DEMYSTIFYING DISTRESS

Receive tools that will help you be trauma-informed, accessible, equitable, and inclusive to all. Most importantly, these are tools that can help you move through distress in a trauma-informed way instead of having it derail the conflict resolution process (and ruin your day)

Recorded on May 14th, 2024
3.5 Hours

FREE ACCESS

TOPICS INCLUDE:

  • Anticipating and Understanding Distress
  • Creating Bias-Resistant Boundaries for Challenging Behaviors
  • Overcoming Avoidance and Promoting Practicing Self-Care to Manage Your Own Distress

We all experience emotional distress sometimes, especially during conflicts. And when people experience emotional distress, everything can spin out of control. Even the most seasoned dispute resolution professionals may find themselves overwhelmed while trying to balance the clashes that occur when some distressed parties start shutting down and others begin blowing up. The professionals, themselves, may have their own distress – maybe the conflict reminds them of something in their own lives or perhaps they feel personally attacked or nervous that things are escalating beyond what they can handle.

Amidst these traumatic breakdowns, many practitioners and clients are tempted to disengage, give up, and write some people off as impossible to have a “normal” connection with. This Demystifying Distress program is all about shifting our normal so we can [1] understand ways distress manifests differently for different people, and [2] take a trauma-informed approach to working with those differences – all while setting appropriate, transparent boundaries for challenging behaviors (ones that are equitable to ensure people aren’t treated differently due to unconscious or systemic biases).

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INSTRUCTORS

Dan Berstein, MHC

Dan founded the Mental Health Safe Project as part of MH Mediate, to provide free resources to help people respond to everyday instances of mental illness discrimination.

Stephen Kotev

Stephen Kotev is a Washington D.C.-based conflict resolution consultant offering mediation, negotiation and facilitation services, conflict and leadership coaching, training, and somatic education to private and government clients (including TSA and over 15 other Federal Agencies) since 2009. For the past 13 years, he has served as adjunct faculty at George Mason University’s Carter School in Arlington, Virginia.

Joanne Saint Louis

As the Director of Diversity Outreach at JAMS, Joanne Saint Louis works collaboratively across JAMS to further the organization’s diversity and inclusion goals. Her key responsibilities include bringing on high-caliber, diverse neutrals to the JAMS panel and working with law firms, in-house counsel and affinity bar organizations to diversify the selection of mediators and arbitrators. She is based in the Atlanta Resolution Center.

Marya C. Coleman

Director of Mediation Services for the Franklin County Domestic Relations and Juvenile Court. She serves as an adjunct professor with the Moritz College of Law for the Interprofessional Collaboration and the Family and Divorce Mediation classes.

David Reinman

Supervisory ADR Coordinator for the U.S. EEOC's New York District Mediation Program. Advocating accessibility and empowerment for parties in mediation.

Clare Fowler, PhD

Clare Fowler is Executive Vice-President and Managing Editor at Mediate.com, as well as a mediator and trainer. Clare received her Master's of Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine University School of Law and her Doctorate in Organizational Leadership, focused on reducing workplace conflicts, from Pepperdine University School of Education.