August 5, 2022 • 53 mins
In this episode Laura interviews Dr. Samantha Hardy Lawson, Principal at Conflict Coaching International and Adjunct Associate Professor at James Cook University.
Dr. Lawson is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the James Cook University (JCU), Conflict Management Resolution (CMR) Program. Sam is accredited under the National Mediator Accreditation System and certified as a transformative mediator by the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation in the United States. She is an experienced conflict coach and the founder of the REAL Conflict Coaching System.
A leader in the field of conflict management and resolution, Sam is a principal at Conflict Coaching International and runs a consultancy practice in creative conflict engagement and education. She has published widely in conflict resolution, including her books Dispute Resolution in Australia, 3rd ed. (2014), co-authored with David Spencer, and Mediation for Lawyers (2010), co-authored with Olivia Rundle.
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Episode Transcript
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Laura (00:10):
hello and welcome to the Conflict podcast from media.com,
the podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May,and today I have with me Dr.
Samantha Hardy, Conflict ManagementSpecialist, Coat mediator, director
of CCI Academy and fellow Australian.
Welcome, Sam.
Samantha Hardy (00:29):
Thank you, Laura.
You're not in Australiaanymore though, are you?
You're a long way away.
Laura (00:34):
I, it is true, but I think I'm still allowed to call myself a Australian.
It's all my
Samantha Hardy (00:37):
Oh yes.
Laura (00:40):
Anyway, so Sam has her PhD in Law and Conflict Resolution and is
a well known trainer and universityeducator who has worked in Australia,
Hong Kong, Singapore, the usa,and an hour ago online in Ukraine.
She is also prolific author and reader,and I encourage you to follow her
LinkedIn page for ongoing book tips and.
(01:02):
She's a transformative mediator andnarrative coach, the founder of the Real
Conflict Coaching System, and providescoaching, conflict support, and training
to managers and leaders across the world.
She's also recently created a fabulousnew cause, working with emotions
and conflict, though I think we'lltalk about that a little bit later.
Sam, today we're gonna be talking a bitabout emotions, narratives, and conflict.
(01:23):
What led you down this pathway?
Samantha Hardy (01:27):
Oh, that's a long story.
I started out life as a lawyer, and thenafter about five years out of law school
I did a masters of law and I did a subjectcalled Alternative dispute resolution.
This was in 1997, soquite a long time ago.
Showing my age and.
They had a, an opportunity for peoplewho were interested in mediation
to do an extra two days trainingand get what was then a certificate
(01:49):
three in community mediation.
And for me, this coursewas just mind blowing.
I was working in litigation.
Suddenly I had experienced thisway of talking with people, getting
them involved in the process.
It really was like an epiphany and I muchto the horror of my friends and family.
I quit my job as a lawyer and Idecided I was gonna be a mediator.
(02:09):
But in 1997, there were, youcouldn't have a career in mediation.
In Australia, it wasn't really a thing.
There was some community mediationcenters, but it, you couldn't
really make a living out of it.
So being the nerdy kind of reader thatI was, I decided I'd do the next best
thing, which is I'd go and do a PhD onthe topic and I would really find out
everything I knew about mediation andconflict and all of that sort of thing.
(02:32):
So I went back and I started teachingin law schools and and do, did my
PhD and I started out looking at.
Why people when they wentto court weren't happy.
And I was trying to figureout why mediation was better.
And for me it was something to dowith their ability to talk about it.
And, all the stuff that's inthe can of why mediation's a
(02:52):
great way to resolve conflict.
But I thought, Oh, there'ssomething to do with lawyers.
I had it in my head.
Lawyers are somehow ruiningpeople and making them more
adversarial and breaking them.
So I was gonna try and solve this problem.
And I know, and so I.
I went and interviewed all
Laura (03:09):
Yep.
Samantha Hardy (03:11):
I went and interviewed all these people who had what I
called in a very technical sense,an injurious experience and that
they blamed somebody for it.
And most of the people I interviewedthought I was a psychologist.
I didn't tell 'em I was a lawyer.
And when I say interviewed, Ididn't really interview them.
I was sat down with them at the time.
I had one of those little mini discplayers, that like a mini CD to record.
(03:32):
It was like the highesttech of the moment.
So excited about that.
So I'd turn it on and I wouldsay to them, All I want you to
do is just tell me what happened.
Take as long as you like,Tell me what happened.
I'm not gonna interrupt.
And I would just let them go.
And what people did was tell me astory and the only, most of them
talked for around 20 minutes.
(03:52):
There was one or two that I had to stopbecause they were going forever, but most
people talked around about 20 minutes.
And at the very end I would askthem, the only question I asked them,
Did you see a lawyer about this?
And my expectation was, the storiesof the people who had seen a lawyer
would be different from the storiesof people who didn't see a lawyer.
(04:13):
I did end up with two very distinct typesof stories and I couldn't end, in the
end, I couldn't prove in any way thatwhether the lawyer caused the problematic
stories or the problematic storytelling.
People were the sort of peoplewho would go to a lawyer.
So I got into a chickenand egg situation there.
But what I did discover was these,this one very kind of dysfunctional
(04:36):
way of talking about your conflict orwhat I called an injurious experience.
And then this other group of people,some of whom had things much worse
happen to them than the other groupwho've had this sort of resilience and
this capacity to grow from something.
Quite potentially harmful.
Some of them had reallybad things happen to them.
One guy had become a quadriplegicand yet told this story about
(04:59):
how it improved his life.
So I was intrigued by that.
And then I started trying to figure outhow am I gonna describe these two stories?
How am I going to explainthe difference between them?
And this is one of those weirdserendipitous moments as well as doing
my PhD and teaching at law school.
I was also studying a degree inFrench and French literature because
(05:20):
that's what you do when you're anerdy geek type person who . So
Laura (05:24):
nerd credentials up.
Samantha Hardy (05:25):
I definitely do.
Sorry about that.
was read, I was doing a subject onFrench theater and we were reading the
plays of a French writer called Core.
That's probably a very bad pronunciation.
And he was known as thefather of Melodrama.
And as I was reading the hisstories, his theater plays.
(05:46):
I thought this is likethe dysfunctional story.
So many of the way the characters wereportrayed, the way the plot was laid
out, the moral of the story, they fitthese dysfunctional conflict stories.
So I thought, okay, I'vegot my genre for that.
I had to come up with the genrefor the more resilient stories, and
after looking at a lot, I ended up.
Having a bit of a toss up between comedyand tragedy and weirdly, ironically,
(06:10):
which is a really bad nerdy pun.
Ironically, tragedy one.
Ironically, tragedy.
That's probably not thebest use of the word, but.
Laura (06:19):
I'll allow it.
Look, if Alana
Samantha Hardy: counterintuitively, shall I say (06:21):
undefined
Laura (06:24):
we go.
Yeah.
Samantha Hardy (06:24):
The tragic stories where the resilient
stories fit the genre of tragedy.
And it wasn't because they told astory of life sucks and then you die.
But it was that they understoodthe challenge they were facing.
They were on their own.
They had to, or they choseto manage it on their own.
They took control.
Sometimes they made the wrong choices,but at least they were making choices.
(06:45):
And even if it didn't workout that well in the end, they
learned something from it.
They grew and developedas a person in some way.
And so that was the beginning ofmy journey into conflict stories.
And then next step.
How do we make the shift?
I How can I help people who are stuckin this dysfunctional story move into
a version of a tragic story with someresilience and learning and growth?
(07:08):
And that's where the realconflict coaching system came in.
It was a process that I developedto help people make that shift.
Laura (07:16):
Yeah, that's actually really a really good jumping off point.
Cause I have been reading your book,Conflict Coaching Fundamentals,
Working with Conflict Stories.
I've got it here on my hand.
You definitely can't see it right now.
And I haven't finished reading it yet,but what I did for myself in the first
half of the book I've read so far,you read these different stories that
people have told you about the complex,they're in it and you talk about this,
(07:36):
this is the tragedy or what have you, orthis is the sort of victim type story.
And I was almost gaslighting myself.
I'm like, Oh, what I think aboutevery C I've ever been here.
I'm like, Oh, you knowwhat did I do there?
Did I not do enough tosave this relationship?
Like, how do I move into theother story what's going on here?
So I'm glad that you're maybe telling methat in the second half of the book, I
find I'll find out how to tell people likemyself jump from this story into this one.
(08:00):
Is that what I'm hearing?
Samantha Hardy (08:02):
yes, yes, you'll definitely develop some skills.
The second half of the book talks aboutwhat I call the six shifts that the
story needs to make, and they're reallybasic things like going from a position
of simplicity or a story that's verysimple into a story that's complex
and nuanced, going from a sense ofcertainty into a sense of uncertainty.
There's a couple of kind ofthematic shifts that we can make.
(08:24):
Quite easily.
We can support people to make itquite easily, but just opens up
so many new choices, opportunitiesfor learning and growth.
Laura (08:32):
It certainly makes a lot of sense and I will look forward
to reading that second half soI can stop gaslighting myself.
But what you've just said now in termsof Yeah, making this ship from like
really simple black and white typethinking into more complex thinking.
It's something that there can bequite hard to do though, right?
That's something we suffer from every day.
It's just our brains saying,Let's take a shortcut.
Let's make life easy.
We need to worry about things like what tohave for dinner, not about this problem.
(08:55):
So can you give us in really broadterms, , So people wanna read your
book as well, which I'm sure they will.
What would be the first thing youwould say to someone in that kind
of situation to get them out of thisreally black and white and just the
more great, complex way of thinking?
Samantha Hardy (09:09):
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things
to, to set in place First.
It is a challenging shift togo from everything being right
and wrong, very clear certain.
So you have to make people feelsafe enough to become vulnerable
as Brene Brown would say.
But there's a fine line too, betweengoing overboard and making the complexity
(09:30):
So big and overwhelming that peoplecan't function, can't move through it.
So it's about finding a balance.
There's a really good book, I can'tremember the author called The Paradox
of Choice, that talks about thattension between choice is a good
thing, but after a certain pointit becomes overwhelming and we lose
the capacity to keep processing.
So I think one of the thingsas a conflict resolver.
(09:51):
That can help a lot is just toask lots of questions for detail
for no particular purpose.
So rather than, what the kind ofgetting to Yes, people would say is
ask people about their underlyinginterests, drill down into their
underlying needs and concerns.
Yes, that's useful, but also what canbe really useful is just asking for more
detail, asking people for a little bitmore context, a little bit more history,
(10:15):
what happened in between the dramaticevents that are part of their simple
story, to give it a little bit more.
I dunno, balance sometimes, and part ofthat actually is gonna relate to, I, I
assume the sort of conversation we mighthave about emotions in that we typically
remember more clearly the negative eventsand we don't remember positive events.
(10:36):
If we're feeling negative at the moment,cuz we're in conflict with someone,
we re we can easily remember thenegative events or the dramatic events.
We find it harder to remember theneutral events or even the positive.
And so just asking people for detailwithout any particular purpose, not
pointing out inconsistencies, not realitytesting, just getting them to fill in the
(10:56):
gaps in a non-threatening, supportive way.
People accidentally notice thingsthat were there but they haven't been
paying attention to often becausetheir emotions are filtering them.
Laura (11:07):
Fantastic.
And you have given me good leapingoff point to ask about emotions
to say thank you very much.
Very considerate of you.
So then what is the connectionactually between this work you've done
previously on, on these narrativesin interpersonal conflict and
your more recent work on emotions?
What's the link there?
Samantha Hardy (11:26):
It's funny, when I started doing the work on emotions, I hadn't
decided that there was a deliberate link.
They were two separate things that Idecided, were important and I wanted to
explore, and then I wanted to share withpeople because I thought it was helpful.
But the more I've done the work,the more I realize is stories
like melodrama and tragic stories.
(11:48):
Take us on an emotional journey.
They have a purpose that'sdriven by emotional goals.
The way we tell the story is drivenby our emotions as we, in response to
the events, into the, in the contentthat we access, in our memories,
in, we present it, wanting anemotional response from our audience.
Often if we want someone to rescueus or to, go into bat for us.
(12:11):
We need to motivate them and wemotivate people by triggering
an emotional response.
The motivation and emotionare from the same Latin roots.
So the purpose of our stories and what wewant from our audience is heavily based
on us getting an emotional response.
And I guess that's thedifference in those two stories.
In a melodramatic story, we'reaiming for an emotional response
(12:31):
from an external audience.
Person who, her father figurein the genre who we want to
come and save us from our woes.
In tragedy, it's aboutemotional learning and growth.
It's about us becoming aware of,in, you think about the sort of
stereotypical, tragic stories.
The client, the hero has this emotionalmoment where, it's often very confronting.
(12:55):
Suddenly they realize somethingthey really believed in or something
they really loved and valuedwasn't true, that it was wrong and
they had this emotional crisis.
But it leads to them discovering somethingabout themselves or the world they live
in or how conflict works, for example.
Laura (13:10):
The hero in his second story does definitely sound like a very
emotionally complete and more maturehuman in some ways, , at least that's the.
Samantha Hardy (13:18):
But imperfect.
In, in tragic theater wetalk about the fatal floor.
And that's the thing thatsort of ruins their life.
I think in our day to daytragic conflict stories.
It doesn't have to be a fatal flaw,it's just some little failing or mistake
that we make that, that in conflict canescalate and have ramifications far beyond
(13:38):
the little thing that happened to us.
It might be pride, our ego, ourunwillingness to be vulnerable.
There are a whole lot of little thingsthat we might have in our makeup that.
End up being the floor thatcreated or escalated the conflict.
But I think, so I think it's importantin melodrama, if you wanna be saved,
you have to portray yourself as perfect.
(13:59):
You have to be perfectly innocentand pure, so you are not even.
Consciously aware of things thatyou've done that have contributed to
the problem, and you're gonna be veryresistant to going there because it's
gonna ruin your story, your identity.
Whereas in tragedy, it'sokay to be imperfect.
It's okay to make mistakesas long as you learn from it.
Sometimes you learn too late and thenlife sucks and you die on the stage.
(14:21):
In tragic theater, my goal isto work with clients before
it's too late so that they can.
Twist the ending.
Like a choose your own adventureinstead of going to the
life sucks, you die ending.
We, we choose a different route andwe turn it into something a little
less tragic, in terms of the outcome.
Laura (14:41):
For sure.
As you were talking about this idea ofbeing a perfect victim in some ways just
now it reminded me of the literature I'veread in Victimology, and I love that's the
actual field name victimology in that, Forexample, if you are going to court or if
there is a violent crime, for instance,then unless the victim is perfect in some
(15:01):
way, then it's less likely to go to court.
And then less likely it is, that theperpetrator will be judged guilty
and of course perfect in this caseis not just completely free of any
activity that might have led totheir becoming a victim, right?
But also what they look likeand where they're from and
what their education level is.
So it can be quite.
(15:21):
Difficult, I would sayto be a perfect victim.
And so even if you're able toperform being a perfect victim for
yourself, it's Oh no, I was absolutelynothing wrong in the situation.
Of course it's all on me.
When you're playing to youraudience, they still might have a
very different perception as I asI suppose, as exemplified it in the
perpetrator in your melodrama, right?
They're gonna be like no.
This victim ains so perfect after all.
Samantha Hardy (15:42):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what happens, The bad guy in amelodramatic conflict of it conflicts.
So you, when you have a conflictof stories, what happens is the bad
guy in one person's story is themelodramatic heroin or hero in the other.
And so they're like, there's afight for who's the actual villain
and who's the actual victim.
And so there's a fight to, to bemerto each other's virtue as a way to.
(16:05):
Heard the other bigger societal thing,and I know your work is much more on a
social scale, whereas I tend to focuson individuals and maybe very small
groups like families or workplaces.
The question is, who defines virtue?
That can be a very challengingquestion to answer.
Who defines the parameters ofvirtue in classical melodrama?
(16:27):
The virtuous heroin had to be alegitimate birth, a virgin and At least
not ugly, but preferably beautiful.
You know, and, and they,
Laura (16:36):
for climbing up tower sides, right?
Samantha Hardy (16:38):
That's right.
There were expectations of virtuethat are very different from now.
And now that expectations ofvirtue are often internalized.
We see ourselves as a good colleague ora generous person, but there are social.
Requirements of virtue if you're a rapevictim, for example, were you wearing
a short skirt and fish net stockings?
(16:59):
That shouldn't be a criteria forwhether or not you get raped.
And technically it's not,but it's still there.
Underneath , underneaththe radar, so to speak.
Laura (17:09):
Absolutely, and I it's this sort of same story in terms of well are you white
or not ? And if you are not, if you'rea per, if you're a person of color, then
you're less likely to taken seriouslywhen reporting violent crime against you.
Or as well.
So of interesting, there's been a bitof Twitter and social media discourse
these last few days about how.
This one chap was being basicallybashed up by his girlfriend.
(17:29):
That's probably not theproper way to put it.
And so he called the police,and the police arrested him.
And apparently, and I haven't done thefigure check on this, but yeah, if you
are a male victim of domestic violenceand you call the police, you're more
likely to be arrested, at least in theUS because you're not a good victim.
So you don't fit into thesort of social victim role.
Absolutely.
Samantha Hardy (17:48):
Behavior.
It differs for different people as well,and in even in the, what's appropriate
in terms of a display of emotion.
So there's a whole lot of reallyinteresting research about how it can
be particularly risky for a personof color to display anger in the
workplace compared with white person.
There shouldn't be any difference.
There's gender and culturalexpectations about.
(18:10):
What emotions you're supposed toexperience and how you're supposed to
display them, and they're not consistent.
They're not equitable.
Laura (18:17):
No.
Absolutely.
It's quite interesting.
Actually was thinking aboutthese broader social complex.
I remember I read this reallyfascinating paper about Brexit, right?
You saying like the US presidentialcampaigns can be and have known to
be the recent past, so this portrayalof one side is angry and irrational.
But what this paper talked about wasactually both sides describe them
(18:38):
themselves as angry, and the otherside is angry, and they're both justly
angry, but the other side is angryand crazy, like they make no sense.
They have no basis, likeour anger is justified.
Of course we're fighting for truth and allthat lovely stuff, but they're irrational.
So it is really interesting thateveryone's getting mad, right?
(18:59):
But the other side are legitimatelymad, if that makes sense.
Samantha Hardy (19:04):
Sarah Co and I many years ago started working on a paper.
We didn't actually ever publisher,but we looked at the narratives,
the sort of propaganda narrativesof the US government and isis.
And it was really funny and intriguingto see that they were both, as you just
described, with Brexit, telling thesame story, characterizing each other as
(19:24):
evil and trying to ruin our way of life.
And they were very melodramatic narrativesof the other In the same way, but
ours, we, yes, we're angry, but we arejustified exactly the same dynamic.
Yeah.
So interesting.
Laura (19:37):
you were saying in terms of who wins the story?
Who's the real hero?
He's the real victim who's justlyangry and who is not justly angry.
They're very much intertwined thesenarratives and these emotions.
And I found it really interestingthat you started from narratives
and moved over to emotions.
I actually went the other way around.
Cuz in my research Istarted with emotions.
I was like, Look, post Brexit vote.
I was like, Wow, all myremainder friends are really sad.
(20:00):
And which is not the same emotion thatwas being expressed by Levis, right?
And then you of had these ideas ofProject Fear is the Remain campaign
and Project Anger is the main campaign,but sorry, as the leave campaign,
but these were all deeply intertwinedwith the strategies and who was
being talked about and in what way.
The leave campaign was verymuch portraying the EU as a.
(20:20):
So you're allowed toget angry against them.
But the way I came to this wordvillain, which obviously echoes so
close to your own work these girlsare doing there going, If I'm really
angry at someone, what do I wanna do?
I was like, I wanna call them somethinglike what are they, Like how I, how
do I describe this relationship?
And it took be a very long timeto think of a word that was not
a swear word to describe them.
(20:41):
And then it was like,Literature will save me.
The other side is a villainand not anything less
appropriate to say on a podcast.
But they are very deeply intertwinedand, we look at George Lakos work
and things that area as well.
I'm very similar our, even as far asthey the pathways in the brain these
stories and these emotions are just, Verydifficult to extricate from each other.
(21:02):
But because we're talkingabout brain, Oh, sorry,
, Samantha Hardy: I
was gonna say, you just highlighted thatvery important difference, that there's a,
it's a completely different level to sayyou are wrong or you are morally wrong.
Yes,
Samantha Hardy (21:15):
And once you have that, the villain, the moral villain part of
it then there's no room for conversation.
You can have a conversation withsomeone who's wrong, but there's
also that saying, you don't changesomeone's mind with information.
You change someone's mind by getting.
Connecting with their heart andtheir emotions, and you do that
through a story, through narrative.
(21:35):
You don't do that by giving them data.
Data never really changed anyone's mind.
You have to make it tell a story thatthey can believe in and relate to.
Laura (21:45):
Absolutely.
And this was a key thing.
I, Sorry, now I'm justtalking about my work.
I can talk about all day
Samantha Hardy (21:50):
no do.
It's fascinating.
Laura (21:52):
but it was something I found as well.
There's this idea of sayingthat This cause I research
specifically blame, right?
And what blamed did to us, how it helpscreate villains, how it makes us feel,
how it manipulates us, what we cando about it is the very short story.
And it of seemed to this conflationof blame and name calling.
But to me one of these things is you didsomething bad and the other is you are.
(22:15):
Which is what you are talking about here.
And we need to be ableto disentangle those two.
It's the same as, saying, Oh, youdid something good or you are good.
And, one can lead to the other.
If you keep doing bad things, atsome point someone's gonna say,
You know what, you might just be asociopath . But otherwise it's a lot
more wiggle room in this sort of grayarea you were talking about before.
So it doesn't all have to be black andwhite, which is I think, quite important.
Samantha Hardy (22:37):
And that's the flip side of what we were saying before
about how if you are the, if you arethe virtuous heroin, you have to be,
and I say heroin cuz in classicalmelodrama it was always a young woman.
Obviously in modernmelodrama it can be a man.
Typically in the way the story'sconstructed, they're emasculated, they
have feminine attributes, so they're.
And it's hard if you're a man tryingto get support through a melodramatic
(22:58):
story, it can feel very emasculating,which is often why men don't get support.
But I'm getting off on another tangent,but the way, what we were saying
about the innocent victim has to bepure and virtuous in the same way.
To get the outcome, which is come up andit's my favorite word, comeuppance of
the bad guy, which is really removinghim from the situation by killing him,
(23:18):
or imprisoning him, or banishing him.
We have to not let anyroom for doubt there.
We have to make him entirely bad as well.
And it's never that straightforward.
I don't think I've ever beeninvolved in any conflict ever
where someone was entirely goodand someone was entirely bad.
It makes us feel good, especially if weare casting ourselves in the good vi, in
the good role to say the other person'sbad, but it shuts down any opportunities
(23:42):
for conversation or movement.
Because the only Why woulda nice girl like me talk to
someone who's so completely.
The only thing to do is to protect myselfand shut myself off from them until
someone comes and gets rid of them.
Laura (23:55):
So it sounds like black and white thinking is big problem.
Then , we need to, so we need toredress that within ourselves in
our interpersonal conflicts andin our social conflicts as well.
Samantha Hardy (24:05):
and Sarah Cobb talks about two shifts.
She talks about Before we're able, beforewe're able to see the benefit of the
doubt, I suppose in the other, we haveto create some doubt about our own role.
And again, one of the things that youdo as an innocent victim is you avoid
talking about anything that you've done.
You mentioned this before, it, the onlyway you can stay completely innocent is to
(24:27):
be completely passive and not do anything.
Cuz anything you do is open to.
Making a mistake or being interpretedas not perfect, that you have to do
as little as possible and distractattention from you doing anything.
And then on, on the other hand,you point to all the things
the other person's done asking.
Someone who's in that helplessvictim role, questions about
things that they've done.
(24:48):
Very often results in themanswering by suffering.
So you say when he did that terriblething to you, what did you do?
Oh, I felt sick.
I felt terrible.
I was mortified.
They respond in feelings.
They don't actuallytell you what they did.
And if you can get people to starttalking about their past actions.
Even without I dunno, rubbing their nosein it, I suppose they will sometimes
(25:12):
remember, or recognize or realize thatyes, maybe their actions haven't always
been perfect, and only then will I beopen to giving the benefit of the doubt
to the evil villain that Sarah Co saysThe shift has to happen in that order.
Laura (25:27):
So I have a question for you.
I feel like I make every podcastabout me, actually, cuz I want
everyone to solve my problems whileI'm talking with all these experts
Samantha Hardy (25:33):
It should be called Tipping.
Laura, the Laura Tipping Podcast.
Laura (25:38):
Oh my goodness.
Samantha Hardy (25:39):
This a new Olympic sport
Laura (25:41):
No, that, that's extremely violent.
I feel like I'm gonna get a lot ofbruises if I'm being tipped over anywhere.
Because like I find that when I'min a conflict with someone I'll sit
down, even if I'm talking to thirdperson and I'll sit down and say,
Look, this is the situation andthese are the things I did wrong.
So I'm actually immediately chippingaway at my victim credibility.
Is that a bad thing, Sam?
Should I not be doing
that?
Should I
Samantha Hardy (26:01):
No, I think that's a great thing.
But I it's about balance.
It's about balance.
think it's a really important thing.
If you can see.
The things that you've done.
Let's use the language of the difficultconversations in, If you can notice
the ways you've contributed to thesituation rather than being blameworthy
or wrong, if you can recognize that, thenthat opens up your opportunity to see.
(26:23):
The other person's contributions,both positive and negative.
So I think it's an important step.
It might mean that you're more advancedthan other people who, or you've not
been considering com conflicts in whichyou've been really stuck in a victim role.
You've allowed yourself to to askyourself what your contributions might
(26:44):
have been without worrying too muchthat turns you into the evil villa.
Laura (26:49):
Okay, you've reassured me on that front, but you've also made
me wanna ask a more provocativequestion, not about myself this
time I feel I should clarify that.
What about, for example, insituations of domestic violence?
Cause I was talking about earlier, youknow what, if you have someone who's been
the victim of domestic violence and theysay yeah, sure they hit me, didn't have
their dinner ready on time, for example.
(27:09):
Like at what point is it too much andhow do you judge it, especially as an
external party, how do you guide them ona pathway through a conflict like that?
Samantha Hardy (27:17):
I think there's two distinct situations we're
talking about here that we're talk.
When I talk about people stuckin a melodramatic story, I'm
talking about people whosestory is divorced from reality.
It's a version of events thatdoesn't match up with reality.
I'm not saying that.
That, that there's neversomebody who is a victim there.
There are going to be people who arein, who are the subject of coercive
(27:41):
and controlling behaviors by othersand really have little room to move.
And and so that sort of thinkingfrom them is just, Exacerbating
that situation, their victimhood.
So I guess that's a, I mean for me it'sa slightly different issue that's about
screening very carefully the people thatyou're working with to ensure that it's
not a situation in which they reallyare the victim of those sort of co
(28:03):
conversive and controlling behaviors.
Most of the people I workwith are not, That's the story
they're telling themselves.
That's the way they thinkabout the situation.
But when you look at it objectivelyas an outsider, you're like, Yeah.
So that person.
Something to you that was a littlebit annoying or hit one of your
triggers, but doesn't seem to me likethey were really out to get you and,
(28:23):
gonna do some terrible harm to you.
So I think that's animportant distinction.
I'm not saying, I'm not sayingthat no one is ever a victim.
I'm also not saying that.
There are always things that people whoare in a victim type role can do to help
themselves because in those coercivecontrolling behaviors, there may be very
little they can do to help themselves andtrying to sell 'em a version of events
(28:46):
or help them reframe their story intoone where they're not so victimized is
just gonna put them at risk of harm.
Laura (28:51):
No, sorry.
I definitely phrased that wrong then.
Cause I was thinking more of thesituation where they are saying these
things and they had this idea thatthey caused their own victimization,
but obviously that's untrue.
Like they didn't doanything to deserve that.
So in a situation, I maybe this is moreof a I would refer them to a psychologist
slash domestic violence counselor.
But yes, I wasn't tryingto say that, Oh you.
(29:12):
Have them see this gray area.
I'm more about thinking what,where victims actually really
question themselves aboutam I really a victim here?
Does that actually come up in the sortof situations that like you normally
coach in as far as conflict goes?
Samantha Hardy (29:26):
I think that if somebody's in that role where they're buying
into the other person's melodrama,when they're agreeing that they're the
villain and that the other person is thevictim, then firstly, they're unlikely
to come for support because they won'tsee themselves as worthy for support.
So they're not the sort of people whoturn up asking for my services but also,
(29:50):
They're probably the situations wherethe kind of coaching model that I'm
talking about isn't going to be effective.
It's a situation where you actuallyneed a melodramatic outcome.
You need someone withpower to come in and.
Take control of the situation.
And I think in that case, you don'thave two competing narratives.
You have one person who's in controlof both people's version of events
(30:13):
and they don't actually differ.
And the person with power is manipulatingthe other person to believe their
narrative, So their own version of events.
Becomes the one that they'rebeing told or they're being
forced to agree with for their ownphysical and psychological safety.
So it's, for me it's not the samekind of conflict of competing stories.
(30:35):
That is what I deal with andwhat I'm more talking about.
Laura (30:38):
Yeah.
Now thank you for that clarificationbecause I, Yeah I was, that was something
I was definitely wondering about.
Wow, we've gone somereally dark places, so
Samantha Hardy (30:46):
we have,
Laura (30:47):
feel that
Samantha Hardy (30:47):
lighten it up.
Laura (30:49):
Oh goodness.
I need to like shake it off.
Okay, so look, before we weretalking a bit about narratives
and how they're intertwinedwith emotions and what have you.
And so we had this idea of theyeah, really being together
there in our brains, but.
I know your view of emotions cuz I'vebeen reviewing your course recently.
So like, why don't you tell us a littlebit about how you conceptualize emotions
(31:10):
and discuss emotions in this coursethat you've been building recently.
Samantha Hardy (31:14):
Yeah.
So as we talk, Laura and I talk aboutthis love, we're both big fan girls
of Lisa Feldman Barrett, who wrotea book called How Emotions Are Made.
And one of the things that I discoveredfairly recently, is that the emotions
research in the last 10 to 20years has developed exponentially.
Often because of increased technologyaround things like MRIs and, we can
(31:37):
study a whole lot of things that beforewe had to make assumptions about and
extrapolate from our own experiences.
And things have changed so much from whatI was taught when I was doing mediation.
I did psychs a year ofpsych at university.
It was really different back then.
And one of the things that really startledme when I read that book, How much of e
(31:59):
everybody I knows, popular assumptionsof how emotions work and what we need
to do to manage them was based on allthis really outdated research that was
either really simplistic or absolutelymisguided, given recent research.
So it's taking a while for popularculture to catch up with the amount of
research that's been happening in andquality research in the last 10 20.
(32:23):
So one of the things that, thatI really like, and I've been
struggling a lot with how to explainthis, articulate this clearly.
So maybe Laura, you and I canwork on something together.
But the crux of it for me is thereisn't this thing called an emotion
and this thing called a thought in.
They're both thoughts.
They're both ways of thinking.
(32:44):
And there may not be as muchdifference between them as we think.
We categorize some sorts of thinkingas thinking and some sorts of thinking
as feelings, but they're actuallyusing all different bits of the brain.
There isn't like emotions aren'tone bit of the brain and thinking
another bit, both thinking andemotions in inverted comments, I.
Using all different bits ofthe brain and actually a going
(33:07):
a brain when we think or feel.
Is doing the same thingin both situations.
The biggest distinction that I can comeup with, and maybe you can add to this,
Laura, is the speed that our emotionalthinking tends to happen very quickly.
It takes into account different bitsof information, bits of sensation,
perception, past experiences, memories,little bits of it very quickly.
(33:31):
To give us a quick response, whereaswhat we think of as thinking does
the same thing we take into accountwhat's going on, information, past
experiences, but maybe it takes a littlebit longer and we maybe incorporate a
little bit more information into it.
For me, that's thedistinction between the two.
It's really the quantity ofprocessing and the speed.
(33:53):
What did, do you agree?
Is that how you.
Laura (33:55):
I guess I see it as a little bit different.
What you've just said now reallyreminds you of Daniel Conneman's work on
Samantha Hardy (34:01):
Yeah, they're thinking fast and slow.
Laura (34:03):
Exactly.
Yeah.
So you've got this like really fastthinking Aris takes shortcuts ways
of processing information, right?
Or you've been seeking information which.
We would more typicallyconsider emotional, right?
Just, read a headline, have areaction, move on, try not to let
it bother the rest of your day.
And then the system too where yeah,you are really taking time to seek
(34:24):
out information and to mull itover and think about it and plan.
And most of it, mostly I thoughtobviously is the first type.
Like we don't mull over most thingswe do each day, unless we're extremely
neurotic, like guilty . But even likemost of our thinking is that first.
But for me, as far as I guess adifference goes, I I guess I'm
less concerned about a difference.
(34:44):
As you'll know as well.
There's some cultures where there'snot actually a linguistic separation
between thinking and feeling.
Cause as you just highlightyourself, they're both just
products of the brain and we justlike to label them differently.
For me, I guess the importantpart of emotion is that it
is Deeply connected to our.
So because I the way that FeldmanBarrett really talks about emotions
(35:05):
is this sort of idea of affect,which is your almost your physical
symptoms or your information.
So whether it from your eyes oryour ears or the internal churning
of your intestines and other.
The growth and stuff.
And all of that information forms, itcomes together with your knowledge that
you've learned, that you've learnedthat a stomach a means that maybe
you're actually a bit angry at somebody.
And then also the context that, you'resitting there in a room and your stomach
(35:27):
hurts and this person's there, and you'relike, I might be a bit angry at you.
And so for me, that bodilyinformation is really important.
How emotions are constructedand how we create them.
But of course, that's not to say thatwhen we're, so called thinking that we're
not thinking, Oh, I might be hungry laterand our body's completely invisible.
No, that's not it.
But it is.
(35:48):
For me it's that reallyvisceral component.
But I actually, I find it reallyinteresting that, when we talk about
non-violent communication and in mediationand what have you one of those principles
is separate thoughts from feelings.
Like not, Oh, I feellike you did a bad thing.
No, I think you did a bad thing and Ifeel angry, or what have you about it.
So it's interesting that we try andactually artificially separate these in a
(36:10):
way when we're trying to resolve conflict.
Whereas in our brains, theyjust kinda a big mishmash.
Samantha Hardy (36:15):
Yeah, and the problem with that is if we just talk about the
emotions, particularly if we use thoseemotion labels that we're familiar
with, I was angry, that made me feelangry, but made me feel frustrated.
What we lose is the informationthat we have used to construct
that emotion in our mind.
And so using that label, firstly,those labels are very imprecise.
(36:38):
They cover very broad categories.
They can mean very differentthings in different situations.
But if we just talk about the feelingrather than trying to articulate.
It reminds me of this time and I wasit worried about the, If we can try
and articulate our thought processunderlying the emotions and sometimes
(36:59):
recognizing what's happening inour body underlying the emotion.
It helps us either clarify and moreclearly express our emotion or sometimes
realize that what's the wrong emotionthat make it helps us revise it.
And the example of which I wasjust reminded of that you were
just implying in a way there isthe hangs, when you're hungry and
interpreted as angry and there's allthat great research about how people.
(37:22):
Judges in particular tend torefuse bail, for example, or
parole hearings just before lunch.
Whereas up just after lunch,the vast majority of their
decisions are to grant it.
And it's a really great example of howwe can misinterpret our bodily functions
as thinking when it's, , that arebodily functions become our thoughts
(37:42):
and affect how we perceive the worldwe're in, but we are misinterpreting it.
Laura (37:50):
I like that example of the hungry judges.
I did actually read a couple ofpapers that suggested that all was
not , that maybe that study wasttotally accurate, but I can, Yeah.
Which, so I'll forwardthat to you later on.
You can have a read and foryourself, always intended.
Samantha Hardy (38:06):
After I've had something to eat.
Laura (38:08):
Exactly right.
So you will think about it.
But one that is, and again, is going toa dark place, but it's really interesting
that people with ptsd, for an example evenif their trauma is unrelated to sexual
violence, Can often be triggered by sexualsituations because in our body, basically
(38:28):
fear and sexual arousal are pretty muchdoing the same thing, and it's only the
context and the knowledge that actuallyallows us to construct it as being horny.
For instance, someone like inmy surveys and emotions, people
actually wrote that as an emotion.
I was like, I accept your labeling.
Ok.
So you know, are they horny or are they.
And it's only that knowledge thatallows us to go this is the difference.
(38:49):
And I think that reallygets to the heart of it.
So like this, we need to go throughand think, actually what am I feeling
and why am I constructing this?
Okay.
But does, and this is a very leadingquestion, but does this mean that
we can actually just feel whateverwe want whenever we want to?
Sam, can I just chooseto be happy all the time?
Is that how that works?
Samantha Hardy (39:09):
Oh, wouldn't it be good if it was that easy?
I think one of the things, again, thisis my interpretation of what I read, so
feel free to give me a count of view.
If you don't think this is quite right.
But my take on it, it is.
We.
In a way our emotional profile, ourhabits of feeling, certain feelings
in certain kinds of situationsis created by our experiences.
(39:31):
And for me, it's alittle bit like exercise.
I can just go along and, I might tendto have, I don't know, stronger arms
and legs, cuz I do a lot of work withmy arms and I very rarely use my legs
so I can, It's just by accident strengthin one part rather than the other.
And I think the same thing couldhappen in my emotional profile.
I could just tend to hang outwith people who are angry all
(39:54):
the time, or I tend to be angry.
And so I get in the habit of being angry.
I think what I how I think about itis maybe I can choose to exercise.
The sorts of emotions that I would liketo feel more, maybe I can go looking for
activities that will give me opportunitiesto create those emotions that I want more
(40:16):
of and build those emotion muscles withinmy body so that I can then be less angry
because I'm counterbalancing it by doing.
Exercises in a way, activitiesthat prompt me to be happy.
So I think it's not like I'm just gonnaturn off my anger and decide to be happy.
I think it takes work and practiceand building up, actively looking
(40:38):
for opportunities to develop thoseemotions rather than making a
decision not to feel that way anymore.
Cuz that doesn't work.
So that's take on it a littlebit, like exercising the emotions
that you would like to have more.
Laura (40:52):
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
It's like they say, neurons thatfire together wire together.
And so if you keep using those littlehappy pathways, even though they're
in different parts of the brain,et cetera, like you're, of course,
you're able to create them more.
And so when you were developingyour course and emotions and
obviously doing all the research,what surprised you the most?
Samantha Hardy (41:14):
Look, I think the biggest surprise for me is how much is out there
that is directly related to conflict.
We as conflict resolution practitionersreally don't know enough about, and
that there are so many interventionsand things that we can do to support
people, not just to manage theiremotions, but to work with them.
(41:36):
We, a lot of what we learn in ourmediation training is let people
vent, remove toxic emotions encouragepeople to be as rational as they can,
and then you'll get a good outcome.
Yes, that helps to a certain degree, butthere are so many more things we can do.
So things like helping peopleregulate physiological side.
And I hear people as I say this out loud,I can hear listeners saying, We're not
(42:00):
counselors, we're not psychologists.
We're not doctors.
We can't give people antidepressants.
No, that's true.
But there are some basic things thatwe can do to help people regulate
or to help people monitor howthey're feeling so that when they.
Conflict conversations.
They can be the best they can be.
We can.
We can help them prepare.
We can help them, let it monitorand let us know in the moment if
(42:23):
they need a break, for example.
I think there's things we can doaround people's emotional experience
so we can help people understand that.
And emotion is an experience.
It has a whole lot of differentcomponents, including our past history,
our perception of the situation thecontext, whether we've had , whether
we've had breakfast or a cup of coffee.
(42:43):
What's happened to us on the wayto the mediation room, how the
mediation room looks and feels to us.
What sort of music's playing even.
There's all sorts of things we cando to help people understand their
experience and then, Maybe make afew more conscious choices about how
they respond to it rather than justfeeling like it's controlling them.
Then there's theemotional expression side.
(43:05):
That is often what we talk aboutwhen we talk about managing emotions.
It's don't let people yelland scream at each other.
It's a very superficialunderstanding of expression.
But again, there's so many thingswe can do to support people to
consciously express their emotion in a.
Way or not, if it's not appropriate, andsometimes it's not, but also recognizing
(43:27):
the fallacy of this idea that we canunderstand what someone else is feeling,
particularly by looking at their facialexpression that we're only ever, as Lisa
Feldman Barrett says, We're only everguessing and we're often guessing by
paying attention to the wrong cues ornot the most useful cues, and engaging
people in meaningful conversationswhere they can share with each other.
Descriptions of how they'refeeling in nuanced ways.
(43:51):
Can do so much more.
And then lastly, youasked a simple question.
I'm giving you a very long answer.
The idea of emotional reflection, andparticularly in my coaching work, a lot
of what I can do with my clients is tohelp them reflect on their emotional
experiences in the past, reflect onthe ones that are working for them
and the ones that aren't working forthem, and help them think about things
(44:12):
like their emotional profile andstrategies that they might wanna take.
In relation to this particular personor this particular situation, but
maybe bigger picture strategies tobuild up the emotion muscles of the
emotions they prefer to be feeling.
So I just think there's so much wecan do that's not just try and stop
people from talking over each otherand swearing, and because emotion
(44:33):
is so much a part of conflict,even if we pretend it's not, it is.
That we should be paying attention to it.
We should be doing more on it.
And it doesn't mean becominga psychologist or a counselor.
We can do it within the boundaries of ourrole as a coach or a mediator or whatever.
Laura (44:51):
Absolutely.
I totally agree.
And I think it even extends aswell to, to managers and leaders.
Certainly something I try and dowith staff cuz you know, ask them
about, what they need and I like toask them what they're feeling and if
I'm asking about a task, I'm like buthow would you feel about doing this?
And I feel alright let'sjust do something else.
I'm not here to like order year round.
And I think that emotionalintelligence, I we're hearing.
More and more is an essentialleadership skill as well.
(45:14):
So to be a mediator and a conflictcoach and a leader, these are all things
you're gonna wanna learn about, right?
Emotions, how to express them,how to regulate, how to talk
about them with others as well.
Samantha Hardy (45:24):
The emotional intelligence term.
I heard Susan David talk at a conferencerecently, and someone asked her what,
So she wrote the book, EmotionalAgility, and someone asked her, what's
the difference between emotionalintelligence and emotional agility?
And I thought her answerwas really powerful.
She said, You can use emotionalintelligence for good or evil.
Laura (45:44):
Ooh.
Samantha Hardy (45:44):
If you are good at regulating and managing and expressing
your own emotions in a way that worksfor you, and you're pretty savvy at
interpreting other people's emotionsand potentially manipulating them,
you can use emotional intelligence tobecome a dictator and build an atomic
bomb, or to try and promote world peace.
Her take was emotional agility,uses emotional intelligence
(46:08):
ideas and techniques, but itstrongly links it to your values.
So she says, Before we start workingon our emotions, we need to identify
our values because they should be thefoundation of what we do with emotions.
And I thought mind blown.
I love it.
I love.
Laura (46:26):
Yeah,
Samantha Hardy (46:27):
people do you know?
Like I can see people, bullies inworkplaces and those kind of narcissistic
personality people, I know a few ofthem and they are really smart and
emotions, but they use it for evil.
And I thought, yes, it's so true.
They're very emotionally intelligent,but it doesn't mean they're nice.
Laura (46:45):
Yeah, no I have . I think they would be okay with me sharing this.
I have a prior colleague who wasactually diagnosed with antisocial
personality disorder, so a sociopathwhen they were quite young and they
were in therapy and they continuedto be in therapy years later.
And of course, they'revery narcissistic and they.
(47:06):
insulted by me saying, Yes,they're a sociopath, because I
figured that out pretty quickly.
I was like, Oh, you're a sociopath.
They're like, Yes, I am.
And obviously there's noemotional attachment there.
And so I have some really interestingdiscussions with this person sometimes.
Cause I was trying to understand this.
Yeah, this idea of emotionalintelligence, what you just described.
And they're like yeah because I'mnot attached to this situation,
it's very easy to see whatpeople are thinking and feeling.
(47:29):
And of course it's veryeasy to manipulate them.
Because I'm not emotionally there, , I'mlike, That's a really good point.
Thank you for this tip from the dark side.
Very interesting.
So I really like what you've saidjust now instead of, reframing
Susan's work on emotional agility.
It's define our values first becauseof course, for this person, their
values were redirected to giving agood performance of a good person.
(47:51):
That sounds very dark, right?
So yeah, it's really about identifyingwhat our values are and then
building our emotions around that.
So I think it's a very good
Samantha Hardy (47:59):
Yeah.
Use our emotions for the right reasons.
Laura (48:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Which comes back tosocial conflict, right?
So what is the right reason?
How do we decide who's right, who's wrong?
Oh dear.
What a keuffel.
Okay, look, this has beena very interesting talk.
I feel like we couldprobably talk all day but we
can't do that cuz it's, Exactly.
We'll just have a week long podcast wherewe're just venting that and narratives.
(48:23):
But I wanted to say thank you somuch for coming today and I would
also really strongly recommend tolisteners that you do absolutely.
Take a look at Sam's course.
I think it's.
By far the best reasons I've seenfor mediators, conflict coaches,
et cetera, about emotions.
It's really cutting edge and its lovely.
Got some really nice videos as well.
That's very good.
Okay, so yeah, thank so muchfor joining me today, Sam.
(48:44):
I hope you'll maybe join me againsoon and we can keep ranting.
And until next time, thisis Laura May with a Conflict
Tipping podcast for media.com.
See you next.
hello and welcome to the Conflict podcast from media.com,
the podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May,and today I have with me Dr.
Samantha Hardy, Conflict ManagementSpecialist, Coat mediator, director
of CCI Academy and fellow Australian.
Welcome, Sam.
Samantha Hardy (00:29):
Thank you, Laura.
You're not in Australiaanymore though, are you?
You're a long way away.
Laura (00:34):
I, it is true, but I think I'm still allowed to call myself a Australian.
It's all my
Samantha Hardy (00:37):
Oh yes.
Laura (00:40):
Anyway, so Sam has her PhD in Law and Conflict Resolution and is
a well known trainer and universityeducator who has worked in Australia,
Hong Kong, Singapore, the usa,and an hour ago online in Ukraine.
She is also prolific author and reader,and I encourage you to follow her
LinkedIn page for ongoing book tips and.
(01:02):
She's a transformative mediator andnarrative coach, the founder of the Real
Conflict Coaching System, and providescoaching, conflict support, and training
to managers and leaders across the world.
She's also recently created a fabulousnew cause, working with emotions
and conflict, though I think we'lltalk about that a little bit later.
Sam, today we're gonna be talking a bitabout emotions, narratives, and conflict.
(01:23):
What led you down this pathway?
Samantha Hardy (01:27):
Oh, that's a long story.
I started out life as a lawyer, and thenafter about five years out of law school
I did a masters of law and I did a subjectcalled Alternative dispute resolution.
This was in 1997, soquite a long time ago.
Showing my age and.
They had a, an opportunity for peoplewho were interested in mediation
to do an extra two days trainingand get what was then a certificate
(01:49):
three in community mediation.
And for me, this coursewas just mind blowing.
I was working in litigation.
Suddenly I had experienced thisway of talking with people, getting
them involved in the process.
It really was like an epiphany and I muchto the horror of my friends and family.
I quit my job as a lawyer and Idecided I was gonna be a mediator.
(02:09):
But in 1997, there were, youcouldn't have a career in mediation.
In Australia, it wasn't really a thing.
There was some community mediationcenters, but it, you couldn't
really make a living out of it.
So being the nerdy kind of reader thatI was, I decided I'd do the next best
thing, which is I'd go and do a PhD onthe topic and I would really find out
everything I knew about mediation andconflict and all of that sort of thing.
(02:32):
So I went back and I started teachingin law schools and and do, did my
PhD and I started out looking at.
Why people when they wentto court weren't happy.
And I was trying to figureout why mediation was better.
And for me it was something to dowith their ability to talk about it.
And, all the stuff that's inthe can of why mediation's a
(02:52):
great way to resolve conflict.
But I thought, Oh, there'ssomething to do with lawyers.
I had it in my head.
Lawyers are somehow ruiningpeople and making them more
adversarial and breaking them.
So I was gonna try and solve this problem.
And I know, and so I.
I went and interviewed all
Laura (03:09):
Yep.
Samantha Hardy (03:11):
I went and interviewed all these people who had what I
called in a very technical sense,an injurious experience and that
they blamed somebody for it.
And most of the people I interviewedthought I was a psychologist.
I didn't tell 'em I was a lawyer.
And when I say interviewed, Ididn't really interview them.
I was sat down with them at the time.
I had one of those little mini discplayers, that like a mini CD to record.
(03:32):
It was like the highesttech of the moment.
So excited about that.
So I'd turn it on and I wouldsay to them, All I want you to
do is just tell me what happened.
Take as long as you like,Tell me what happened.
I'm not gonna interrupt.
And I would just let them go.
And what people did was tell me astory and the only, most of them
talked for around 20 minutes.
(03:52):
There was one or two that I had to stopbecause they were going forever, but most
people talked around about 20 minutes.
And at the very end I would askthem, the only question I asked them,
Did you see a lawyer about this?
And my expectation was, the storiesof the people who had seen a lawyer
would be different from the storiesof people who didn't see a lawyer.
(04:13):
I did end up with two very distinct typesof stories and I couldn't end, in the
end, I couldn't prove in any way thatwhether the lawyer caused the problematic
stories or the problematic storytelling.
People were the sort of peoplewho would go to a lawyer.
So I got into a chickenand egg situation there.
But what I did discover was these,this one very kind of dysfunctional
(04:36):
way of talking about your conflict orwhat I called an injurious experience.
And then this other group of people,some of whom had things much worse
happen to them than the other groupwho've had this sort of resilience and
this capacity to grow from something.
Quite potentially harmful.
Some of them had reallybad things happen to them.
One guy had become a quadriplegicand yet told this story about
(04:59):
how it improved his life.
So I was intrigued by that.
And then I started trying to figure outhow am I gonna describe these two stories?
How am I going to explainthe difference between them?
And this is one of those weirdserendipitous moments as well as doing
my PhD and teaching at law school.
I was also studying a degree inFrench and French literature because
(05:20):
that's what you do when you're anerdy geek type person who . So
Laura (05:24):
nerd credentials up.
Samantha Hardy (05:25):
I definitely do.
Sorry about that.
was read, I was doing a subject onFrench theater and we were reading the
plays of a French writer called Core.
That's probably a very bad pronunciation.
And he was known as thefather of Melodrama.
And as I was reading the hisstories, his theater plays.
(05:46):
I thought this is likethe dysfunctional story.
So many of the way the characters wereportrayed, the way the plot was laid
out, the moral of the story, they fitthese dysfunctional conflict stories.
So I thought, okay, I'vegot my genre for that.
I had to come up with the genrefor the more resilient stories, and
after looking at a lot, I ended up.
Having a bit of a toss up between comedyand tragedy and weirdly, ironically,
(06:10):
which is a really bad nerdy pun.
Ironically, tragedy one.
Ironically, tragedy.
That's probably not thebest use of the word, but.
Laura (06:19):
I'll allow it.
Look, if Alana
Samantha Hardy: counterintuitively, shall I say (06:21):
undefined
Laura (06:24):
we go.
Yeah.
Samantha Hardy (06:24):
The tragic stories where the resilient
stories fit the genre of tragedy.
And it wasn't because they told astory of life sucks and then you die.
But it was that they understoodthe challenge they were facing.
They were on their own.
They had to, or they choseto manage it on their own.
They took control.
Sometimes they made the wrong choices,but at least they were making choices.
(06:45):
And even if it didn't workout that well in the end, they
learned something from it.
They grew and developedas a person in some way.
And so that was the beginning ofmy journey into conflict stories.
And then next step.
How do we make the shift?
I How can I help people who are stuckin this dysfunctional story move into
a version of a tragic story with someresilience and learning and growth?
(07:08):
And that's where the realconflict coaching system came in.
It was a process that I developedto help people make that shift.
Laura (07:16):
Yeah, that's actually really a really good jumping off point.
Cause I have been reading your book,Conflict Coaching Fundamentals,
Working with Conflict Stories.
I've got it here on my hand.
You definitely can't see it right now.
And I haven't finished reading it yet,but what I did for myself in the first
half of the book I've read so far,you read these different stories that
people have told you about the complex,they're in it and you talk about this,
(07:36):
this is the tragedy or what have you, orthis is the sort of victim type story.
And I was almost gaslighting myself.
I'm like, Oh, what I think aboutevery C I've ever been here.
I'm like, Oh, you knowwhat did I do there?
Did I not do enough tosave this relationship?
Like, how do I move into theother story what's going on here?
So I'm glad that you're maybe telling methat in the second half of the book, I
find I'll find out how to tell people likemyself jump from this story into this one.
(08:00):
Is that what I'm hearing?
Samantha Hardy (08:02):
yes, yes, you'll definitely develop some skills.
The second half of the book talks aboutwhat I call the six shifts that the
story needs to make, and they're reallybasic things like going from a position
of simplicity or a story that's verysimple into a story that's complex
and nuanced, going from a sense ofcertainty into a sense of uncertainty.
There's a couple of kind ofthematic shifts that we can make.
(08:24):
Quite easily.
We can support people to make itquite easily, but just opens up
so many new choices, opportunitiesfor learning and growth.
Laura (08:32):
It certainly makes a lot of sense and I will look forward
to reading that second half soI can stop gaslighting myself.
But what you've just said now in termsof Yeah, making this ship from like
really simple black and white typethinking into more complex thinking.
It's something that there can bequite hard to do though, right?
That's something we suffer from every day.
It's just our brains saying,Let's take a shortcut.
Let's make life easy.
We need to worry about things like what tohave for dinner, not about this problem.
(08:55):
So can you give us in really broadterms, , So people wanna read your
book as well, which I'm sure they will.
What would be the first thing youwould say to someone in that kind
of situation to get them out of thisreally black and white and just the
more great, complex way of thinking?
Samantha Hardy (09:09):
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things
to, to set in place First.
It is a challenging shift togo from everything being right
and wrong, very clear certain.
So you have to make people feelsafe enough to become vulnerable
as Brene Brown would say.
But there's a fine line too, betweengoing overboard and making the complexity
(09:30):
So big and overwhelming that peoplecan't function, can't move through it.
So it's about finding a balance.
There's a really good book, I can'tremember the author called The Paradox
of Choice, that talks about thattension between choice is a good
thing, but after a certain pointit becomes overwhelming and we lose
the capacity to keep processing.
So I think one of the thingsas a conflict resolver.
(09:51):
That can help a lot is just toask lots of questions for detail
for no particular purpose.
So rather than, what the kind ofgetting to Yes, people would say is
ask people about their underlyinginterests, drill down into their
underlying needs and concerns.
Yes, that's useful, but also what canbe really useful is just asking for more
detail, asking people for a little bitmore context, a little bit more history,
(10:15):
what happened in between the dramaticevents that are part of their simple
story, to give it a little bit more.
I dunno, balance sometimes, and part ofthat actually is gonna relate to, I, I
assume the sort of conversation we mighthave about emotions in that we typically
remember more clearly the negative eventsand we don't remember positive events.
(10:36):
If we're feeling negative at the moment,cuz we're in conflict with someone,
we re we can easily remember thenegative events or the dramatic events.
We find it harder to remember theneutral events or even the positive.
And so just asking people for detailwithout any particular purpose, not
pointing out inconsistencies, not realitytesting, just getting them to fill in the
(10:56):
gaps in a non-threatening, supportive way.
People accidentally notice thingsthat were there but they haven't been
paying attention to often becausetheir emotions are filtering them.
Laura (11:07):
Fantastic.
And you have given me good leapingoff point to ask about emotions
to say thank you very much.
Very considerate of you.
So then what is the connectionactually between this work you've done
previously on, on these narrativesin interpersonal conflict and
your more recent work on emotions?
What's the link there?
Samantha Hardy (11:26):
It's funny, when I started doing the work on emotions, I hadn't
decided that there was a deliberate link.
They were two separate things that Idecided, were important and I wanted to
explore, and then I wanted to share withpeople because I thought it was helpful.
But the more I've done the work,the more I realize is stories
like melodrama and tragic stories.
(11:48):
Take us on an emotional journey.
They have a purpose that'sdriven by emotional goals.
The way we tell the story is drivenby our emotions as we, in response to
the events, into the, in the contentthat we access, in our memories,
in, we present it, wanting anemotional response from our audience.
Often if we want someone to rescueus or to, go into bat for us.
(12:11):
We need to motivate them and wemotivate people by triggering
an emotional response.
The motivation and emotionare from the same Latin roots.
So the purpose of our stories and what wewant from our audience is heavily based
on us getting an emotional response.
And I guess that's thedifference in those two stories.
In a melodramatic story, we'reaiming for an emotional response
(12:31):
from an external audience.
Person who, her father figurein the genre who we want to
come and save us from our woes.
In tragedy, it's aboutemotional learning and growth.
It's about us becoming aware of,in, you think about the sort of
stereotypical, tragic stories.
The client, the hero has this emotionalmoment where, it's often very confronting.
(12:55):
Suddenly they realize somethingthey really believed in or something
they really loved and valuedwasn't true, that it was wrong and
they had this emotional crisis.
But it leads to them discovering somethingabout themselves or the world they live
in or how conflict works, for example.
Laura (13:10):
The hero in his second story does definitely sound like a very
emotionally complete and more maturehuman in some ways, , at least that's the.
Samantha Hardy (13:18):
But imperfect.
In, in tragic theater wetalk about the fatal floor.
And that's the thing thatsort of ruins their life.
I think in our day to daytragic conflict stories.
It doesn't have to be a fatal flaw,it's just some little failing or mistake
that we make that, that in conflict canescalate and have ramifications far beyond
(13:38):
the little thing that happened to us.
It might be pride, our ego, ourunwillingness to be vulnerable.
There are a whole lot of little thingsthat we might have in our makeup that.
End up being the floor thatcreated or escalated the conflict.
But I think, so I think it's importantin melodrama, if you wanna be saved,
you have to portray yourself as perfect.
(13:59):
You have to be perfectly innocentand pure, so you are not even.
Consciously aware of things thatyou've done that have contributed to
the problem, and you're gonna be veryresistant to going there because it's
gonna ruin your story, your identity.
Whereas in tragedy, it'sokay to be imperfect.
It's okay to make mistakesas long as you learn from it.
Sometimes you learn too late and thenlife sucks and you die on the stage.
(14:21):
In tragic theater, my goal isto work with clients before
it's too late so that they can.
Twist the ending.
Like a choose your own adventureinstead of going to the
life sucks, you die ending.
We, we choose a different route andwe turn it into something a little
less tragic, in terms of the outcome.
Laura (14:41):
For sure.
As you were talking about this idea ofbeing a perfect victim in some ways just
now it reminded me of the literature I'veread in Victimology, and I love that's the
actual field name victimology in that, Forexample, if you are going to court or if
there is a violent crime, for instance,then unless the victim is perfect in some
(15:01):
way, then it's less likely to go to court.
And then less likely it is, that theperpetrator will be judged guilty
and of course perfect in this caseis not just completely free of any
activity that might have led totheir becoming a victim, right?
But also what they look likeand where they're from and
what their education level is.
So it can be quite.
(15:21):
Difficult, I would sayto be a perfect victim.
And so even if you're able toperform being a perfect victim for
yourself, it's Oh no, I was absolutelynothing wrong in the situation.
Of course it's all on me.
When you're playing to youraudience, they still might have a
very different perception as I asI suppose, as exemplified it in the
perpetrator in your melodrama, right?
They're gonna be like no.
This victim ains so perfect after all.
Samantha Hardy (15:42):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what happens, The bad guy in amelodramatic conflict of it conflicts.
So you, when you have a conflictof stories, what happens is the bad
guy in one person's story is themelodramatic heroin or hero in the other.
And so they're like, there's afight for who's the actual villain
and who's the actual victim.
And so there's a fight to, to bemerto each other's virtue as a way to.
(16:05):
Heard the other bigger societal thing,and I know your work is much more on a
social scale, whereas I tend to focuson individuals and maybe very small
groups like families or workplaces.
The question is, who defines virtue?
That can be a very challengingquestion to answer.
Who defines the parameters ofvirtue in classical melodrama?
(16:27):
The virtuous heroin had to be alegitimate birth, a virgin and At least
not ugly, but preferably beautiful.
You know, and, and they,
Laura (16:36):
for climbing up tower sides, right?
Samantha Hardy (16:38):
That's right.
There were expectations of virtuethat are very different from now.
And now that expectations ofvirtue are often internalized.
We see ourselves as a good colleague ora generous person, but there are social.
Requirements of virtue if you're a rapevictim, for example, were you wearing
a short skirt and fish net stockings?
(16:59):
That shouldn't be a criteria forwhether or not you get raped.
And technically it's not,but it's still there.
Underneath , underneaththe radar, so to speak.
Laura (17:09):
Absolutely, and I it's this sort of same story in terms of well are you white
or not ? And if you are not, if you'rea per, if you're a person of color, then
you're less likely to taken seriouslywhen reporting violent crime against you.
Or as well.
So of interesting, there's been a bitof Twitter and social media discourse
these last few days about how.
This one chap was being basicallybashed up by his girlfriend.
(17:29):
That's probably not theproper way to put it.
And so he called the police,and the police arrested him.
And apparently, and I haven't done thefigure check on this, but yeah, if you
are a male victim of domestic violenceand you call the police, you're more
likely to be arrested, at least in theUS because you're not a good victim.
So you don't fit into thesort of social victim role.
Absolutely.
Samantha Hardy (17:48):
Behavior.
It differs for different people as well,and in even in the, what's appropriate
in terms of a display of emotion.
So there's a whole lot of reallyinteresting research about how it can
be particularly risky for a personof color to display anger in the
workplace compared with white person.
There shouldn't be any difference.
There's gender and culturalexpectations about.
(18:10):
What emotions you're supposed toexperience and how you're supposed to
display them, and they're not consistent.
They're not equitable.
Laura (18:17):
No.
Absolutely.
It's quite interesting.
Actually was thinking aboutthese broader social complex.
I remember I read this reallyfascinating paper about Brexit, right?
You saying like the US presidentialcampaigns can be and have known to
be the recent past, so this portrayalof one side is angry and irrational.
But what this paper talked about wasactually both sides describe them
(18:38):
themselves as angry, and the otherside is angry, and they're both justly
angry, but the other side is angryand crazy, like they make no sense.
They have no basis, likeour anger is justified.
Of course we're fighting for truth and allthat lovely stuff, but they're irrational.
So it is really interesting thateveryone's getting mad, right?
(18:59):
But the other side are legitimatelymad, if that makes sense.
Samantha Hardy (19:04):
Sarah Co and I many years ago started working on a paper.
We didn't actually ever publisher,but we looked at the narratives,
the sort of propaganda narrativesof the US government and isis.
And it was really funny and intriguingto see that they were both, as you just
described, with Brexit, telling thesame story, characterizing each other as
(19:24):
evil and trying to ruin our way of life.
And they were very melodramatic narrativesof the other In the same way, but
ours, we, yes, we're angry, but we arejustified exactly the same dynamic.
Yeah.
So interesting.
Laura (19:37):
you were saying in terms of who wins the story?
Who's the real hero?
He's the real victim who's justlyangry and who is not justly angry.
They're very much intertwined thesenarratives and these emotions.
And I found it really interestingthat you started from narratives
and moved over to emotions.
I actually went the other way around.
Cuz in my research Istarted with emotions.
I was like, Look, post Brexit vote.
I was like, Wow, all myremainder friends are really sad.
(20:00):
And which is not the same emotion thatwas being expressed by Levis, right?
And then you of had these ideas ofProject Fear is the Remain campaign
and Project Anger is the main campaign,but sorry, as the leave campaign,
but these were all deeply intertwinedwith the strategies and who was
being talked about and in what way.
The leave campaign was verymuch portraying the EU as a.
(20:20):
So you're allowed toget angry against them.
But the way I came to this wordvillain, which obviously echoes so
close to your own work these girlsare doing there going, If I'm really
angry at someone, what do I wanna do?
I was like, I wanna call them somethinglike what are they, Like how I, how
do I describe this relationship?
And it took be a very long timeto think of a word that was not
a swear word to describe them.
(20:41):
And then it was like,Literature will save me.
The other side is a villainand not anything less
appropriate to say on a podcast.
But they are very deeply intertwinedand, we look at George Lakos work
and things that area as well.
I'm very similar our, even as far asthey the pathways in the brain these
stories and these emotions are just, Verydifficult to extricate from each other.
(21:02):
But because we're talkingabout brain, Oh, sorry,
, Samantha Hardy: I
was gonna say, you just highlighted thatvery important difference, that there's a,
it's a completely different level to sayyou are wrong or you are morally wrong.
Yes,
Samantha Hardy (21:15):
And once you have that, the villain, the moral villain part of
it then there's no room for conversation.
You can have a conversation withsomeone who's wrong, but there's
also that saying, you don't changesomeone's mind with information.
You change someone's mind by getting.
Connecting with their heart andtheir emotions, and you do that
through a story, through narrative.
(21:35):
You don't do that by giving them data.
Data never really changed anyone's mind.
You have to make it tell a story thatthey can believe in and relate to.
Laura (21:45):
Absolutely.
And this was a key thing.
I, Sorry, now I'm justtalking about my work.
I can talk about all day
Samantha Hardy (21:50):
no do.
It's fascinating.
Laura (21:52):
but it was something I found as well.
There's this idea of sayingthat This cause I research
specifically blame, right?
And what blamed did to us, how it helpscreate villains, how it makes us feel,
how it manipulates us, what we cando about it is the very short story.
And it of seemed to this conflationof blame and name calling.
But to me one of these things is you didsomething bad and the other is you are.
(22:15):
Which is what you are talking about here.
And we need to be ableto disentangle those two.
It's the same as, saying, Oh, youdid something good or you are good.
And, one can lead to the other.
If you keep doing bad things, atsome point someone's gonna say,
You know what, you might just be asociopath . But otherwise it's a lot
more wiggle room in this sort of grayarea you were talking about before.
So it doesn't all have to be black andwhite, which is I think, quite important.
Samantha Hardy (22:37):
And that's the flip side of what we were saying before
about how if you are the, if you arethe virtuous heroin, you have to be,
and I say heroin cuz in classicalmelodrama it was always a young woman.
Obviously in modernmelodrama it can be a man.
Typically in the way the story'sconstructed, they're emasculated, they
have feminine attributes, so they're.
And it's hard if you're a man tryingto get support through a melodramatic
(22:58):
story, it can feel very emasculating,which is often why men don't get support.
But I'm getting off on another tangent,but the way, what we were saying
about the innocent victim has to bepure and virtuous in the same way.
To get the outcome, which is come up andit's my favorite word, comeuppance of
the bad guy, which is really removinghim from the situation by killing him,
(23:18):
or imprisoning him, or banishing him.
We have to not let anyroom for doubt there.
We have to make him entirely bad as well.
And it's never that straightforward.
I don't think I've ever beeninvolved in any conflict ever
where someone was entirely goodand someone was entirely bad.
It makes us feel good, especially if weare casting ourselves in the good vi, in
the good role to say the other person'sbad, but it shuts down any opportunities
(23:42):
for conversation or movement.
Because the only Why woulda nice girl like me talk to
someone who's so completely.
The only thing to do is to protect myselfand shut myself off from them until
someone comes and gets rid of them.
Laura (23:55):
So it sounds like black and white thinking is big problem.
Then , we need to, so we need toredress that within ourselves in
our interpersonal conflicts andin our social conflicts as well.
Samantha Hardy (24:05):
and Sarah Cobb talks about two shifts.
She talks about Before we're able, beforewe're able to see the benefit of the
doubt, I suppose in the other, we haveto create some doubt about our own role.
And again, one of the things that youdo as an innocent victim is you avoid
talking about anything that you've done.
You mentioned this before, it, the onlyway you can stay completely innocent is to
(24:27):
be completely passive and not do anything.
Cuz anything you do is open to.
Making a mistake or being interpretedas not perfect, that you have to do
as little as possible and distractattention from you doing anything.
And then on, on the other hand,you point to all the things
the other person's done asking.
Someone who's in that helplessvictim role, questions about
things that they've done.
(24:48):
Very often results in themanswering by suffering.
So you say when he did that terriblething to you, what did you do?
Oh, I felt sick.
I felt terrible.
I was mortified.
They respond in feelings.
They don't actuallytell you what they did.
And if you can get people to starttalking about their past actions.
Even without I dunno, rubbing their nosein it, I suppose they will sometimes
(25:12):
remember, or recognize or realize thatyes, maybe their actions haven't always
been perfect, and only then will I beopen to giving the benefit of the doubt
to the evil villain that Sarah Co saysThe shift has to happen in that order.
Laura (25:27):
So I have a question for you.
I feel like I make every podcastabout me, actually, cuz I want
everyone to solve my problems whileI'm talking with all these experts
Samantha Hardy (25:33):
It should be called Tipping.
Laura, the Laura Tipping Podcast.
Laura (25:38):
Oh my goodness.
Samantha Hardy (25:39):
This a new Olympic sport
Laura (25:41):
No, that, that's extremely violent.
I feel like I'm gonna get a lot ofbruises if I'm being tipped over anywhere.
Because like I find that when I'min a conflict with someone I'll sit
down, even if I'm talking to thirdperson and I'll sit down and say,
Look, this is the situation andthese are the things I did wrong.
So I'm actually immediately chippingaway at my victim credibility.
Is that a bad thing, Sam?
Should I not be doing
that?
Should I
Samantha Hardy (26:01):
No, I think that's a great thing.
But I it's about balance.
It's about balance.
think it's a really important thing.
If you can see.
The things that you've done.
Let's use the language of the difficultconversations in, If you can notice
the ways you've contributed to thesituation rather than being blameworthy
or wrong, if you can recognize that, thenthat opens up your opportunity to see.
(26:23):
The other person's contributions,both positive and negative.
So I think it's an important step.
It might mean that you're more advancedthan other people who, or you've not
been considering com conflicts in whichyou've been really stuck in a victim role.
You've allowed yourself to to askyourself what your contributions might
(26:44):
have been without worrying too muchthat turns you into the evil villa.
Laura (26:49):
Okay, you've reassured me on that front, but you've also made
me wanna ask a more provocativequestion, not about myself this
time I feel I should clarify that.
What about, for example, insituations of domestic violence?
Cause I was talking about earlier, youknow what, if you have someone who's been
the victim of domestic violence and theysay yeah, sure they hit me, didn't have
their dinner ready on time, for example.
(27:09):
Like at what point is it too much andhow do you judge it, especially as an
external party, how do you guide them ona pathway through a conflict like that?
Samantha Hardy (27:17):
I think there's two distinct situations we're
talking about here that we're talk.
When I talk about people stuckin a melodramatic story, I'm
talking about people whosestory is divorced from reality.
It's a version of events thatdoesn't match up with reality.
I'm not saying that.
That, that there's neversomebody who is a victim there.
There are going to be people who arein, who are the subject of coercive
(27:41):
and controlling behaviors by othersand really have little room to move.
And and so that sort of thinkingfrom them is just, Exacerbating
that situation, their victimhood.
So I guess that's a, I mean for me it'sa slightly different issue that's about
screening very carefully the people thatyou're working with to ensure that it's
not a situation in which they reallyare the victim of those sort of co
(28:03):
conversive and controlling behaviors.
Most of the people I workwith are not, That's the story
they're telling themselves.
That's the way they thinkabout the situation.
But when you look at it objectivelyas an outsider, you're like, Yeah.
So that person.
Something to you that was a littlebit annoying or hit one of your
triggers, but doesn't seem to me likethey were really out to get you and,
(28:23):
gonna do some terrible harm to you.
So I think that's animportant distinction.
I'm not saying, I'm not sayingthat no one is ever a victim.
I'm also not saying that.
There are always things that people whoare in a victim type role can do to help
themselves because in those coercivecontrolling behaviors, there may be very
little they can do to help themselves andtrying to sell 'em a version of events
(28:46):
or help them reframe their story intoone where they're not so victimized is
just gonna put them at risk of harm.
Laura (28:51):
No, sorry.
I definitely phrased that wrong then.
Cause I was thinking more of thesituation where they are saying these
things and they had this idea thatthey caused their own victimization,
but obviously that's untrue.
Like they didn't doanything to deserve that.
So in a situation, I maybe this is moreof a I would refer them to a psychologist
slash domestic violence counselor.
But yes, I wasn't tryingto say that, Oh you.
(29:12):
Have them see this gray area.
I'm more about thinking what,where victims actually really
question themselves aboutam I really a victim here?
Does that actually come up in the sortof situations that like you normally
coach in as far as conflict goes?
Samantha Hardy (29:26):
I think that if somebody's in that role where they're buying
into the other person's melodrama,when they're agreeing that they're the
villain and that the other person is thevictim, then firstly, they're unlikely
to come for support because they won'tsee themselves as worthy for support.
So they're not the sort of people whoturn up asking for my services but also,
(29:50):
They're probably the situations wherethe kind of coaching model that I'm
talking about isn't going to be effective.
It's a situation where you actuallyneed a melodramatic outcome.
You need someone withpower to come in and.
Take control of the situation.
And I think in that case, you don'thave two competing narratives.
You have one person who's in controlof both people's version of events
(30:13):
and they don't actually differ.
And the person with power is manipulatingthe other person to believe their
narrative, So their own version of events.
Becomes the one that they'rebeing told or they're being
forced to agree with for their ownphysical and psychological safety.
So it's, for me it's not the samekind of conflict of competing stories.
(30:35):
That is what I deal with andwhat I'm more talking about.
Laura (30:38):
Yeah.
Now thank you for that clarificationbecause I, Yeah I was, that was something
I was definitely wondering about.
Wow, we've gone somereally dark places, so
Samantha Hardy (30:46):
we have,
Laura (30:47):
feel that
Samantha Hardy (30:47):
lighten it up.
Laura (30:49):
Oh goodness.
I need to like shake it off.
Okay, so look, before we weretalking a bit about narratives
and how they're intertwinedwith emotions and what have you.
And so we had this idea of theyeah, really being together
there in our brains, but.
I know your view of emotions cuz I'vebeen reviewing your course recently.
So like, why don't you tell us a littlebit about how you conceptualize emotions
(31:10):
and discuss emotions in this coursethat you've been building recently.
Samantha Hardy (31:14):
Yeah.
So as we talk, Laura and I talk aboutthis love, we're both big fan girls
of Lisa Feldman Barrett, who wrotea book called How Emotions Are Made.
And one of the things that I discoveredfairly recently, is that the emotions
research in the last 10 to 20years has developed exponentially.
Often because of increased technologyaround things like MRIs and, we can
(31:37):
study a whole lot of things that beforewe had to make assumptions about and
extrapolate from our own experiences.
And things have changed so much from whatI was taught when I was doing mediation.
I did psychs a year ofpsych at university.
It was really different back then.
And one of the things that really startledme when I read that book, How much of e
(31:59):
everybody I knows, popular assumptionsof how emotions work and what we need
to do to manage them was based on allthis really outdated research that was
either really simplistic or absolutelymisguided, given recent research.
So it's taking a while for popularculture to catch up with the amount of
research that's been happening in andquality research in the last 10 20.
(32:23):
So one of the things that, thatI really like, and I've been
struggling a lot with how to explainthis, articulate this clearly.
So maybe Laura, you and I canwork on something together.
But the crux of it for me is thereisn't this thing called an emotion
and this thing called a thought in.
They're both thoughts.
They're both ways of thinking.
(32:44):
And there may not be as muchdifference between them as we think.
We categorize some sorts of thinkingas thinking and some sorts of thinking
as feelings, but they're actuallyusing all different bits of the brain.
There isn't like emotions aren'tone bit of the brain and thinking
another bit, both thinking andemotions in inverted comments, I.
Using all different bits ofthe brain and actually a going
(33:07):
a brain when we think or feel.
Is doing the same thingin both situations.
The biggest distinction that I can comeup with, and maybe you can add to this,
Laura, is the speed that our emotionalthinking tends to happen very quickly.
It takes into account different bitsof information, bits of sensation,
perception, past experiences, memories,little bits of it very quickly.
(33:31):
To give us a quick response, whereaswhat we think of as thinking does
the same thing we take into accountwhat's going on, information, past
experiences, but maybe it takes a littlebit longer and we maybe incorporate a
little bit more information into it.
For me, that's thedistinction between the two.
It's really the quantity ofprocessing and the speed.
(33:53):
What did, do you agree?
Is that how you.
Laura (33:55):
I guess I see it as a little bit different.
What you've just said now reallyreminds you of Daniel Conneman's work on
Samantha Hardy (34:01):
Yeah, they're thinking fast and slow.
Laura (34:03):
Exactly.
Yeah.
So you've got this like really fastthinking Aris takes shortcuts ways
of processing information, right?
Or you've been seeking information which.
We would more typicallyconsider emotional, right?
Just, read a headline, have areaction, move on, try not to let
it bother the rest of your day.
And then the system too where yeah,you are really taking time to seek
(34:24):
out information and to mull itover and think about it and plan.
And most of it, mostly I thoughtobviously is the first type.
Like we don't mull over most thingswe do each day, unless we're extremely
neurotic, like guilty . But even likemost of our thinking is that first.
But for me, as far as I guess adifference goes, I I guess I'm
less concerned about a difference.
(34:44):
As you'll know as well.
There's some cultures where there'snot actually a linguistic separation
between thinking and feeling.
Cause as you just highlightyourself, they're both just
products of the brain and we justlike to label them differently.
For me, I guess the importantpart of emotion is that it
is Deeply connected to our.
So because I the way that FeldmanBarrett really talks about emotions
(35:05):
is this sort of idea of affect,which is your almost your physical
symptoms or your information.
So whether it from your eyes oryour ears or the internal churning
of your intestines and other.
The growth and stuff.
And all of that information forms, itcomes together with your knowledge that
you've learned, that you've learnedthat a stomach a means that maybe
you're actually a bit angry at somebody.
And then also the context that, you'resitting there in a room and your stomach
(35:27):
hurts and this person's there, and you'relike, I might be a bit angry at you.
And so for me, that bodilyinformation is really important.
How emotions are constructedand how we create them.
But of course, that's not to say thatwhen we're, so called thinking that we're
not thinking, Oh, I might be hungry laterand our body's completely invisible.
No, that's not it.
But it is.
(35:48):
For me it's that reallyvisceral component.
But I actually, I find it reallyinteresting that, when we talk about
non-violent communication and in mediationand what have you one of those principles
is separate thoughts from feelings.
Like not, Oh, I feellike you did a bad thing.
No, I think you did a bad thing and Ifeel angry, or what have you about it.
So it's interesting that we try andactually artificially separate these in a
(36:10):
way when we're trying to resolve conflict.
Whereas in our brains, theyjust kinda a big mishmash.
Samantha Hardy (36:15):
Yeah, and the problem with that is if we just talk about the
emotions, particularly if we use thoseemotion labels that we're familiar
with, I was angry, that made me feelangry, but made me feel frustrated.
What we lose is the informationthat we have used to construct
that emotion in our mind.
And so using that label, firstly,those labels are very imprecise.
(36:38):
They cover very broad categories.
They can mean very differentthings in different situations.
But if we just talk about the feelingrather than trying to articulate.
It reminds me of this time and I wasit worried about the, If we can try
and articulate our thought processunderlying the emotions and sometimes
(36:59):
recognizing what's happening inour body underlying the emotion.
It helps us either clarify and moreclearly express our emotion or sometimes
realize that what's the wrong emotionthat make it helps us revise it.
And the example of which I wasjust reminded of that you were
just implying in a way there isthe hangs, when you're hungry and
interpreted as angry and there's allthat great research about how people.
(37:22):
Judges in particular tend torefuse bail, for example, or
parole hearings just before lunch.
Whereas up just after lunch,the vast majority of their
decisions are to grant it.
And it's a really great example of howwe can misinterpret our bodily functions
as thinking when it's, , that arebodily functions become our thoughts
(37:42):
and affect how we perceive the worldwe're in, but we are misinterpreting it.
Laura (37:50):
I like that example of the hungry judges.
I did actually read a couple ofpapers that suggested that all was
not , that maybe that study wasttotally accurate, but I can, Yeah.
Which, so I'll forwardthat to you later on.
You can have a read and foryourself, always intended.
Samantha Hardy (38:06):
After I've had something to eat.
Laura (38:08):
Exactly right.
So you will think about it.
But one that is, and again, is going toa dark place, but it's really interesting
that people with ptsd, for an example evenif their trauma is unrelated to sexual
violence, Can often be triggered by sexualsituations because in our body, basically
(38:28):
fear and sexual arousal are pretty muchdoing the same thing, and it's only the
context and the knowledge that actuallyallows us to construct it as being horny.
For instance, someone like inmy surveys and emotions, people
actually wrote that as an emotion.
I was like, I accept your labeling.
Ok.
So you know, are they horny or are they.
And it's only that knowledge thatallows us to go this is the difference.
(38:49):
And I think that reallygets to the heart of it.
So like this, we need to go throughand think, actually what am I feeling
and why am I constructing this?
Okay.
But does, and this is a very leadingquestion, but does this mean that
we can actually just feel whateverwe want whenever we want to?
Sam, can I just chooseto be happy all the time?
Is that how that works?
Samantha Hardy (39:09):
Oh, wouldn't it be good if it was that easy?
I think one of the things, again, thisis my interpretation of what I read, so
feel free to give me a count of view.
If you don't think this is quite right.
But my take on it, it is.
We.
In a way our emotional profile, ourhabits of feeling, certain feelings
in certain kinds of situationsis created by our experiences.
(39:31):
And for me, it's alittle bit like exercise.
I can just go along and, I might tendto have, I don't know, stronger arms
and legs, cuz I do a lot of work withmy arms and I very rarely use my legs
so I can, It's just by accident strengthin one part rather than the other.
And I think the same thing couldhappen in my emotional profile.
I could just tend to hang outwith people who are angry all
(39:54):
the time, or I tend to be angry.
And so I get in the habit of being angry.
I think what I how I think about itis maybe I can choose to exercise.
The sorts of emotions that I would liketo feel more, maybe I can go looking for
activities that will give me opportunitiesto create those emotions that I want more
(40:16):
of and build those emotion muscles withinmy body so that I can then be less angry
because I'm counterbalancing it by doing.
Exercises in a way, activitiesthat prompt me to be happy.
So I think it's not like I'm just gonnaturn off my anger and decide to be happy.
I think it takes work and practiceand building up, actively looking
(40:38):
for opportunities to develop thoseemotions rather than making a
decision not to feel that way anymore.
Cuz that doesn't work.
So that's take on it a littlebit, like exercising the emotions
that you would like to have more.
Laura (40:52):
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
It's like they say, neurons thatfire together wire together.
And so if you keep using those littlehappy pathways, even though they're
in different parts of the brain,et cetera, like you're, of course,
you're able to create them more.
And so when you were developingyour course and emotions and
obviously doing all the research,what surprised you the most?
Samantha Hardy (41:14):
Look, I think the biggest surprise for me is how much is out there
that is directly related to conflict.
We as conflict resolution practitionersreally don't know enough about, and
that there are so many interventionsand things that we can do to support
people, not just to manage theiremotions, but to work with them.
(41:36):
We, a lot of what we learn in ourmediation training is let people
vent, remove toxic emotions encouragepeople to be as rational as they can,
and then you'll get a good outcome.
Yes, that helps to a certain degree, butthere are so many more things we can do.
So things like helping peopleregulate physiological side.
And I hear people as I say this out loud,I can hear listeners saying, We're not
(42:00):
counselors, we're not psychologists.
We're not doctors.
We can't give people antidepressants.
No, that's true.
But there are some basic things thatwe can do to help people regulate
or to help people monitor howthey're feeling so that when they.
Conflict conversations.
They can be the best they can be.
We can.
We can help them prepare.
We can help them, let it monitorand let us know in the moment if
(42:23):
they need a break, for example.
I think there's things we can doaround people's emotional experience
so we can help people understand that.
And emotion is an experience.
It has a whole lot of differentcomponents, including our past history,
our perception of the situation thecontext, whether we've had , whether
we've had breakfast or a cup of coffee.
(42:43):
What's happened to us on the wayto the mediation room, how the
mediation room looks and feels to us.
What sort of music's playing even.
There's all sorts of things we cando to help people understand their
experience and then, Maybe make afew more conscious choices about how
they respond to it rather than justfeeling like it's controlling them.
Then there's theemotional expression side.
(43:05):
That is often what we talk aboutwhen we talk about managing emotions.
It's don't let people yelland scream at each other.
It's a very superficialunderstanding of expression.
But again, there's so many thingswe can do to support people to
consciously express their emotion in a.
Way or not, if it's not appropriate, andsometimes it's not, but also recognizing
(43:27):
the fallacy of this idea that we canunderstand what someone else is feeling,
particularly by looking at their facialexpression that we're only ever, as Lisa
Feldman Barrett says, We're only everguessing and we're often guessing by
paying attention to the wrong cues ornot the most useful cues, and engaging
people in meaningful conversationswhere they can share with each other.
Descriptions of how they'refeeling in nuanced ways.
(43:51):
Can do so much more.
And then lastly, youasked a simple question.
I'm giving you a very long answer.
The idea of emotional reflection, andparticularly in my coaching work, a lot
of what I can do with my clients is tohelp them reflect on their emotional
experiences in the past, reflect onthe ones that are working for them
and the ones that aren't working forthem, and help them think about things
(44:12):
like their emotional profile andstrategies that they might wanna take.
In relation to this particular personor this particular situation, but
maybe bigger picture strategies tobuild up the emotion muscles of the
emotions they prefer to be feeling.
So I just think there's so much wecan do that's not just try and stop
people from talking over each otherand swearing, and because emotion
(44:33):
is so much a part of conflict,even if we pretend it's not, it is.
That we should be paying attention to it.
We should be doing more on it.
And it doesn't mean becominga psychologist or a counselor.
We can do it within the boundaries of ourrole as a coach or a mediator or whatever.
Laura (44:51):
Absolutely.
I totally agree.
And I think it even extends aswell to, to managers and leaders.
Certainly something I try and dowith staff cuz you know, ask them
about, what they need and I like toask them what they're feeling and if
I'm asking about a task, I'm like buthow would you feel about doing this?
And I feel alright let'sjust do something else.
I'm not here to like order year round.
And I think that emotionalintelligence, I we're hearing.
More and more is an essentialleadership skill as well.
(45:14):
So to be a mediator and a conflictcoach and a leader, these are all things
you're gonna wanna learn about, right?
Emotions, how to express them,how to regulate, how to talk
about them with others as well.
Samantha Hardy (45:24):
The emotional intelligence term.
I heard Susan David talk at a conferencerecently, and someone asked her what,
So she wrote the book, EmotionalAgility, and someone asked her, what's
the difference between emotionalintelligence and emotional agility?
And I thought her answerwas really powerful.
She said, You can use emotionalintelligence for good or evil.
Laura (45:44):
Ooh.
Samantha Hardy (45:44):
If you are good at regulating and managing and expressing
your own emotions in a way that worksfor you, and you're pretty savvy at
interpreting other people's emotionsand potentially manipulating them,
you can use emotional intelligence tobecome a dictator and build an atomic
bomb, or to try and promote world peace.
Her take was emotional agility,uses emotional intelligence
(46:08):
ideas and techniques, but itstrongly links it to your values.
So she says, Before we start workingon our emotions, we need to identify
our values because they should be thefoundation of what we do with emotions.
And I thought mind blown.
I love it.
I love.
Laura (46:26):
Yeah,
Samantha Hardy (46:27):
people do you know?
Like I can see people, bullies inworkplaces and those kind of narcissistic
personality people, I know a few ofthem and they are really smart and
emotions, but they use it for evil.
And I thought, yes, it's so true.
They're very emotionally intelligent,but it doesn't mean they're nice.
Laura (46:45):
Yeah, no I have . I think they would be okay with me sharing this.
I have a prior colleague who wasactually diagnosed with antisocial
personality disorder, so a sociopathwhen they were quite young and they
were in therapy and they continuedto be in therapy years later.
And of course, they'revery narcissistic and they.
(47:06):
insulted by me saying, Yes,they're a sociopath, because I
figured that out pretty quickly.
I was like, Oh, you're a sociopath.
They're like, Yes, I am.
And obviously there's noemotional attachment there.
And so I have some really interestingdiscussions with this person sometimes.
Cause I was trying to understand this.
Yeah, this idea of emotionalintelligence, what you just described.
And they're like yeah because I'mnot attached to this situation,
it's very easy to see whatpeople are thinking and feeling.
(47:29):
And of course it's veryeasy to manipulate them.
Because I'm not emotionally there, , I'mlike, That's a really good point.
Thank you for this tip from the dark side.
Very interesting.
So I really like what you've saidjust now instead of, reframing
Susan's work on emotional agility.
It's define our values first becauseof course, for this person, their
values were redirected to giving agood performance of a good person.
(47:51):
That sounds very dark, right?
So yeah, it's really about identifyingwhat our values are and then
building our emotions around that.
So I think it's a very good
Samantha Hardy (47:59):
Yeah.
Use our emotions for the right reasons.
Laura (48:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Which comes back tosocial conflict, right?
So what is the right reason?
How do we decide who's right, who's wrong?
Oh dear.
What a keuffel.
Okay, look, this has beena very interesting talk.
I feel like we couldprobably talk all day but we
can't do that cuz it's, Exactly.
We'll just have a week long podcast wherewe're just venting that and narratives.
(48:23):
But I wanted to say thank you somuch for coming today and I would
also really strongly recommend tolisteners that you do absolutely.
Take a look at Sam's course.
I think it's.
By far the best reasons I've seenfor mediators, conflict coaches,
et cetera, about emotions.
It's really cutting edge and its lovely.
Got some really nice videos as well.
That's very good.
Okay, so yeah, thank so muchfor joining me today, Sam.
(48:44):
I hope you'll maybe join me againsoon and we can keep ranting.
And until next time, thisis Laura May with a Conflict
Tipping podcast for media.com.
See you next.
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