This workshop will focus on MCD Relationship Competency 12: Healthy Differentiation
Connection Gem:
Healthy Differentiation: Learning to Be Your Authentic Self
Podcast:
Help for “I Can’t Be Myself in This Relationship”
Is this you?
You want to fully be yourself in your relationships. You recognize that conflict in your relationships often comes from a lack of clarity about when you are crossing someone’s boundaries and when you are just speaking up for yourself. You sometimes get confused about being “nice” versus truly respecting differences and the other person’s autonomy. You don’t want to inauthentically “play nice.” You would like to trust that you can express yourself authentically and honestly, while truly respecting boundaries and maintaining self-responsibility.
Or, perhaps you recognize that you take on the other person’s emotions. You find yourself compelled to try to make them feel better. Or you find that you can’t maintain your good mood when they come home in a bad mood.
If any of this rings true, you will benefit from greater clarity and practice with healthy differentiation.
What's It All About?
When you have a strong sense of healthy differentiation, you can access a new sense of both autonomy and intimacy in your relationships. When you are not afraid of losing yourself in or being controlled by another, you can allow yourself to feel deeply connected and affected, while standing strong in your own sense of self.
With healthy differentiation, your relationships transform from something you are beholden to into something that supports you in new adventures of discovery and learning in the world.
There are many ways to cultivate a sense of healthy differentiation. One important way is being able to stand clearly in the values that guide your life. When you are grounded in your values, you can make effective decisions for yourself and engage in effective collaboration with others. Healthy differentiation also involves learning to tolerate disharmony, embrace differences, self-soothe, offer compassion, and set boundaries.
At the most basic level, to differentiate means deciding what you identify with— what you call “me.” Differentiation could also be described as being who you are in the presence of who they are. If you are someone who thinks you are more connected to yourself and happier when you are not in a significant relationship, you may have developed your individuality, but likely have difficulty with differentiation.
From the process-oriented framework of MCD, identity is something that is fluid and directed by universal needs and what most deeply serves life. From this perspective, an identity phrase could be something like this: “I am an ever-changing flow of dynamic aliveness.” Identity phrases that include active verbs align with this process orientation. For example, “I am someone who is dedicated to compassion,” rather than, “I am compassionate.”
From a process orientation, differentiation is an active, ongoing process of connecting to and honoring your own experience and sharing that experience when doing so will support collaboration to meet needs. Specifically you are able to identify your needs and preferences in any given situation and speak up for them when necessary. You regularly and explicitly clarify boundaries. You are able to manage the reactivity and discomfort that comes from either risking greater intimacy or potential separation. This last point shows up, perhaps, most often in intimate relationships.
About Mindful Compassionate Dialogue
Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD) naturally supports you in creating the relationships you want by integrating the wisdom and skills of three powerful modalities: Hakomi, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and mindfulness.
Each modality contributes something unique to the process. Hakomi offers clarity about reactivity and healing. NVC provides a method for achieving self-responsibility, skillful communication, and agency. And mindfulness adds the stable attention and clear focus needed to continuously refine your understanding and skills.
MCD is a system meant to provide access to agency, compassion, mindfulness, and wisdom. Personal transformation is achieved through practice with the 12 Relationship Competencies and Nine Foundations, which arise from a central, life-serving intention.
What to expect?
In this 8 week series, you will engage in conceptual learning, group discussion, experiential learning, and skills practice. Practice exercises will be done individually, in pairs, and in small groups. You can apply examples from your own life that you choose in the exercises. Some students will know each other and me from previous courses.
This course may be too challenging if you do not already have experience with other Wise Heart courses, Nonviolent Communication, or extensive personal work.
Understanding the online format
Students will be signing in to the workshop simultaneously in real time from their own locations, using Zoom. We will be able to see and hear each other. For visibility, it’s important to have a light in front of you, not behind you. The technology allows for breaking up into pairs or small groups, which the trainers can check in with just as would happen in an in-person course.
You will be able to review a recording of the workshop for a full week after it ends. Students won't be shown on the recording, but can be heard. You can participate in discussions via chat if you don’t want your voice recorded. This course may be sold later as a pre-recorded course.
You can also opt to take the series only through the recording.
Having someone in your life available to do the exercises with you is recommended for this option.
You will receive a detailed handout as a part of the workshop that you can download and keep for future reference.
Details:
Live attendance means:
Arriving on time to the workshop.
Attending and participating for the duration of the class. It is disruptive to come in and out of the workshop; please plan to attend by recording if you cannot stay for the full 90 minutes of the workshop.
Access to the video recording for a full week following the workshop.
Receiving a detailed handout that you can download and keep for later reference.
Ensuring you have consistent access to internet speeds and connectivity that support video conferencing (600kbps/1.2Mbps (up/down) for HQ video; 1.5Mbps/1.5Mbps (up/down) for gallery view).
Facility with using the Zoom video conferencing system. For more technical information about zoom, you can go here.
Self-paced attendance means:
Access to the video recording for eight weeks following the series
Receiving a detailed handout that you can download and keep for later reference
Trainers: LaShelle Lowe-Chardé
When: 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (PST - U.S. pacific coast), (7:00pm for GMT/UTC +0), Saturdays on the following days:
Oct 1
Oct 15
Oct 22
Oct 29
Nov 19
Dec 3
Dec 10
Dec 17
Where: Online video conferencing
Cost $270.00 USD - Please contact us by email if you believe you would benefit from this course and payment is the only barrier - info@wiseheartpdx.org