Episode Description - How to Handle Conflict Without Creating More Pain
How amazing would your marriage, your family, and your community be if you had the tools to transform conflict into connection?
In this podcast episode, psychotherapist and author Phyllis Leavitt dives deeply into the complex topic of conflict resolution and decision-making within personal relationships, families, and communities. She breaks down the dynamics of both healthy and unhealthy family relationships and talks about strategies you can use to improve your own ability to handle conflict and resolve your conflicts in a healthier way.
Beyond healing our individual relationships, Phyllis also reflects on America’s current cultural divide, noting the way we take responsibility and resolve conflicts in our personal relationships can influence society as a whole.
Phyllis shares valuable insights from her book "America in Therapy," and urges listeners to approach conflict on all levels with empathy and a willingness to listen and understand which will both promote peace and foster healthier relationships.
In an era of escalating social division and family conflict, Phyllis emphasizes how the skills we use to heal our closest relationships can transform our larger societal wounds. If you've ever wondered how you can handle conflict - especially the level of conflict that currently exists - and HEAL from it, this podcast episode is for you.
Show Notes
About Phyllis
Phyllis has been a psychotherapist for 34 years and is the author of three books-- A Light in the Darkness, Into the Fire, and America in Therapy: A New Approach to Hope and Healing for a Nation in Crisis. Her focus is on healing our families on all levels-- family of origin all the way to the macrocosm of the Family of America, for the sake of bringing us back into healthy cooperation and connection and mitigating the forces of escalating divisiveness and violence so many are suffering from today.
Connect with Phyllis
You can connect with Phyllis on LinkedIn at Phyllis Leavitt, on Facebook at Phyllis Leavitt. You can follow her on Instagram at phyllis_e_leavitt, on X at @PhyllisLeavitt2 and on YouTube at Phyllis Leavitt Podcasts. To find out more about how to work with Phyllis visit her website at Phyllis Leavitt and email Phyllis at [email protected].
Newly released book: America In Therapy
Key Takeaways From This Episode with Phyllis
- Phyllis is a psychotherapist that focuses on healing our families on all levels, from the family of origin all the way through the macrocosm of the family of America.
- Healthy families are built on safety, love, and nonviolent conflict resolution, balancing individual and group needs
- The most effective way to handle conflict starts with taking responsibility for your own behavior rather than blaming others
- Both active aggression (yelling, door slamming) and passive aggression (eye rolling, phone checking) damage relationships
- Children often become symptom bearers of parental conflict, whether in intact or divorced families
- Unresolved anger and resentment typically hurt yourself more than anyone else
- Grieving is necessary after divorce, but getting stuck in grief for years indicates a need for professional help
- Making peace requires more strength than going to war; it takes courage to reflect on yourself instead of pointing fingers
- Deep listening - hearing others' pain rather than just their positions - is key to resolving conflicts
- Moving from a win-lose to a win-win mindset is essential for healthy relationships and society
- Perfect behavior isn't the goal; commitment to improvement and repair after conflicts is what matters
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Transcript
Phyllis Leavitt: How to Handle Conflict Without Creating More Pain
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
conflict resolution, safety, responsibility
SPEAKERS
Karen Covy, Phyllis Leavitt
Karen Covy Host
00:10
Hello and welcome to Off the Fence, a podcast where we deconstruct difficult decision-making so we can discover what keeps us stuck and, more importantly, how we can get unstuck and start making even tough decisions with confidence. I'm your host, Karen Covy, a former divorce lawyer, mediator and arbitrator, turned coach, author and entrepreneur. And now, without further ado, let's get on with the show.
With me today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Phyllis Leavitt. Phyllis is a psychotherapist and the author of three books A Light in the Darkness, into the Fire, and her latest book, America in Therapy A New Approach to Hope and Healing for a Nation in Crisis. Phyllis focuses on healing our families on all levels, from the family of origin all the way through the macrocosm of the family of America. Her mission is to bring people back into healthy cooperation and connection and to mitigate the forces of escalating divisiveness and violence that so many are suffering from today. Phyllis, welcome to the show.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
01:21
Well, thank you so much for having me here with you. It's really a pleasure and an honor to talk with you and participate in the great work that you're doing.
Karen Covy Host
01:30
Oh, thank you, and I am so excited for today's conversation because, as you and I spoke with before we started, when we're recording this, it is the day after the election, and I think there is no more timely topic than the one we're talking about, which has nothing to do with politics, but has everything to do with healing the you know, the divisions that have happened in families and relationships and in our society, so I am so looking forward to our conversation.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
02:03
Well, thank you, I am too. Where would you like to begin today?
Karen Covy Host
02:11
I'm going to begin with the microcosm right. So, instead of getting all the way big into us as a society or as a country, let's start with families. Let's start with individuals. What are the basic healthy and unhealthy family dynamics? And how does a family dynamic affect an individual?
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
02:35
Yeah, and you know, that's so much the focus of psychology today, which is really looking at ourselves as individuals, couples, children and larger groupings of people through a family systems lens, because I think what we've come to discover is that the well-being of the individual is very much conditioned by the well-being or not of the family systems they live in. And I think more and more people are aware that if you live in a relatively healthy family, which is basically and again, none of us do this perfectly, we all have our missteps and have to repair a relationship at different times but in a relatively healthy family there's a feeling that we're loved, there's a feeling that we're wanted, that we belong, that it's safe, that if there's conflict there's a commitment to resolving it without hurting one another, and if we fail and we, you know, say mean things or we slam the door, that we're willing to come back and work it out and repair whatever the hurt has been, with some commitment to trying to do it better in the future. Other signs of a healthy family are that there's an openness to different points of view, that there's a feeling that we support each other to be our best selves, that we are esteemed as individuals.
03:59
These are some of the elements of a healthy family, and I can't emphasize enough the commitment to nonviolent conflict resolution and a feeling of being safe, and one of the big components of a healthy family is, in sort of, around everything that I just said is that there's a balance between what's good for the individual and what's good for the whole, and it's a constant dialogue. You know, how do I get my needs met, but in relationship to your needs, which might be different, or the needs of the family system, that might not be what I want for myself. And do we have the tools to try to work that out on a continual basis? Because it's an ongoing conversation of how we balance our collective needs with our individual needs.
04:50
You know I'd like to interrupt you. I'm sorry right there, but this is an issue that so many of my clients and the people that I work with struggle with, which is when they get down to the you know they're in the family they're trying to figure out do I stay married or do I not stay married? And so many parents are concerned that if they get divorced, that it will, you know, definitely negatively affect their children, right, and so it's all about balancing their own need for some personal happiness with the needs of the family system and their children, who, you know they would prefer to have an intact family. So how would somebody go about balancing those needs and making that decision?
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
05:41
Well, I think it's a very individual one and I really do think there's no one size fits all for that question, and I think that's important to say, because there's no proclamation of like you do it this way or you do it that way. I do think that there's research that shows that children that stay in highly conflictual and or abusive homes violent homes, whether it's emotional violence or verbal violence or physical violence don't fare as well as children who tolerate the distress and are helped to tolerate the stress of a divorce. So, but again, I think we all have to make our own decision. Do the difficulties in the marriage outweigh what is good for the? You know, what we think is good for the children as a whole? And does that make sense?
Karen Covy Host
I think yeah no, it makes total sense
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
And when there's abuse and when there's you know, when there's overt abuse and when there's overt neglect my sense is that it's better to find a way. I mean, if you can't resolve it, you know, and sometimes with help it can be resolved. But if it can't be resolved then I think a rule of thumb is it might be better to part ways and hopefully find a way to do that without continuance of violence than to stay in an unresolved, highly conflictual situation because the toll it takes on both the adults and the children I've worked with many of the long-term results of that where people who grew up in homes that stayed highly conflictual, addicted, violent, name-calling, discriminatory the damage is very intense and very deep and is difficult to heal from can be healed from. So I think safety it might be the bottom line. Are we safe and are we safe or not in this relationship? And again, that's a personal decision 100%.
Karen Covy Host
07:47
But when you say safe are you, I get the feeling that you're referring to more than simply physical safety that you know. Tell me more about that. What do you mean when you say safe?
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
07:59
Well, yeah, and I do mean more than physical safety and, of course, physical or sexual safety is primary. But if there's emotional and verbal violence, if there's lots of name calling and screaming, I do mean more than physical safety and, of course, physical or sexual safety is primary. But if there's emotional and verbal violence, if there's lots of name calling and screaming and threats and slamming of doors or withholding of resources or you know that kind of thing, those are the things that we consider unsafe and many people feel unsafe and don't feel that they can leave because they don't know if they can make a living, they don't know if they can be a single parent, and I think these are rampant issues in our society that many people actually stay in unsafe situations because they don't know that they have the support either from their extended families or their communities, or know that they have the support either from their extended families or their communities or society at large to make a healthier break from an unsafe situation, and the children are very often the collateral damage in that. Yeah, 100%.
Karen Covy Host
08:56
But let's talk about, you know, in the context of conflict, because this is something I think it should be taught in schools. But we are not taught conflict resolution skills, and they are you know. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always thought of them as skills. They are things that can be learned. So what if people are having conflict in the marriage and trying to see can they work it out? What kind of skills do they need to learn to acquire in order to resolve the conflict peacefully?
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
09:30
Absolutely and I totally agree with you. I wish this was taught in every school. I wish when people got married they were offered a free course in conflict resolution. You know, upfront, I wish that you know relationship teaching about healthy relationship was part of our innate curriculum. And just you know, upfront, I wish that you know relationship teaching about healthy relationship was part of our innate curriculum. And just you know, because we know that really serves us all.
09:52
But I think the skills are first of all number one a commitment to nonviolence that no matter how upset I am, how angry I am, how right I think I am, knowing that you think you're right too, that no matter how sure I am that I'm right and you're wrong, and how upset I am, that I won't do or say something that is overtly harmful.
10:17
I won't threaten harm, I won't call you names, I won't look at you with disgust, I won't slam the door, that kind of thing.
10:26
So I think the bottom line and that is the creation of safety the safety is that we can both express our highly divergent opinions without fear of being acted out on by anyone. So that's the bottom line and that's a skill all in of itself, because many people feel highly entitled to act out when they feel that they're right and hurt and angry, and we see this all the time, like I said that and I yelled because you did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, when none of us actually want to be on the receiving end of that. So number one is a commitment to nonviolence on every level and in the best psychology, this is a skill we teach people. It can be not yelling, but it can also be not rolling your eyeballs when somebody's talking, or sighing in disgust, or picking up your phone when they're emotional and, you know, not even paying attention to them. These are all forms of acting out on one another, whether they're overt or not.
Karen Covy Host
11:29
That is so interesting because you're talking about things that I wouldn't necessarily have thought. I wouldn't have thought of in terms of acting out right. I would have just thought they're ways people behave, ways people react. But to frame them in terms of oh yeah, you're looking at your phone, you're not looking at me is a way, it's a behavior, it has an effect and you know it's something that you could change.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
11:59
That's right and it's a more. Those kinds of things. Yelling would be active aggression. Slamming a door would be active aggression. Picking up my phone and not paying attention to you when you're sitting there, speaking from your heart about what you need from me is passive aggression, and it's still aggression.
Karen Covy Host
12:18
Interesting, interesting. So what are some of the other skills you? I interrupted you.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
12:27
No, no no, yeah. So I have a whole chapter in my book that's devoted to these skills, but I also talk about other larger picture paradigm shifts that we need to make, but I'll focus right now on the skills. The first one is restraint. Restraint of our most you know aggressive tendencies toward one another. The second one is and let me preface this by saying when I was in graduate school, I took a course in couples counseling, and I'll never forget one of the things that the professor said, and that was that in all of his experience working with couples, the couples who did the best were those who focused on taking responsibility for their own behavior and stop pointing the finger at the other person, and that's really the bottom line for conflict resolution.
13:16
So the second step is I look at myself. Who am I being? Am I being respectful toward you? Am I talking to you the way that I wish you would talk to me? Am I listening to you with an open mind, the way that I wish you would hear me? Is there something I need to understand about myself? Do you remind me of someone who hurt me in the past and I've projected a massive thing onto you and I can't hear you separate from the way my mother treated me or the way my teacher was, or whatever.
13:50
So it's the process of self-reflection is I look and see where I'm coming from and how I'm behaving. And that leads to the third step, which is then I become responsible for that. If I'm yelling at you, then I need to be responsible not to do that. And it might require and this is the next step it might require, because you know we all want the other person to be responsible to us, right, of course, so many arguments are you, you, you, you, you and the whole what we're flipping around is I, who am I being? Where am I coming from? What's my goal here? Is my goal here to shame and blame you, or is my goal to actually work it out? Is my goal to find some resolution? Is my goal to treat you the way that I'm hoping you'll treat me? And, of course, when we're angry and upset and really triggered, that's not the goal, you know. So that's one of the reasons why a third party, a mediator, a therapist, someone else trained in nonviolent conflict resolution, can be extremely helpful to bring us back to a place that actually has a potential for resolution.
14:59
So we have restraint, we have self-reflection, we have taking responsibility, and the next step is you know, maybe there's amends I need to make. I'm sorry I spoke to you that way. I know I really had a harsh tone of voice and I said things that were hurtful to you. I'm sorry I did that and you know, if I say this to you and to anybody out there and really this is my experience, if you've ever had the experience of someone behaving that way toward you, of actually taking responsibility and making amends, it is incredible. It is so reparative, it is so heart opening, and so when one of us and I think this is the reason why the professor said what he said when one of us takes that responsibility, it makes it so much more possible for the other person to do it too.
Karen Covy Host
15:46
This is true gold because, like you said, so many people in my experience, the people that I've worked with they want the other person to change, they want the other person to take responsibility, but at the same time, they're blaming the other person for how they feel and how they're acting and reacting. Because you made me do it, you said this. Now I have to say that, and that just spirals into a never ending argument.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
16:14
Right, which is basically attack, defend, attack, defend, and which goes nowhere, except often it just even gets worse. Which goes nowhere, except often it just even gets worse, it just escalates. And then you have you know, verbal violence, violence or non-resolved divorces, where people continue the battle even though they're divorced and their children suffer terribly as well as they suffer.
Karen Covy Host
16:41
Everybody suffers and I think what you've just said I really want people to hear, because a lot of people don't realize it. They think that the only reason to have an air quotes amicable divorce is because it saves you time and money and grief in the moment, which is true. But what people don't realize is that a significant portion of the people who are in court about their divorce are already divorced. This post-decree things. The fighting can go on for years or decades after your divorce if you haven't figured out how to resolve your conflicts amicably and whether you care more about resolving the conflict or being right.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
17:29
A hundred percent and let me share with you. When I first started my practice, I worked almost exclusively with children and I can tell you now that 99.9% of the children that were referred for therapy were suffering from a conflictual marriage or a conflictual divorce. There was nothing wrong with them. They were the symptom bearers for the pain that was unresolved in their families and the toll on them. And again, some of these were custody battles.
17:58
Some of these were people who had been divorced for a long time but they were still arguing and fighting and talking terribly to their children about their spouse, the relationship, which might mean that, and often does, and you probably see this all the time that you just need to walk away and heal your pain about what happened in the marriage somewhere else, because and I you know, I would bring the parents in and I would, you know, pretty much outline your. There's nothing wrong with your child. Your child is telling you that they can't tolerate the pain and the tension in the home and they're becoming symptomatic. It's toxic for them emotionally and the thing I would say to parents over and over is if you didn't resolve this in the marriage, it's highly unlikely you're going to resolve it out of the marriage, so you have to find a different way to deal with yourself and the problems that that occur.
Karen Covy Host
19:06
And you know what you're saying is so is so important. I really want people to hear it. It's you're not saying to them you've got to heal the other person, you've got to fix the other person. It's you have to heal yourself.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
19:21
That's a whole difference Right, and that's the heart of what I was sharing with you. It's when I learn how and again this is hard I what I'm saying is easy to say and really difficult to do. When you're angry, when you're upset, when you feel like you haven't been treated fairly, you know, for people who don't feel like they're getting adequate child support or their partner is still acting out or drinking or whatever's going on it's really hard to just find your center and say I'm going to focus on my own responsibility. But that's actually where we have the most power, that's where change can happen and and getting and taking responsibility might be I hire a lawyer. It might be I advocate for a different custody arrangement, it might be whatever, but I do that still within the safety of taking appropriate power in a nonviolent way.
Karen Covy Host
20:17
And just thinking of this in the context of a family, though. If you want to get a divorce, if you've come to that realization where this is not working and it's more healthy for myself and my children that we split and probably for my spouse too how do you do that in peace? Is it possible to separate and divorce in peace?
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
20:42
Well, let me just say I think most of us don't do it perfectly, you know, I think we have our moments where we yell or we say something unkind or we forget that our children can hear what we're saying, or we even want our children to dislike the person that we're in such conflict with. So perfection really isn't the goal. We're human and, as human beings, when we're hurt, it's really hard to totally restrain our most aggressive or unhealthy reactions. But, that being said, I think you know when, when you really know this is hurting me, it's keeping me stuck in this relationship, it's making it harder for me to move on and find a new life and it's really hurting my kids. You know, when we know the high cost and we can allow ourselves to feel the pain of that high cost, there can be access to a greater motivation to really work on getting our own help. You know, maybe, maybe you need to go to your own therapist or your own friends, but sometimes it's a therapist that can be a little bit less, you know, personally involved and just vent your pain and process your pain and your disappointment and your anger and your hurt. Or maybe you need to get a lawyer. But again, you, we can do those things without acting out on other people and trying to spare ourselves and our children the most pain.
22:09
You know I'm divorced, I'm remarried, but I went through a very difficult divorce when my children were small and I know what that's like and I know how hurt and angry you can feel and I know how hard it is to restrain your most inappropriate reactions. So I'm not preaching. I'm saying I know what that's like and I didn't do it perfectly, but I learned a lot along the way and I think that's what we ask of ourselves. Can I be open to learning something new? And you know, and I did go and get my own help and I did go to therapy and process some of the deepest wounds and often our deepest wounds that come up in a divorce or in a conflictual marriage, are the wounds we were already suffering from childhood. So it's like another layer over unhealed wounds that just makes the whole thing erupt like a volcano and that can be addressed in the best healing work and the best therapy, and that's a gift to ourselves and to our children. And I'll just say this last thing and then please jump back in. You know, at one point I realized that my own unresolved anger and resentment was hurting me more than anybody else.
Karen Covy Host
23:25
That's a pivotal moment. That is a really pivotal moment because we all have a tendency to think, if we forgive, if we try to make peace, that somehow it makes the other person right, it makes us wrong. It doesn't feel as good all those things. And what you're saying is really what all the spiritual teachers have said for millennia, which is you've got to. You know. Forgiveness is about you, it's not about the other person. Healing is what you do for yourself, you know, and the other person in the relationship. They have their own work to do, but you can only focus on yourself and to your point.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
24:05
that's where your power lies, that's where you can do the most, and I think the pain comes from feeling powerless, you know, powerless to make the other person change, powerless to have a happy marriage, powerlessness to save your family. And so you know we're looking. I always say this, these exact words you're looking for your appropriate power, and your appropriate power is to address your own wounds and help your children. like I said, you know, what I realized was the person who was hurting the most was me, um, and I didn't want that. I didn't want to be, um, a hostage to an unresolved relationship, which is what I was feeling, and let me just add this in, and I would love your feedback on this too Part of it was grieving, was really grieving the dream of a happy family, the dream of feeling loved and in a secure and loving relationship. And when that doesn't happen, you know there's really an important space for just grieving it in order to let that go and make room for something new.
Karen Covy Host
25:37
Because so many people, you know, they can get to the point where they know that the relationship isn't working, that this person that they're married to isn't the right person for them to be married to and they're not the right person for their spouse. Right, it goes both ways, but they still had the dream of what your marriage was supposed to be. That's a loss, I think, in and of itself. It is.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
25:51
It's a huge loss. It's a huge loss and I think divorce is up there. I don't know where on the list it is today, but it's up there with the major traumas .
Karen Covy Host
26:02
Yeah, as far as I know, the last, the last research I saw I think it's the Holmes-Rye scale was that divorce is number two, second to death of a spouse. Divorce is the most traumatic thing you know. You know that you can go through and you got to grieve.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
26:21
And so many people I don't know. They think they're robots or something.
Karen Covy Host
26:23
Right, like they're supposed to be fine.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
26:24
We live in a society that's like pull yourself up by your bootstraps, move on, forget the past. And we don't do that. And in the world of psychology and counseling, we know we don't do that. And when people really try to do that, they usually become more symptomatic, they become more depressed or anxious or obsessed or addicted or people pleasers or whatever they do to try to cope. There's really a place for grieving and there's a place for moving through it, but nobody gets to say how long you need to grieve, you know, because often I think people feel that well, you know, you've cried for two months, get on with it.
Karen Covy Host
27:01
Yeah, I mean there. There's definitely a pressure where you know your friends are tired of listening to you or family doesn't want to hear it anymore. They're like, like you said, just get over it and move on. But, and like, everybody has their own timeline, their own way of grieving, but I think. Tell me if I'm wrong, but there will come a point where it's been too long, right, you know? If you're still grieving the fact that your spouse divorced you and you're 10 years out, it's a problem.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
27:34
Right, it's definitely a problem and you haven't gotten the help that you really deserve, because nobody should have to go through that for 10 years. You know, yeah, yeah and I, but I think we can look at that with compassion. Like you know, terry real is a very well-known couples therapist and I remember, you know, one video I saw, or something I read in one of his books where somebody had come to therapy and they were just up in arms about their ex and it turned out they had been divorced for eight years and he, he, was like. This happened eight years ago. You know what do you need to move past this? This is keeping you hostage. A hundred percent, the ex isn't suffering from it, you are.
Karen Covy Host
28:19
Yeah, that's true. I mean, your ex moved on a long time ago and yeah, so you know. So much it's occurred to me as we're talking and I can see that the similarities between what we're talking about healing yourself, which is where everything starts, growing into the healing of the family, and then taking it out on a bigger level to healing the country, because there is so much conflict in our country right now and I think it's my personal opinion it's hurting all of us.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
28:52
That's my opinion too. I think it's deeply hurting all of us, just like when parents don't resolve their conflict or their divorce. It really hurts their children and we're all the family members of the family of America. And when the people in power are unwilling to resolve conflict or unable, unable and unwilling for whatever psychological reasons and I really believe it's psychological reasons, reasons, and I really believe it's psychological reasons then we do all suffer. And one of the reasons why I wrote my book is not to point a finger at anyone. But there's a fine line in therapy between blame and calling out something that's dysfunctional and harmful. And I try to walk that line of calling out what's dysfunctional and harmful and what the ongoing effects of that harm are, without blame, without shame, but with a desire and an impulse to really help us understand what the elements of healing are, so that we could embody them as a nation. And if there was ever a time when we need to come back together, it is now was ever a time when we need to come back together.
Karen Covy Host
30:02
I agree a hundred percent. But you know, like it not. You know bringing this into down to the level of a political conversation, because that's not what it's about. But I see both sides of every argument these days. People are saying, well, you know, it's because you're, you know, a narcissist or you're a bad person or you don't. You've done this and they've done that. And everybody is into this blame and finger pointing of the other side of whatever argument they're on, whatever political divide they're on. So, as a country, and knowing that you know, it's one thing. And I agree with you that it'd be beautiful if the healing started from the top. But as a person in America, as a citizen, what can we as individuals start to do ourselves? Because it's not enough, I don't think to say, well, they should do it Again. You're just giving up your power and not taking responsibility. What can we as humans, as individual people in a larger collective of society, do to start bringing us all back together?
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
31:12
Yeah Well, I think it's multi-pronged and, while I agree that finger pointing and saying it's them rather than looking at ourselves doesn't work it doesn't work in an individual relationship, it's not going to work in a country, but I think there's a place and this is what I really try to merge in my book to talk about both. The real access, of course, is my own healing. Am I embodying this in my own life? The very best I can? When I fall, do I pick myself back up and repair whatever relationship issue I've engaged in? Do I do my best to live what I'm talking about, which is that I want to resolve conflict in my own life and I want to be a voice for what I believe is healthy, Because therapy wouldn't help anybody if two people came there and were just fighting and the therapist didn't identify at all what might be dysfunctional in the relationship with the desire to heal, with the desire not to blame and shame.
Karen Covy Host
32:16
How do you walk that line? It's the line that you said that you were walking between. You know, calling something out and blaming. How do you walk that line? Where do you think that spot is?
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
32:28
Well, I think in my own life, you know, I really try to embody that in my marriage and I don't do it perfectly, but we just keep at it. You know, and we're, you know, the man that I'm married to now we're committed to working it out, you know, and we do, and we do it with less strain and angst than we did when we first met, because we're both committed to that and we've worked on the skills. And do we do that perfectly? No, and we probably never will. But we're committed to coming back and repairing whatever ruptures we have.
32:56
And I think that's as good as it gets, that there's a commitment to repair and a commitment not only just to repair but to return to love, to, to return to connection, to return to working it out and making agreements or behaving differently the best we can. But in the process, do we tell each other sometimes the things that the other person is doing that we don't like, that aren't acceptable, that we want them to upgrade? Yes, we do, but we do that with a spirit of that. We want it to heal, not like you're wrong and bad and you're a horrible person and I want to shame and blame you and retaliate, and that's what I think we can bring to our country, that we can call out.
33:42
If we see that a law or a policy or a behavior in farther reaches of a higher institution or government are injurious to people, can we say that with the desire to repair, and I think we have a long way to go to get there. But how do we do that without trying to hold that light for one another in our own lives and on larger levels? And that's really what I tried to do in my book. Did I do it perfectly? I don't know. You know, probably not.
Karen Covy Host
34:13
Well, you know, but just going on that theme, because I love what you said on that theme, because I love what you said, it seems like what you're saying is that we have to, as citizens of a country, want to keep the country together, want to heal, that if you don't have respect I mean, I know this from the work of the Gottmans that if you don't have respect for your spouse, if you look at your spouse and you've got contempt and disgust and you're eye rolling and the rest of that you can't repair that relationship. There's not space in there to do that, to come together as a country to want to heal, to want to listen to both sides, without, you know, breaking down into a I'm right, you're wrong position.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
35:07
Right and I think some, some of the and it's very hard to do, especially when people are deeply entrenched in opposing points of view.
35:15
But I think one of the elements of the best psychotherapy or mediation practice is that we really help people learn the skills to listen deeply, and often what that requires is not just this is my opinion and this is my feeling about you, but this is the pain that I carry from what happened, and when and I think many media mediation kind of practices have shown this and certainly good therapy shows this when it's like with a couple who's in in crisis is that when we can really hear each other's pain, then there's more, there's more of an openness to some compassion and a desire to work it out.
35:57
And it's that unwillingness to hear the bottom line pain that people are experiencing that has caused them to become so entrenched in their position and in their righteousness or in their anger that keeps the door shut. And so I think we you know that's what therapy does, and there's so many models in therapy where it's part of the conversation, the nonviolent conversation that opens up the door to listening to the pain in each other, and I can't tell you how important that is, whether it's in a family, a couple or country that it sounds like that willingness to listen and not just hear words.
Karen Covy Host
36:45
Not listen so that you can formulate what you're going to say next, but to really listen and hear the other person and be open to understanding their pain and how they see the world. That that is that would. It's very humanizing, right. It makes you start looking at the other person who has a different opinion. You may never agree intellectually on whatever it is you're talking about, but when you see them as another human who also has pain and also has, but has a different point of view, that maybe that's what will open the door to a conversation instead of an argument.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
37:24
A hundred percent and again, I don't think we do it perfectly. I think we have to keep trying. But one of the things that I really like to say to people is it takes great strength to do that work. It takes courage to actually reflect on yourself and not just point the finger at the other person. It takes great strength to restrain your most aggressive impulses or the things that you want to say in. In actuality, it doesn't take much to go to war. You're just reacting on an automatic reactive impulse. It takes a lot of strength to make peace oh my gosh, that just you're giving me chills.
Karen Covy Host
38:12
So that, bringing this back to the family situation, it reminds me I was talking to a lawyer.
38:20
This was years, years, years, years ago and he was more aggressive. He was more of a trial lawyer and we had a case together and I was trying to understand why he was so entrenched in a position and why he was determined to go to trial rather than helping these people work out something that, in my opinion, could have been worked out. Ultimately, it was worked out, but his reasoning was this it's like look, if I tell people to settle and they have second thoughts, it's my faultIf we go to trial and the judge orders them to do exactly the same thing and they don't like it, it's not my fault.
39:04
I tried the case the way the best that I could, and it was the judge's decision. So it was easier to let the conflict go on and then have an authority figure decide it rather than actually get to the root of what the problem was and heal the issue. So the people didn't have the conflict anymore.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
39:27
Right, well, did you make any impact?
Karen Covy Host
39:33
Yes, we did resolve that. I don't remember how we finally brought it up, but I was just I remember when he said this to me it was such a different way of thinking than the way I had. I was kind of just shocked that anybody could really think that letting the conflict go on made sense on any level, so that the motivation was to avoid taking any responsibility himself.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
39:58
I mean, what's that about?
Karen Covy Host
40:01
Yeah Well, I wasn't going to therapize him not be a therapist but we did end up coming together and somehow or other, I was able to get the case resolved. I can't remember exactly now, but the point is that it sounds like we've come full circle and it's all about personal responsibility, personal restraint, which, to your point, isn't easy, whether you're talking about your spouse or the country, right, it's all the same thing. But by learning these skills and maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but if you can learn how to apply them in your own life, in your own marriage, in your own family, it's going to bleed upwards into the society as a whole.
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
40:48
I agree with that, and I think it's okay and necessary to talk about society as a whole at the same time that we talk about ourselves as individuals and work on ourselves as individuals. Because how do we point the way to a different way of being if we don't extrapolate from our own experience and bring it to the venues, large and small, that we operate within? And, using your example of the case you just talked about, I just want to illustrate that one of the things that I talk about on the larger paradigm level that I think is an important part of the shift that we need to make, is we've been living forever in a win-lose paradigm. Somebody has to win and therefore somebody has to lose.
41:34
And what you do with mediation is you really try to create a win-win. and that's what's healthiest for human beings. Because when you, when we keep operating on a win-lose paradigm for, for one thing, it's just a gateway to massive war, right, but on a personal level, the person who loses doesn't go silently into the night. They, they become symptomatic, they become depressed, they might act out, they might, you know, not be able to function at work. They might, you know, take out their disappointment on their children. So we need to know that living in this win-lose paradigm creates symptom bearers that we're then all having to deal with.
Karen Covy Host
42:20
Yeah, and it goes on. Phyllis, I could keep talking to you in this conversation forever, and I'm so excited that we had it today because I think it's so timely. But you know, if people are interested in going deeper, if they want to get your book, if they want to learn more about the work that you do, where can they find you?
Phyllis Leavitt Guest
42:38
Please, thank you. I really appreciate that. Well, my book is available America in Therapy from all major booksellers. You can also order it off of my website, which is my name, www.phyllisleavitt.com, and it's P-H-Y-L-L-I-S-L-E-A-V-I-T-T. I have lots of blogs and video interviews on my website. You can find my other two books on my website which are more about my own healing journey.
43:07
I'm all over YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook and all of that. And if you want to contact me directly, you can email me at my business address, which is [email protected], and I'm happy to confer and answer any questions or just engage with anybody who has that kind of interest. And let me just add here that if you go to my website and you contact me, you will get a free PDF which I designed out of that chapter on the conflict resolution skills. It's called the six secrets to repairing relationship after conflict and it's. I took that chapter and I designed it into a little mini course that you can apply in your own life.
43:49
And just recently I don't know if it's quite finished, but I also created a quiz where you can begin to identify your conflict type. Are you more combative, are you more passive, aggressive, are you more submissive, are you more avoidant and or are you more mediating in your approach to conflict? So there's lots of resources available right through my website. That conflict quiz is on my website, on the homepage, so please feel free to visit and take advantage of everything.
Karen Covy Host
44:22
Phyllis, thank you so much. And for those of you listening, I really encourage you to go to Phyllis's website, pick up that tool, because anything that helps you resolve conflict better is going to result in a better quality of life for you and everyone around you. So, thank you again, Phyllis, so much, and for those of you who are listening, for those of you who are watching, please, if you enjoyed today's episode, do me a big favor. Give it a thumbs up like. Subscribe on YouTube, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps more than you'll ever know, and I look forward to talking with you all again next time.
