Here's a cure for late-night doomscrolling that no app can offer: real conversation with real people.
You know the feeling. It's 11:30, the house is quiet, and we're still scrolling, waiting for something the feed never quite provides. Or we're at a party, deep in small talk, feeling lonelier than when we arrived.
We're not alone in feeling this way. In 2024, San Mateo County became the first county in the U.S. to declare loneliness a public health emergency. A year bofore, in 2023, the Surgeon General issued a report stating that loneliness was epidemic in America and as harmful to longevity as cigarette smoking. That same year, the Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that “Only 10% of all adults have a great deal of confidence in organized religion, a percentage that has been in steady decline in recent years, with confidence now at half of what it was in 2016.”
And here's the point: Everyone needs not just community and human connection; we need community and human connection that feeds our desire for purpose, meaning, beauty, and truth, celebration, awe, laughter, and sometimes, a shoulder to cry on. Not shall interraction. Deep community. Community that is alive with what matters, with all that is truly valuable to our happiness and wellbeing.
That's why Family Tree Meidation is offering Deep Community Groups.
Join a Deep Community Group in the New Year!
For our Group on Tuesdays from 4 to 6 pm, January 5 to June 15 2027:
For our Group on Wednesdays from 4:30 to 6 pm, January 6 to June 16 2027:
Each group meets once a week for two hours over 24 weeks. Together we explore the adventure of life: what matters most, what moves us, what we're struggling with and celebrating. The conversations are face-to-face, varied, often funny, sometimes profound, and structured to empower us to discover all the ways our connections are alive and nourishing to the heart, soul, and health of everyone of us.
No posturing, no networking. Just a place to belong.
I've come to believe the phone isn't really the problem. Our challenge is meeting our human need to live a meaning-rich life of connection with others in exploration of our full potential, in celebration of our adventures, and in solidarity through our trials. When we make space to enjoy deep community with each other, week after week, the pull of the screen gets weaker. Join us, and I bet you'll find yourself putting that cell phone to bed earlier and earlier.
You can register simply by clicking one of the registration buttons to the right! We look forward to having you join us.
Share this with others you know who are looking to cultivate a more vibrant ecology of deep community in their lives.
Attorney-Mediator Hank Edson is responsible for the information provided in this video and caption, which is for educational purposes only under California law and does not create an attorney-client relationship or mediator-client relationship and does not constitute legal advice.
Whether you're asking for a divorce, approaching your elderly parents about assisted living, dealing with adult siblings unhappy about the administration of your parents' estate, impatient to take your relationship with your sweetheart to the next level, or navigating any emotionally charged issue where there is a difference in perspective, the hardest thing about initiating a difficult conversation is that opening the issue makes you "the HOST." And being host comes with an etiquette. First, a host extends an invitation that not only includes the invited person in the anticipated conversation, but also includes the other person’s perspective. Second, a host makes the anticipated conversation a safe place. Finally, third, a host listens first and shares later. Of course, it’s good for guests to practice these good manners too, which is why it is important for the host to set a good example for the difficult conversation to be successful. What are ways you model good etiquette in difficult conversations? Please share in the comments below, and follow us for more reels about the etiquette of a good invitation, making your conversations feel safe, and the skills involved in listening and sharing.
Also, sometimes, families need the support of a neutral venue for difficult conversations, where no one has to play the host and a mediator is there to help everyone show up in the best possible way practicing their best etiquette. That’s what we’re here for. If you need help, give us a call.
Attorney-Mediator Hank Edson is responsible for the information provided in this video and caption, which is for educational purposes only under California law and does not create an attorney-client relationship or mediator-client relationship and does not constitute legal advice.
If you are experiencing conflict in your life you need help navigating, such as divorce or a dispute with your siblings about caring for your parents or handling their estate or differences with your young adult children, the thing that makes all the difference is shifting from a mindset in which each person reacts from a place of feeling vulnerable and alone to a mindset where each person has confidence that “we’re all in it together.”
When we're all in it together, we buy-in to the principle that everyone’s needs, experience, and contributions matter equally. We let go of the mindset that identifies with isolation and separateness, we let go of the compulsion to control. We recognize that there is an ecological genius at work in the whole of our family, community, society...whatever group we're a part of, that is greater than that of any one individual, that is greater than the sum of its parts. When we appreciate the greater genius of the whole to which we belong, each person's contributions, experience, and needs suddenly becomes vested with an irreplacable value to everyone else. We need each person's input and happiness to fulfill the formula that nature invests for the wellbeing of all us who are "in it together." This is the magic of collaboration.
When we need to control things out of a feeling that our isolated, separateness needs to be protected, we miss out on experiencing the profound ways in which our separate needs are better protected by the genius of the whole than by our efforts as people who feel ourselves to be separate and alone. Why is this so? It is so because a word of separate individuals who are not "all in it together" is a world in conflict and a world populated by people operating from fear and the limitations of their own experience, which is unavoidably distorted in all kinds of ways. In such a climate, our individual needs are far more vulnerable than when we give up control in favor of a "We're all in it together" mindset that is confident in our collective, collaborative ability to take care of everyone in fair and beautiful and profoundly satisfying ways.
Making this shift and keeping the right mindset takes practice, which is where mediation can be so helpful. Mediators are people who coach people trying to practice having difficult conversations with a “We’re all in it together” mindset. No matter what the context you find yourself in, if you are having a difficult convesation that is going from bad to worse, odds are that the reason is the participants need help practicing a "We're all in it together" mindset, which is exactly what Family Tree Mediation is here to offer: help. Give us a call. We can help.
FDR told us a long time ago, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Our fear and discomfort with uncertainty drive us to try to control things that can't really be controlled. This fruitless strategy doesn’t protect us, but it does put us in conflict with reality in a harmful way.
When we learn to apply ourselves to what we can control by investing in thoughtful preparation and then trust in the goodness of the nature of what cannot be controlled, we more fully open ourselves to receive that goodness than we do by fearfully slamming the door in its face.
And there is sound logic for trusting in the goodness of the nature we cannot control. After all, the nature we can control, our own, we know to embody a goodness it only makes sense to conclude is universal.
We also said a long time ago that it was a self-evident truth that all people are created equal. This means, among other things, that we recognize that within our hearts we all share an equally good essence that only tends to get distorted by the strategies aiming at an illegitimate control.
And we only pursue these distorting strategies out of a fear that leads us to act irrationally and in discord with our own nature. It’s not easy to learn to be comfortable with not being in charge, with uncertainty, with vulnerability, but the more we do, the more we learn that the ecological dynamics of life to which we all contribute equally enable us to embody goodness in a way that empowers us to live in happy and fulfilling relationship with each other and all life.
Cultivating clear eyes, and open mind, and a welcoming heart thus really does make a huge difference. One of the most effective ways to do this is by practicing constructive communication rooted in a confident appreciation of the goodness at the heart of every person we converse with no matter how many apparent conflicts we may share with them. In this way, mediation too can be transformative.
If a conflict is presently making you feel afraid, perhaps Family Tree Mediation can help you navigate it with the confidence and preparation capable of transforming a painful dynamic into a deeply meaningful one.
Attorney-Mediator Hank Edson is responsible for the information provided in this video and caption, which is for educational purposes only under California law and does not create an attorney-client relationship or mediator-client relationship and does not constitute legal advice.
These are feel good songs, songs with good advice, and motivational songs that focus and heighten my energy and passion for life. The message and the vibe. Both are key! When you're going through change and clarifying what you want most out of the next stage in life, a celebratory sound track is essential. Family Tree Mediation put this together just for that purpose.
I recently came across a video of the 1999 induction celebration of Mr. Rogers’ into the television hall of fame. I stand in awe of Mr. Rogers because like no other human being I can recall, he achieved an outlier level of greatness – a game changing achievement – through absolute gentleness. When we think of rebels and revolutionaries, people who bucked trends, spurned conventions, and refused to conform to social pressures of all kinds, particularly when we think of men, we think of James Dean types, punk rockers, or even the rising momentum of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s oratory. But, of course, in some sense these types are conforming in their nonconformity to the gender stereotype of what a man is supposed to be. And, the problem with that stereotype (which is not necessarily the problem of the leaders who fall into it) is that it does not look deeper into what a human being is supposed to be.
Mr. Rogers did not simply repeat the structures of gender stereotypes in demonstrating his value as a human being. Instead, he understood that human beings needed to risk developing their capacity for gentleness in order to achieve our fullest capacity for greatness.
We all know what it’s like to NOT want to share our feelings. We know the vulnerability, imbalance, unpredictability, and wild nature the feelings by themselves often embody. We know their subjectivity, and the ease with which they may be ridiculed and judged. We know how challenging they make maintaining strategic control when other important things are also at stake. And we know that in many cultural contexts, feelings are also taboo as either unprofessional, effeminate , or simply bad taste. The cards are basically stacked against us putting our feelings on the table.
But it turns out, keeping our feelings out of a difficult conversation is actually more risky, not less, than putting them in it.
Consider the following points:
~ Unexpressed feelings can leak into the conversation through one’s affect, tone of voice, body language, facial expression, withdrawal, distance, sarcasm, impatience, defensiveness, and unpredictability.
~ Unexpressed feelings can burst uncontrolled into conversation once they have built up such intensity that we are unable to contain them any longer.
~ Unexpressed feelings make it difficult to listen because all our psychic energy is consumed in simultaneously keeping them in check and seeking their relief.
~ Unexpressed feelings take a toll on our self-esteem and relationships as you judge yourself for not sticking up for yourself and deny others the opportunity to step up in response to your sharing.
All of these aspects of unexpressed feelings can seriously hurt our chances of achieving a resolution to a conflict that serves our best interests.
In “The What Happened Conversation, Part 1,” I suggested that our lack of experience skillfully navigating difficult conversations all too often leads us to conclude that we are damned if we do (pardon my French), and damned if we don’t. For this reason we are prone to adopt a strategy of avoidance, choosing to let the perceived doom of a looming conflict come and get us, rather than to actively assist that doom along by seeking it out and opening it up for discussion.
But, as I discussed, the flaw in this approach is that our history of making a bad situation worse by rolling head-long into it does not mean that the problem lies in choosing to engage rather than to avoid. What it means, actually, is that we have to engage the conflict in a skillful way. Avoidance will eventually blow up in our face. Yet picking up the ticking conflict bomb without preparation for disarming it, also means it will blow up in our face. Fortunately, disarmament skills can be acquired.
Last time, we looked at the skill of holding the “And-Stance” posture when initiating a difficult conversation at the What Happened layer, the surface layer of three layers present in every difficult conversation, the surface where the facts of who, what, where, when, how, and why are discussed.
The "And-Stance" is a skill that can help you avoid the truth assumption pitfall—the pitfall wherein you approach the conflict with an either/or mindset that assigns exclusive right to the truth to one of you or the other. Since you can plainly see the errors of the other, that means you must be the one who's right, right?
They are all too common, those difficult conversations we would do almost anything to avoid. And though we do try our best to avoid them, that never seems to work. Sooner or later, we get cornered by a situation grown intolerable for at least one of the parties in the mix. If no one musters up the courage to dive into the situation, someone eventually “breaks” and the vectors of the conflict fly across the room from every angle. Chaos ensues. The perils of avoiding a difficult conversation are many and complex and they merit separate attention. Today, however, I want to think about why we are tempted to embrace avoidance in the first place.
I would like to venture the hypothesis that the temptation to embrace avoidance arises not just because conversations about painful conflicts are hard. Even if such conflicts are hard, if they were reliably successful in achieving a constructive outcome, no one would choose the inevitable failure of avoidance over the promise of eventually getting what we want in exchange for facing sooner rather than later the challenges ahead.
Instead, I think the reason we are tempted to embrace avoidance is that we have so much experience messing things up worse whenever we try to talk about triggering and difficult issues. Based on this experience, we cannot help but feel doomed either way, and therefore we are less inclined to speed our unhappy fate along by opening up the dangerous subject. You may end up catching me, we say to the situation, but I’m certainly not going to help you do it!
Well, let's see if we can find a more hopeful approach to our plight.
Last time, I talked about all the ways sharing feelings feels unsafe and why it’s actually more risky to keep feelings out of a difficult conversation than it is to put them in it. I also explained that this “feelings layer” of the conversation was only part of the anatomy of any difficult conversation, there also being a “what happened layer” and an “identity layer.” Finally, I noted that the directors of the Harvard Negotiation Project whose book, Difficult Conversation, presents this anatomy, recommend a three-step process for including feelings in any difficult conversation in a manner that is both wise and self-possessed. These steps are:
1.) Sort out your feelings for yourself;
2.) Negotiate with your feelings; and
3.) Share your feelings without judgment or attribution.
Last time, I also offered my thoughts on how to sort out your feelings for yourself in a meaningful way. Today, I’d like to offer some insight into the process of negotiating with your feelings and also how to share your feelings without judgment or attribution.
Negotiating with Your Feelings
The idea that you can negotiate with your feelings at first seems a little ridiculous. It sounds a little bit like playing a game of chess by yourself – playing the black knight, pretending you don’t know the white queen’s countermove. The suggestion seems to be that you should be the instigator of your own psychological manipulation. But in fact, it’s not as bad or crazy as it seems.
When we experience difficult conflicts, part of the reason they are difficult is that we are not just confronting someone else; we are also confronting ourselves. One common form of conflict involves us receiving feedback that is painful to us. We find ourselves objecting to whatever it is, unwilling to accept delivery of the message being sent to us, in conflict with it.
What we are so often unable to understand is that there is a reason for our strong reaction to such feedback: the feedback challenges a story we tell ourselves about ourselves, about the way we show up as a human being in the world. We all need confirmation that we are competent, good and lovable people. This sense of ourselves is our identity. Over time, we develop identity stories that explain why and to what extent we are competent, good and loveable beings. But at times, we are confronted with feedback that is difficult to face because it suggests we are not who we thought we were, we are not who we have claimed to be to ourselves. Confronting ourselves in this way is no picnic.
Figuring out how to cope with such identity confrontations is one of the great offerings contained in one of my favorite books, Difficult Conversations.
Hank Edson, J.D. 
