Have you ever had one of those days (or years) where you chafe against the reality that humanity is a group project? Do you, too, find yourself lamenting the fact there are so many other people around, with their own ideas and ways of doing things? Navigating the post office in one another’s company can be hard, let alone trying to navigate PTA meetings, church committees, or other spaces in which emotions run high and perspectives diverge.

In spite of these frustrations, I’ve come to accept that we have to collaborate if we want to build the greater good for the greatest number of people. Decades of facilitating group projects across the arts and media taught me that healthy conflict is a necessary part of collaboration. It’s only been in recent years, however, that I’ve learned it’s possible to intentionally develop my body’s capacity to engage in conflict without abandoning myself or my relationships. Apparently, I can build this skill systematically, not haphazardly over time through trial and error.

That’s why I wanted to talk with Jazmin Pichardo and Beth Douthirt-Cohen. They’re frequent collaborators at the University of Maryland, where they both help people strengthen their capacity to engage across differences of power and identity. Their goal, Pichardo says, is “shifting our culture so that we can talk, work, and be better humans together.”

Jazmin Pichardo is faculty of practice and director of intergroup dialogue collaborations and partnerships at the University of Maryland College of Education’s Intergroup Dialogue Training Hub. Beth Douthirt-Cohen is the director of strategic initiatives for undergraduate studies as well as political faculty at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, where they support processes of truth and reconciliation that were initiated in the wake of a murder that was committed on campus in 2017. (Beth is also an alum of our Bridging Differences in Higher Education Learning Fellowship and their work is featured in our Bridging Differences in Higher Education Playbook.)

In this lightly edited conversation, Pichardo and Douthirt-Cohen take me step-by-step through their process of teaching folks concrete, embodied ways to face painful conversations and stay connected.

Kelly Rafferty: Over the course of a semester or a series of workshops, what is the primary skill you’re trying to help your students or participants develop? What are you training people to do?

Beth Douthirt-Cohen: Jazmin has a powerful way of saying it: “How do I choose relationship?”

“Choosing relationship” is not necessarily choosing you as my best friend. How do we choose to stay in relationship with each other and why would we make that choice? What is the groundwork we need to do in order to choose relationship when we come to a point where I’m like, No, it would be easier for me to peace out. Maybe that’s me leaving the room. Maybe it’s me leaving my body. Maybe it’s me pretending like I’m listening.

Jazmin Pichardo: It’s about facing the conflict rather than running away, freezing, feeling still, or even getting defensive and argumentative. Am I facing this situation with a desire to be right and shut this person down and prove them wrong? Or am I facing this situation with the intent to actually want to learn and understand their perspective, even if I don’t agree? Am I facing this conflict so that we can sit in it together and figure out where we have some shared understanding or some common ground?

BDC: Facing the conflict gives you more choice. You’re not just at reaction. Like, Can I have more choice in the way that I want to respond? And how do I build that capacity? It’s in micro-moments that we build that capacity. Our bodies are already practicing something. Can we try something new? There are more options for us than just seeing discomfort as danger.

KR: Very few people show up in the world, ready on day one to engage in deep, honest conversations about legacies of racist harm, or present-day experiences of ableism or gender-based violence. Your work is proof that we can learn how to do these things. How does capacity-building start? Are there specific things the group discusses or practices long before you ask anyone to jump into a challenging dialogue?

BDC: We name what is coming. Inevitably disagreement will happen, and inevitably there will be points where our bodies are feeling defensive, we’re uncertain, unsure. How do we prepare for that? How do we see those sensations as data, as information? How do you build the somatic awareness to be able to do that? Notice what happens in your body when you feel defensive, when you feel challenged, when you feel uncomfortable. What story do you tell yourself when that’s happening?

We also get clear on what the values are that will keep you in the room at that point. What matters to you? Is there an ancestor you want to call on or a value you want to call on that orients you in those moments?

JP: Yes, together we find a shared connection—a shared investment. We have some shared values, and that’s important enough that we’re going to work on not throwing each other away.

We also spend a lot of time being really clear with participants and our students about wanting to build a container. The classroom or the workshop space is a space where we can practice living into some different ways of being with one another. We know that out in the world, we can be conflict-avoidant and we can be judgmental and run with the stories we tell ourselves about other people.

With participants and students, we are deliberate and intentional in saying, “Let’s try to suspend that in this space and use it as a practice ground for different ways of being with one another.”

KR: When you’re teaching students how to develop Self-awareness around their reactions to conflict, what are some of the things you ask them to pay attention to?

JP: Early on, I will often ask students and participants, “Who are you in conflict?” If we’re opening up the conversation by saying conflict is normal, and the work that we want to be able to do together is figure out how we navigate conflict together before we can even have that conversation, then there is a need for a level of Self-awareness and reflection around who I am in conflict. What are the stories I tell myself about my relationship to conflict? Before we even have the conversation—whatever is the focus of our course or topic—we’re giving participants time to really think about how they get activated. What are their stress responses? Do you fight, flight, freeze, fawn?

We start with, what do you know about your responses? And then what do you need to feel grounded and secure enough to face conflict instead?

BDC: And how do I build the somatic awareness and skills to do that? It depends on the level of the stress response, but maybe I have a sense that I’m a “toward” person. In conflict, I’m more likely to be like, “No, Jazmin, I do agree with you.” That’s a “towards” shape. That’s very adaptive. That has kept you safe and alive and kept your ancestors safe and alive. And can I have more choices? Maybe I can say, “Actually, I really disagree with you here.” I’ll notice that when I say that, my body is going to freak out because it might not feel safe. But how do I stay in it and believe in the possibility of Jazmin staying in it with me, for example?

As much as we try to normalize strong feelings, students will still come out of a very difficult conversation and they’ll be like, “Why did I have such a strong reaction? I know that people say these dumb things.” As much as we can, we normalize. That’s your body protecting you, trying to keep you safe. And your brain-body doesn’t distinguish between a lion coming over the hill and this threat. They’re just both threats in the body. As much as we can increase that awareness, it tends to reduce shame.

KR: I know you encourage students to pause and breathe when they’re feeling activated in a conversation. What other practices, tools, or techniques do you teach them to help them respond instead of react?

JP: Early on, we start talking about emotions. Emotions are information. In the traditional academic classroom, you get taught that there is head and logic, and you separate that from your emotions or bodily reactions. In dialogue, we bring both in. We teach that head and heart, that thinking and understanding together actually support deeper learning and greater Self-awareness. We model that for the students.

We provide them with emotion wheels. Sometimes they really struggle with naming emotions. They’ll say, “I feel like sometimes we need to rethink things.” And I’ll say, “That sounds like an ‘I think’ statement, not an ‘I feel’ statement.” We support students to identify the emotion, and if they’re not in a place where they can identify that emotion, we come back to sensations. Where are you feeling a sensation—a kind of tension—in your body around this topic? When a peer shared this comment, where did you feel the reaction in your body internally?

BDC: We’ll also say things like, “Feel your feet on the ground. Notice your breath.” One of the things that’s most important to me is the fact that we’re modeling it. We will lower our voices. We will get more in our bodies. We will name what’s going on for us. It’s almost like facilitator-as-tool or model. I’ll sometimes say, “I really feel my heart beating fast right now. That tells me my body’s feeling stuff, things are happening.”

Sometimes people think somatic work is supposed to calm people down, and that’s actually not our purpose. We also try to be really clear about that. It’s never about calming people down. You can be centered and grounded and full of rage and still in dialogue, still facing. The goal here is not harmony. Harmony might come, but that is not the purpose of this.

Whatever you’re feeling, you can be centered and grounded and have choice. Our goal is that you have more capacity, more choice in these moments so that you can turn towards or face the possibility of relationship in the midst of profound differences.

KR: In what you’re describing, I see the dance of patience and courage that the psychologist and neuroscientist Sarah Schnitker and her colleagues articulate in their work. They understand patience and courage to be complimentary virtues. Too much patience can be apathy, which is also the deficiency of courage. Conversely, too little patience is recklessness, which is also excessive courage. In a recent conversation Sarah said, “We find, empirically over time, that if someone has both of these virtues . . . they’re able to do what is needed to act in service of love and justice because patience allows them to take that space [to make a conscious choice] and courage allows them to act even when it’s really difficult.”

I’m curious if you’ve noticed this dynamic at play in your classrooms and workshops. Have you witnessed students drawing on their patience and their courage in complimentary ways during dialogues?

JP: I think a lot about our students who, in a moment where I’m noticing emotional elevation, take the deep breath and say, “Actually, I’m not OK with that. Actually, that feels really harmful.” Not in a way that is intended to be judgmental, but in a way that is intended to bring our awareness to the impact that our words can have.

Dialogue is a process that allows you to speak your truth while also being able to stay in relationship with folks during tension. Those are moments where I see our students leaning into some courage, holding that patience and that grace for others, particularly when they’re calling people in while not losing sight of the dignity they inherently hold and that they want us to be able to hold for them, as well.

BDC: Yes. The only thing that I’ll add is patience for self. I’m thinking about our dialogues that are more about race, and I’m thinking about myself, in particular, working with white students or white faculty and staff. I see people practice patience for self, for not already having arrived, for not being perfect, for not knowing what to say.

I also see participants—not just white participants—say, “I am feeling something and I need us to slow down,” which feels so brave. With the power dynamics of higher education classrooms, that rarely happens. It feels powerful to me because it says to me that they’re honoring where they are. Because we co-regulate, and we’re all doing it together, they’re honoring other people in the room by extension. Patience for self and patience with each other feels incredibly important. This is really brave work, to have conversations where you’re not pretending to get along.

KR: You bring a great deal of intention and skill to how you prepare students for dialogue and how you support them all the way through the conversation. What happens when it’s time to end? What do our bodies and relationships need at the end of a session or a semester?

JP: From the get-go, we are really clear with participants, whether they be students, faculty, or staff in a workshop or training. Expect and accept a lack of closure. That can be really unsettling and hard, in particular when we’re talking about identity and power differences and inequities. We close out by acknowledging that this can feel unfinished. We ask, “What parts of this feel unfinished for you in this moment? What do you want to take away from this space? What’s something that you want to leave here?”

Closure in this work isn’t always a neat bow. But we can acknowledge the ongoing work that we all have to do. We can acknowledge that some kind of progress was made in the time that we had together. I think adrienne maree brown says, “People are gonna have the conversation that they need to have in that space.”

BDC: Yes. Closing each dialogue session and closure at the end of a class is important, partially because there is a rhythm to all of this. We’re honoring our humanity. In this culture, you just run from one thing to another. You switch jobs. You finish a class and you’re on to the next one. Part of honoring the humanity of self and other is doing some kind of closing ritual practice. We have a few activities that we typically use. One of our colleagues, Dr. Carlton Green, does something that feels so humanizing to me. We stand in a circle and express gratitude. Gratitude as a somatic practice can shift mood and shift possibility—not to paint over difference, not for harmony, but actually to be in relationship and in connection with each other. We ground it always in the humanity of ourselves and each other.

For a firsthand experience of some of these techniques, listen to Beth Douthirt-Cohen guide us through a centering practice in a recent GGSC skill-sharing session.