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MARiA

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physically or emotionally. a joker. maybe. a pacifier. at times. and... usually make the issues, people don't notice much.

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  • Ang Paboritong Libro ni Hudas
  • Solitaire Mystery
  • Veronica Decides to Die
  • The Best Laid Plans

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March 13, 2008

Conflict and LOVE

Eight years ago I walked out of the boardroom of the company I worked for muttering, "Life's too short," and, "This is killing me!" I'd somehow "survived" five years in a high stress, emotionally exhausting, and totally dysfunctional organization, reached what was certainly the pinnacle of my career, and cratered. That I'd lasted that long before burning out is more due to my ignorance than to my strength. That I'd left is more testament to divine intervention than to any personal wisdom on my part.

In hindsight, I can see how the individual and collective energies of each of us in the organization were all focused on the tasks and goals typical of any main-stream profit-oriented organization in America. What we weren't focusing on was the emotional environment we were co-creating, the affect of that environment on our relationships (inside and beyond the organization), and the impact on our health. It is amazing to me, in retrospect, how narrow we allowed our vision to become as we slowly split off access to our own emotions and intuition in order to survive the trauma of the emotionally toxic environment. This isn't new. People do it everyday all over the world, in the name of workplace productivity or some equally compelling value.


Feeling totally lost, I went to see a therapist to begin the work of understanding what I had just been through, and to see why I had been willing to participate in something so toxic. I initially found it difficult, basically impossible, to find a therapist who was able to be supportive or understanding of workplace trauma. I was offered prescribed programs for what I should do. Eventually that psychological investigation led me to process work and to an experience that all of this had happened for a reason that I could finally begin to understand. I became a client, then a process work student, eventually started working with others and recently began work on a doctorate in the psychology of social conflict.


Looking back through the lens of six years of study of process oriented psycho-logy and conflict facilitation, I can see a wealth of rich opportunity for greater awareness and intimate relatedness inside of the conflicts that I experienced in that job at that time. My aversion to noticing and naming conflict was what prevented me from dealing with it in a more loving and creative way. I didn't yet have the tools to do this. Socially speaking, our way of doing things makes it hard to notice and name conflict publicly. And bosses do have a habit of firing you if you do that in the workplace. We're not yet open to discussion of rank and power issues, especially at work. Face it, we currently don't have the openness in our lives, or a forum where it's safe to get that real.




- Anonymous Article

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