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In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Gwen Olton, co-director of the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, talks to Stephanie and Michael about her effort to shift the way we understand and engage in conflict. Gwen encourages us to see conflict as normal. Given our varied backgrounds, needs and aims, we will inevitably find ourselves in conflict with others and we need not avoid this or dream of eradicating conflict entirely. Conflicts become problematic when they are entwined with fear, and this can happen when the authorities called upon to help lack the tools needed to de-escalate them:
…we’ve outsourced our support systems to authorities, and they’re not equipped. And there’s a lot of other reasons that we don’t want to use authorities for all our conflicts. Like it leads to this punishment cycle and many of us are not actually getting support with our conflicts when we go to authorities. We’re getting just more entrance into a system that causes more harm.
Rather than fuel this broken system, Gwen suggests that we approach conflict with a sense of curiosity and confidence, remembering that each of us has the capacity to find resolution. And while resolution does not demand interference from a formal authority, it is greatly helped with support from others, more specifically, third parties who can “hold space for you in a way that helps you get creative and constructive about your conflict instead of jumping on an anger bandwagon.”
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Stephanie: Welcome everyone to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I’m your host, Stephanie Van Hook and my co-host and news anchor is Michael Nagler. And we’re with the Metta Center for Nonviolence.
On today’s episode we speak with Gwendolyn Olton from the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Rochester New York. Gwen has recently published a book, the title being From Conflict to Community: transforming conflicts without authorities which is really a guidebook and a training manual for supporting each other while in conflict.
Gwen: When we have conflict, we tend to exit community in one way or another. Rather than really deeply knowing and feeling how normal and natural conflict is, we get scared and worried, or we have a reaction that causes us to exit community in some way, or causes us to look for someone else to be exited out of community.
And so, it shows up as sometimes intense conflict avoidance, or it might show up as campaigns in some way, to get someone removed from a community in a different way. And in lots of conflicts that I’ve witnessed or supported, it might – it’s often the case that we’re not having conversations together, or we haven’t gotten enough support from other folks in community who are not involved in the conflict, to transform that conflict before we have a rift in community.
I think you have a lot of conflict in community so you’re not really moving out of conflict into community, in the community that I envision for us all. We have lots of conflict, and we’re in community. I think both things are actually true.
Stephanie: We discussed the phenomenon of conflict denial…that many of us have negative views of what conflict is, and even deny having it in our lives. ‘Oh conflict is something that other people have,’ but do you ever find yourself having dilemmas? Or just tough situations? These are all part of conflict in our daily life, and the promise of this work is we can build the skill sets to manage it and to help support others in a restorative way that heals instead of tears at the fabric of our relationships. We don’t have to rely on other people to do it for us. We’re interdependent and also loaded with innate wisdom that can be polished and put to use. Which is really what Gandhi meant by self-rule or swaraj and it’s relationship to a nonviolent culture. So let’s hear from Gwen….
I get the impression you have a lot of experience in difficult situations and then in managing stress. And I feel like that really comes across in what you’re bringing to your teaching about conflict, that stress is manageable, and it doesn’t have to escalate into something that feels out of control for you as a third party or you as somebody, like is the one who is receiving conflict.
Gwen: Thank you. Yeah. That all sounds true to me.
Stephanie: I was curious and interested to find out you have a bit of a medical background, a bit of a philosophy background, a bit of a conflict training, roller derby. How do they all fit together?
Gwen: I studied in undergrad the first time – and I say the first time because, later on I went back to school to become a nurse and that was also an undergraduate degree.
So, the first time I was an undergrad at the University of Rochester. I was studying philosophy, and I had a second major in geology.
At the time, I had become influenced, you know, just a little bit – the toe-dip-in that I got in school and then a little bit of my own reading into Gandhi and a little bit of Dr. King and Buddhism in high school. And then when I was applying to college, I saw that there was a nonviolence class in the philosophy department at the University of Rochester and I was really excited for that. So, I took that class.
And I was involved in a peace club in undergrad – and just, yeah – kind of soaked up, ate up, anything I could on conflict and peace and nonviolence. And then I went to grad school for conflict resolution.
And then roller derby – how does that fit in? Well, I always loved playing sports and eventually, played roller derby too. And then just like in any sport, actually, there can be a lot of conflict in roller derby. And so, leagues that are structured well and are able to have that infrastructure usually have someone that does conflict resolution or ombudspeople. The leagues that I was part of certainly had that too and I helped rewrite our code of conduct at one point and supported lots of conflict spaces for folks who played roller derby.
Stephanie: And your background in nursing. You were involved in trauma nursing?
Gwen: When I was in nursing school, I was also working full-time in a residential treatment facility under the office of mental health. So, I was working in a facility where there were a lot of – it was teenagers in the unit, on the building where I was working. And there were teenagers who had mental health diagnosis and often, maybe always, a lot of experience of trauma, for different reasons for everyone, were not living at home because of symptoms around their mental health diagnosis or the way that their symptoms interacted in their family systems.
And so, I was in that context in nursing school. And then when I finished nursing school, I continued to work there, but the role was called, ‘Nurse Coordinator’ for the mental health program. So, I ended up working with a lot of the youth that I had been working with before, but more of them in this other nursing role.
And then I spent a little bit of time supporting mostly older adults who had a lot of chronic conditions, and it was a lot of talking with them about where they were and what behavior changes they maybe did or didn’t want to make and how things were going for them.
And then I spent quite a bit of time doing some kind of mix of consulting, training, workshopping, coaching with behavioral health agencies and schools.
Stephanie: And so, these different threads of your own academic and professional background – I know that that’s not always what makes us who we are – are usually an expression of something that we’re looking for and something that we’re trying to do, that we sort of grasp at these career paths or ideas.
When did that thread become clear that between what you’re looking for in your study of philosophy and what you’re looking for in your extracurricular activities, and then your interest in human beings and healing – like that there’s this kind of thread of understanding the power and role of conflict in our lives that came out.
Gwen: Yeah. I love that question. Yeah. I mean, I think like so many folks, I just felt a pull to it. When I was younger and my family of origin, there was a lot of conflict in the house that I grew up in. And I felt just so curious about what was happening when that was going on. I felt like I was always experimenting with different ways of being in conflict or not being in conflict, with my siblings, different ways of approaching conflicts that my parents were having – and my step-parents.
So, I feel like it started there, but it really was about curiosity, about how humans are together in different ways. And I feel like that is part of the common thread for me. It just felt like such a truism for me – nonviolence, you know? When I came across that in high school, it just was like that moment where you learn 1+1=2. Like, it just made such perfect sense. I felt such alignment with any kind of path that helped move in the direction of that vision, of a nonviolent world, whether it’s like small steps in my own life or being part of bigger movements or working with others who also held a nonviolent vision.
And so, it’s like the interest in how humans interact and work together and how we are and how we live together, came together with this sort of thread of nonviolence in the very practical or logistical sense. I finished up with grad-school in conflict resolution and it seems like most of what I was finding, in maybe the conflict world, was not – it just wasn’t quite what I wanted to be doing. Somehow, you know, I don’t know if I had a clear vision of what it was that I wanted, but the kinds of opportunities I was seeing just didn’t feel like a good fit somehow.
And I thought, you know, I had done trainings and mediation and restorative justice facilitation and I thought I think I can do this work and not get paid for it and that would be okay. I think as long as I’m still walking a nonviolent path, and I’m able to find ways to support folks in conflict in a way that works for all of us, that will be great. That’ll be a good life.
So, I started thinking about other career paths and that’s when I looked at nursing. And I thought, “Oh, yeah. I think I could really – I could do this and feel like I’m of service to people in this other way and still be able to do restorative processes or mediations.” And then when I found psychiatric nursing, I was like, “Oh, well, this is the thing. This is talking with people and supporting folks and being in connection and in relationship.”
And so, I found a lot of communication practices and styles that were very complimentary in some parts of mental health nursing that I had found in conflict work. And so, it just felt like this melding.
Conflict competency
Stephanie: Like bringing together of worlds of these skills and conflict, understanding, and nonviolent conflict de-escalation and just being able to resolve our conflicts, is something that – well, I want to go beyond that and not just resolving our conflicts, transforming them, understanding what are deeper cause is, how it affects mind/body/spirit, you know. That these aren’t skills that we’re necessarily raised with or learn.
You happened to be one of the lucky people that found a course about in their philosophy department or learned about it in high school. And even then, I bet it was just like a small sliver of the entire pie that’s available.
So, would you say that mainstreaming the kind of worldview that requires us to become conflict competent is one of your goals?
Gwen: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think I see so much possibility and hope with folks who are in conflicts. Like it just feels like we so naturally want to resolve conflicts and collaborate with one another, and we do it so easily. I mean, if you’ve ever held space for people who are in conflict – I mean, there are points at which it feels like impossible, and you might think like, “Oh, I don’t know how these two people are ever going to be in relationship again.”
But something always happens – well, not always – but something often happens where there’s this openness. There’s this willingness. There’s this desire for things to be different. And we slip back into peace. And I think that folks just naturally want to collaborate and be together in good, healthy ways. But we are not surrounded with a lot of models in our culture and maybe in our homes and maybe in a lot of our family systems, our relationships around us, for how to do that.
And so, we’re kind of searching around. Like, “Well, what do I do when I’m really mad at someone? I guess I need to make sure they know that I’m not going to take what they’re dishing out.” Like, we might get tougher and more defensive. I see so often in people that they do want another way. And we’re just kind of searching around for some of those other strategies. And I think people take to them really quickly when they know there’s other skills, other tools, other things out there that we can do.
From conflict to community
Stephanie: The title of your book, “From Conflict to Community,” I’ll just start with the first part of it because there’s the second part that I’d like to dive into as well. “From Conflict to Community,” what do you mean by that?
Gwen: So, my experience with folks in conflict – and probably like, myself included, in the past sometimes, and hopefully not too much now – but it is that when we have conflict, we tend to exit community in one way or another. That rather than really deeply knowing and feeling how normal and natural conflict is, we get scared and worried, or we have a reaction that causes us to exit community in some way, or causes us to look for someone else to be exited out of community.
And so, it shows up as sometimes intense conflict avoidance, or it might show up as campaigns in some way, to get someone removed from a community in a different way. And in lots of conflicts that I’ve witnessed or supported, it’s often the case that we’re not having conversations together, or we haven’t gotten enough support from other folks in community who are not involved in the conflict, to transform that conflict before we have a rift in community.
So, really, the title is kind of – it’s sort of funny to name it like that because I think you have a lot of conflict in community. So, you’re not really moving out of conflict into community in the community that I envision for us all. We have lots of conflict, and we’re in community. I think both things are actually true.
Stephanie: I want to circle back to that part that you said. That in exiting community – there was something about third-parties who don’t quite know how to do enough to keep us in the community.
Gwen: Yeah. This thing about exiting community somehow, right? I think I have a lot of mourning in me that we don’t have – we collectively – like big WE – don’t have more support for our conflicts. And they’re often ending in rifts that are keeping people from being in community together.
One of the things that I talk about in my book is how to be a good third-party to other people’s conflicts when you don’t have training in conflict, necessarily. And the reason that this felt important to me is that all of us, when we’re in conflict, usually, talk to someone else about our conflict. We go to our friends, and we say, like, this is what’s going on. Sometimes we’re like, “Can you believe this person did this thing and, aren’t they terrible?” And, you know, maybe we’re saying those exact words but we’re upset, and we talk with someone about our upsetness.
And the way that we respond to people when they are in conflict really matters. It will have an effect, and what we say really matters. And it doesn’t just matter in our conflicts. It matters how we respond to other people’s conflicts too because we’re just really interdependent. And we take in a lot of what is said to us.
So I just would love for us all to be supportive in a way that helps people build connection and transform the issues that are at stake so that folks can stay in relationship rather than encouraging more escalation, more unnecessary or non-productive escalation. I think there are times for escalation, right? And more constructive conflict and more staying together instead of abandoning relationship or abandoning community.
Listening and motivational interviewing
Stephanie: There are ways of defining love, you know, as this kind of passive emotional state or there are ways of understanding it as like a verb that you’re doing all the time and always working on. And I see that as the way of understanding conflict in terms of this kind of conflict dynamic that you’re discussing. After I read your book, I was sort of struck by the fact that almost every conversation I have with anyone, I can become more sensitive to the fact that I could be a better listener, third-party, understand that this person is going through something.
And I think that what it really just brought out is that we’re kind of always going through something or other and that we can just be more support and kind of step back and understand that if I say this, if I don’t check in with this person to see how they’re feeling about the situation right now, things can escalate without even being aware of it.
So, it just requires engaging with people with conflict awareness, requires real sensitivity to the fact that all of our engagements with others can lead to conflict escalation or de-escalation.
Gwen: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And I think about – one of the gifts I got in mental health nursing was a lot of work in this communication practice called, “Motivational Interviewing.” And it’s not very well named, like the creators of it don’t love that name, but that’s what it’s called.
One of the neat things about this practice is that there’s a lot of research around it because they were looking at very concrete things. Like, how does what a counselor or therapist – how does what they say to a person they’re working with impact whether or not this person changes a behavior?
And so, I talk about this in the book a little bit, but what people say to you when you are in a moment of vulnerability can impact what you talk about and what you talk about impacts what you do. So, if I am talking to you, and I’m really angry at someone, and I’m thinking about doing something harmful to them, or I’m thinking about, you know, not ever talking to them again or something, right?
What you say to me will impact what I talk about more with you and will impact what I do next. So, it’s like we have this power in relationships. And it’s not that you do the thing, right? It’s not you that cuts someone off from relationship if I’m mad at them. And it’s not you that does something harmful to the other person. But it is the case that we affect one another.
Managing conflicts, dilemmas and misalignments
Stephanie: Yeah. And how do you define conflict? Because it seems to be a term that people don’t feel like they have conflict. You know, conflict is something like, you know, other people are having that in the news or in politics. Those are conflicts. There’s a discomfort with the term ‘conflict.’ So, can you talk about that and what conflict means to you?
Gwen: Yeah. There really is a discomfort with conflict. When I’m working with people who are in conflict, I am not always calling it “conflict,” with them because, yeah, we just have some kind of allergy to that word. I mean, I have some ideas about why it is. I think some of it is that we feel some judgment about having a conflict. Some, like, embarrassment if we have a conflict. Like we should be able to figure it out on our own. We shouldn’t need help.
And one thing that I’ll hear from folks is, “Well, I don’t have a problem. They have a problem with me.” Or, “I don’t have the conflict. They have a conflict with me.”
I very loosely define conflict as any kind of misalignment that you might have someone or another, you know, creature in your life. Some misalignment that you have that is causing some discomfort for one or both of you.
And I often use the word ‘misalignment’ instead of conflict or – Kit Miller, my predecessor here at the Gandhi Institute and a wonderful teacher, often says, “Dilemma. We have a dilemma.” I think that’s wonderful. Or just like saying that you are needing some clarification with something. You know, I think the words that we use to describe what our experiences of the conflict can really vary depending on the type of conflict and the relationship that we have to the other person.
Stephanie: And do you find, in conflict, that – or dilemmas or misalignments – that by just solving those, that you’re going to get to the heart of a problem? You know that, say we’re bickering over, you know, sharing some resource between us. Like the pen. You know, I want the pen, you want the pen.
And then we resolve that, and then we go and we bicker again over the cup of coffee. Who gets this coffee mug? And then, you know, we bicker over who is going to drive today. Can you resolve one of those conflicts and then keep returning to conflict with the same person? Or are conflicts kind of a sign that there’s something deeper that needs to be addressed, or is it both?
Gwen: I think both. I think sometimes we have conflicts come up because there is a pattern that’s happening in relationship. And the pattern is sort of the underlying thing that maybe needs to be transformed in order to stop having the conflicts. You know, in the like, pen and who’s going to drive kind of example – you know, maybe there is something where the way that we are talking with one other is actually the thing that’s causing the conflict and not the pen or not who drives, right?
So, I think sometimes when we work on conflict, we might just get the logistical surface-level thing taken care of, and we might get deeper and get some of the underlying patterns. And sometimes we get to the underlying patterns. We work on it a little bit. And it is, you know, 5% healed and then 5% more healed at another conflict, you know. You don’t just stop having the conflicts.
Stephanie: Yeah. You take some time away and realize, “Well, I think that you don’t pay attention to what my needs are, and you always put your needs first.” And then it goes – you know, then you go deeper. Like, “In my family, I didn’t feel like my needs were taken care of.” You know, like it gets intense.
Gwen: Yeah, and then you can start – the more you’re able to touch into those places and spaces, the more agreements you’re able to make with the people that you’re in relationship with, about how you’ll be when these things come up and when we can do to care for one another.
And you can learn a lot just by unpacking and processing a conflict that you’ve gone through with someone, too. To say, “Oh, like now I realize. I know we already figured out the car thing. I was reflecting on the car thing and I realized it’s that I have this worry that I won’t have autonomy when I’m with you, and so I’m always wanting to drive because it gives me a sense of control. And yeah, maybe we could talk about why that is coming up or something.” Right?
Like – yeah. We can – I think a lot can happen in a debrief from a conflict that’s already been resolved in some ways.
Transforming conflicts
Stephanie: And what you’re pointing to in that is that we have the capacity and an innate self-knowledge if we give ourselves this space and permission to sort of figure out what’s going on. That’s the second part of your title of your new book, “Transforming Conflicts Without Authorities.” There’s a lot we can go into with this, and so maybe just like start with that. Do you believe we have an innate capacity to know what’s going on for us in a conflict, even if during the conflict we don’t see it.
Gwen: Yeah. I think we do. I think we have a lot of inner wisdom around what is going on for us and what might help. And I think – I always want to encourage folks to get support too. You don’t have to figure that out by yourself, and maybe the support you need is not from the person that you’re in conflict with. But talk to other people that help bring out your inner wisdom. You know, talk to someone who really will hold space and let that wise voice emerge.
Stephanie: So, the title, “Transforming Conflict Without Authorities,” you’re not saying transforming conflict by yourself. Figuring this out on your own and, you know, heading out. Like, “You’re on your own, kid,” kind of thing. But –
Gwen: Definitely not.
Stephanie: But we have set up systems – this is not just about not calling the police as a first option or any option – we can get into that – also not going to HR. So, we set up these institutions to resolve our conflicts for us. What’s your problem with HR?
Gwen: You know, I’ve talked with a lot of wonderful Human Resources people, and they do not feel ready for all of our conflicts. [Laughing] Many of them do not –
Stephanie: Yeah.
Gwen: Many of them did not get into that role thinking that they would be spending a lot of time negotiating people’s conflicts. And yet, that is where things often go. At the time that I was first dreaming up the book, I was working with some folks. I was supporting some folks with some conflicts where it was like HR was going to be on speed-dial. You know, if we didn’t work out, everyone was calling HR.
And there were just a lot of workplace conflicts where folks were – I do think that because of our kind of systematic conflict avoidance that many of us grow up with, when things get to a point where we’re not sure what else to do, we’re like, “I’m going to call mom. I’m going to call the HR. I’m going to call the cops. I’m going to go somewhere up this chain of command,” this is like big scare quotes, “to get some help because I can’t deal with this,” right?
And so, I think it’s out of some real desperation, some real wanting some support and wanting some help and just not knowing who else to talk to and where else to go for that support. And so, we’ve outsourced our support systems to authorities, and they’re not equipped. And there’s a lot of other reasons that we don’t want to use authorities for all our conflicts. Like it leads to this punishment cycle and many of us are not actually getting support with our conflicts when we go to authorities. We’re getting just more entrance into a system that causes more harm.
Finding third-party support
Stephanie: I think it’s an interesting hypothesis people can experiment with and be given the option that you don’t necessarily have to rule out those options in the end if you’re not ready to do that, if you don’t feel safe without those. However, can you do everything possible before you go down that route? And how do you get third-party support? How do you engage with the situation, that we’re not taking authorities completely off the table, or are we?
Gwen: I think our comfort or discomfort with taking authorities off the table is really just on a spectrum for everyone. And I think that we’ve – I’ll just speak for myself – I’ve grown up socialized around authorities that can do things by force. And for me, part of this is around my commitment to nonviolence and only using force when it is protective in nature.
And so, I want to really question myself, like when do I need the protective use of force, and when do I need something else? So, for me, I’m pretty far on a spectrum of comfort with not using authority. And I also think you could get yourself in a situation where you’re – and I see this too sometimes – where people are tolerating a lot of things because they don’t want to use force, and they know that, and so they’re not going to authority, but then they don’t have anything else to do. And I also don’t want people forcing themselves to be in really bad situations or tough situations.
So, I think removing – just for the purposes of ‘right in this moment’, like we’re moving their safety concerns. And instead it’s physical safety concerns, maybe especially. And then it’s about maybe just slowing down and questioning, is this something that I think I can experiment with and try something else out?
Or is it something where, like, I really do need some help and I don’t have another option, so I’m going to go to an authority.
Stephanie: Yeah. It’s a question that we often get in nonviolence is, okay, when is it okay to use violence? Like, “I don’t need to learn all these other skills. I just need to learn when I need to identify the moment to use violence.” And it seems to be an ongoing conversation. And so, what I like that you’ve done is you say – you kind of build your teaching along that spectrum of there’s a point when the protective use of force may be called for. But I’m going to give you, you know, all of these skills that you can learn to help you in that in-between period.
And if you learn these things, you might find that that need to go to an authority or an institutional punishing agent, becomes less and less. It becomes more that you’ve increased in skill and that you can push that down the road even further.
Building skills to manage conflicts
So, some of the skills that you bring up – the book is just wonderful, the way that you walk through, basically, like a workshop or a training that people get to explore their own feelings and attitudes around conflict. And then you give situation after situation, sort of case study of what might happen if you do this in a conflict, what might happen if you try another way?
It’s fantastic, in that regard, as a personal training manual for getting comfortable with conflict, or feeling inspired to want to practice good conflict.
Gwen: I like that – that change, right? Maybe we’ll never be totally comfortable with it. And I like to tell people, too, I also get anxious and activated if I’m in conflict. Sometimes even before I support people who are in conflict, it can be activating and – yeah, these things happen to our bodies and our nervous system. It doesn’t feel necessarily good to enter into it, but it does feel good to get through it, and get through it constructively, and in a way that aligns with your values.
Stephanie: Well, you’ve given us a lot to think about already, and I was wondering if you would feel comfortable, perhaps, just highlighting a few key ideas that you hope people take from this work that you’ve put together.
Gwen: Yeah. So, one key idea I sort of mentioned already, and that is like being a really good friend or a third-party to people when they’re in conflict. And so, you know, maybe what that means could really vary depending on your relationship. And I think, finding ways to be with people when they’re really upset and angry, and not make the conflict worse.
So, like if someone is going through something that’s really unjust, I wouldn’t say, “Don’t escalate the conflict.” I might say, “Yeah, escalate the conflict. That’s okay. And that would be making the conflict better, in some ways. But don’t make the conflict worse by jumping on an anger and retribution bandwagon.”
And I know this is kind of going back to the authority thing, but I think that is part of what I see a lot when we call authorities. It’s not that folks are feeling – or calling HR. It’s not that someone is feeling unsafe. It’s that they’re angry, and they want someone to “get what they deserve” – in scare quotes.
And so, when we are getting that kind of retributive energy from someone that we’re in relationship with, we can be a really good support person for that person who’s talking with us and also for the rest of the community that we’re in – and the world – by hearing them, offering empathy, listening, asking them what they think will make things better, what ideas they have about what will make things better, and encouraging those – that wise mind to emerge. Encouraging those good ideas and good strategies to emerge. And listening carefully for those – and naming them when we see them. Reminding them of the values that we know that they hold.
Affirming them for the good work that they’ve done in conflict before and how they’ve gotten through tough situations before, and you’re going to be with them. Asking them if they want to practice, what they’re going to say to the person.
So, those are some of the strategies that I would say kind of really briefly about being a third-party. And some of the strategies when you are in conflict yourself, I think, are really similar. But I would say if you are in conflict yourself, one of the things that I would want folks to get out of the book is – yeah, asking for support. Talking to the people that you know will do what I just named – hold space for you in a way that helps you get creative and constructive about your conflict instead of jumping on an anger bandwagon and fanning the flames – wow, really mixing metaphors here.
Stephanie: Flaming bandwagon. [Laughter]
Gwen: There’s like a fire on a bandwagon right now. [Laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Talking to folks that you know will support you, I really think practicing what you want to say and what you’re looking for, getting connected with what you’re needing – yeah, some of the other things I hope people get out of the book.
Mental health and connection to something bigger
Stephanie: You seem to be coming from a space of deep practice of these ideals. What would you say are – like for good mental health around the practice of nonviolence and conflict transformation? What would be some recommendations that you have just in terms of your daily life?
Gwen: Yeah. I love this question. I think having daily practices that help connect you to yourself or something bigger than yourself – like both things, I think are really good. I think anything that you can do, that you can build into a routine to care for yourself and connect you with – I’m just saying something bigger than yourself. If that’s all of reality, objective reality to you. If that’s like a higher power, if that’s like a spirit, but something that is bigger than you, I think, doing activities that ground you in where you’re at in something bigger can be really helpful.
For me, that’s journaling and meditating, like every day. So, I think those like – because then when things get bad, you’ve got those things there. Something I talk about a lot in workshops is that we just can’t expect to try a conflict skill out for the first time in an escalated situation. It’s not going to work. We have to practice in low-stake situations. And then that practice will be there when we need it when something bigger happens.
And so, some of the things that help de-escalate ourselves and de-escalate other people are breathing practices, right? And of course, we can access those even if we aren’t practicing breath every day, and if we are practicing breath every day, it is more easily available to us when we are really escalated, or we’re encountering someone who’s really escalated.
So, you can get the book from your local indie bookstore, if you’ve got one. Bookshop.org. You can order it there. And you can choose, you know, which indie bookstore you’d like to support on there if you’d like. And also just supports independent booksellers. You can buy it directly from the publisher at MicrocosmPublishing.com. And if you just type in “Conflict” my book will come up.
And you can find me – I’m not super-present on social media. But you can find me at the Gandhi Institute. So, if you go to GandhiInstitute.org you’ll see different events, and you can sign up for our newsletter, and you can reach out to me there as well.
Stephanie: You’ve been listening to Nonviolence Radio. You can find this and past shows at our website: nonviolenceradio.org. We want to thank our mother station, KWMR, our show’s guest, Gwen Olton from the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, Matt Watrous, Annie Hewitt, Bryan Farrell at Waging Nonviolence, to our Pacifica affiliates and all of our listeners, until the next time please take care of one another.