Conflict Decoded Podcast

On Valentine’s Day 2013, at a small community center in New Hampshire, I attended a workshop with Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Lakota-Cherokee shaman and narrative psychiatrist. The workshop began with a talking circle in which each of the forty or so participants shared a personal story about love. At the beginning of the day, I was excited. I’d read all of Dr. Mehl-Madrona’s books, and I was eager to...

I invite you to imagine that you are a great big bus driving through life and that all the passengers are different parts of yourself. The part who wants everyone else to like you, the part who just wants to be left alone, the part who is excited about your big goals, the part who just wants to do nothing, and so many other subpersonalities with their own desires and beliefs about the world. Somet...

Imagine that you’re an antelope. You're grazing on the savanna, minding your own business, when suddenly, out of the shadows, bounds a lion straight toward you. You can’t fight the lion, so you leap into action, running as fast as you can. You run, run, run, and miraculously, you escape. Then, once the lion is gone, you do something that most mammals do after surviving a threat—You shake. As the a...