Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your
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Joanne Lockwood: So just your earbuds and settle in. It's time to
Joanne Lockwood: ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites.
Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 133 with
Joanne Lockwood: the title, from conflict to compassion.
Joanne Lockwood: And I have the absolute honor and privilege to welcome Maria
Joanne Lockwood: Arba. Maria is a workplace culture innovator
Joanne Lockwood: and conflict resolution expert. When I asked Maria to describe
Joanne Lockwood: her superpower, she said that is she is able to help people
Joanne Lockwood: find healing for themselves even when people
Joanne Lockwood: believe they have tried everything. Hello, Maria.
Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to the show. Hi, Jo. It's great to be back
Maria Arpa: here. Back here again. Yeah. Yeah. We had
Joanne Lockwood: a challenge last time. We we had a fantastic conversation for an
Joanne Lockwood: hour, 2 takes, and neither recorded properly.
Joanne Lockwood: And I was absolutely devastated because it was, as I remember remarking
Joanne Lockwood: at the end of it, one of the best podcast recordings I've I've ever made,
Joanne Lockwood: and I was really looking forward to listening to it back. And I
Joanne Lockwood: didn't have it. Scream for your
Joanne Lockwood: back. Yes. Well, that's a challenge, isn't it? Can we I mean,
Maria Arpa: is it that we're meant destined to have another conversation to go
Maria Arpa: even deeper? You know? I I think I think most definitely because,
Joanne Lockwood: the the conversation last time was so fascinating. I wanted to have another conversation with
Joanne Lockwood: you. So it's I think it was a bit like a karma kicking in saying,
Joanne Lockwood: well, you 2 are destined to have another conversation. So this is it. This is
Joanne Lockwood: it. And this I'm I'm sure we'll have more conversations after this
Joanne Lockwood: as well. Yeah. It's a joy to be invited. Thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: And thank you for coming back. So, Maria, for
Joanne Lockwood: conflict to compassion, tell me more about the work you do.
Maria Arpa: Thank you. Yes. So I work wherever people
Maria Arpa: gather, and so in workplaces is
Maria Arpa: a particular interest of mine,
Maria Arpa: and places of community and family
Maria Arpa: and, you know, all sorts of places where people gather, there
Maria Arpa: are going to be tensions and
Maria Arpa: disagreements and inability
Maria Arpa: to trust things that pop up that
Maria Arpa: were not expected, you know, expected and unexpected
Maria Arpa: disagreements. And what I've
Maria Arpa: learned is that we can treat
Maria Arpa: those conflicts and those disagreements
Maria Arpa: and those tensions actually is an amazing resource
Maria Arpa: for us to find a way to become
Maria Arpa: authentic, to navigate into our common humanity,
Maria Arpa: and to be our most creative. Whereas
Maria Arpa: most of what we've been taught is that the minute tensions
Maria Arpa: arise and the minute we disagree, we're frightened
Maria Arpa: of the pain so we can become either conflict
Maria Arpa: avoidant or use a sledgehammer to crack a
Maria Arpa: nut and and divide
Maria Arpa: and separate and then go into kind of
Maria Arpa: legal processes or, you know, processes that
Maria Arpa: are destined maybe to get some kind
Maria Arpa: of a re result, but
Maria Arpa: definitely not healing and compassion and care for our
Maria Arpa: humanity. A bit of retribution, bit of payback, bit of
Joanne Lockwood: you've you've offended me or you've cast dispersions on
Joanne Lockwood: my credibility, and I want to make you pay for that. Is is that kinda
Joanne Lockwood: how people escalate? Yeah. It's and sometimes it's
Maria Arpa: as aggressive as that, but, you know, settling scores
Maria Arpa: and holding people accountable in ways that
Maria Arpa: are very painful. And sometimes it's fear because
Maria Arpa: sometimes I I feel that, actually, if I don't
Maria Arpa: defend myself, nobody's going to. So you don't wanna be seen as a
Joanne Lockwood: walkover or pushover. You wanna stand your ground because in the
Joanne Lockwood: past, you haven't this time, you want to make a you want to make a
Joanne Lockwood: big deal of it. Sometimes it's really important for
Maria Arpa: us to make a stand and to hold boundaries. And, you know, after
Maria Arpa: all, change generally comes
Maria Arpa: when there has been some kind of escalation. You know? It's very
Maria Arpa: rare in places where there are power
Maria Arpa: imbalances for someone to say, oh, mister
Maria Arpa: person with the power, could you just change this? And the person came, yeah.
Maria Arpa: Sure. Of course. But that that becomes problematic, I guess,
Joanne Lockwood: if you're you become very entrenched in that that that viewpoint or that
Joanne Lockwood: belief. The 2 2 parties or multiple parties can all
Joanne Lockwood: be entrenched with their own view. How do we
Joanne Lockwood: release our prisoners of belief, if you like, and and get around the table? Because
Joanne Lockwood: that's the hard thing is is, letting go of that I
Joanne Lockwood: must win at all at all costs or
Joanne Lockwood: compromises. Compromise means I lose.
Maria Arpa: Yeah. So so for me, it's about
Maria Arpa: going in and remembering that we are going to
Maria Arpa: just about how much we love each other, how much we cooperate,
Maria Arpa: how much we share the same ideals or the same purpose
Maria Arpa: or the same mission. There are going to be times when we don't
Maria Arpa: agree or when I want change ahead of you.
Maria Arpa: And the the the important thing to remember
Maria Arpa: is as soon as a conflict or attention
Maria Arpa: or disagreement has arisen, change has
Maria Arpa: already taken place. Something has already
Maria Arpa: changed. What we need to do is find our most
Maria Arpa: compassionate selves to figure out how we're going to talk
Maria Arpa: about it. All we're doing is growing into it. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: It's, I mean, I I I've I've been in
Joanne Lockwood: disputes with people, family, friends,
Joanne Lockwood: work colleagues, whatever it may be. And I I sometimes find it really difficult
Joanne Lockwood: to to deescalate because because I it's not that I want to
Joanne Lockwood: win. I just don't want to be I just don't
Joanne Lockwood: wanna lose. I think the difference between wanting to win and not wanting to lose,
Joanne Lockwood: and you're hoping the other person if the other person can
Joanne Lockwood: can try and meet you on that journey where they they don't wanna lose, but
Joanne Lockwood: they don't want to win, It's trying to find that middle ground where
Joanne Lockwood: you can both say how you feel without feeling like
Joanne Lockwood: you're you're you're sorry because you're not actually sorry. You're just trying to
Joanne Lockwood: resolve the conflict. So I think there we have to start
Maria Arpa: thinking about what do I mean by resolve.
Maria Arpa: So is the resolve having a third party
Maria Arpa: who, you know, like a judge or an adjudicator come
Maria Arpa: in and decide on an outcome for us
Maria Arpa: that we both obediently uphold.
Maria Arpa: And and, you know, that is that is generally the way things are
Maria Arpa: done in our mainstream society. You know, we go to a court or
Maria Arpa: a tribunal or or there's some senior manager
Maria Arpa: or somebody that sort of says, well, you know, no. This is how it's
Maria Arpa: going to be. But I believe that as humans, we
Maria Arpa: can actually do better. And so, you know, I've spent the last 30
Maria Arpa: years proving that that when we
Maria Arpa: let go of the need to win, when we let
Maria Arpa: go of, you know, believing that some kind
Maria Arpa: of result will resolve the conflict,
Maria Arpa: then we can actually start to see that we're all
Maria Arpa: human. Sure. We may have differences about the
Maria Arpa: way we want to go about things, but
Maria Arpa: you have needs and I have needs. And and
Maria Arpa: the the simple, you know, the simple kind of
Maria Arpa: guideline for this is connection before
Maria Arpa: correction. So what I want us to do and
Maria Arpa: that's why, you know, there are people like me exist. You know, people that can
Maria Arpa: mediate and people that can, take that impartial
Maria Arpa: view is is let's let's meet in
Maria Arpa: our humanity first. Let's be human. Let's
Maria Arpa: remember that you need to sleep and I need to
Maria Arpa: sleep, and you need to eat and I need to eat, and you need to
Maria Arpa: go to the bathroom and I need to go to the bathroom, and you
Maria Arpa: need to breathe and I need to breathe, and you want respect and I want
Maria Arpa: respect. So let's build those layers up first
Maria Arpa: so we can see each other as human. And
Maria Arpa: then we can begin rather
Maria Arpa: than rather than seeing you
Maria Arpa: as an attacker or a predator or
Maria Arpa: or somebody I have to defend against, I
Maria Arpa: see us as humans that just don't know in this
Maria Arpa: moment. And there's a real beauty in going,
Maria Arpa: wow. We see this so differently. I
Maria Arpa: don't know what to do next. Let's just sit in that
Maria Arpa: stew for a minute together. Yeah. Recognizing there is no one
Joanne Lockwood: answer. There's no final solution. There's no definitive
Joanne Lockwood: outcome. It's around about finding, you
Joanne Lockwood: say, the humanity in each other rather than the stereotype or dehumanizing
Joanne Lockwood: name calling. Attack the situation, not the person sort of thing. It's
Joanne Lockwood: it's trying to understand about the issues we're trying to discuss and
Joanne Lockwood: resolve. Because I found that sometimes when these in these situations, you you
Joanne Lockwood: try and gather your own army, don't you? You want people to agree with you
Joanne Lockwood: and sort of like, I'm right, aren't I? I'm right. This this person
Joanne Lockwood: this person's against me. If
Joanne Lockwood: are you against me or you're are you for me? Where do you sit? Are
Joanne Lockwood: you in or out? And that's what we end up doing. I guess that's why
Joanne Lockwood: we're being out to mediation or adjudication is we we want someone else to agree
Joanne Lockwood: with us who has the final the final solution for the final the
Joanne Lockwood: final say in all that. Yeah. Well, that's what's interesting. Because the
Joanne Lockwood: judge says so. Yes. What's interesting about these pros
Maria Arpa: adversarial processes where someone else
Maria Arpa: is going to decide the outcome is now it's even worse
Maria Arpa: because now I'm competing with you to get the person
Maria Arpa: on my side. I'm I'm going to tell the
Maria Arpa: best version of my story.
Maria Arpa: And and now shall I slip into making you sound
Maria Arpa: really bad? So so that will divide us
Maria Arpa: even more because then at the end when the judge
Maria Arpa: says this is what's going to happen, and we
Maria Arpa: look at some of the perhaps
Maria Arpa: suboptimal truths that were told across
Maria Arpa: that across that meeting,
Maria Arpa: the the hope for reconciling
Maria Arpa: so we can get an answer to the problem, but
Maria Arpa: did we heal? Did we reconcile?
Maria Arpa: Did were we able to go, okay. You know?
Maria Arpa: That's where we are, and how do we feel about it? So when
Maria Arpa: we mediate so the distinction for me is a mediator
Maria Arpa: or a facilitator is not there to make any
Maria Arpa: decisions. What I do is create
Maria Arpa: the conditions in which a group of
Maria Arpa: people, 2 people or a group of people can sit
Maria Arpa: down and start to talk about something through dialogue,
Maria Arpa: not debate. And what's the difference between dialogue and debate then? What's the what's
Joanne Lockwood: that nuance? So yeah. So this is really important. It's very
Maria Arpa: much at the core of my work. What I recognized
Maria Arpa: is that in our mainstream society, the
Maria Arpa: model of conversation that we've mostly been
Maria Arpa: exposed to is debate. And the debate is where
Maria Arpa: the idea is for one argument to prevail over all
Maria Arpa: others. And we see this in academia, in
Maria Arpa: the legal profession, in our government, in the military,
Maria Arpa: you know, and in script writing, in
Maria Arpa: in the films that we watch, you know, the goody and the baddy and
Maria Arpa: someone prevails over over everyone else. And so this is what
Maria Arpa: we've been exposed to without having it explained to us.
Maria Arpa: Now if I'm in the science laboratory and I want to
Maria Arpa: prove a point, well, happy days. But if
Maria Arpa: I use that model when human emotions
Maria Arpa: are at stake, when how we see each other as people is
Maria Arpa: at stake, then you can I don't have to spell
Maria Arpa: out where this leads in our world, in our society?
Maria Arpa: So I started to realize that there's
Maria Arpa: another way of conducting conversations, which is dialogue.
Maria Arpa: And dialogue is where we accept that we
Maria Arpa: all hold a piece of the answer. So there isn't
Maria Arpa: anything to win. There's something to build on.
Maria Arpa: And then we can all participate as
Maria Arpa: equals in the conversation
Maria Arpa: where we're we're focusing on
Maria Arpa: what's the best we can manage, not what's
Maria Arpa: the best argument. Yeah. I see I see what you're
Joanne Lockwood: saying there, and I think what what I've realized
Joanne Lockwood: as well, a bit like you about the debate and the dialogue side, is that
Joanne Lockwood: much of our conversation is around trying to sell our perspective on
Joanne Lockwood: something. Even if it's a case of what it's nice
Joanne Lockwood: weather outside. I'm trying to tell you what I believe the weather is. You can
Joanne Lockwood: either go, oh, it's lovely to stay or you go, it's it's warmer than last
Joanne Lockwood: week, and we can end up with this debate about, yeah, who's
Joanne Lockwood: who's more who's more right about the weather from their perspective. And that's that's
Joanne Lockwood: what we fall into is perspectives and beliefs, not
Joanne Lockwood: objectivity. We could become very subjective through our own lived experience, things like
Joanne Lockwood: that. And so we're always gonna cloud for judgment. I think what you were saying
Joanne Lockwood: there about this trying to yeah. You're
Joanne Lockwood: very polite in not calling it a lie, just a a
Joanne Lockwood: story you tell yourself and trying to sell to other people.
Joanne Lockwood: Because we can also, if we're not careful, we rewrite our
Joanne Lockwood: own version of the truth in our head. We reinforce our our our
Joanne Lockwood: bias, our confirmation bias, whatever you wanna call it. And then that that
Joanne Lockwood: story becomes the story in our head because it's become so
Joanne Lockwood: well practiced. And we now get invested in this
Joanne Lockwood: version of a story that isn't actually the true story. And
Joanne Lockwood: that's another part of this challenge, isn't it? Trying to get back, peel those layers
Joanne Lockwood: off. And there's no it gets to a point where there's no point in
Joanne Lockwood: trying to debate the original conflict because
Joanne Lockwood: everyone's moved so far forward with their beliefs becoming entrenched.
Joanne Lockwood: It's about trying to find what do we wanna do next.
Maria Arpa: So I liked, you know, the the example you
Maria Arpa: gave about the weather, which seems really innocuous. But a
Maria Arpa: a really good way of how I would look at that is, you know, you
Maria Arpa: tell me the weather's a certain way and that, and I say,
Maria Arpa: well, no. It isn't. It for me, what's really
Maria Arpa: important is to allow you to fully have your
Maria Arpa: experience of the weather. It might not be my
Maria Arpa: experience of it even if we're standing on the same
Maria Arpa: paving slab in the same street at the same moment. How
Maria Arpa: I experience the world is a result
Maria Arpa: of everything that ever happened to me from
Maria Arpa: birth and maybe, you know, maybe even actually
Maria Arpa: intergenerational stuff that's come down the line. But how
Maria Arpa: I experience the world in any given moment is a
Maria Arpa: result of everything that I've ever experienced, and we could be
Maria Arpa: standing you know, it's like when parents say, oh, I treat both my children the
Maria Arpa: same way. It's actually impossible. It's impossible. Just
Maria Arpa: because you gave them the same amount of pocket money or whatever, that's
Maria Arpa: not treating them the same. How a child experiences
Maria Arpa: their upbringing is unique to them because they've
Maria Arpa: also got all the other people that came in their lives and gave them
Maria Arpa: messages. So for me, it's like how wonderful
Maria Arpa: or or how terrible that you're experiencing the world
Maria Arpa: in this way. I'm experiencing it differently.
Maria Arpa: Wouldn't it be fun for us to examine the gap? Yeah. I'm standing on
Joanne Lockwood: this paving slab with an umbrella, welly boots, a big thick coat
Joanne Lockwood: for the hood. Yeah. And you're standing there in a in a pair of shorts,
Joanne Lockwood: a T shirt, and and sandals, and it's pouring down with rain. Our
Joanne Lockwood: experience of that weather is completely different and our perspective is completely
Joanne Lockwood: different. Yeah. So So we could find the shared truth.
Maria Arpa: We could find a so for me, everything is about you can't have the
Maria Arpa: conversation till you've got a shared truth. And the shared truth
Maria Arpa: is always observational and factual. It is
Maria Arpa: not evaluated. So the shared truth
Maria Arpa: is rain is falling and wind is blowing. So
Maria Arpa: we could agree that. Now from there, how are you
Maria Arpa: experiencing that, and how am I experiencing that?
Maria Arpa: That's the richness of life. Otherwise, we're gonna become
Maria Arpa: Stepford wives. Yes. So so we want to have the discussion, as
Joanne Lockwood: you say, about how I'm experiencing the weather today.
Joanne Lockwood: And I can say, understand, oh, wow. I see how you're experiencing that.
Joanne Lockwood: It's interesting. I don't experience it that way because of this.
Maria Arpa: Yes. Yes. Exactly. So It's moving from moving
Joanne Lockwood: moving the discussion from what to
Joanne Lockwood: why or how I'm experiencing it or why I
Joanne Lockwood: experience it or why I believe something than just what I believe
Joanne Lockwood: in. And and the interesting thing is this this
Maria Arpa: for me, you know, I come from a really rough upbringing. Right?
Maria Arpa: I had you know, it was a it was suffice to say it was a
Maria Arpa: rough upbringing. And so I'm not sort of, you know, your armchair
Maria Arpa: liberal kind of, you know, make everything
Maria Arpa: fluffy and nice. The point is, for me,
Maria Arpa: is you are on this planet and I am on this
Maria Arpa: planet, and I haven't yet found a way to defy
Maria Arpa: gravity and cut you off gravity and send you away.
Maria Arpa: So whether I like it or not, we share the space.
Maria Arpa: So I wanna make that joyful. Why would I wanna make that
Maria Arpa: hateful? Because when I make it hateful, I'm
Maria Arpa: poisoning myself. So even in my worst
Maria Arpa: kind of most selfish moment, I find it's
Maria Arpa: better to wanna share the space in
Maria Arpa: a generous way. Yeah. Does that of ethos.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. It's I'd like to believe that I can coexist
Maria Arpa: Yes. That's true. Planet with people who have
Joanne Lockwood: opposing views, distasteful views.
Joanne Lockwood: The more distasteful, the more opposing the other. The harder that statement is is to
Joanne Lockwood: sort of reconcile. But I think the problem that comes
Joanne Lockwood: down to sometimes is when people want to convert you
Joanne Lockwood: or or weaponize that belief. I'm I I can stand on the
Joanne Lockwood: same page as I have with you, and you believe it's sunny and I believe
Joanne Lockwood: it's raining, and we can just laugh about that. But as soon as you're trying
Joanne Lockwood: to push your belief onto me, then it becomes problematic
Joanne Lockwood: if I'm not buying it. If I don't if I don't buy into that that
Joanne Lockwood: reason, then that's a lot of where the woke politics
Joanne Lockwood: are coming out these days where you have these 2 2 opposing views
Joanne Lockwood: that are seemingly unreconcilable where people want to win
Joanne Lockwood: and, and weaponize and change
Joanne Lockwood: opinions or gather their armies. Yes.
Maria Arpa: So for me, the the way that
Maria Arpa: I measure you know, I heard you say, you know, some
Maria Arpa: opinions that are really distasteful, for example.
Maria Arpa: So you can have any opinion you want. What
Maria Arpa: I'm looking out for is what is
Maria Arpa: the actual or potential for injury,
Maria Arpa: loss, or harm if you act on that. And
Maria Arpa: that's for me, that's the measurement. That's the conversation.
Maria Arpa: So you have an opinion, and I don't like your
Maria Arpa: opinion or your opinion hurts my feelings.
Maria Arpa: That's work for me to do. I mean, I can spend
Maria Arpa: my whole life having my feelings hurt. If
Maria Arpa: I perceive, though, that you're about to take an action
Maria Arpa: or do something that creates injury, loss, or harm,
Maria Arpa: then, of course, the next thing is we have to decide, is that injury,
Maria Arpa: loss, or harm real or perceived? If it's perceived,
Maria Arpa: then we can get into a dialogue and we can do some risk
Maria Arpa: managing. And, you know, some risk managing is to shut the door in
Maria Arpa: someone's face or run away. So
Maria Arpa: nobody needs to put up with stuff that they don't wanna put up with.
Maria Arpa: In workplaces, of course, you know, that's a whole another part of the
Maria Arpa: conversation because we have to look at power imbalances.
Maria Arpa: But but if there's going to be injury, loss, or harm,
Maria Arpa: then you should expect me to want to
Maria Arpa: ask you about your intentions, to ask you
Maria Arpa: about the impact you're about to have,
Maria Arpa: and whether you want to proceed with that. And if if after that
Maria Arpa: discussion you still want to proceed, then you're going to have to expect some
Maria Arpa: opposition. Does that make sense? But it's not coming out of hating
Maria Arpa: you. No. I mean, we're we're I'm just thinking
Joanne Lockwood: about the date. You know, it's it's just we're recording this mid October 2024,
Joanne Lockwood: and it's just past the anniversary of the,
Joanne Lockwood: October 1984 Brighton bombing, the attempt to
Joanne Lockwood: take Margaret Thatcher's and the conservative party's lives.
Joanne Lockwood: And, I think we're we're both aware of Anthony
Joanne Lockwood: Berry's daughter, Jo Berry. Yeah. And she's
Joanne Lockwood: advocating reconciliation, and I've I've heard her speak several times.
Joanne Lockwood: And she talks about this creating a a
Joanne Lockwood: destination planning or destination vision of where you want this
Joanne Lockwood: to end and focusing on that shared or acquiesce
Joanne Lockwood: around the shared goal of we want our children to live in peace.
Joanne Lockwood: We want a society where I can walk down the street. I want this. I
Joanne Lockwood: want that. I want that. And we can all agree with those high
Joanne Lockwood: level destinations. And it's moving towards
Joanne Lockwood: that and and letting go of the the
Joanne Lockwood: unsolvable history, if you like. History has happened. It's done it.
Joanne Lockwood: We can be sorry or not, but we can't take it back.
Joanne Lockwood: And that that's what we wanna sometimes do. That's where the retribution comes in. I
Joanne Lockwood: want payback for that thing which stops us finding the dream
Joanne Lockwood: or the vision, the future. So, yeah, so I don't want
Maria Arpa: payback. I want a genuine
Maria Arpa: expression of regret and remorse and
Maria Arpa: education for the person who who did the
Maria Arpa: injury, loss, or harm, and I want them from
Maria Arpa: their heart out of the quality of connection
Maria Arpa: that we form to offer something up. Making somebody
Maria Arpa: do something doesn't mean we change their attitude.
Joanne Lockwood: No. No. It it's framing it in a way. I mean,
Joanne Lockwood: I I was listening to this some of the news the other day about
Joanne Lockwood: that time back in 1984, and the people involved,
Joanne Lockwood: they have regret about maybe the loss of life, but
Joanne Lockwood: they don't regret what was going on at that time. You know, they were they
Joanne Lockwood: were in a a war for one of the better way of describing
Joanne Lockwood: it. And they they were part of that conflict and
Joanne Lockwood: conflict happens and things, people die. So they don't regret
Joanne Lockwood: being there. They just regret maybe some of the outcomes of it. And it's it's
Joanne Lockwood: it's trying to work out what I want someone to be sorry
Joanne Lockwood: for. Again, humanizing the process again.
Joanne Lockwood: The loss of life, you know, as you say, injury loss or harm. The the
Joanne Lockwood: harm was the injury was getting the empathy to acknowledge
Joanne Lockwood: what that injury loss or harm is, and then we can move
Joanne Lockwood: forward. But I don't have to understand your motivation for that, but I
Joanne Lockwood: understand that you have some remorse or empathy for how I feel about
Joanne Lockwood: that. Yes. And the question is, given
Maria Arpa: what you've heard, you know, and I bring people together to have these
Maria Arpa: very tough conversations. You know? I have brought people
Maria Arpa: into prison to come face to face with people
Maria Arpa: that may have directly or indirectly been impacted.
Maria Arpa: And after that understanding
Maria Arpa: has has taken place, the question is, if we were here
Maria Arpa: again today, would you do the same thing, or what would you do
Maria Arpa: differently? That's a real indicator of the journey.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. That that's, rehabilitation. That's self awareness,
Joanne Lockwood: isn't it? That's EQ, most intelligence. That's that's appreciating
Joanne Lockwood: the context of of what happened, isn't it? Yes.
Maria Arpa: Yes. So and we can apply this, as I said, we can apply this to
Maria Arpa: workplaces and anywhere that people gather
Maria Arpa: because you you cannot put a group of people together
Maria Arpa: and expect that it's all going to be harmony. And in fact,
Maria Arpa: actually, as I as I you know, to sort of go back to the
Maria Arpa: beginning, for me, the diversity
Maria Arpa: of opinion, the the different lived experiences,
Maria Arpa: the way I see the world, and the way you see the world
Maria Arpa: is what makes this life worth living.
Maria Arpa: Imagine living in a world where everybody thought the same as
Maria Arpa: you. It I mean, it would be it would be totally useless.
Joanne Lockwood: We'd all be wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, going on
Joanne Lockwood: holidays to the same place. We're very busy and crowded.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. So so, so for me, what makes life worth
Maria Arpa: living is being among people. Yeah. That richness,
Joanne Lockwood: that fabric, the the the growth that occurs through meeting different perspectives,
Joanne Lockwood: different opinions. But as you say,
Joanne Lockwood: dialogue, debate is gonna occur where we have those different
Joanne Lockwood: viewpoints. And when they're healthy, we grow. When
Joanne Lockwood: it's not healthy is when we kinda get locked into
Joanne Lockwood: wanting to win. Yeah. So it only becomes
Maria Arpa: unhealthy when we see the world from an adversarial
Maria Arpa: perspective that that you're either with me or against me.
Maria Arpa: And then and then we have a further problem because you see,
Maria Arpa: if I see the world from an adversarial perspective, if I only
Maria Arpa: see sides, then
Maria Arpa: now I need to know what kind of competition are we in.
Maria Arpa: Are we competing to be the best we can
Maria Arpa: be, or are we competing in a
Maria Arpa: winner takes all competition, or are we
Maria Arpa: competing in fight to the death? And you can see gladiators at
Joanne Lockwood: the, the cinema especially. Yeah. I see that a lot in lots of, you
Maria Arpa: know, the the sorts of disputes that I mediate. You've
Maria Arpa: got one person who's actually they they act as if their
Maria Arpa: life depends on. You know, they'll fight to the death,
Maria Arpa: and and you'll have another side that just literally just wants
Maria Arpa: some resolution. Yeah. I would see the film gladiators yesterday, the first
Joanne Lockwood: one, the Russell Crowe. And that that is very
Joanne Lockwood: much win at all costs, isn't it? You know, you your life depends on it,
Joanne Lockwood: and either you die or they die. And it's hard to
Joanne Lockwood: find the compromise in that situation. And if you go into your
Joanne Lockwood: problem or conversation with that, I have to win at all costs, then
Joanne Lockwood: you're never gonna compromise, and you probably aren't even gonna listen to the
Joanne Lockwood: other person. Yes. And and as I said, if you if you
Maria Arpa: don't want to find that generous self to be able to do
Maria Arpa: that, just think about how much you're poisoning your own
Maria Arpa: life. You're just going to be in 1 life is just gonna be one
Maria Arpa: constant battle. I mean, I have met people who
Maria Arpa: actually can't define themselves unless they
Maria Arpa: have an adversary, And they they sort one thing
Maria Arpa: out, and then they create another adversary in their life.
Joanne Lockwood: I can I can see lots of examples of that in, in politicians in
Joanne Lockwood: our public life and things? They're career career
Joanne Lockwood: adversaries, aren't they? Or people who are in the legal
Joanne Lockwood: profession spend their whole life advocating for for a
Joanne Lockwood: polarized argument and trying to win on behalf of their client.
Maria Arpa: I mean, that's a whole another topic because I would love to look
Maria Arpa: at, you know, when people choose that that's the
Maria Arpa: path they want their life to go down, you know, what
Maria Arpa: what is it they're working out?
Joanne Lockwood: So I I I read a a book or actually listened to it. I don't
Joanne Lockwood: read many books. I listened to them by Rooker Bregman, and, his his
Joanne Lockwood: second book is called Humankind. And it's really interesting to to
Joanne Lockwood: hear his analysis around, you know, the fact that our human species
Joanne Lockwood: is largely generous and kind. And
Joanne Lockwood: we're one of the reasons that the Homo sapiens
Joanne Lockwood: effectively wiped out the Neanderthals is we were more community focused.
Joanne Lockwood: So we have strength in numbers with them. The pandasals were more intelligent, bigger,
Joanne Lockwood: stronger, faster, but more individualistic. So we as a
Joanne Lockwood: society thrive in a collaborative
Joanne Lockwood: space. We're not alone, are we? We're definitely not. I
Maria Arpa: mean, look. If you really believe that
Maria Arpa: people are a pain in the butt and you don't like being around them, then,
Maria Arpa: you know, go and live on your own in the cave and find out how
Maria Arpa: you can survive without some form of connection and
Maria Arpa: collaboration and participation,
Maria Arpa: you will shrivel. Yeah. We
Joanne Lockwood: saw Tom Hanks do that in castaway, and we've recently seen, Philip Scofield, I
Joanne Lockwood: think, doing his own mini castaway. I think Tom Hanks took to
Joanne Lockwood: it better than Philip Scofield from what I understand. But, Tom
Maria Arpa: Hanks ended up having an argument with the ball, didn't he? Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Wilson. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to to communicate with
Maria Arpa: Wilson. I think Phillips Goeffort is having an having an argument with
Joanne Lockwood: his camera.
Maria Arpa: And that there's there's something about that for me. There's something
Maria Arpa: about being around people
Maria Arpa: and feeling the tensions that arise. If
Maria Arpa: you're frightened of that or you've been trained
Maria Arpa: to treat that as dangerous and unsafe,
Maria Arpa: that's what causes all the problems. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Anxiety about engaging, as you say, the power of privilege
Joanne Lockwood: dynamic kicks in. Yeah. If you're feeling subordinate
Joanne Lockwood: or subservient to somebody, it's hard for you to push back
Joanne Lockwood: without feeling bullied or yeah. You're you're you're worried about the
Joanne Lockwood: consequences as well of of speaking up. Yeah. We talk about psychological safety.
Joanne Lockwood: Part of that is, will I be thought less of? Will I be
Joanne Lockwood: dismissed for what I'm saying? And so that's why we could become invested
Joanne Lockwood: in a in an outcome because we we hold on to these prisoners
Joanne Lockwood: really tightly because we we have to win because we have to win.
Joanne Lockwood: The the alternative is in our heads. We die. We're
Maria Arpa: in our own hands. Yeah. Yeah. And and so for
Maria Arpa: me, you know, like, if we come on now to the idea of power imbalances,
Maria Arpa: you know, there are there have been great power imbalances. There are power
Maria Arpa: imbalances in workplaces. But think about it. Who can tell the
Maria Arpa: truth in a workplace? It's perspectives. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: It's it's so many things. Few workplaces where people can actually
Maria Arpa: really tell the truth and trust that that won't come back to
Maria Arpa: haunt them in some way. Yeah. Because a lot of this
Joanne Lockwood: stuff is incremental, isn't it? It's it's layered. It's not just one
Joanne Lockwood: conversation. It's a pattern of conversations. It's a history of relationships.
Joanne Lockwood: It's that one remark there that gets amplified by another
Joanne Lockwood: remark, becomes a pattern. So we talk about the me too movement,
Joanne Lockwood: sexism in the workplace. It's an escalation of inappropriateness
Joanne Lockwood: rather than just a one off instant in many cases. Yeah.
Maria Arpa: Well, the other thing that I, you know, I really believe
Maria Arpa: creates a lot of problems is people form clubs.
Maria Arpa: And and once you start forming clubs based on
Maria Arpa: beliefs and that you're, you know, you're forming a club and
Maria Arpa: you're building your membership based on an ideology
Maria Arpa: or a belief, and you're not open to the
Maria Arpa: idea that there are other ideologies and beliefs and we
Maria Arpa: can still love each other, still coexist,
Maria Arpa: still, you know, do things together, still cooperate as
Maria Arpa: humans, then you have a problem because
Maria Arpa: firstly, there's the otherizing. But then with
Maria Arpa: these clubs, you get an inner sanctum.
Maria Arpa: And first of all, there's the purpose of the club,
Maria Arpa: then the somehow the inner sanctum
Maria Arpa: become as important as the mission, and
Maria Arpa: then there's a point where the inner sanctum
Maria Arpa: and protection of the inner sanctum becomes more important than the
Maria Arpa: mission. And that's where you see the real corruption. Yeah. People
Joanne Lockwood: become really invested in that belief because it's a
Joanne Lockwood: career, it's a it's a status, it's a it's a and I don't want
Joanne Lockwood: to specifically single out religion as such because there are lots of other beliefs out
Joanne Lockwood: there that that have the same sort of impact, but you become invested in the
Joanne Lockwood: momentum of this belief. And then you're back
Maria Arpa: in an adversarial world because you only you only
Maria Arpa: live while you have the bigger membership than the other people or
Maria Arpa: you've got the bigger weapon or the more money or the more tools.
Maria Arpa: And so, actually, what you're doing is you're actually
Maria Arpa: underlying while you may have the bigger army,
Maria Arpa: you're actually growing the fear. You're not Yeah. I've
Maria Arpa: you're not on a path to healing. I often think about this like the medieval
Joanne Lockwood: castle where you shore yourself up, you
Joanne Lockwood: you barricade, you pull the drawbridge up, and you're on the ramparts with your
Joanne Lockwood: boiling oil and your rocks. You're chucking at the people down below
Joanne Lockwood: who want their rights. They wanna be heard and they're peasants with their swords
Joanne Lockwood: and things. And all you're doing is you're pouring boiling oil on them. And it's
Joanne Lockwood: really hard to just lower that drawbridge, isn't it? Because you're so invested in your
Joanne Lockwood: sanctimony of the castle or your sanctimony of
Joanne Lockwood: attack and being marginalized that you can never actually
Joanne Lockwood: sit down and and, again, the destination planning, the thinking about the vision,
Joanne Lockwood: the future, because your vision is so tightly bound in
Joanne Lockwood: your belief system. Yes. And there's a fear of having
Maria Arpa: that disturbed or disrupted. And, of course, if
Maria Arpa: we think that we can live on this planet from birth to
Maria Arpa: death and never encounter disruption,
Maria Arpa: well, it's not in reality. And and if there isn't gonna
Maria Arpa: be you know, there's enough kind of you know, mother nature gives us enough
Maria Arpa: powerful messages and disrupts us enough to say, you
Maria Arpa: know, don't take me for granted here. You know, you have to honor
Maria Arpa: the resources I give you. You, you know, you have to live
Maria Arpa: in a in a in a decent way with what's been
Maria Arpa: provided. So if we start fighting amongst
Maria Arpa: ourselves in that way, it's distractive and not creative.
Maria Arpa: And that's really my message is there are far better
Maria Arpa: ways to use our suffering
Maria Arpa: and our pain to develop something that is healing
Maria Arpa: and something that is creative and something that takes us to a better
Maria Arpa: place. It's not just the
Joanne Lockwood: so these political tribes or that develop that that are invested
Joanne Lockwood: in it. There's also in many cases, you think about the
Joanne Lockwood: media or the observer or the reporter or whatever you
Joanne Lockwood: want to describe the person observing these two tribes with their different
Joanne Lockwood: views. If there's money to be made in clicks, in
Joanne Lockwood: advertising, in promotion of one view versus another view and it
Joanne Lockwood: becomes sort of self filling there. They're almost fueling the arguments of
Joanne Lockwood: division, making people become more polarized because they're they're
Joanne Lockwood: actively collecting people and pushing them to the side to say,
Joanne Lockwood: you have to decide whether you're for or against. And if you're for, you're on
Joanne Lockwood: this side of you, against you're on that side. And we have a whole political
Joanne Lockwood: media base that is pushing people to these edges and
Joanne Lockwood: not to the center to have the conversations. That's what that I mean, you know,
Maria Arpa: if I if I got really political about it, of course, it's
Maria Arpa: in a lot of people's interest to keep everyone fighting each
Maria Arpa: other because if if if we stop
Maria Arpa: fighting each other and we actually look at each other eye to
Maria Arpa: eye, we would look at the mainstream world
Maria Arpa: that that we're invested in, and we'd see
Maria Arpa: that there is this superficial
Maria Arpa: layer of governance and
Maria Arpa: rules and all the rest of it that we're all supposed to live up
Maria Arpa: to, and we all pretend we're living to that. But, of
Maria Arpa: course, we can see, you know, in the recent years, we
Maria Arpa: can see that actually it's a it's a very thin veneer that
Maria Arpa: doesn't exist. There are all sorts of
Maria Arpa: corruption and, you know, terrible things that have
Maria Arpa: happened that that we're starting to
Maria Arpa: see are more normal than we realized.
Joanne Lockwood: Again, I go back to I mentioned earlier in this humankind book. He
Joanne Lockwood: talks about the this reality TV myth.
Joanne Lockwood: The, you know, we we've got big brother. We've got I'm a Celebrity Get Me
Joanne Lockwood: Out of Here. Whatever whatever your chosen reality TV
Joanne Lockwood: habit is, inherently, if we put people in a room,
Joanne Lockwood: they're gonna start getting on with each other. But what we have to do is
Joanne Lockwood: then we have to create a a love triangle, deploy
Joanne Lockwood: people of food, create a competition, give someone
Joanne Lockwood: a fake hierarchy, put them in charge, have to defend that
Joanne Lockwood: position, give them the blame when things go wrong. We have to create that
Joanne Lockwood: social tension to to then stir up people into a way
Joanne Lockwood: that makes reality TV interesting. Otherwise people would just sit around there
Joanne Lockwood: having a cup of coffee and having a chat. So
Joanne Lockwood: it's they're creating the debate, not the
Joanne Lockwood: dialogue. And they're forcing the debate to occur, the polarization to
Joanne Lockwood: occur. And that's what I think the media do. The
Joanne Lockwood: government have invested interest in the masses
Joanne Lockwood: fighting amongst themselves or worrying about, you
Joanne Lockwood: know, keeping I I need my money. I need to be paid. I need a
Joanne Lockwood: roof over my head. Because if I suddenly had all that sorted,
Joanne Lockwood: there'd be no way of controlling me because I'm I'm independent.
Joanne Lockwood: Absolutely. You know, one of the things that I do
Maria Arpa: when I work with people is I show them that
Maria Arpa: most people in our mainstream society
Maria Arpa: have more power than we recognize. We
Maria Arpa: allow others to tell us that we are
Maria Arpa: powerless, and we allow
Maria Arpa: others to create stories of victimhood in
Maria Arpa: our position in the world that disempower
Maria Arpa: us, and there are very good reasons for holding people in that
Maria Arpa: place. Yeah. I've always thought the the world
Joanne Lockwood: is run by the 2 poll 2 polls. 1 being
Joanne Lockwood: the government, and then the other poll being, say, religion
Joanne Lockwood: for sake of argument or some sort of faith and belief that
Joanne Lockwood: sits in parallel. So you you need this to survive
Joanne Lockwood: economically, but you also need spiritual or or faith based. If you look
Joanne Lockwood: at, you know, if you look at tribes and people around the world, you have
Joanne Lockwood: the the the chief and the witch doctor, the chief and the medicine person or
Joanne Lockwood: whatever it was. And again, you're creating that power base
Joanne Lockwood: to to control people and to keep the incumbent
Joanne Lockwood: in privilege if you want. Yes. Absolutely.
Maria Arpa: To make sure that the people that hold the power retain the
Maria Arpa: power. And, you know, obviously,
Maria Arpa: it's been shown and it and it can happen where people who
Maria Arpa: have least amount of power decide to fight back and get
Maria Arpa: change, and and I'm all for that when
Maria Arpa: it's justified. But there are other things that
Maria Arpa: we need to do internally to find our own
Maria Arpa: empowerment to be able to look beyond, you know,
Maria Arpa: what you were talking about with the media and and this
Maria Arpa: addiction to watching other
Maria Arpa: people in adversarial positions,
Maria Arpa: watching the love triangle, watching the gossip,
Maria Arpa: watching one person triumph over another in the sub
Maria Arpa: diffuse. And that and it's there's a sort of it it does
Maria Arpa: something to the nervous system, and it creates an
Maria Arpa: addiction. And so one of the things that I find is
Maria Arpa: that by the time people come and see me,
Maria Arpa: often, the way they speak, because
Maria Arpa: their nervous system is so stressed, they speak
Maria Arpa: really quickly. And one of the first things we do is just
Maria Arpa: breathe. Just breathe to try and get off
Maria Arpa: the addiction to chaos and
Maria Arpa: stress. I found that when
Joanne Lockwood: I'm dealing with or talking to people who have something to
Joanne Lockwood: say, you've almost gotta let people have their say and then let them have
Joanne Lockwood: their say again, and then let them have their say again. And then and then
Joanne Lockwood: what eventually, you say you can calm people down. They
Joanne Lockwood: feel they've been listened to. They've been heard. And now you can shift it
Joanne Lockwood: from emotion to more logical thinking or to more
Joanne Lockwood: structured objective thinking, but you have to let the emotion out sometimes. You
Joanne Lockwood: have to meet people at that place. Otherwise, you you end up if
Joanne Lockwood: you don't let it out, you never let it out, and it it will always
Joanne Lockwood: be there. So I always call that an emptying out.
Maria Arpa: An emptying may take more than one session
Maria Arpa: because a person who hasn't been heard or has has no
Maria Arpa: evidence that they've been heard for most of their life
Maria Arpa: will need some time to empty out. And then when
Maria Arpa: only when the person's emptied out can we start
Maria Arpa: to connect as humans, start to build
Maria Arpa: that connection and safety,
Maria Arpa: and and then we can start to talk about what could be different.
Maria Arpa: So I have a I have a key principle that
Maria Arpa: a person needs to empty out and they need to trust that they've been
Maria Arpa: heard, and we need to demonstrate to them that they have been
Maria Arpa: heard, and then they need to receive
Maria Arpa: empathy. Like, empathy is really important.
Maria Arpa: And only when a person has received empathy, and empathy is
Maria Arpa: not sitting in the other person's shoes. Empathy is saying,
Maria Arpa: you come in all shades of dark and light.
Maria Arpa: You have you have a light part of you. You have a
Maria Arpa: shadow, and however you come today in
Maria Arpa: this moment is absolutely fine. We have
Maria Arpa: enough love for it. And only at that point have I found
Maria Arpa: then that can a a person or a group of people
Maria Arpa: go, I actually matter.
Maria Arpa: Oh, you know, now let's think what it could be what could be
Maria Arpa: different. Yeah. That's when I when I work with
Joanne Lockwood: companies around having challenging conversations and resolving
Joanne Lockwood: something, You really gotta be creating the right space for these
Joanne Lockwood: conversations. And sometimes it's better to
Joanne Lockwood: defer and say, actually, we get together to call it
Joanne Lockwood: quality time, private space, both be in the right
Joanne Lockwood: frame of mind. We both go there with resolution in mind, not
Joanne Lockwood: just a vent. Because sometimes we shoot from the hip, don't we? We we react
Joanne Lockwood: to that moment. The we're triggered. We
Joanne Lockwood: the the vagus nerve kicks in. Our adrenaline flows. We can put it in
Joanne Lockwood: our stomach, whatever it may be. So we've we've we've got us
Joanne Lockwood: come together at a place where we're both ready as well. Yes.
Maria Arpa: Absolutely. Then and then when we've reached that point
Maria Arpa: of connection and empathy and we've and we've
Maria Arpa: shown each other that there is enough love, no matter how bad it is, there's
Maria Arpa: enough love in this moment for both of us, for everyone.
Maria Arpa: Then we can start to you know, you said logical or rational.
Maria Arpa: So what I do is I like to divide divide it
Maria Arpa: up into 2 things. The first is what are the practical
Maria Arpa: issues here? You know, is there a systemic problem
Maria Arpa: that needs to be addressed addressed? You know, do we keep doing things in
Maria Arpa: a way that brings us back here, in which case there's a system
Maria Arpa: change? Maybe the framework that we built is no
Maria Arpa: longer fit for purpose. You know, there's the mechanics, the
Maria Arpa: business, the technical part of whatever it is,
Maria Arpa: and then there's how we feel about it.
Maria Arpa: And we must attend to both. Yeah. You're right.
Joanne Lockwood: We we've gotta satisfy both. And
Joanne Lockwood: I often talk about the, was it the 3 pillars of ancient
Joanne Lockwood: Greece of Aristotle? Was it egos, logos, and pathos?
Joanne Lockwood: You have to you have to sort of satisfy all of those, the ethical
Joanne Lockwood: compliance element, the logical outcome, as well as the
Joanne Lockwood: human factor, the pathos. And we've got to recognize that all of those things need
Joanne Lockwood: to be in place for us to come together as one. Because if we're
Joanne Lockwood: too heavily people focused, the other person may be compliance or logical
Joanne Lockwood: focused. So we've gotta recognize that we gotta meet people where they are and those
Joanne Lockwood: 3 pillars. Yes. And so often stopping
Maria Arpa: in those conversations and saying, okay. So
Maria Arpa: right now, where where are you now? You know? From from
Maria Arpa: where we were 10 minutes ago, has something shifted? What is
Maria Arpa: so we take it out of the head, and I get very into an
Maria Arpa: embodied what is going on through the body. What is your body
Maria Arpa: telling you? So what what I mean, I'm I'm I'm a relatively good,
Joanne Lockwood: excuse me, a relatively good theorist on this. I
Joanne Lockwood: find it harder to put it into practice myself because
Joanne Lockwood: it's easier to be a tennis coach than a tennis player because we can all
Joanne Lockwood: sit in a football stadium and be a better football manager than we are actually.
Joanne Lockwood: We've all got better ways of doing things. How do you find
Joanne Lockwood: putting into practice what you coach? Because I find it
Joanne Lockwood: really difficult sometimes to separate that that side of it. I know what I should
Joanne Lockwood: be doing, but I never quite manage it. So for me, it's a
Maria Arpa: practice, and it's been a a practice for the last 30 years, I would
Maria Arpa: say, perhaps even longer. And for the 1st 10 years of it, you
Maria Arpa: know, couldn't manage any of it. But I'd
Maria Arpa: say my insights have come thick and
Maria Arpa: fast in the last 10 years and in the last
Maria Arpa: 5 years, really taking the
Maria Arpa: time to reflect, really always going beyond
Maria Arpa: my current thinking. So, you know, one a a really good example of that is
Maria Arpa: once upon a time, if somebody presented me with something
Maria Arpa: that I couldn't understand, I might just
Maria Arpa: write it off. You know, if somebody went into the spiritual
Maria Arpa: realm and I wasn't there, I would just write it off.
Maria Arpa: You know? She this person's, you know, away with the angels
Maria Arpa: or whatever. What I've learned to do now
Maria Arpa: is to understand that maybe I haven't reached their point of
Maria Arpa: evolution. Maybe I'm so far
Maria Arpa: behind that it's not tangible for me and I reach it because
Maria Arpa: so many times I got there later on. And that's
Maria Arpa: a really wonderful thing to be. This is where I am today.
Maria Arpa: This is what I understand today, and I love for me, I
Maria Arpa: love sharing this. You know? That's my whole raison
Maria Arpa: d'etre, you know, is I like to share what I've learned
Maria Arpa: and put it out there and see if it's useful to anyone. I mean, you
Maria Arpa: know, the first time I went into a prison, I had
Maria Arpa: some ideas around gangs and conflict and violence
Maria Arpa: and, you know, I just someone said, oh, you know, you should bring this into
Maria Arpa: a prison, and I sat with 12 people who had, you
Maria Arpa: know, like, very, very long sentences. And and, you
Maria Arpa: know, what I said is, look, these are some things that I've learned and tried
Maria Arpa: out in the community over the last few years. I've come here to ask
Maria Arpa: you, is it any good? Not I've come here to teach you something.
Joanne Lockwood: I was enlightened, if you want, for for of a better word, by a person
Joanne Lockwood: who did a lot of work with the rough sleeping
Joanne Lockwood: community. So I I I would say I'm
Joanne Lockwood: still relatively ignorant around rough sleeping. It's not my field of
Joanne Lockwood: expertise. There's some things I picked up and it's a change of
Joanne Lockwood: nuance between homeless and rough sleeping. These people are
Joanne Lockwood: not homeless, they have a home. This is not the home that I would
Joanne Lockwood: identify with. It's not the home the government identify with, it's not the
Joanne Lockwood: home that society represents. Some people choose that
Joanne Lockwood: way of life. And when we have former former home secretaries
Joanne Lockwood: thinking the solution to rough sleeping is destroy the
Joanne Lockwood: tents, that's almost like carpet bombing Dresden by saying
Joanne Lockwood: if we carpet bomb we'll destroy the morale. Taking someone's tent
Joanne Lockwood: away isn't going to stop them living that life. There's
Joanne Lockwood: no rehabilitation, there's no encouragement there, it's just destruction
Joanne Lockwood: and creating conflict. So it's around trying to meet them where they
Joanne Lockwood: are. My understanding people who love sleep have complex
Joanne Lockwood: needs, the same as all of us, but food,
Joanne Lockwood: water, security, safety are the are the basic needs we all
Joanne Lockwood: have. How can we help these people to achieve
Joanne Lockwood: basic human standards without using our
Joanne Lockwood: privilege to look down and say, well, they must wanna live in a house or
Joanne Lockwood: maybe they don't. I, yeah, I can tell you a
Maria Arpa: very nice story about that, about some work I did in, in New York
Maria Arpa: a long time ago. And it was someone it was,
Maria Arpa: the organization I was working with provided shelter
Maria Arpa: for people who rough who were rough sleepers.
Maria Arpa: And they managed to find somewhere to live, a
Maria Arpa: more permanent place to live for this particular person. And then
Maria Arpa: 3 months later or 6 months later, he he
Maria Arpa: was he came by and and someone said, you know, how are you getting
Maria Arpa: on? And and he said, oh, terrible. Terrible.
Maria Arpa: So what what's happened? We've you know, you've got a home and you're off the
Maria Arpa: street. And he said, every day, I
Maria Arpa: worry about losing this key because I've never had owned a
Maria Arpa: key before. I mean, you didn't know that you could
Maria Arpa: get another one cut and all the rest of it, but, you know, that's all
Maria Arpa: about perceptions, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I've heard similar stories
Joanne Lockwood: that suddenly they've they've lost their community. They've lost their connection. They've
Joanne Lockwood: lost the people they hang out with, their their their support
Joanne Lockwood: network because they're now living in a premier inn somewhere in temporary
Joanne Lockwood: accommodation. And everybody they care and love for is is
Joanne Lockwood: not with them. And suddenly so you take them out of the heart of the
Joanne Lockwood: people that supported them and put them in this sterile environment
Joanne Lockwood: that's it's alien, has a key. What do they do with it? And and there
Maria Arpa: was something when I heard you talk because that's not a subject I know
Maria Arpa: much about, you know, and this using this term rough sleeping rather
Maria Arpa: than homelessness just really landed well for
Maria Arpa: me. It named something for me. And you're really
Maria Arpa: touching on how language controls.
Maria Arpa: Our use of language controls what
Maria Arpa: we see, how we see it, how we understand something,
Maria Arpa: and why that is so important because the way we use
Maria Arpa: language in the debate model is very violent. Yeah. Because
Joanne Lockwood: we're we it's adversarial. It's designed to hurt, isn't it? It's designed to
Joanne Lockwood: to win. It's designed to promote conflict or a
Joanne Lockwood: situation where you keep drilling into it and drilling into
Joanne Lockwood: it, not reconciliation language. Yes.
Maria Arpa: Absolutely. And and labeling people in
Maria Arpa: a way. You know? I mean, I think that there's a lot to answer for
Maria Arpa: in language of the verb to be. I think the verb to
Maria Arpa: be creates many, many problems
Maria Arpa: when we say, you know, you are angry, you
Maria Arpa: are narcissistic, when we
Maria Arpa: we describe an entire person's life by one
Maria Arpa: label. You are a murderer. Well, that's
Maria Arpa: really interesting because, generally, the act of
Maria Arpa: murdering someone may take a few minutes, and we may
Maria Arpa: be defining an entire person's existence
Maria Arpa: by an act that took a couple of minutes. I'm not
Maria Arpa: saying that that excuses it. I'm not saying that we don't
Maria Arpa: have conversations about injury, loss, and harm and
Maria Arpa: and, you know, compensation and what we're gonna do to put
Maria Arpa: things right. But it's really interesting. I think the
Maria Arpa: verb to be causes many problems in the
Maria Arpa: way that we use it. Yeah. As you're talking now, just reflecting on that
Joanne Lockwood: again, listening to the language, I am a
Joanne Lockwood: murderer. Actually, I was a murderer
Joanne Lockwood: when it happened. Yeah. But I'm not actually murdering
Joanne Lockwood: someone the second. So I am a person who took
Maria Arpa: someone's life. Yeah. So to say I am
Joanne Lockwood: is a very transient moment in time that
Joanne Lockwood: can change and evolve. And if you're not careful, you get stuck in the I
Joanne Lockwood: am where actually that's who I was,
Joanne Lockwood: who who I were. That's bad English in it. Who who was
Joanne Lockwood: I? So, yeah, it's it's recognizing the whole of somebody,
Joanne Lockwood: not just your perception or stereotype, isn't it? And even with
Maria Arpa: diagnosis, you know, I am autistic.
Maria Arpa: I'm a person with autism. We have to
Maria Arpa: start with I'm a person because one of the other
Maria Arpa: things that's happening in our society is
Maria Arpa: categorizing people and, you
Maria Arpa: know, making people less than by
Maria Arpa: titles and labels rather than you're a
Maria Arpa: human, I'm a human. You know, there is a really good book called The
Maria Arpa: Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szaszczak
Maria Arpa: because the idea of mental illness only
Maria Arpa: exists because a few people decided that people who act in a
Maria Arpa: certain way have got mental health problems. You know, it's a
Maria Arpa: big concept, but we need it's you know, this use of language is
Maria Arpa: really important. Maybe there's supposed to
Maria Arpa: be a variety of people acting in different ways and
Maria Arpa: with things that maybe I can't understand.
Maria Arpa: So and maybe maybe it's all okay.
Maria Arpa: And then we can just look at injury loss and harm.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I'm with you on that. I mean, I often think about the
Joanne Lockwood: term neurodiverse or neurotypical. Mhmm. I
Joanne Lockwood: think in our evolution as a species,
Joanne Lockwood: did someone actually say to us that we had to sit down and read a
Joanne Lockwood: book or write something or develop a report or
Joanne Lockwood: sort something or have conversations or paint?
Joanne Lockwood: We've we've kind of created this social constructs of how we're supposed to
Joanne Lockwood: behave. Whereas our human evolution, we had different
Joanne Lockwood: people who were good at different things. Dyslexia.
Joanne Lockwood: Can't read a book. Can't read words. What in my human evolution
Joanne Lockwood: of 3,300,000 years ago was writing and
Joanne Lockwood: reading ever on the evolutionary times go? It's something that has occurred
Joanne Lockwood: probably in the last 100 years, a 150 years since people
Joanne Lockwood: expected to read and write. Going back previous to a 150
Joanne Lockwood: years, many people who lived in poverty would never
Joanne Lockwood: ever been allowed or chosen to read or write.
Joanne Lockwood: Girls, certainly not. So, yeah, it's just suddenly society is now
Joanne Lockwood: saying, well, this is what a typical human should be. Oh, yes.
Joanne Lockwood: Let evolution catch up. So I see I
Maria Arpa: see this, shift and I've seen it. And for having done a lot
Maria Arpa: of work on housing estates, council estates,
Maria Arpa: and and looking over the years, what I see
Maria Arpa: is there are 2 sort of tracks that are
Maria Arpa: creating aiming to create the model citizen.
Maria Arpa: And the first one is antisocial behaviour. So we have
Maria Arpa: this track of antisocial behaviour. I went into a school and there
Maria Arpa: was a sign in the dining room that said
Maria Arpa: pushing in the queue is antisocial behavior
Maria Arpa: to 14 year olds. You know? Okay. Let's not go. That's a whole
Maria Arpa: another workshop. But, okay, so so antisocial
Maria Arpa: behaviour, if you go to a public meeting
Maria Arpa: and you start yelling because you can't get hurt, you
Maria Arpa: it's antisocial behaviour. The other one is mental
Maria Arpa: health issues. So as soon as if you go to a meeting
Maria Arpa: and you start yelling, somebody somewhere is going,
Maria Arpa: so this person's got mental health issues. And so
Maria Arpa: the the the the box is getting
Maria Arpa: narrower and narrower of what makes you normal. Yeah.
Maria Arpa: And this is really of normality shrinking, isn't it? Yeah. Yes.
Maria Arpa: The normality. What's normal is shrinking.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Yeah. And we're all normal. Because I think
Joanne Lockwood: yeah. We we we just ask, as you say, go away from that I am,
Joanne Lockwood: and and it's it's it's almost like this collection or hierarchy
Joanne Lockwood: of adjectives to describe yourself. And before you
Joanne Lockwood: know it, being human is so far down the pile.
Joanne Lockwood: It's you've been lost in tall, fat, thin, skinny,
Joanne Lockwood: autistic, disabled, trans, non binary, whatever you
Joanne Lockwood: wanna put in there. African, British.
Joanne Lockwood: So you're questioning these adjectives, and human should be at
Joanne Lockwood: the top, shouldn't it? And and people have been persuaded
Maria Arpa: to queue up and get their label. Yeah. That's that's what's
Maria Arpa: worrying is where where, you know,
Maria Arpa: the the the statutory agencies of society
Maria Arpa: are persuading people that it's a really good thing to
Maria Arpa: get a label because then you can get some
Maria Arpa: rights. And then and and not seeing
Maria Arpa: that the long term damage of that when we just need
Maria Arpa: to start as human and we need to a better
Maria Arpa: sharing of resources. Is that linked to
Joanne Lockwood: impostor syndrome or being valid? You know, so if I don't have a
Joanne Lockwood: diagnosis or a bit of paper to say who I
Joanne Lockwood: am, who am I? We need that
Joanne Lockwood: to to well, maybe we need that to join our
Joanne Lockwood: collective support group in order to be part of this
Joanne Lockwood: belief system and and and social construct. I need to be
Joanne Lockwood: valid enough. Otherwise, I try and knock on the door and go, Well,
Joanne Lockwood: you're just self diagnosing there. We're not sure about you until you got a bit
Joanne Lockwood: of paper to say you're you're you're good enough for us. It becomes this, again,
Joanne Lockwood: hierarchy of good enough, doesn't it? Well and also it means
Maria Arpa: that we're rationing healing. Yeah.
Maria Arpa: Healing is rationed, and it's only given out to those who can
Maria Arpa: prove that they need it. Yeah. Yeah. I was seeing a a
Joanne Lockwood: lot of short shortage in diagnosis for people with neurodiversity,
Joanne Lockwood: ADHD, autism. People need the validation,
Joanne Lockwood: though. They need to have the bit of paper. They need to be able to
Joanne Lockwood: go to their employer, go to their their family and friends and say, look. It's
Joanne Lockwood: official. I'm officially diagnosed. And I I can I
Joanne Lockwood: can I can relate to it? And people doing that, and I'm okay because that's
Maria Arpa: just political savvy. It's just the way you need to navigate
Maria Arpa: the system. I'm I'm saying though that the
Maria Arpa: leaders that are that are
Maria Arpa: pushing this agenda need to look at the long term
Maria Arpa: damage that will come back on them too.
Joanne Lockwood: Mhmm. Because people could become so transfixed on this
Joanne Lockwood: identity and this tribal,
Joanne Lockwood: if you like, support through that identity that
Joanne Lockwood: it becomes very difficult to sort of to engage without bringing that part of
Joanne Lockwood: your lived experience into the conversation or the debate or the
Joanne Lockwood: discussion. So yeah. Yeah. What what a mess we
Joanne Lockwood: created, social consciousness. Isn't it? Isn't it? I mean, and
Maria Arpa: and the the the truth of it is, you know, the more I meditate,
Maria Arpa: the more I reflect, the more I, you know, go back over the way
Maria Arpa: I've led my life and the things that I wanna change and the healing
Maria Arpa: processes. Life is actually incredibly simple.
Maria Arpa: Life is really, really simple, but for some
Maria Arpa: reason, we seem to have made a complete and utter
Maria Arpa: mess of complication that's
Maria Arpa: that's you know? And this is my work. My work is the alleviation of
Maria Arpa: unnecessary human suffering. You know, some
Maria Arpa: some human suffering is going to happen. No one promised birth to
Maria Arpa: death was gonna be a fun ride, But there's
Maria Arpa: a whole heap of unnecessary human suffering that
Maria Arpa: we just keep repeating. And on that, don't worry. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: That's brilliant. That's fantastic. So this is the end of our
Joanne Lockwood: conversation. It's been fascinating again. How
Joanne Lockwood: can people get hold of you if they want to find out more? Oh, yeah.
Maria Arpa: I love you know, I'm always open. I love hearing from people, and I like
Maria Arpa: to converse and talk about, you know, whatever workplaces
Maria Arpa: and and communities, and basically
Maria Arpa: just Google my name. I happen to have an unusual name, Maria
Maria Arpa: Arpa, A-R-P-A. And if you just Google my
Maria Arpa: name, I come up. And whichever website you
Maria Arpa: find, you know, you'll find your way to me. I, you know, I do answer
Maria Arpa: my own emails. So I'd love to hear from anyone that
Maria Arpa: was moved, inspired, or or aggravated
Maria Arpa: by this conversation. I would too. I'd love to love to get some reactions.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Fascinating. So I noticed on the on the show notes, you've got
Joanne Lockwood: centerforpeacefulsolutions.org. Is your website.
Joanne Lockwood: So search for Maria Arpa. Yeah. That's
Maria Arpa: for peace. Anyway, just Google my name. I come up.
Maria Arpa: And that's just been wonderful, Jo. I mean, really, we went
Maria Arpa: there. It's been really fantastic. Thank you
Maria Arpa: so much. Alright. The thing that jumps out at me, if if obviously, if you're
Joanne Lockwood: still listening, the thing that jumps out at me from the 3 recordings we've tried,
Joanne Lockwood: this is the final one, is each time we've talked about Tom Hanks and
Joanne Lockwood: Wilson. We've managed to get that into all three recordings
Joanne Lockwood: organically without it being forced, which is which is fascinating. So there's obviously
Joanne Lockwood: something going on there about living on a desert island Yes. With a football.
Maria Arpa: Fantastic. Maria, thank you. Thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to
Joanne Lockwood: express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for
Joanne Lockwood: lending your ear and heart to the cause of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord.
Joanne Lockwood: Consider subscribing to Inclusion Bites and become part
Joanne Lockwood: of our ever growing community, driving real change.
Joanne Lockwood: Share this journey with friends, family, and colleagues. Let's amplify
Joanne Lockwood: the voices that matter. Got thoughts,
Joanne Lockwood: stories, or a vision to share? I'm all ears.
Joanne Lockwood: Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk,
Joanne Lockwood: and let's make your voice heard. Until next time. This
Joanne Lockwood: is Joanne Lockwood signing off for the promise to return
Joanne Lockwood: with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire,
Joanne Lockwood: and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world,
Joanne Lockwood: one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.