that moved the conversation forward, the mediator followed up with another layered question to deepen further on future expectations: “What is it that you are trying to protect when this sort of conversational roadblock happens?”

5. When Adrianna is able to provide new information in response to this deeper question that appears to be at the root of her fears, the mediator first verifies that Carla had heard what Adrianna said. He asks: “Carla, what is your understanding of what Adrianna is envisioning will happen and how she is protecting that it does not happen?”

6. All the while through this questioning, the mediator has been directing his questions to Adrianna and he has been listening carefully to Adrianna. As importantly, he has also been observing the reaction of Carla, and whether Carla’s words and body language reveal whether she is responding to Adrianna with an attitude of defend-attack or whether she is becoming genuinely curious about what Adrianna is saying. Once it is determined that Carla understands what Adrianna has been saying, and that she is ready to talk about what matters to her and how it is being threatened in the current context, the mediator shifts his attention to deepening on the threat-to-care that Carla feels being sure to also attend to Adrianna’s reactions.

Conclusion

            In this brief text, we have provided an illustration of the Insight mediation strategy Exploring Expected Futures. Our goal has been to help mediators trained in other approaches identify particular ways that practicing Insight mediation differs from practices rooted in their prior training. We selected this particular strategy because it highlights how Insight mediators think differently about conflict. Insight mediation does not understand conflict as arising from incompatible or conflicting positions or interests. Rather it arises when parties’ ability to learn from each other in conversations is blocked by feelings of threats-to-cares. To help parties move past these blockages, Insight mediators know they need to find ways to “deepen” their learning conversation. This case study illustrates how the Insight mediation strategy of Exploring Expected Futures helps parties achieve this goal.  

Books for Further Reading

Melchin, Kenneth and Cheryl Picard, Transforming Conflict through Insight. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2008.

Picard, Cheryl A. Practising Insight Mediation. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2016.

Notes

[1] See Picard, Practising Insight Mediation pg. 134.

[2] Ibid. pgs. 112-123.

[3] Ibid. pgs. 139-140.

[4] Responsive intentionality is described in Cheryl’s book, Practicing Insight Mediation, pages 31-33.

Insight Mediation Working Paper #1: Four Distinguishing Features

Cheryl Picard and Kenneth Melchin, July 8, 2022

            Insight mediation brings conflicting parties together in face-to-face dialogue sessions that help them transform conflicts by gaining insights into themselves and others. Insight mediators help parties probe feelings of threat that block them from innovating solutions on their own. Through insights they de-link from threat feelings, and this opens avenues for a genuine curiosity that can explore more cooperative and less threatening ways of interacting. The process is fully participatory, creative, flexible, emergent, non-linear, and responsive. It takes parties through a 5 phase process towards decisions that change their conflicts for the better.

            At first glance, Insight mediation may appear similar to other mediation models. With roots in Insight Theory, however, the training takes practitioners in novel directions that are markedly different, and for this reason it is currently acclaimed as a fourth pillar of mediation. We believe that exploring its full potential has only just begun.

There are four features that distinguish Insight mediation from other approaches:

1. conflict is understood as arising from threats-to-cares; 

2. conflicts evoke feelings and narratives that block parties from innovating solutions on their own;

3. conflict is resolved through the transformative learning of insights; and

4. insight mediators help parties by deepening on threats-to-cares.

The remainder of this discussion overviews these four features.

1. Conflict is Understood as Arising from Threats-to-Cares

            In Insight mediation, conflict is understood differently than in other mediation approaches. Instead of thinking of conflict as arising from incompatible or conflicting goals, needs, or interests, conflict is said to emerge from defending behaviours animated by feelings of threat to an individual’s or group’s “cares”; an occurrence referred to as “threats-to-cares”.  

            Cares are understood to be of various types and they operate on various levels. What is important for Insight mediators is the distinction between two levels of cares: (1) cares for particular goods that satisfy our own particular interests, needs and desires, and (2) cares rooted in deeper patterns of interpersonal or social cooperation that evoke strong value feelings, which oblige us, often without our being aware, toward actions focused on others. While parties usually can identify their cares of the first type, frequently they have not understood their own deeper cares of the second type. The deeper cares drive conflict behaviours through feelings, images, and narratives that often operate pre-reflectively. When these cares are threatened, even when parties have not understood their own deeper cares, they nonetheless feel the need to defend themselves or attack others.

            As in other models, Insight mediators can help parties probe beyond presenting problems to identify underlying cares of the first type. But this is not their main task. Rather, their focus is on probing the deeper threats that operate as blocks to understanding. This means that Insight mediators must help parties gain insights into themselves as well as each other. 

            In conflict situations, it is easy for parties to misunderstand each other’s words and actions, and these misunderstandings arise frequently when threat feelings shift them towards defending and away from curiosity and understanding. Understanding others requires that we be curious about them, that we be open to alternate lines of questioning, that we consider things from their perspective, that we learn about their context, that we gain the necessary insights, and that we ask the questions required for verifying our insights and correcting our misunderstandings. When we feel threatened, our minds are galvanized into action away from these concerns and towards defending what it is that matters to us. The result is our minds get blocked and we are left with the misunderstandings that exacerbate conflicts.

            The main task of Insight mediators is to probe these threats-to-cares so they can help parties de-link from the blockages that escalate and sustain conflicts. When they do this successfully, parties are able to innovate solutions for themselves.

2. Conflicts Evoke Feelings and Narratives that Block Parties from Innovating Solutions on Their Own

            The Insight approach recognizes that parties in conflict interpret the meanings and actions of others based on data from two different sources: (1) data from their careful observations of others; and (2) data from feelings and narratives from their own past that are triggered in the present by the words and actions of others. When parties’ responses are animated by threats-to-cares, then data from the second source (their own feelings and narratives) often distort their interpretations of others and block the curiosity required for correcting these distortions. When Insight mediators probe parties’ threats-to-cares, their goal is to discover the personal feelings and narratives that influence these misunderstandings so they can be discovered and more accurately understood.

            Conflict is about patterns of interaction happening in the present that are linked to experiences of the past that give rise to expectations of unwelcome futures. To exemplify this point, we refer to the workplace mediation between Les and Micki analyzed in Cheryl’s book (Chapter 4), Practicing Insight Mediation. In this dispute it was discovered that how Micki and her co-workers responded to a request by Les to answer the phones over their lunch-hour triggered in him feelings of threat, and that these feelings were accompanied by an unformulated yet powerful narrative that was rooted in Les’ past. The narrative provided Les with a “logic” for his defending behaviour that the staff interpreted as an attack on them – a logic that in their minds felt perfectly reasonable and justified. In Les’ past experience, when others spoke and acted like this, the result was that harm came to him. The narrative placed Les in the present with the expectation that an unwelcome event in the future will happen, and so he must now focus entirely on defending against this. The same sort of threat-based experience is also taking place for Micki and the co-workers she represents.

            In Insight mediation, we expect to discover that conflicting parties’ interpretations of each other are likely mistaken. These misunderstandings arise because when a party feels threatened, the feelings and narratives triggered from their own past (data from the second source) block the curiosity required for carefully attending to the words and actions of others (data from the first source). The work of the Insight mediator, then, is to ask questions that elicit answers that can help correct these misunderstandings. One strategy is for the mediator to ask Les for his interpretation of the staff’s actions, and then to ask Micki to verify if that is what they were intending. Because the questions were careful enough to elicit the personal feelings and narratives that shaped Les’ interpretations, Micki was able to discover information that helped her correct important misunderstandings. 

            When Insight mediators ask questions that probe for unwelcome futures anticipated by parties, they often unearth responses that have the greatest potential for transforming conflicts. When the mediator asked Les about his expectations of a dire future, her focus was as much on Micki as it was on Les. The mediator was interested in observing and learning how Micki was listening and responding to the conversation going on with Les. In particular, she was interested in Micki’s reaction to the portrait of the conflict that was emerging. Breakthroughs occurred when Les formulated an account of a dire future expectation that was sufficiently different from the actual intentions of Micki and the other staff causing Micki to sit up and take notice. She became curious in a way that previously she was not. This curiosity helped her de-link from her prior portrait of the conflict with its implied threat to her and the other staff’s deeper cares.

3. Conflict is Resolved through the Transformative Learning of Insights

            A key aspect that differentiates Insight mediation from other approaches is that it engages parties in a learning process to resolve conflict. Learning, when it is authentic, is transformative, and this changes the course of conflicts. The mediator’s focus is on opening pathways for the curiosity that sets parties on the road to the transformative learning of insight.

            Insight mediators do not help parties solve problems. Rather, they focus on helping remove blockages that stand in the way of parties solving problems for themselves. Frequently this involves learning that the problem is different from what they had thought. This means that Insight mediators pay attention to the kind and quality of learning of conflicting parties. They wonder about how curious parties are about each other and how able they are to be attentive to new information. When opportunities arise to probe threats that block curiosity, mediators ask questions that deepen parties’ understanding of threats-to-cares.  

            Insight mediation does not understand learning as acquiring information. Rather, the focus is not on acquiring information but on understanding information. This changes things dramatically. When we gain insights, we are transformed away from mistaken and misleading impressions and we begin to glimpse novel and surprising aspects of others that previously we would not have considered or imagined. When learning is blocked by threat feelings, parties’ interpretations often misrepresent the other’s intent leaving them feeling forced into defend behaviours. When parties are able to de-link from threat feelings, parties engage in ways they could not have done previously. Their new forms of engagement arise from initial insights that open the doors of curiosity. And what follows is a learning path animated by their basic “operating system,” their curious mind’s own operations of experiencing, understanding, verification, and decision. The goal of Insight mediators is to enhance the quality of learning because of its potential for bringing about transformation and change.

4. Insight Mediators Help Parties by Deepening the Conversation on Threats-to-Cares

            The fourth distinguishing feature of Insight mediation is that practitioners explore and deepen on the threats-to-cares at the root of the experience of attack and subsequent defend responses that generate and sustain conflict. For conflict to change, threat experiences need to be reduced or eradicated. Deepening the learning conversation helps parties determine whether their cares must necessarily threaten others’ cares. It is the felt necessity of threat that keeps parties locked in conflict. If they can discover that differing cares can co-exist without the necessity of threat, the course of the conflict changes dramatically.

            Misinterpretations in conflict result frequently in parties attributing intentions to others that are misguided. These attributions arise from the feelings and narratives from parties’ own pasts that are triggered by the words and actions of others in the present. When their own narratives trigger parties into expectations of dire futures, the threats are attributed to others as their malicious intentions. In conflict, we generally feel like the other intends the harm we expect and fear. The fact remains, however, that these attributions are often enough misguided.

            Deepening conversations help parties learn about their own feelings, narratives, and threats as well as those of the other party. Having threats “on the table” allows them to be examined, considered, and reconsidered when they are found to be misguided. Paying attention to threats is the focus of deepening. Rather than helping parties innovate solutions, deepening focuses on the things parties frequently find it difficult to talk about: their deeper cares, the feelings that accompany and evoke these cares, and the past life narratives that are triggered when these cares are threatened. These are the things holding them in conflict and when they can be discussed openly, insights transform the course of the conflict. At this point, parties are able to innovate solutions for themselves both today and in future conflicts.

            There is much more to be said about deepening the learning conversation and the strategies mediators employ to deepen on threats-to-cares. For the present purposes, our focus is on offering a brief overview of four features that distinguish Insight mediation from other approaches. Readers interested in reading further can consult the texts and bibliographies of two books we’ve published on Insight Mediation: Kenneth R. Melchin and Cheryl A. Picard, Transforming Conflict through Insight (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); and Cheryl A. Picard, Practicing Insight Mediation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). We also look forward to posting other texts on Insight mediation on this website in the upcoming months. So please stay tuned.

Counseling: Philosophical Foundations in Brief

The type of change, growth, learning, self-improvement, etc. that counseling aims at results from some transformative experience. The kind of transformation I have in mind is not like adding new items to my inner treasury of information or adding a new skills to my repertoire or improving upon a skill I already have. These may be transformative in their way, but what I have in mind is learning about learning. It is understanding myself as a person who has been making improvements and then first identifying then committing to work with that process. This is growth at a different level because it means taking control of my own development.

The founder of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Aaron Beck, characterized CBT as training in epistemology. It is training in what constitutes knowing. People who make good use of CBT have understood something about themselves as knowers and deliberately make use of what they now know about themselves. From Bernard Lonergan I take the idea that knowledge is a matter of self-transcendence. It is comforting, and sometimes a sign of laziness, to assume that knowing comes easy. That it is a matter of looking and seeing what is going on. But if knowing is by self-transcendence, then we know by going beyond this youthful assumption. It is also comforting, and possibly a sign of arrogance, that we show a special regard for our preferred hypotheses or our own ideas. This is arrogant when my, perhaps unacknowledged, assumption is that an idea must be right if it occurred to me, or that it deserves special respect. Knowing as self-transcending means going beyond this attitude and doing the real work of verifying my hypotheses, of checking my work. The real transformation is a change in the criteria of truth that motivate and direct my acts of observation, my questions, and my efforts at verification. Lonergan also talked about this as an intellectual conversion, a conversion to intellectual self-transcendence as the criteria of truth.

Usually people do not seek counseling to become better thinkers. They may wish to change something in their lives, to make things better for themselves. People seek a couple’s therapist in order to work on creating a better relationship. To seek for something better is not a matter of intellectual but of moral self-transcendence. Here we are also entering into a more complicated field. The first stage of moral self-transcendence is away from a facile association of goodness and value with getting what I happen to want or simply seeking satisfaction of my needs and desires. I recall my earliest awakening to moral deliberation captured in the phrase, “If it feels good, do it!” It didn’t seem right that the satisfaction of feelings and of passing desires were the standard of goodness. At a second level of moral deliberation we may indeed take other people into account, but only our friends. The good is defined by what is good for our group, or community, or industry, or race, etc. We may continue to expand our moral horizons or we may even discover new criteria for making decisions that would make things better  for ourselves. The transformative experience that does make things better is a shift from the criteria of satisfaction and of group preference to the criteria of self-transcendence. This does not mean, of course, that the satisfaction of desires is never morally justifiable or that we must always be putting others’ interests before our own. Moral maturity is a matter of knowing when to apply the proper criteria for moral decision making. This means developing the art of deliberation and cultivating the skills of discernment.

Intellectual and moral self-transcendence are names for the dynamism that we are as rational and responsible beings, and to be intellectually and morally converted is to be committed to living according to our nature. But I’d like make a few observations. First, self-transcendence means denying the self that is transcended. It is a massive step out of my comfort zone. We are invited to deny our immediate satisfaction, to question our cherished hypotheses, to consider others first, or to risk rocking the boat. Second, we are invited to submit to the process that we are with no guarantees. By the nature of the case we cannot have beforehand the certainty we might desire that our efforts will get us where we want to go. Transcendence is in the direction of what as yet I do not know and do not yet care about or value. It means calling into question a known for the sake of an as yet unknown. It means giving time, and energy and space to values that cannot possibly mean anything to me until my heart is expanded. So the overriding question emerges, Why put myself through that? Is it worthwhile being the creature that I am? It has famously been said that a person can put up with any ‘How’ as long as he or she has a ‘Why’.  The Why is the meaning or purpose in life that grounds a one’s commitment to self-improvement in the intellectual and moral realm. Submission to the criteria of self-transcendence is for Lonergan the question about the ground of our being. It is ultimately a matter of trusting that our natures are wonderfully made. It is what he called religious conversion.

To these three forms of self-transcendence, we must add a fourth, affective self-transcendence. To some extent our feelings grow and change as we develop intellectually and morally. More importantly, our relationship to our feelings undergoes a transformation, because of the moral and religious conversions. When I began to wonder whether feelings were the measure of the good, I brought my feelings into question. When I no longer look upon the satisfaction of my desires the highest value in life, I can acknowledge that I may very much like it if the world went as I want it to go, but that this is unrealistic and would be not be a good thing. Here I am developing a new attitude toward my feelings and desires. I have them but am not ruled by them. My irritation or anger at not getting what I want is put into perspective. Just because I want it does not mean it is good for me or for us. It may not be good for the system to grant the fulfillment of my desires if it means compromising the system itself.  I can handle feelings threat much better. Just because I feel threatened does not mean I am under attack. I  have to learn how to check things out. I can also accept the fact that I may be irritated or angry without beating myself up, because I know that this is the being that I am. Moral self-transcendence is a matter of denying myself the right to act on selfish feelings, and it wouldn’t be self-denial if I did not feel those selfish feelings. So I accept my difficult feelings because they have a role to play in my overall development. On the positive side, my feelings also change as I commit myself more to the good of system than to the things I get out of it. That system may be a relationship or group, humanity, or the environment. I start to cherish what I did not cherish before. Here we see that in addition to feelings that refer to getting things that I want there are other types of feeling.

Learning to manage these feelings is a large part of couple therapy. When things like relationships themselves become important to me, I am vulnerable to the threat of losing them. And because the system is more important to me than the good things I get from it, the threat is more severe. The biggest transformation is the adoption of a new criteria for assessing the quality of a relationship. At the first level of moral evaluation, a relationship looks good to me if it is giving me the things that that I want. By contrast, a relationship is bad if it is not giving me the things I desire. To take a stereotyped and composite example simply by way of illustration, a wife who is preparing for a dinner party may want a clean kitchen with an empty garbage can and may feel irritated that the bin is overflowing. If this minor conflict is not handled well it will escalate into feelings about the relationship. Her accusations may sound something like this: “You’re not trying hard enough.” “You’re not committed.” “You are not a man-of-your-word.” His defensive responses will also turn to her role in making the marriage a living hell. As the fight becomes more personal both accuse the other: “You don’t love me!” “I am just not important to you!” From this example, we see that threats to care come in three kinds. As the threat moves from individual good things that each wants (a clean kitchen or some down-time) to the lack of responsibility each takes for the relationship to the absence of genuine love for the other, the feelings grow in intensity. The problem is that what provokes the fight, the absence of individual goods, is not what the fight is about. This is why most couples cannot remember what they were fighting about.

What each most wants is to be loved and to be in a healthy relationship. However, it is never the case that those higher needs could be fulfilled by any number of good things that I may get. An infinite series of good deeds, which may be provided by a butler or barista or hairdresser, won’t make a loving relationship. If what she wants is for him to be a “man of his word”, she is asking for moral self-transcendence and even asking to know that he has a purpose in life that grounds his commitment to lifelong personal development. If what he wants is peace in the home, then he asking for the same thing. They both want the other to be committed to the relationship and want to trust that the other is sufficiently grounded to follow through on that commitment.

The three prior forms of self-transcendence themselves help to manage the conflict and the attendant feelings. If knowledge is a matter of intellectual self-transcendence, then the fact that I feel threatened does mean that I am actually in danger. But we are beings who learn and grow in conversation with others. And I can only dis-confirm the feeling of threat by engaging in the conversation. However, communication is a complicated activity and messages as sent are rarely identical to messages as received. But I can only dis-confirm my initial interpretation of a message by testing it against further evidence in the conversation. A great difficulty exists where the intensity of the feeling prevents me from hearing or correctly interpreting the sender’s message. It may also be that the feeling is so intense that it makes being in the conversation itself hurtful. Feelings may prevent the learning process whose outcome is needed to change the feelings. The most important and difficult skill relevant to conversations from a counseling perspective is emotional regulation.

In some cases difficult feelings or bodily responses need interventions of their own. Somme feelings may not respond even to the experience of dis-confrmation in a good conversation. Feelings have a physiological component that in cases such as trauma or neurodiversity functions independently of insight and responsibility. In short, we may be triggered or flooded with affect, and unable to learn in order to de-link feelings and judgments. Insight requires the cooperation of our feelings and imaginations. I invite you to think of an insight the emergence of a new skill that allows us to coordinate many discrete operations. To speak about seeing an object is an abstraction. There are a host of operations involved. My wife is a speech therapist and I have come to learn from her about many of the operations that we have to organize and coordinate to accomplish the abstraction called talking. The emergence of insight in mathematics is likewise an achievement of coordination. Things just finally come together, which really means, there is something I can finally do, that is, perform a specific set of cognitive operations. In order for a hard conversation to move a relationship forward, many things have to come together. I have to be able to coordinate a specific flow of feelings and thoughts. When my nervous system is sufficiently malleable, it spontaneously cooperates with my efforts to bring things together. Under normal conditions, our bodies happily cooperate with our life projects. In the case of trauma or anxiety, or even exhaustion or illness, that neuroplasticity is not there and some intervention at the level of the body may be necessary. As a simple example, couples engaged in a tough conversation are invited to monitor their heart rate. It has been found that an elevated heart rate corresponds to nasty behavior. It is as though I am seeing the other as an enemy rather than a friend. Even if I wanted to have a good conversation, I may not be able to pull it off when my body is in threat mode. My body may not make the adjustments that constitute seeing the other in a new light, or understanding the other’s point of view. I cannot coordinate my physiological and intellectual operations. Trauma therapy, somatic therapy, pharmacology or some specialized form of coaching may be helpful in meeting the challenges that one’s body is presenting.

To take ourselves seriously means accepting that knowledge is the outcome of a good conversation and developing the art and skills of communication and conflict management. We not only learn intellectually in relationship with others, we also develop morally in and through our interactions with others. I grow as I move from valuing what the other offers me, to valuing the quality of the relationship, to valuing the other as integrally worthy. The process of growth is a matter of self-denial for the sake of self-transcendence. None of us know where this will lead, but we learn to trust the process. And to the extent that the process is authentic to the conversational beings that we are, the process is trustworthy. Accepting and committing to the criteria of self-transcendence means accepting that there are operations or facts of consciousness that make us who we are, that these occur in a normative pattern and that we are challenged to live our lives in submission to that normative order. It is the challenge of self-love, and it helps to know that we are loved first. This we experience in a good conversation, in therapy, in a mutually committed relationship and in prayer.

Values in Compassionate Communication

Human Development Vol. 43 (2) 2023 Compassionate Communication in s a Technical Age

This issue of Human Development contains an article by Paul LaChance on values in communication

From Self-Doubt to Self-Love: Objectivity of Self-Presence

In many cases, self-doubt and self-criticism are driven by emotional wounds perhaps as a result of neglect, abuse, betrayal, or any number of psychological assaults individuals may suffer on the way to their present stage in life. Trauma has the effect of focus the mind on the environment from which dangers arise. Trauma has two kinds of effects. First, trauma teaches the sufferer that he or she is in some way expendable or irrelevant. This can be a hard lesson to overcome as the individual learns to love him or her self. Trauma also makes it difficult to free the one’s feelings and thoughts from the world around one in order to attend to, come to understand and to love oneself. The process of healing leads through conscious connection with and acceptance of the wounded part along with any associated thoughts and feelings. The person who experiences such a emotional healing is freed from the doubt and criticism generated by the distressed part. He or she won’t be easily led to doubt the reality of what happened. However, the individual may not as easily be able to understand why it happened in order to repeat the process elsewhere. Coming to an understanding of why healing happens also means healing from philosophical injuries sustained on the way to their present stage of education or professional development.

Understanding the process of healing correctly would have several important consequences. First, the process may be deliberately repeated with respect to other wounds or areas of distress. Second, the individual may serve as a guide and help to others. Finally, understanding the process is a matter of understanding oneself as a living human being. Such deep understanding promotes authentic self-love. However, understanding what self-love is and how it is possible and the ability to recognize it when it occurs, requires healing from the philosophic wound.

There exist patterns in modern daily life and education that constitute specific obstacles to authentic self-love. These patterns grow out of and reinforce an extroverted mindset that orients individuals away from inner experience, consequently making self-presence difficult. In conversational speech ‘extroverted’ refers to being outgoing. In this context the term refers to a pattern of attention and of questioning that is oriented away from inner experience and toward external events. This extroverted pattern in conscious living does not prevent folks from attending to and making connection with inner sources of distress, though it does make the chances of healing less likely in ordinary daily living; however, extroverted consciousness will never understand of the process of inner healing.

The societal and educational patterns that promote this extroverted orientation away from self-presence include almost exclusive reference to performance outcomes and consequences to quantify achievements and personal growth and a formal scientific training in education all along the line. These two factors are mutually reinforcing and make it a challenge for individuals to properly conceive their own inner process of healing, communicate it to others, or incorporate it into a full knowledge and understanding of the self.

The focus on outcomes and consequences in all areas of modern living is consistent with our scientific culture and takes its cue from the way in which school children are taught to think about truth and objectivity in contrast to opinion and subjectivity. Beginning with the basic division between fact and opinion, students learn that being objective is good while being subjective is bad. Believing objective facts is a sign of intelligence, while placing too much faith in subjective opinion in not. Here is the first step in the orientation away from self-presence. Self-presence is subjective conscious experience. But such subjective experience has no currency in formal prescriptions for scientific, fact-based, objective thinking.

Students are generally taught two lessons about objectivity drawn from the natural sciences: that it is objective truth is public and it is sensible. Objectivity is measured by ‘publicity’. That is, if other people agree, then the idea is objective. In the history of scientific discoveries, no experimental results are accepted as valid unless they can be replicated independently by other scientists. A single experiment, especially if it involves a small sample, is never sufficient to establish the validity or truth of a scientific idea or hypothesis. An opinion is something that Is held privately (I am the only one who thinks it) or is held by a sub-group. I am the only one who thinks something. A lone scientist may turn out to be correct, but he or she cannot know that he or she is correct unless the results are reproduced by others. The scientist must entertain self-doubt until the results are confirmed by others. 

Objective facts are sensible. Science follows the empirical method, which deliberately restricts its observations to sensible data. Scientists do not perform experiments on data that are not given to the senses and that cannot be weighed or measured. Consequently, anything that cannot be seen, heard, etc. is by definition not objectively observable. And, what cannot be objectively observed cannot be objectively verified. As a result, science can obtain no objective facts about anything in human life that is not given to the senses and subject to weights and measures. Here the scientist’s methodical self-doubt comes closer to home. Making an objective observation is simply a matter of seeing what is there to be seen. However, bias is a psychological blind spot. A biased observer does not see what is there to be seen. A biased observer, instead, may see what he or she wants to see. However, the act of seeing is not something that can be measured except when instruments are applied to the sense organs to determine whether they are responding to physical stimuli. Even if scientists were subjected to audiological and visual testing prior to entering the laboratory every day, most of what counts as bias is not a defect in the sense organs. Most bias is psychological. The scientist, therefore, must constantly entertain self-doubt. Am I being an objective observer or not? How would I know?

By contrast with objectivity, subjectivity is personal and non-sensible. One’s own subjective mental and emotional experience will never be sensibly available to others for independent verification. These formal lessons in and about objectivity are of no help in the world of subjective human experience, thinking and loving. Since I am the only one to whom my thoughts are given and (non-sensibly) observable, no one else would be able to confirm that I did in fact have a thought, never mind able to verify the content of the thought. Since, my feelings arise only within my own conscious experience, no one else is able to verify directly whether I had a feeling, never mind what the feeling was about. To be sure, there may occur indirect evidence about thoughts and feelings as communicated non-verbally in facial expressions, tone, etc. But the external observer, relying on sensible data is limited to making educated guesses and hypotheses.

Further, subjective experience and references to self-presence are suspect, being formally associated with bias and prejudice. In formal educational settings, being objective means not being biased, whereas to be subjective means the opposite, that is, to be biased. The scientific method along with methodological approaches in every discipline are designed to limit and make corrections for anything that might be properly considered subjective. Objectivity is achieved in so far as we are able to avoid being influenced by prejudice or bias by, for instance, being focused on exactly and only what’s in the room at the moment. History, prior judgments (whether true or not), pre-existing interests or desires (whether good and noble or not) are all sanctioned as illegitimate. What count as evidence and as legitimate grounds for argument is what is available for sensible observation and interrogation to all parties at the moment. Finally, there is a democracy of questioning as well. All questions are treated equally, and none may be excluded or disqualified as being beside the point. Where the desire for truth has no special status in the face of those who would muddy the waters, sow confusion, or trade in tribalistic thinking, no standard exists for the exclusion of false equivalencies, unsupported allegations, nor many other recognized forms of fallacious reasoning.

Under the influence of this high cultural standard of objectivity, everyday common sense strives to imitate this extroverted mentality.  Opinion, bias and subjectivity all come to mean similar things. The standards for proof and legitimacy are conceived along the lines of the objective-subjective dichotomy. Children and adults all carry away the prize in any argument if they can successfully assert, “That’s just your opinion.” Similarly, from the classroom to the workplace, to courts and legislatures, to the dinner table, every argument or dispute is expected to satisfy the requirements of a scientific experiment. Nothing is deemed relevant that does not come directly from the data and material right in front of the disputants. No ideas or interests from the past should be allowed to influence or inform how individuals interpret what is going on right now in the present.

On this basic, popular formulation of the conditions of objectivity, there can be no objective facts about personal experience and no self-knowledge. If objectivity must meet the requirements of publicity, then there can be no objective knowledge about whether a thought or a feeling occurred or what either might have been about. First of all, I cannot ‘see’ and confirm the fact by looking in a mirror. The most relevant data on the occurrence of the thought or feeling are not reflected back to me. Second, my observer’s hypotheses about what I am thinking and feeling can only be confirmed by asking me. People claim to know what others are thinking or feeling even without being told, but such cannot be knowledge in the strict sense because the observer does not have access to the most relevant data, which are mental operations. The observer is in the position of one who may have very good reasons to suspect the truth, but has to choose whether to believe my report about my inner experience or to doubt it. Neither his or her suspicions nor belief in my report fulfill the requirements of publicity required for the common notion of objectivity. What I know and what he or she believes about me are both grounded in my personal experience.  On the commonsense account, I cannot assert as an objective fact that I felt confused or curious, that I did or did not have a question, that I got an insight or understood something, or that I know anything about myself at all. I must live in perpetual self-doubt.

The problem is that I do not really live in such perpetual self-doubt, but I must at times pretend to do so according to the requirements of common conventions but accepting that my own ideas are simply my opinions and that I do not know what I really do know even about myself, or else take my stand on experience alone. What I mean by that is, although my private experience dose not measure up to the stature of public knowledge, it is nonetheless my experience which cannot be refuted. Thankfully there are institutions and movements that defend my right to my unassailable private experience. The hitch is that any experience, like any scientific observation, spontaneously gives rise to a question about that experience or observation. After sensing or seeing something new, we spontaneously ask “What’s that? What is that all about?” And, should I turn to those same institutions and movements for guidance in the interpretation of my inner experience I find that they have only the common, public notion of objectivity at their disposal. As a consequence I am left in a state of constant second-guessing, psychological uncertainty and fruitless rumination. To take my stand on experience alone while avoiding the abyss off self-doubt means preventing the emergence of or the serious consideration of such questions. For such questions lead to hypotheses required verification and heading in the direction of knowledge. If I would be accepted by and meet the approval of others, I must lie even to myself or at lease deny my own native curiosity. The thrust of formal educational practice is an orientation away from self-presence, and the cumulative impact is pervasive anxiety.  Healing the philosophic wound of socialized extroversion with its mistaken ideas of objectivity begins with understanding what we are doing when we get insights and pass judgments on the validity of those insights. But here we run into another difficulty related to a pervasive democratic bias against judgments. But that is for another article.

Flight from Experience 3: Gnosticism

Gnosticism, refers to a theory of human happiness, which in the ancient world was connected to a special knowledge about transcendence and the human soul, whose salvation lies in divine liberation from forces outside the individual. Gnosis today means an intuitive apprehension of spiritual truths or an esoteric form of knowledge. In the modern world transcendence has been replaced by an immanent source of healing. Happiness and salvation are achieved by means of the integration of conscious and unconscious drives or habits or the creation of a social order which provides a human solution to the problem of evil. In either case, human beings are themselves the sources of their own healing and happiness. Such ideas are alluring today, in part, because people commonly take experience to be equivalent to knowledge. However, to insist that happiness results either from the integration of unconscious drives or in the creation of social orders alone is to reject human experience in favor of some mythic version of experience.

I will start by pointing to a commonly debated point: Is it possible to love someone else until I love myself? Some people insist that we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. Others are not so sure. We may ask the parallel question: Can I really know anyone else unless I first know myself? Again there are different opinions. If anything brings knowing and loving together it’s relationship. And, of course, people often wonder how they can be in a healthy relationship without first becoming healthy individuals. If I do not know and love myself, how can I know and love my spouse, partner, family, friends, etc.?

Gnosticism offers a clear answer to each of these questions. You can’t! If we need the appreciation or approval of others to feel good about ourselves, we make them responsible for our mental health and well-being. If we look beyond ourselves to role models to learn out how to love and live responsibly, we are being untrue to ourselves. If we hope for someone, anyone, or the universe or God to save us, we will be waiting along time. No help is coming. Gnosticism offers the hope and promise of self-salvation and self-grace. This why we cannot know, love or be in genuine relationship with anyone else unless start with ourselves.

My first point is that this kind of self-salvation, self-knowledge and -love, rests on a certain forgetfulness of experience. Everything we learn, we learn by first experiencing something. This does not mean that experience is the same as knowing. Insights begin with experience and are verified by returning to experience. I have had many experiences of hearing people speak in foreign language. But I do not know what those speakers are saying. I have also been frightened when coming upon things in the dark that I perceive dimly but do not understand. I recall being startled in a dark and unfamiliar room when I saw a black figure which I took to be a crouching animal and that turned out upon further inspection to be a large throw-pillow.

So experiencing is not knowing. Experience together with ideas however insightful, appealing or well-expressed is not knowing. But knowing begins with an experience that is not understood and returns to verify, upon further investigation, an initial guess in experience. The sounds coming from foreign speakers and the confused outlines of obscure figures are the stuff about which we ask questions on the road to knowledge. Those same sounds and outlines are what we later use to assess our initial interpretations. When I saw the dim and frightening image in the dark room, my instinct was to run. My mind suggested a few further questions to test the original impression. Surely, what appears to be an animal would present additional information or data: shouldn’t I hear or smell something that supported the idea? If it were an animal, certainly its presence might be accounted for: did my hosts have a pet or was there a door or window open? Further questions along these lines may or may not have settled the issue, but in the end the simple act of turning on the light provided me with the final experience and information that I used to disconfirm my first guess about the nature of the figure. Knowledge involves a learning cycle that moves from experience through thinking and back to experience. The return to experience supports, corrects or disconfirms what I thought was going on. We build up our ideas about things, people, cultures, traditions, the world, God, and even ourselves piece by piece by being attentive and curious about our experiences and returning to experience to verify, challenge, correct or dismiss our first impressions.

Gnosticism supposes that knowledge involves only the first two moments of experience and interpretation, grasping the whole picture from just the initial encounter with experience. Since there is no return to experience to verify ideas, gnostic ideas are held to be true because they are invulnerable to challenge or further question. They are not subject to second-guessing because of their revelatory, self-evident or creative nature. They are closed to challenge or question as a revelation by those in the know, who communicate to us the impressive truths that government, media, your family or the church don’t want us to know. Or they need no verification because they are self-evidently what we discover within ourselves, perhaps by entering altered states of consciousness. Or they are closed to investigation as the aesthetic truths that we creatively invent for ourselves. Gnostic wisdom attempts to circumvent the long, slow process of self-discovery and self-correction by completing an end-around that avoids the return to real contact with everyday experience in the process of verification.

My second point about the kind of knowledge on offer is that it involves a flight from the process of social experience, understanding and verification that constitutes history. The process of knowledge that begins experience and ends with experience constitutes a social cycle of self-correction. There is a history to my knowledge of myself, others, my world and God that plays out as a virtuous cycle. There is also a history to our common knowledge that follows a similar path of experience, ideas or plans, implementation, re-evaluation, and self-correction. The re-evaluation and self-correction of plans and policies happen in a return to experience in light of which we judge whether or not things have actually gotten better or not. This is history in the sense of a personal or intellectual and communal autobiography. It is history as lived. But history means something else as well. We cannot avoid representing to ourselves this process of knowledge itself. Besides the history that we live, there is the history that we write about and try to explain to ourselves.

The importance of the second type of history and the way in which we think about the process of knowledge is that we learn to take control of the process of self-correction both personally and socially. If we represent knowledge to ourselves accurately we can collaborate authentically with own natural process of learning and loving. If we misrepresent the process of knowledge to ourselves, we inevitably fail to live responsibly. Gnosticism offers an explanation of knowledge, love and relationships that, as I say, involves a flight from experience. it prevents us from becoming active and responsible collaborators in our own personal and social growth.

Certainly, we can become better at loving others as we learn to know and love ourselves and correct our mistakes or the direction of our living. And we do this most effectively and efficiently if we consciously and deliberately commit to the cyclical path. But the commitment is one we make from wherever we happen to find ourselves. The process of living itself is one that we have already begun and we are already well on our way. We need not possess an invulnerable idea about ourselves before claiming that we are coming to know ourselves. We need not possess the ideal self-love before making improvements in our love of self or others.

Gnosticism claims that we do not really know and love ourselves or others until we know and love the whole thing that we are a part of. In reality, knowledge and love are the culmination of a long and cyclical process.We do not really wait for our lives to be explained to us before we start living them. We live a bit, stop and reflect on what we are doing, get some ideas, go on living, reflect some more and perhaps correct our first ideas, go on living perhaps putting some of the new ideas about the process into action, and gradually progress to a fuller and fuller sense of what it means to love self and others. It’s a beautiful cycle we call human growth. Learning to cooperate with this ongoing cycle is the challenge of adult living.

Flight from Experience 2: Challenges to Self-Awareness

The practice of modern psychotherapy, going back to Sigmund Freud, is based on the idea that mental health depends upon gaining insight into one’s issues. The more we understand ourselves, the happier we will be. To this has been added the awareness that in order to gain insight we have to begin with experience and observation. Here’s the rub…it turns out people are not great observers of their own experience. Consequently, mindful self-presence is an increasingly important tool in contemporary psychotherapy. But we should be cautious not to assume that mindfulness alone will lead to happiness. Rather, it is a vital first step that points beyond itself.

Moving, as the scientific method does, from observation to hypothesis (insight) practitioners of talk-therapy simply presumed that individual subjects were capable observers of their own experience and simply needed help interpreting it. The subsequent focus on experience is grounded in evidence from clinical practice and scientific research that individuals are often not very reliable witnesses of their own experience. The most important intervention in the domain of experience (prior to interpretation) is the practice of mindfulness or nonjudgmental self-acceptance, as it is sometimes called. The goal of mindfulness is to allow oneself to be present to whatever occurs within the range of conscious experience. That means being present to thoughts, feelings and sensations as they occur, in real time. This is easier said than done, and the difficulties help to explain why individuals are not often reliable witnesses to their subjective experience; and hence why many people have difficulty understanding or gaining insight into that experience (which, after all, they do not adequately observed as it occurs). First, let’s look at several challenges that arise as one tries to cultivate this capacity for mindfulness. Second, let’s see if we can get a clear picture of the promise and goal of mindfulness, lest we go only half-way and wind up in an equally difficult or perhaps a worse place.

The first challenge is to overcome a lifelong pattern of allowing life to just happen and of passivity. In this way, one thinks and acts merely by habits that one has acquired but has not really chosen. Habits are formed in the course of daily living, and the person who has passively gone along with things now possesses habitual ways of thinking and feeling that may be useful or comfortable but that are not intentional or deliberate. Along these lines, mindful presence is frequently contrasted with a state of forgetfulness, of acting as if one were sleep-walking or on automatic pilot. To be mindful is thus to be awake, intentional, deliberate in one’s thinking and acting.

A second challenge follows upon the first. One of the habits formed in daily living is the habit of ‘extroversion’. Extroversion here means an orientation outward or away from the self or subject who is doing the thinking, feeling and sensing. Thinking is always about something. Sensations are always a response to something, even if the something is just an inexplicable firing of neurons somewhere in the nervous system. Similarly, feelings are either about something (perhaps something pleasant or unpleasant) or arise from within the physiology of one’s body, like a mood one cannot seem to shake. The extroverted consciousness is oriented to what these inner processes are about or are responding to. The extroverted way of thinking, feeling and sensing is exclusively focused on the content of the thoughts, feelings and sensations.

This extroverted habit leads to what Acceptance and Commitment Therapists call ‘fusion’. To the extent that one is operating on automatic pilot, one does not make any distinction between the content of these subjective operations and events in the world independent of oneself. Fusion means that the content of one’s thoughts or feelings are fused to objects in the world and both are fused to one’s sense of self. Sensations are taken as reflections of reality. Feelings are signs that something good or bad, fearful, dangerous or beneficial is really present. Thoughts are representations of the real world. In addition, I AM my thoughts and feelings. In this literalist orientation to thoughts and feelings, there is no distinction between the content of one’s inner experience and the world independent of the self.

To the extent that one is somewhat awake or intentional, sensations, thoughts and feelings may not be taken quite so literally. The thinker may demand some evidence for the thought. As one slogan has it, “Don’t believe everything you think.” Feelings also may be subjected to inner scrutiny: “If it feels good, does that mean it is good?” “I am afraid, but am I in any real danger?” But if this half-awake attitude is less literal than that of the sleepwalker, it is nonetheless still oriented to the content of conscious experiences and not to the conscious subject of those experiences. The content of experience and the content of psychological insight (interpretation or hypothesis) are not yet adequately distinguished, when one does not yet possess an adequate sense of the self as observer and the self as thinker or the self as actor.

In contrast to these modes of being, mindful presence is oriented to both content and operation. To be mindfully aware of ones thoughts, feelings and sensations is to acknowledge what these are about and to heighten awareness of oneself as the observer, as the one who thinks these thoughts, feels these feelings or has these sensations. Better yet, mindful self-presence is awareness of the self to whom these thoughts, feelings and sensations are present.

At this point, the third challenge arises. A common difficulty with being mindfully present to whatever occurs is the adoption of a negative attitude toward or evaluation of the self to whom these things occur: I know that these thoughts are my thoughts, and may not represent reality as it really is; but my thoughts are usually entirely wrong and I don’t know how to correct them; and these feelings are my feelings and may not be the best guides when it comes to making decisions about what is good and bad, but my heart always leads me astray and I cannot change it; and these sensations are my sensations, but I don’t like them and want them to go away. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to cultivate a sense of and develop a strong connection to the self as observer when one is locked in an ongoing battle with the content of what occurs.

Flight from Experience 1: Observation Biases

The orientation of contemporary psychology is primarily to experience. Depth Psychology originates with Sigmund Freud’s theory of unconscious drives and early childhood events. Central to Freud’s approach was insight into the way in which drives and early experiences shape one’s current thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Freud’s own approach has been characterized as archeological because it centered on bringing to consciousness problematic forces that have been operating below the surface of awareness due to unconscious drives and unremembered childhood experiences. In more recent decades Freudian therapists have brought more attention to beliefs, fears, and habits as they function in the present while acknowledging that these likely were acquired in early years. This goal of understanding how thoughts, feelings and habits may be influencing the quality of one’s work, relationships and life in general is the dominates the majority of psychological interventions.

To the extent that an individual’s goal in counseling is psychological insight, a necessary first step is observation of and attention to the data that the insight will be about. Biases related to research and decision-making seem to have become common knowledge. For example, a confirmation bias refers to the temptation to focus on evidence that supports my own thesis and an egocentric bias inclines me to make choices that benefit myself personally. A good method for, or good conversation about, research and decision-making is an important aid to resisting such temptations.

Biases also exist that tempt us to be poor observers of our own experience. Here good observation means heightening conscious awareness of inner experience. Biases that skew such observations include avoidance of feelings in favor of thoughts about feelings (what some psychologists have termed intellectualization) and avoidance of feelings that are not only uncomfortable in themselves but that evoke secondary feelings, for example, shame or anger. A good method such as mindful self-acceptance or a good therapeutic conversation help to limit the destructive impact of such biases.

Part of making a good observation is managing thoughts and expectations about what I should be feeling or what other people might feel or what I am expected to feel. Such thoughts about what I must be feeling or should be feeling will occur, but mindfulness exercises cultivate a capacity to look past them and to constantly check such thoughts against inner experience as it occurs in real-time to see if the thoughts are accurate. Similarly, a therapeutic conversation brings a person into the present of ongoing inner experience and makes it possible to correct thoughts about what must be going on against what is occurring in inner experience.

Heightening conscious experience means adopting a welcoming attitude to whatever occurs and being open to, even seeking, novelty. Very often thoughts about my feelings are drawn from the pool of knowledge that I already have about myself or from things I already know about people in general. What matters most in psychological insight is learning something new. That means being open to the as yet unknown parts and depths of myself. To be open to the unknown is to hold my ideas about what I am or must be feeling lightly and be ready to add to my personal the catalog of feelings whatever this new inner experience might turn out to be.

A welcoming attitude serves as an antidote to selective attention and poor observation by managing secondary experiences. What I am feeling about a person or situation is distinct from what I might feel about being uncomfortable in the first place. Here, for example, is where shame or anger about feeling sad, weak or embarrassed might come into the picture. Such secondary feelings often complicate the process of self-discovery. They function as a filter that pre-selects which feelings I’d be willing to allow into the catalog and which feelings I would not. Feeling ashamed about or angry because of some inner experience means that the primary feeling is banished from the catalog and I’ll never discover whatever I might otherwise have learned about myself.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 4

In this final post in the series, I wish to reflect on some specific questions related to work and career that people often struggle with and on how the shift to interiority, Bernard Lonergan’s mindful way, if you will, of doing philosophy and theology influences how I think about work-life balance.

Two questions in particular come to mind: 1. What kind of career will bring me the most satisfaction in life? or How can I make the job I have now more meaningful? and 2. How can I strike a better work-life balance? The best answer turns out to be the same in both cases.

Individuals deliberating about potential careers often think not just about the tasks and rewards of the job itself but wider questions about family, society and faith as well. They may frame the question in terms of finding a job that they enjoy that provides sufficient income to raise a family at a hoped for standard of living. Or, they may focus their deliberations on finding a career that allows them to make a decent living while doing some good for society or the planet. In both cases the job itself is instrumental to higher goals and values.

Psychologists have learned that people are most happy or experience the greatest satisfaction when the rewards they seek and the challenges they face are grounded in their own interior lives. Here is where human beings have the greatest degree of control and can exercise the greatest level of responsibility. Those who ground their hopes and expectations on outcomes over which they have little or no control set themselves up for disappointment. And, if they assume responsibility for things outside their control they are likely to experience anxiety or depression. Determining what is and what is not in one’s control may not be easy but it is an important step in the journey toward job, marriage and life satisfaction.

The shift to interiority likewise shifts the question about the most satisfying career track. Traditional wisdom suggests that a good way to approach the question is to find out what needs to be done, determine what can be done by me, and deliberate about which course most aligns with my highest values. To find out what needs to be done is to know about some potential difference that can be made in the world. To determine what I can do is to know about the realistic possibilities of my making that difference and avoiding burnout. To determine which accords with my highest values is to set for myself a goal and standard of responsibility from within. Here is where we meet the challenge of career discernment at core. The satisfaction I derive from my career is determined by my faithfulness to a life of authenticity. By committing myself to a life of genuine attentiveness to, of curiosity and learning about, and of loving responsibility for the tasks and people around me, to that extent the rewards and challenges of my career are grounded in my interiority.

This shift to interiority in which one embraces the challenges of authentic living may be made at anytime. So whether one is thinking about a major, choosing an internship, accepting a job or stepping back and hoping to get more out of a current job, the best option would be to internalize the goal and criterion of success.

The world of work and the world of family life are distinct worlds but the thing my work and my family have in common is me. The real challenge of full adulthood in the modern world is the ability to adopt the right frame of mind and heart at the right time and to be able to move smoothly in and out of the diverse worlds of the consumer, the employee, the family member. What is common to all the worlds we inhabit is the need to be as attentive as possible to the people and tasks that populate them and to be as intelligent as possible in making sense of the situation and in knowing what is going on--what are the goals and patterns that make this world be what it is? In whatever world we find ourselves, we make sense of that world by making sense of its goals and structures. Finally, there is a need to be as responsible as possible in living up to the expectations set by that world and by the demands of human authenticity. The more we develop the skills to live up to the challenge of authenticity the more we can be at home in our own skin whether we are in the marketplace, online, at work, or in the bosom of our families.

Fellow-passengers to the grave: Reframing our society

“I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” Fred’s beautiful sentiment in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol is one of the greatest cognitive reframes in literature. Cognitive reframing is a powerful tool which allows us to alter how we feel about a situation by changing how we think about it. Thinking about others in light of a shared humanity and common goal has the capacity to evoke a great many positive thoughts and feelings and motivate positive actions.

Often parodied as saying positive things to oneself, reframing works best when it is motivated by a desire to make sense of a situation by challenging mistaken or distorted ideas and replacing them with more realistic ideas. That other human beings are another race of creatures bound upon their own individual journeys is certainly a distorted way of thinking about things. It shares in the folly of the myth of the ‘self-made man’ or ‘self-made woman’. Yet, it can be hard to feel the truth of the idea that what unites us is more important than what divides us. Differences amplified in media and adjudicated by political violence and activism become sources of division and the further we get from our fellow-passengers, the harder it is to see them as human. It also becomes ever harder to recover basic truths about ourselves. In this case, simply saying positive things to oneself may have only limited value and it may actually make things worse.

A good reframe widens the spotlight of consciousness keeping one from going down the rabbit hole of a particular negative thought or feeling. Fred’s statement is more comprehensive than the distorted thought about others as less than or in competition with oneself. It expresses a fuller grasp of the situation. Fred’s insight goes beyond seeing people in terms of status to grasp the fuller truth of people in the upper and lower classes as people. It also grasps the wider picture within which all people have a common end and a common goal. That goal both transcends us and unites us. Apart from that fuller grasp, a positive statement is just words, and those words appear to be contradicted by the evidence of daily events.

A good reframe is also more realistic than the distorted thought. It is tempting to say that Fred’s insight is more realistic because it embraces wider truths about human beings and leave it at that. But this only works if you and I agree that the wider, more comprehensive idea is truer just because it is wider and more comprehensive. Unfortunately, the “evidence” of daily events has its own appeal. Increasing division counts as evidence for distorted thinking precisely because it is less comprehensive and more immediately relevant. The ideas that inform and structure Fred’s class-based society, impact not only what people think about others but what counts as evidence for the truth of those thoughts. Let’s take another example. Students, athletes, CEOs or politicians may believe that winning is what counts (“good guys finish last”) and accept the fact that everyone cheats. Then everyone acts on the same idea about putting myself or my group first. When those who cheat most effectively earn the prizes or gain power, the guiding thought gains credibility: “See, that’s how things are”. The distorted idea is accepted as the truth about social living. What counts as evidence that supports the truth of this idea is the success of those who get around the rules. The political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, argued that in the modern world we can make almost any idea true by consistently acting upon it. What this means is that when our common lives are structured around flawed ideas, we set up patterns of feeling, thoughts and actions that embody and support those ideas. But this is only part of the story.

It is one thing to try to get around the rules in a criminal way in order to get ahead. It is another thing to manipulate the rules themselves and to rig the game. Let’s say that publicly I justify my own advantages and privileges on the grounds that rewards ought to be meted out on the basis of work or merit, but secretly I am willing to cheat on an exam or pad my resume to make myself appear more meritorious. That sounds rather shady, and I would justly be accused of hypocrisy. Things get morally worse if I collude with others to manipulate the qualifications that count as meritorious, for example setting up social status or race as the standard, to favor our own group. In the first case, what is at stake is the truth or falsity of my claim to a commonly accepted standard of meritorious achievement. In the second case, the standard or criterion itself is at stake. In order for status or race, or even financial success, to be generally accepted as the measure of true ideas, all other measures must be disqualified. Corruption manipulates the criteria to favor one individual or group over others. False ideas become true not simply when people act on them together but when those same people embrace corrupt and inauthentic criteria that make the false ideas appear true.

Good cognitive reframes therefore address the second as well as the first class of faulty ideas. But now we face a deeper and more perilous challenge. The manipulation of criteria for common judgments about truth and common action derails the very process of learning and self-correction that accounts for so much of human progress. Ideas inform action that yield results. When those results are genuinely positive and really solve problems, they legitimately confirm the originating ideas. By genuinely and legitimately, I mean that under careful examination the problem really was solved, and the situation has gotten better--there was progress. Modern civilization is built upon many good ideas that actually solved problems and improved living conditions, notably indoor plumbing that separates drinking and wastewater. Think about where we would be without that modern marvel. In other cases, the original idea may be incomplete and address only part of the problem. In that case, the unsatisfying results should reveal the limitations of the idea. Those affected by unfavorable results are likely to raise questions. Corruption forestalls wherever possible the emerge of these further questions. It is not possible here to even outline the many tactics employed to silence critics of a poorly designed or executed plan. It is sufficient to note that such manipulation calls into question our ideas about ourselves as moral beings and whether the effort to live a moral life is worthwhile after all.

There is thus a third problem in addition to criminal activity and corruption. At this third level distorted ideas effect not just how we act or the criteria we adopt to evaluate our ideas and actions, but our estimates of ourselves as intelligent and responsible beings. Research indicates that while cognitive reframing often contributes to overall well being, it can at times can increase symptoms of depression. What makes the biggest difference may be something that psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, who along with Arendt was a Holocaust survivor, noticed many years ago. Reframing works best when we are faced with unchangeable conditions and can find some inner, deeper or higher reason to endure them. This is what many psychologists mean by internalizing the challenge. However, if we try to adapt our thoughts and attitudes in order to become more accepting of changeable circumstances, we deny ourselves the capacities, intelligence and power that make us responsible human beings. In the first case, we increase our range of freedom by finding something we can control and working on it. We experience ourselves as intelligent and responsible actors in history. In the second case, we decrease our range of freedom by robbing ourselves of our own power and responsibility. What people may conclude from this is that we cannot employ our own intelligence to improve situations. We are morally powerless. Simply putting a positive spin on an awful situation, instead of identifying something that can be changed, may make things worse because it alienates us from our own capacities. The problematic reframe shrinks our horizon of understanding and responsibility. Corruption operates at this level of despair shrinking the moral agent’s autonomy.

At the first and second levels, what look like perfectly legitimate cognitive reframes only work where moral despair has not yet set in. Individuals bothered by the bad behavior of politicians, public figures, colleagues or competitors can lift their own spirits and aspirations by reminding themselves that character matters. But as disagreements regularly devolve into conflicts and differences of opinion are adjudicated by activist in the streets and on social media, guilty bystanders embrace increasingly negative ideas about human intelligence and goodness. We progress from excusing our own crimes: “It’s okay because everyone is doing it”; to justifying collusion: “Winning is what matters”; to despair: “Moral living is not worth it”. Then, no matter how often we say it, we find it hard to believe that character makes the slightest bit of difference.

From all this we can derive a universal lesson. What lies at the heart of any legitimate reframe is curiosity. Curiosity is the desire and the willingness to discover what is really going on. It is not satisfied with half-truths or partial pictures. It wants the whole story. Curiosity breaks out of the group-think that just accepts the common ideas, no matter how half-baked, because that is how we win or maintain our own advantage. It challenges corrupt notions by insisting on its own inner criterion for truth restoring intelligence, reason and moral responsibility to the heart and soul of human living. What makes Fred’s reframe so beautiful to me is its frontal attack on moral despair.

Fred’s reframe starts with the third class of faulty ideas about human goodness, adverts to the criteria of truth and only then challenges particular ideas about one’s fellow human beings. “I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time,” he says, “a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely”. Where corruption skews ideas about evidence in a way that selfishly privileges a particular group, Fred adopts an unselfish, kind, forgiving and charitable criteria. In this he also expresses hope for human intelligence and responsibility. For Fred, ideas emerging from an open heart contain more truth than ideas emerging from a closed heart. Ideas that originate in kindness and charity are truer, and for that reason replacing “creatures bound on other journeys” with “fellow-passengers to the grave” is more accurate. The reframe works so well precisely because it is embedded in a great work of literature. A Christmas Carol insists on the value of thinking about deeper questions of meaning, value and purpose. It addresses head-on corruption’s artificial rules on questioning and manipulation of intelligence. It evokes in us a desire for moral goodness and a call to conversion of heart and mind in the spirit of Christmas.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 3

Those who have created a healthy work-life balance seem to be ‘at home’ wherever they are, in the marketplace, online, at work, at the dinner table or at a family function. Unfortunately, the goal of ‘being at home in the workplace’ may have the negative effect of conflating two different worlds. Studies also suggest that a blurring of work and family roles is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being and marital satisfaction. Individuals may expect family to feel or to operate like work or expect work to feel and look like family. This may result is significant social and emotional confusion, notably when work is a family business and the boundaries are easily crossed. It can be helpful to keep in mind the purpose and nature of work and realize that these are not the purpose and nature of family-life.

There is a phenomenon is modern business that seems to many like forcing a square peg into a round whole. That phenomenon is non-financial reporting. Non-financial reporting (NFR) takes into consideration, for example, a company’s sustainability practices, anti-corruption policies and protection of the human rights of its workers and stakeholders. To those who customarily think of business in terms of the maximization of profit, NFR is indeed a square peg. There is, the traditionalist argues, only one bottom line; while advocates for the new approach looks to a triple bottom line encompassing profits, people and the planet. Those in each camp interpret the meaning of business differently. They appeal to diverse criteria in assessing the truth of a company’s actual performance. And they each place a different value on possible changes in practice and policies, that is, what would count as a good thing.

Intuitively, we might expect that those who gravitate toward the ideals and ways of thinking of NFR are the same whether at work or at home and would have an easier time transitioning from work to home. After all, if at work one’s mindset is oriented toward others as people, and not simple as parts of a corporate machine, then the adjustment to a family mindset is not such a large leap. However, there lurks even in the business-oriented mindset of the non-financial reporter a foundational difference in conscious living than is needed at home.

At the heart of NFR is still a business-oriented criterion of what counts as a good thing -- principally assets that explain a company’s market capitalization, its future profitability and contribution to the industry or to the local or global economy in which it operates. The criterion of value remains the same as in financial reporting. It is a pragmatic criterion. What counts as good is what works. Consequently, all individuals regardless of their roles in modern economic living are expected to think about goodness and success in terms of outcomes, from paychecks to ROI, to churn, to carbon-costs. They are also expected to, and are socialized to, feel deeply the importance of these goals and the factors leading to them. Finally, in a data-driven economy directed by opaque algorithms the best NFR improvements in human work amount to a rear-guard actions.

NFP is a much-needed humanization of modern industry. Like the patterns of sociality in parts of the country that subsume retail shopping under into the wider social goals of general friendliness, NFP understands that business is a human activity. But it does not alter the fundamental fact that the human activity involved is business and not friendship at its highest level. It contains a self-referential orientation that is opposed to the orientation adopted between truly intimate friends and loved ones. Such friendship that puts the utility, enjoyment and well-being of the other first, invites sacrifices that business associates, partners and customers could hardly be expected to make.

The transition to homelife is a shift out of this exclusively pragmatic mode of conscious living and into one that involves a kaleidoscope of mindsets and values. Often what counts as good in the interactions among family members is not what works but what is beautiful. The refrigerator in many homes is a gallery dedicated to the value of creative endeavors that win no prizes and earn no lesser accolades than parental love. What counts a good is time spent (quality time) that serves no utilitarian purpose. The worlds of work and home are distinct not simply because of the rules and roles that constitute each, but because of what the members cherish, because of the patterns of feelings and emotions that are expected and appropriate, and because of the values the define each world as a unique sphere of human living.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 2

Striking a work-life balance in modern society is challenging. For many people the period of transition from one to the other is a period of high stress. What’s at stake goes well beyond scheduling work hours so that we can spend enough time at work or shopping, in scholarship or an engrossing hobby, and at home. The challenge we face when turning our attention back to family reaches into our minds hearts inviting us to learn how to move fluidly in an out of two, or perhaps more, very different worlds.

Beyond any surface differences, worlds of human endeavor are forms of conscious living shaped by different expectations regarding meaning, truth and goodness. Some people become very creative in the rituals and hacks they use to help them make mental, emotional and physiological shifts, especially when these diverse worlds exists in the same place either a home office or home studio. But adjusting requires not just adopting new behaviors and patterns of cooperation but engaging distinct modes of thinking, feeling, caring and responsible living. Something that helps the deeper transition is to understand that the worlds of work, commerce and home, as well as the worlds of scholarship and art, are defined in large part by what they exist for or what is of ultimate importance within those worlds.

Communities are structured around goals and differ from each other and in terms of what the members care about most. At the most superficial level, the community of retailers and customers exists for the sake of economic exchange. Whether the interaction and relationship goes any deeper than the handing over of money and gathering-up of purchases may depend in large part on what part of the country the store is located in. How I am expected to act, to think and to feel as a customer is determined by the patterns that make up the world of retail exchange. What members of this transient community of sellers and buyers most care about, what counts and true and good, is utility or being useful to others so that they in turn will be useful to me. This may sound cold and heartless, but as the saying goes, it’s just business. And, without it we would all be at a great loss.

At a deeper level, the social world of friends and acquaintances involves a degree of utility, friends do wish to be helpful to each other, but it differs from the world of economic exchange by the interest and enjoyment each person takes in and from a common activity and the presence of other people. Attending a book club is quite different from visiting a bookstore. In parts of the country where a trip to the grocery store may involve catching up with the retail clerk, economic activity is subsumed within the social world. Stopping in at a bookstore may well turn into a book club meeting. In other contexts, interactions with employees of large corporations or conversations with telemarketers reading from scripts feel phony. Here social interactions feel like a veneer in the service of the economic objectives rather than a genuine interest in and enjoyment of each other and the activity itself. How we operate socially with friends is very different from how we operate simply as customers and business partners. The worlds differ, the expectations differ, the patterns of thought and feelings differ, and the values differ. Consequently, we are different. What counts as true and good in my social world is doing things I enjoy with people that I like.

The highest form of community is one that involves some measure of usefulness, a high degree of enjoyment in each other, and an deep commitment to the well-being of the other. There is something self-referential in the orientation of people to each other in the worlds of economic exchange and social engagement. In the first, all hope to gain something useful. In the second, all hope to gain some enjoyment or pleasure. The highest form of human friendship is oriented to the what is true and good in the other person. In this world, what matters most is virtue. Starting and maintaining this kind of friendship requires the greatest change in me. To be a good friend, I must cultivate a capacity to think and care about my best friend or loved one first. A great friendship is one in which both friends prioritize the utility and enjoyment of the other and desire to see the other grow in virtue and goodness.

The degree to which couples and members of a family cultivate this highest form of friendship determines the goodness and happiness of the family circle. The degree to which individuals develop the skills needed to shift back and forth among these three worlds determines the emotional safety and happiness of the members. All three worlds are needed for a fully functioning society and the mark of full adulthood is the ability to adopt the right frame of mind and heart at the right time.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 1

A healthy work-life balance means being able to move, not simply between two different environments, but two different frames of mind and heart. Discovering the difference in ourselves between the patterns in conscious living that make up a person’s work-mode and home-mode makes that shift easier and more peaceful for everyone.

A pattern is the way in which diverse elements are organized in an overall structure, and conscious living is a structure in which we organize the elements of thought, feelings and actions in a particular pattern. This fact of daily living is illustrated in how people speak about an artistic or a scientific mindset or refer to the difference between street-smarts and book-smarts. The notion of patterns in conscious living includes but goes deeper than popular beliefs about multiple intelligences. These patterns, for example, do not just organize how individuals think, feel and act, but also organize these elements in cooperation with others. They are patterns in social living that result in the different worlds in which we live, the worlds we are constructing together.

In subsequent posts in this series I will offer some ideas about the different patterns of thinking, feeling and caring that make up the different worlds of work and home. I will also suggest some ideas related to questions about establishing a work-life balance just to bring out the relevance of the larger questions. So the purpose of this first post is just to suggest some ways of navigating a common transition in everyday life, the transition between work-mode and home-mode.

Transitioning from work to home can be difficult. For some it is a time of high anxiety. Clinicians have noticed that many of a couple’s most heated and sometimes violent arguments begin during this crucial time of transition. Studies also suggest that a blurring of work and family roles is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being and marital satisfaction. Intuitively we might image that exhaustion, hunger and stressful commutes, along with left over negative feelings from work itself, contribute to the heightened tension and risk of explosions at home.

But psychologists have begun to suspect something else. Moving from work to home is not simply a change in location. It is a transition from one world with its rules, expectations, roles and cues to another world in which everything is different. It is a transition that requires interior adjustments in ways of thinking, emotional expressions, skills and responsibilities. And, it is a transition that often enough must be navigated in a moment of exhaustion and limited personal resources. Understanding this reality and how to manage external demands and internal challenges is part of what we mean by work-life balance. Balance is not just about spending more time at home. It is about developing a capacity to really be at home.

The organizational structure and culture of a workplace may be fairly hierarchical. Expected and acceptable behaviors may be clearly tied to one’s status, rank, or role. Rewards, approval and esteem may be doled out strictly on the basis of performance and output. At home, spouses and children are rarely impressed with one’s title or latest productivity measures. Roles and responsibilities are often flexible and functionally determined by who happens to be in a position to do what when. Decision-making may not follow clearly defined protocols but emerge in some indefinable manner.

In making the transition from work-mode to home-mode, individuals often find it helpful to provide themselves with cues and rituals that help orient them to the new world in which they are entering. These rituals prepare the body and release feelings and affects from the routine necessary for work life. They prepare the intellect to attend to and think about the people, objects and tasks that populate the world of the home. They help the heart and soul to re-orient to the unique values that constitute family life.In a time when for many people ‘work’ and ‘home’ are the same place, shifting gears may be an even more impossible task.

Couples who do not even notice the difference between the two worlds are at greatest risk for conflict or emotional disengagement.

One way to help transition from work-mode into family-mode is to make use of specific routines that help the body and mind to make the adjustments. Couple therapists encourage clients to develop boundary marking habits and rituals of connection that help effect a transition from work to home. These include:

• Physical reminders to leave work at work, such as taking off work badges and removable insignia or uniforms

• Values-informed scheduling, for example, blocking-off “family-time” or “date-night” on the calendar

• Self-Care and relaxation is helpful and may take many forms and a bit of creativity can pay great dividends. This may include taking time to Admire nature, Listen to music, Take a walk, Meditate and pause for a few deep relaxing breathes, Say some prayers, Shower or bathe

• Rituals of re-connection with loved ones, which may be as simple as a long hug or more strategic as meeting a spouse on ‘neutral ground’ like a restaurant or café

• Most importantly, talk with your spouse and family about home-work boundaries

Individuals who work from home may have to become creative. There are many ideas out there. For example:

• ‘Commute’ to and from work by walking around the block

• Maintain a dedicated workspace in the house that you can leave and forget about

• Set an alarm that sounds at the end of your day or shift

• Change into and out of work clothes (imagine, if you are old enough, Fred Rogers changing his sweater and shoes!)

Above all couples are encouraged to talk together about home-work boundaries, and what each needs at the period of transition.