Intro to Process-Oriented Psychology w/ Dr. Gary Reiss

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Announcer: There are few things that make people successful. Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some time to get there. How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you? Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek. Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward. Now here is Chris Meek.

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Chris Meek: Hello. I'm Chris Meek, and you've tuned to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward. As always, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Our guest today is Dr. Gary Reiss. He's a licensed clinical social worker and certified trainer in process-oriented psychology and private practice in Eugene and Portland, Oregon. He has taught process-oriented psychology worldwide for more than 35 years. Specialties include family therapy, sex therapy, working with coma patients, working hotspots in the world, organizational development, and integrating process work with different spiritual traditions.

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Dr. Reiss is the director of the International Peace Group and the founder and director of the Rivers Way Community Clinic in Portland, Oregon. In addition to finding the time to do all that, he's the author of 14, yes, count that, 14 books, including Healing History, Process-Oriented Facilitation, and Getting off the Wheel-A Process-Oriented Approach to Personal and World Liberation. Dr. Gary Reiss, welcome to Next Steps Forward.

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Gary Reiss: Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having me here, Chris.

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Chris: I'm just trying to figure out, the show is a show of firsts, and you're the first person I've had on that's written 14 books, so there's something else we can check the box on.

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Dr. Reiss: [chuckles]

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Chris: Gary, let's get right into it. People normally try to avoid conflicts, especially because they are so exhausting. What drew you to want to put yourself into the middle of all sorts of conflict, day in and day out?

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Dr. Reiss: First of all, Chris, if we learn to master how to work with conflict, they're not exhausting. They can even be energizing. What drew me, I think, first of all, I grew up in a family-- Sometimes they ask me, how can you stand all the tension when you work with Israelis and Palestinians? I said, "You were never at the breakfast table [chuckles] when I was growing up, when my grandfather and everybody would come over." I grew up in a multi-generational household where there was a lot of verbal conflict. I've always been interested in working on that stuff. I don't really know why.

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When I studied process-oriented psychology, a big part of it is around conflict work. We have these big gatherings every three years, and that's been going on at least 25 years, called World Work, where we bring together about 60 different countries, people from 60 countries, and we work on all the world's conflicts. Those groups can be anywhere from 200 to 700 people all working at once. I feel like that really brought me to conflict work.

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The other thing is what happened, and I think we'll hopefully talk about that later, what happened in the Israeli-Palestinian work. That was really the turning point for me in terms of international work. If you can sit with like two countries at war, then when you have to go into like a corporation or a school, it's pretty mild, actually.

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Chris: Conflict resolution obviously isn't anything new. In fact, its origin can be traced back to the earliest human societies. How has the profession evolved over the years, and how has it remained the same, and especially during the several decades that you've been practicing conflict resolution?

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Dr. Reiss: That's interesting. When the founder of the psychology I do, which is process-oriented psychology, did some conflict work for the First Nation tribe, the Haida Nation in Canada, they watched this work and they said, "Oh, that's just like our work." Really, a lot of what we're rediscovering is ancient wisdom. There's a lot of indigenous cultures that have had methods of conflict work for centuries. Some of those have been lost.

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On the other hand, certainly our work is evolving. I remember a moment where we were facilitating with a lot of Native American and First Nation leaders, and one of the First Nation leaders said, "Oh, we don't do that direct conflict." He said, "I'm walking out of the room." Another leader said, "We need this new stuff. What we've got's not working anymore with some of the younger people." I think that's one of the changes, is we really allow a lot of heat.

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I remember when some other leaders of conflict work in Israel and Palestine came to watch my work, and they said, "Well, we've seen all this. We're walking out," I said, "Stay for 15 minutes." They stayed, and they said, "Chris," they said, "we've never seen anything like that. We've never seen a method that can facilitate so much heat." I think that's the first big innovation, was that we work with a lot of heat and how to do that successfully.

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The second big innovation came about 10 years ago. The founder of this work decided that it was still too difficult for people. He founded what he called the second training. The second training is much more internal, meditative kinds of work around world work, and I think that was a huge change, is to not only be able to have that heat, but to be able to have a more internal inner work. He always called it sitting in the fire, Arnold Mandel, the founder of it. I call it now sitting in the fire with a cool head.

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Chris: I love that. You do a lot of work between conflict at so many levels, couples, families, corporations, cities, countries. That's a very wide range of groups. Is it fair to say that all conflicts have similarities in all differences? If there are differences, are they simply connected to the number of people involved?

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Dr. Reiss: First of all, in the end of April, or the month of April, I launched this new program called 12 Steps in Conflict Work. Those 12 steps, which start with assessment and then communication work, conflict work with individuals, group conflict work, then deep inner work, envisioning work, and then coming out of that and taking action and following up, those steps exist pretty much in every situation.

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However, the real difference, the number of people, we always say that after it goes over about 200 or 150, it doesn't really matter. There's definitely a difference in a small group and as the groups get bigger. The biggest difference is on the amount of heat you're working with. You have to adjust your method to the amount of heat. Also, the way people go through steps can be very different. There's core similarities. You're using the same tools, but you have to apply them really differently.

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The other thing is, where there's been a lot of trauma, you have to do what I call trauma-informed work. That's different. You have to be much more sensitive to not re-triggering people in the group.

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Chris: You've mentioned heat a few times. Why don't you give our listeners and viewers your definition of what you view heat as?

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Dr. Reiss: Heat, the first thing about heat is just the emotional intensity. One of the things we do is called Open Forums, where we go into cities and we work on the hottest issue in those cities. We'll often ask the group, how much intensity can you handle? A little bit? A moderate amount? A lot? We'll try to fine-tune to that.

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By intensity, two things. One, the amount of emotion present. I've facilitated in groups where it's basically quiet and a few people talk, and I've facilitated in groups where it exploded within the first few minutes. I'm trying to present a little theory, and it's already exploded. That's what I mean by heat. The other thing about heat is the amount of potential for violence. This work is based on no harm, and so if I'm working in an area where a riot could break out easily or something like that, then I have to modify the work, and so that's a certain level of heat.

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I remember once I was watching a facilitator internationally known in Israel facilitating between Israeli and Palestinians, and he didn't really know what he was doing in that amount of heat. He worked in cool areas. I jumped in because I thought there was going to be a riot with hundreds of people, and I thought at the end he was going to be really angry with me. He walked up to me and he said, "I don't know who you are, but thank goodness." He said, "I've never worked with that emotional intensity around issues. I had no idea what to do." That's what I mean by heat. One is the amount of emotion, and two is the amount of potential violence.

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Chris: You mentioned rioting there for a couple times as an example. When would somebody bring you in? Because riots just typically break out. It's not something that's usually planned because that could be too late, obviously.

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Dr. Reiss: It's just that the amount of an issue is so hot that if that issue escalates to a certain point, you might have violence. A lot of what our training is is we catch things at a really low heat. We call that a hot spot. You can track it. Things don't go from zero to 90. All of a sudden, everybody's having a nice time and everybody's introducing themselves and suddenly there's a riot. It's usually that you've missed all those escalating signals.

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Once we were working in an Arab village in Israel, and I'm teaching, and my wife's teaching with me, and all of a sudden the mayor comes in and says, you have to leave right now and come to a protest. I was like, "Well, that's a little complicated, because I got all these people here." He said, "It's absolutely necessary." I said, "Can I bring all my students?" He said, "Yes." We're suddenly in like this sort of circus tent. We're processing this issue around weapons and missiles or something. There were all these rumors.

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We processed all of it. We cleared it. A lot of people cleared stuff up and apologized. It was an amazing thing. Afterwards, he wrote me that if we hadn't been there would have been a riot, that the people were so angry. The rumors were so vicious. That's one of the things, Chris, is you get the hot zone, the rumors start to fly, and the rumors themselves. If you can get in there and clear things up, you can prevent a lot of violence.

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Chris: I'm fascinated by your work with people who are

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in a comatose state. What do you do? How can, or does it help them?

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Dr. Reiss: Well, that's interesting. That's a big part of this work. The basic idea is that person is still present. They're just not present like you and me. We've got to figure out how to connect with those people. We connect through their subtle signals, the little tiny things they do, we consider meaningful. Then we figure out what perceptual channel are they using mostly? Are they seeing? Are they hearing? Are they feeling? Are they moving? Are they relating? Once we can find where they are, then we have a GPS to work and bring out those signals. That's a lot of the work.

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Then we also connect with them around what we call binary feedback, like we find a way that they can move their finger or take a breath, deep breath for a yes and no. Literally, at a certain point, I'm sort of doing therapy, and I'm finding out why they might want to stay in that coma, what it would take to come back. Sometimes the work doesn't do much, but I've had a whole number of people that were given zero to 5% chance where they were trying to pull them off life support or something, come back all the way. It's pretty powerful work.

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I ran into a friend once at a festival in Eugene. He's a very happy guy. He's a doctor. I said, "What's the matter?" He said, "Oh, my father just had a massive stroke, and they're going to pull him off life support. He's in a coma." I said, "You don't know I do that work, do you?" He said, "No." He said, "Well, will you fly out and see him?" I said, "Well, I can't see him for three weeks." He said, "I'll pull a plug." I said, "I'll fly out for one day."

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When I went out, he seemed responsive, especially when I put my hands on his stomach, he started moving. I said, "Tell them not to take him off life support." I came back three weeks later, and he was in there a little bit. The neurologists and the neurosurgeon told me that all the brain centers were destroyed, movement, speech, everything was destroyed in the more frontal functional part of the brain. For some reason, I saw his family not getting along. I said, "Why don't I work with you all tonight? I'll come to your hotel, "or whatever.

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I worked with them. I went in the next day, and I started talking to him about how well it went. He started moving a little bit. I started saying, "I know how important your family is to you," and a tear came down his eye. All of a sudden, his wife called. I put the phone up to his ear. I said, We're working on stuff and he's showing feelings." She says, "Hi, honey, I'm coming to see you." He said, "Soon?" We're standing outside with him in a wheelchair in the courtyard. His son, we all started jumping up and down and screaming and whatever. He says, "I can't wait to see you."

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Now that's pretty weird for somebody who's supposed to be dead. Then he said, "I want to go eat lunch." [laughter] I said, "Well, we have to ask the doctor if you're able to swallow and everything." The doctor said yes. It was really a clash of paradigms because the doctor said to me, "I don't really consider what you did significant progress." I said, "Really, because he was dead. Now he's eating lunch." He said, "Yes, but he didn't say three sentences in a row." I said, "Well, we have a different paradigm."

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Then he called me later. He said that he was watching a hockey game and he said three sentences in a row. It's really exciting for me, Chris, because there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country and in other countries, where the medical care does great, like they make sure they don't have bed sores, they keep them alive, but there's not much work, interacting with them to try to actually help them understand where they are. It's pretty strange that some of the responses we get sometimes nothing, but I've had a number of people come back.

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This guy came back. The interesting thing about him, he came back, he was an old guy, he came back for a year, and his family said that he had never shown any feelings. He spent that year with-- He was a very successful, wealthy businessman. He spent the next year just with his kids and grandkids telling them how much they meant to him, how much he loved them. At the end of the year, he died instantly. It's powerful work. It's really powerful.

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Chris: That's amazing. I've never heard anything like that.

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Dr. Reiss: Yes, it's quite startling. I wrote a book about it. One of those 14 books I wrote with a-- I'm a PhD in interdisciplinary studies, process psychology and conflict work. I wrote it the book with a medical doctor who had been head of a head injury unit in Switzerland. He had come with me some of the times to see that work and help me with that work. He was writing more about the science of why it works. I was writing more about the experiences.

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Chris: Let's shift gears and talk about family conflicts, if you don't mind. What are the most common causes of conflict within families?

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Dr. Reiss: First of all, I trained as a family therapist, and I co-founded this method called process-oriented family therapy. I work with family conflict a lot. When you talk about relationships, there are so many common themes we fight over. What do couples fight over? They fight over money, sex, house cleaning, the kids, the in-laws, there's all these- what city are we going to live in? Couples fight over all those kinds of things. I say that the really biggest source of all conflict everywhere is the unconscious use of rank and power.

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As parents, how do we carry that power in a way that's conscious so that we're not just creating issues with our partner, with our children, around the way we use that power? The other thing we say is that a lot of family conflict is social issues. A family will come in and they'll say, it's just us. I've seen like eight families in the last weeks who all have their issue. All the collective issues around gender, around all the power issues around economics, around age, around race, all that stuff is in our family systems.

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One other thing I was going to say is, so these days, the nuclear family is not the common thing so much anymore. Blended families have a lot of issues because most blended families like go out and everybody's going to do this and the other parent just jumps in and nothing's negotiated. Then all heck breaks loose. A lot of what I've spent my time doing with blended families is negotiating like, well, what role do you want to have in this family? What role do the kids want you to have? What role does your partner want to have? Maybe that you came in to a traumatized family as the disciplinarian, that's not going to work. We have to really renegotiate a lot of blended family issues.

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Again, the other thing we work with a lot is trauma because there's so much trauma everywhere. So many people have had emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect. When I was working in one rural area and we had a government grant, I told all my staff that almost every family we were going to work with had a major trauma. You have to know how to work with trauma.

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Chris: I suspect that sometimes the conflict isn't even what's at the surface or what's being argued about. What does it take to identify the real issue and how do you approach that process?

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Dr. Reiss: One of the things is in a way when families and couples are fighting, very little of the intensity often has to do with the current moment. We're very trauma-informed. I think of this guy, I was working with this couple at a seminar and the woman was like, "He's not present. "He was like, "I'm always present," while he's looking up at the ceiling and they're fighting. They said, "This is what we fight about. My kids fight with him about it."

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I said to him, "Well, keep looking at the ceiling and let's find where you really are." He said, "Oh my goodness, I feel like I'm back in the kitchen when my mother used to chase me and hit me with a broom." All of their interactions look like they're there, but they're actually there. Until I can help him get off of the ceiling, I can't help him get back in the room. That's one thing that we do is we work a lot with where are you really, and why are you so triggered? It's really complicated.

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I worked on why I was so triggered around feedback in the kitchen. We're both cooking, but my wife likes things a little more orderly. [laughter] I like to cook a little more creatively. It brought me back to this trauma of when I was in my 20s, and I was training at this institute where the director was very angry all the time and screamed at us a lot in the kitchen. Half the time, we don't even know what the deeper trauma is.

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The other thing is we deepen by going into signals and what we call double signals in relationship, the signals that don't go along with the signals that take you deeper. For example, people often will say, I don't know why my whole family complain I'm angry, but I'm not an angry person. That's a lot of what comedy is made of, but we help them unfold what's in those double signals. It takes them more into things that they dreamt at night. One of the things we found is that what's in that double signal that I'm not aware of is usually something I dreamt about. We go deeper by going into the dream level.

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Then the other thing we look at is roles, that who you are in a family is often that you're stuck in a role, and you don't even know it. I'll give you an example. When I was, I don't know, I must have been about 40-something, I was talking with my brother, and my brother was talking about how much money he had made and how well he was doing. I was like, "Well, that's not me. I heal the world. I don't do money." Then all of a sudden I had this insight that we were locked in roles, that he had been assigned the role from- as a young child, he used to see these big boats on the waters, and said, "I'm going to get one of those." I was like, "Oh, that doesn't interest me." We had actually been assigned roles. You get assigned roles in the family, and you have to become aware of those roles.

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Then all of a sudden I thought, well, why can't I also make a living? I changed my career. We have to become aware of the roles we're stuck in families, and we have to make those conscious and then make the roles more fluid. I remember once working with a woman who said that her sister was born with some illnesses, so she was never able to get sick or get any attention as a child. In her 40s, she developed every imaginable illness you could have. What was useful was when she realized she was just trying to switch roles and be able to be somebody in her family who deserved attention, and then she stopped having so many serious illnesses. We need role awareness, all of these things.

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Then the other thing we do in families to go really deep is we work on what I call the essence. The essence is under every family, it's like this clear spring of water that's the clearest energy a family believes and it's your core values, your deepest feelings. A lot of times just putting a family or a organization back in touch with that will solve something.

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I remember once I was working with a Native American family where there was some issues around addiction and this and that. For some reason, I said to the man, "Do you ever do ceremony or pray with your family?" They were fighting so terribly. All of a sudden, the family got up and held hands and spontaneously, I had a group of psychologists I was training, they all started dancing around them. They had such a core experience of who they are as a family that it cleared up so many of their issues. We work really deep.

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Problem solving's great, but it's not deep enough with most families. The problems will just come back where this kid who's doing terrible will do great and then a sibling will develop the same issues. You have to work really deep.

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Chris: How do you address power dynamics within families during conflict resolution?

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Dr. Reiss: We have a system of rank and power training. In the 12 step, that's one of the biggest, most important things we train there. We train about how to be conscious of the amount of power you have and the amount of rank you have. You sort of learn to put your cards on the table, but you got to go do it sensitively. I remember one time there was a father and his teenage daughter were in a war. I said to them, put your cards on the table.

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He said, I" have all the power. I control the purse. I could take away your cell phone," this and that. She said, "Dad, I can make your life so miserable." They both looked at each other and it was like they're, whoa. Then I said, "You both have that amount of power. Now, how can you use that differently?" That's the point. As long as you have power that you're using unconsciously, it irritates people.

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I once had a woman come to one of my classes who was very wealthy. I had a lot of people from a lot of countries that were struggling to even pay for their food and their hotel. You could tell they just didn't like her. She had diamonds everywhere and this and that. She said to me, "What do I do?" I said, "Own what you've got, your rank, and use it for everybody." She said, "I'm going to try."

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She comes in the group. She says, "I'm a very wealthy woman, as you can see from all my diamonds. What I'd like to do is use that wealth in a more aware way. I just wanted to know if anybody could use some help with dinners or their hotel, would you mind coming to see me?" Let's just say her popularity--

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Chris: [laughs] She was the prom queen.

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Dr. Reiss: She's the prom queen. If you go in like, "Oh, hello, you poor people," you're going to irritate everybody. If you go in humble and sensitive and tuned in, and "Gee, that's really difficult coming from countries with those economics. I've just been really lucky here. I'm like way up in this high-tech corporation. Could I just help you guys? I would love to." It has to be done with a lot of sensitivity.

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Chris: What are the most successful resolution strategies you use in your practice?

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Dr. Reiss: That's one of them, working with rank and power, making it conscious. If we could really do that with enough people in countries at war, we could probably take care of a lot of the fury. We have other methods, like in the 12-step, like I use a three-step method that works really well with conflict. It's so easy to say, it's just not easy to do. The first step is you take your side in a conflict, and you take it with emotion. If you go far enough on your side, you'll notice a point where you're like cycling. You've said, this is how I feel. Then you say, this is how I feel. You're cycling, so you're really ready to take the other side. You take the other side.

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On this side, you must, and you guess into it, and you watch for feedback. Then you take the neutral position to study what's happening. For example, if my wife and I are struggling in the kitchen, I take my side. "I understand I left a lot of dishes, but I'm super busy, and I only had enough time, and I made everybody food, all your friends, and that's the best I could do, so don't be upset with me." "Well, I am upset with you. Look at the kitchen. " A typical thing.

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I can just keep polarizing, but then I'm not being smart because I'm not really thinking. One of the things we tell people is think about your goal. My goal is actually to get closer with her, and to have a really nice evening. I have to think, "Maybe I'll take her side." On your side, you probably feel like I wasn't thinking about you, and that I was just dumping all this load on you, and you're probably just as tired as I am.

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Probably on a social issue level, you're thinking, gosh, why do men feel they have the right to do that? "As a male, you'd probably like me to be more conscious of my rank, and to do house care in a more equal way. Is that how you're feeling?" "Yes." That's the three method.

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Then we have a four-step method. Four-step method is to first avoid things as much as you can. That's like most of us. Then fight. Don't avoid the fight. Then take the other side, and also find that other side in you. How is that person I'm fighting with a part of me? How am I just like that, or how do I need to be more like that? Whoa, or how are they teaching me? I've had to work a lot on that.

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In my marriage, I usually do that while I'm in the shower. I always start with, "Oh, I am so right." Then I think, "but how am I like her? I don't want to look at that. Okay, I'll do it. Gee, I'm just like her in another area of life. I'm actually more like her." I've now changed that conflict internally. The fourth phase, if you can't do that, is to just let go and detach and meditate. The easiest way to do that is to go to a beautiful spot in nature and become that ocean, or imagine that you're rising up through the clouds and you're moving through space. Then from that very detached position, try thinking about or approaching the conflict. Those methods will turn around so many things.

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Chris: How do you manage situations where one or more family members are resistant to participating in the conflict resolution process? Can it work if anyone participates?

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Dr. Reiss: Yes. Well, first of all, we have a different idea of resistance that a lot of times in resistance is just unexpressed power. We don't just go against resistance. The second thing is I start with what I can. Sometimes I just have one person who will come and they can do this inner work and then I can coach them on how to deal with the other people. Sometimes I can get two people to come. Sometimes I can get one of the teenagers to show up. Whatever I can work with is best. If you can have everybody there, it's ideal. I

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I've trained with family therapists who would only work with the whole system but that's just not realistic. A lot of times if you start, then people get interested. The way we would do it in Portland during my family therapy class is that we would serve pizza afterwards and the word got out that if you came and worked with Gary in the middle you got to have some really great pizza.

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Chris: Whatever it takes.

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Dr. Reiss: Whatever it takes. When I first started, that was like in the 1980s in those small towns. Men hated therapy in those small towns. They would usually show up for family therapy when their marriage was about to break up and then they'd be sitting on my steps knocking on the door saying, when can I get in to see you? Men have changed and now we try to get everybody in at lower levels of stress.

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Chris: Boundaries are a big issue within relationships and especially when someone refuses to respect them. How can we set boundaries within the family dynamics to prevent or reduce conflicts? When is an attempt to set and enforce boundaries just as likely to create more conflict?

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Dr. Reiss: First of all, it's how you set boundaries. Again, it's this conscious use of rank and power. If I'm just like, "Hey, I'm the big boss and these are the boundaries and you better live with it," like I'm some prison guard that's not going to go down well. If I make boundaries in a way that preserves our relationship, for example, if I make a boundary and say, "Look, I know you need to talk to me about this tonight. I'm really tired, I have to be up early. I got to go on Chris's radio show in the morning. I really need to make a boundary about how long we talk. I'll tell you what, I'm done with this show at one o'clock from 2:00 to 3:00. How about if we take an hour to work on the conflict?"

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It's doing boundaries with awareness. Now there are absolute boundaries that I make as a therapist and that we need to make in our relationships. You will not like, no, you want to work with me? No, you're not going to hit each other. I have an absolute boundary around domestic violence. I have an absolute boundary around abuse as a therapist. Families need absolute boundaries where there's no negotiation, but most boundaries need negotiation. That's the other difference.

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If you just say, "Look, I'm not talking to you tonight, I'm making a boundary," that's not going to go well. If you say, "How about if we talk first thing in the morning" or, "I need to take a walk to calm down. I'll be back. Could we talk in one hour?" Negotiated boundaries tend to work really well.

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Also because I do a lot of sex therapy too, one of the things that works really well with couples having sexual difficulties is before they do anything, they negotiate their boundaries and they're clear about their boundaries, how much time? What would you like to happen? What would you not like to happen? Also, I teach body work, so anytime somebody is going to give body work to somebody, you have to negotiate the boundaries. If you're good at negotiating boundaries, you don't create more trauma.

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Chris: The COVID pandemic affected so many different aspects of society. How did it change things in terms of conflicts, our collective mental wellness, and our resilience?

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Dr. Reiss: Oh my God, COVID and mental health, that was a disaster.

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Chris: We're still seeing that movie.

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Dr. Reiss: It was a disaster. I run these clinics in Portland and we were just flooded with people. People had so much isolation, so much anxiety, so much depression. It was one of the hardest times around mental health I've ever seen. Suicide rates went up. The level of anxiety and depression was almost universal. Those were some scary times, especially right at the beginning where we didn't really know what was going on. People were dying around us.

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Also one of the things we saw in children, like when children got back in schools, I was talking to some friends of mine who were teachers, they said young children, especially, but also teenagers, they had been so isolated, they forgot their social skills. It was really hard. Also with seniors, I knew some distant relatives who were doing great in their upper 80s, 90s, whatever. They would just tell us or tell family members, I don't want to live anymore. I can't stand living isolated and they would die.

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It was really a matter of life and death for a lot of people to get mental health services during that and there weren't enough. It was really a national crisis. A lot of those people are still working on that. Then the other thing, of course, is I work with people with long COVID. I work with people with long COVID and that needs a lot of special psychology. If I have the flu or you have the flu, Chris, and the doctor tells us, "Come on, in seven days, you're going to feel great," that's great, but with long COVID, they don't know if there's any exit.

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I work with people who basically haven't been able to leave the house for a year or something like that, who can barely get off the couch. I work with families where the two parents and the child all have long COVID. We got a lot of work to do. As therapists, we can't be afraid of that. We have to be able to talk about those things.

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Chris: I don't like to talk too much about politics on this show, but conflict over politics has many relationships at the breaking point. There have been countless cases where such arguments have destroyed family relationships. Simple question for you, Gary.

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Dr. Reiss: Oh my God.

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Chris: It's a difficult and complex issue. What's the answer to resolving family conflicts over politics, especially now that we're in an election year?

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Dr. Reiss: First of all, here's a really bad example. There were two brothers that were fighting over their belief in the vaccine, and one of them killed the other. That's the worst story I heard over politics. One of the most important things about when I'm working on social or political issues is to have people think about what outcome they would like. For example, if I just want to dump a bunch of anger around politics, then that's- I'm just going to let it fly.

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If I want to make sure that I'm at the table with my best friend, and we're on opposite ends of the political spectrum, I'm going to say things in a way that preserve that relationship. I'm going to keep two screens in mind. One is the political screen, and one is the relationship screen. If we could do that in families, it would be a whole different matter. I was thinking of, I have a new, really close male friend. [inaudible 00:37:48] I just know we're on the opposite end of that political scene. We just like each other so much, and that's what we emphasize.

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He's one of my new Aikido teachers, and we both love Aikido. That's what we focus on. We're not focusing on, so sometimes you even agree, there's certain things, even in my marriage, politically, that mostly we're in sync. A few things we're not, and we never were able to really work that out. What we worked out is that the marriage is what's important, so we don't really go there. Then you use all those conflict work skills, the three-point conflict, the four-point conflict, you use all of those when you're working on political issues.

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The other thing is, we need open forums and things like that where you can have conflict facilitated. I have facilitated some of the most brutal social issues. In Oregon, for example, I facilitated many times between the LGBTQ community and the anti-gay community, and I also did that in Salt Lake City. Now, those are hot conflicts, but when people have facilitation around political issues, it's different. It's really different. You create a safe container to have those experiences.

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Also, people learn from each other. They learn to see the other as a human being, not just a label, oh, you're a Republican, you're a Democrat, you're a straight person, you're a gay, you're Israeli, you're Palestinian. You reconnect with people in those public forums in a human way. That's my biggest answer is, yes, disagree about your political stuff, but remember the relationship and protect it.

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Chris: Early in the show, you mentioned your release of the 12 Steps of Conflict Work.

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Dr. Reiss: Yes.

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Chris: Would you give us a sneak peek and tell us how people can learn more about it and take part in it?

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Dr. Reiss: That's a great question. The 12 steps, I was studying what do I do that works? I realized I have these steps, very specific steps in every system, from a family to working with two countries. This is a training in how to do those steps. We start with assessment. How do you assess? Some organizational people spend a year or two assessing. Many of the situations I'm in, I need to be able to assess in a couple of hours, or maybe 15 minutes. How do you assess?

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Then how do you build communication, bcause most systems don't communicate well? Then how do you work with rank and power? How do you work with two-party conflict? How do you work with group conflict? How do you work with people with different communication styles? How do you work with subgroups? We cover all of that. If you're not a main facilitator, but you're in a group, and you want to do something intelligent and facilitative, how do you do that? We cover all of those things in depth.

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Then we go into more of the newer work, after you learn how to facilitate groups. What are the new tools to work with extreme polarization? How do you work with the deepest essence in any family, or corporation, or country to realign people to their vision? Then how do you take that vision and write it into vision plans? How do you take action? How do you follow up? We go from the, wow, somebody's got a big conflict, to all the steps of how to work through that.

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People can find out about that through the website, www.conflictresolutionmethod.com. They can write me at greiss, that's G-R-E-I-S-S office@gmail.com. We're going to have all kinds of people there from many different countries are signing up. People who are brand new to the work, all the way to, I have some very advanced organizational development people in Asia that are working with major corporations there, they'll be there. People who are out in the field in these different countries will be there. Everybody's welcome. I think everybody will get something that'll make their life easier.

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I always say, Chris, if you want to improve your health, your relationship, your successfulness of your own business or other businesses, you want to improve the level of peace in your society, the one thing we don't train people in much is conflict work. It's crucial to all these parts of our lives. It's crucial.

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Chris: That's interesting. You think about conflict like war or riots or issues, not conflict resolution in your job.

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Dr. Reiss: That's right.

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Chris: There's issues there, or to your point earlier in the show, your family.

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Dr. Reiss: And inside ourselves. One of the things we've been studying in process work is what happens to health issues if you resolve certain internal conflicts. The results I've been seeing are phenomenal. Conflict is everywhere. We always say in process work, I say that we should really be teaching this from about kindergarten on. It's great now that I'm going to teach it to adults but really, even children need those skills. Children are pretty good at it. They'll be on the playground and you'll see kids like fighting and I hate you and whatever, and then they'll say, okay, now can we play? That's They remember the relationship. They remember the relationship.

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Chris: It's that simple. Go back to kindergarten on the playground.

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Dr. Reiss: [chuckles]

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Chris: Gary, you're a certified trainer in process-oriented psychology. What are the core principles and concepts of process-oriented psychology?

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Dr. Reiss: That's a big question because it's a big psychology. First of all, I came out of Jung. Jung, my teacher, Arnold Mendel, was one of the main Jungian dream analysts in Zurich after Jung died. He decided that we needed to explore beyond dreams. The first idea was the dream body. He discovered this part of us that's both the physical body and our dreams at the same time, and that working with that would have some really good effects on our body symptoms.

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It started there and then he said, how about relationships? They're dreamy, nightmarish and dreamy. [laughter] How about movement work? How about art and creativity? How about family therapy? What about people in comas? That's cool. Now we can do almost everything. How about body work? We can do almost everything that a therapist could do with a person. Then he said, now how about the world? The world was very dreamlike. Then he developed world work and working with large groups.

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The core principles under it are things like trust and believe in nature. Follow with great exactness what's happening in a person. Don't impose an outside model on that person. Instead, believe in that person's innate ability to heal and find that healing place within them and nurture that and unfold that. Stay open to feedback. It's a very feedback-oriented thing. If I do some hands-on work with somebody and they pull away, I follow that. If I'm working on even a coma person, I'm following all of their feedback. Many systems just say, no, this is the way it goes. You need deep tissue work or you need this, you need that. We just come in with a huge toolkit and we follow process.

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It's interesting, Chris, one of the first things I say to somebody in coma work is I say, I'm going to follow you and I'm going to follow your process. Together we're going to follow nature. We're looking at what is nature trying to do naturally in any situation. We're trying to get back to the wisdom of nature. One other really cool idea, two cool ideas. One is it's non-pathological. What we're emphasizing is not that you're messed up, but that what is bothering us is meaningful, and finding out meaning rather than labeling pathology.

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The other concept is deep democracy. That's a really cool one. The US is a democracy, but deep democracy means inside, I value or create a space for every part of me. The same thing, if I'm going to do conflict work in the world, I make a space for everybody. It doesn't mean that I like them or believe in what they say, but the view is that pushing stuff out tends to make that part come back at you in ways that aren't creative. Even when I've done conflict work, I invite everybody to the table that can get there, even if they have bad views. They're less dangerous. They're less dangerous. We say what you can do inside the conflict work doesn't have to happen on the streets.

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Chris: Can the rest of us incorporate process-oriented principles into our everyday lives for our personal growth, self-awareness, and well-being?

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Dr. Reiss: Of course. For example, I could teach you, I could teach somebody some basic stuff to do with their body symptoms. They could do it right away. I could teach some basic signal and double signal work that you can use in your relationship instantly. I can teach some basic conflict work skills that you can use right away. Now, if you want to master a system that works on almost every aspect of human existence, and you want to become a master of that, that's a lifetime of work.

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Also, the work keeps developing, but you can use this stuff right away. a lot of stuff they'll tell you can't use this for three years. You have to practice for three years. No, I've had people come to a seminar and say, oh my God, I went home and my daughter had this stiffness in her back, and we tried this dream body exercise, and her back felt completely better. I went home and instead of having the usual fight I have with my partner, I tried taking their side. Instead we went out dancing. Yes, this is real practical stuff. It's meant to be used by everybody.

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Chris: You've worked specifically with Israelis and Palestinians for 30 years now. How didd you get started in conflict work there? Has it changed from the time you started to the most recent conflict?

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Dr. Reiss: Oh my goodness, how did I get started? I was working on a general's son who was in a coma. In Israel, the military is even more highly regarded. The top generals in Israel are more like the president. They have rank like the president, the vice president, secretary of state. They're very important. I was working really hard. This was a really tough case. He had been in a terrible auto accident, and I was exhausted so I was going to the beach.

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Somebody called me and said, "Oh, I'm coming to meet with you to see if you'll do some Israeli-Palestinian conflict work." I said, "I don't think so. I said, "You think that's what I should do on my afternoon off? I'm going to the beach." They said, "What beach are you going to?" I told them. I'm out there swimming, and all of a sudden I see this woman swimming out in her dress in the water. She had somehow gotten my picture off the internet.

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She swam out to me and she said, I really need you to come to the center in Haifa and facilitate between Palestinians and Israelis." I said, "When?" She said, "Tonight." I said, "Well, anybody who would swim out in the ocean to find me, I'll come." That was the beginning. That was about 30 years ago.

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The other thing that happened that was really weird around that- that was weird- was that around that time, I was in my first marriage and we were having problems. We were having conflicts. I saw this poster that said, if you have problems in your marriage or whatever, I was too young, call this number and this man's going to take you on a meditation quest and you'll find the answers to your problems. I called this guy and he said, yes, I'm going to take you into Jerusalem and I'm going to put you back in one of the archeological areas. I'm going to put your head up against one of the holiest sites and you're going to have all the answers to your problems.

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I said, "Okay, great." I put my head up against the wall and I said, "What do I do with this marriage?" You're supposed to wait and hear what you hear. What I heard was your mission is to help make peace between the world's religions. I was like, "Give me a break. I'm 32 years old and I need to know how do I get things right with my wife?" Meditate again. I must've asked four times and it said your mission is to work in this region.

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At that holy spot I was at, within about a five-minute radius is the Jewish holiest spot, the second holiest Muslim spot, the Dome of the Rock where Muhammad ascended, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where they found Jesus on the cross. Also, there's Roman Catholic in that church and Greek Orthodox. You talk about a hotspot. Somehow, I got this life mission to work there. I just keep going back.

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How has it changed? 30 years ago, there was a lot of hope. We got invited by both sides to do a lot of work. What happened over the years, Chris, was that the two sides started to compete for attention and they both felt they had so much pain and trauma, they needed the center. What we started doing is working less with both sides and working individually with each side. What's happened now is the tension is so great and there's a war. I couldn't safely bring the sides together and they won't come together.

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What we're doing now is we're available to teach trauma work to the therapists on both sides. That's the biggest thing we feel we can do to help because people who are traumatized heavily don't recover and that's the beginning of the next war.

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Chris: Dr. Gary Reiss, we're out of time. Thank you so much for being with us today. It was a real pleasure and an honor.

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Dr. Reiss: It's so good to be with you and to be able to discuss such important topics. I hope people will come train with us more in our 12 Steps to Conflict work.

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Chris: We'll send them your way.

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Dr. Reiss: Chris, your questions are so deep and so powerful.

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Chris: We've got a good team here.

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Dr. Reiss: You have an amazing team. I was like, wow, this isn't the questions I usually get.

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Chris: They heard the shoutout.

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Dr. Reiss: I really enjoyed it. I usually enjoyed it. I hope people will walk away with this with something that will give them some hope. The world needs hope and it needs hope that's tied to things that work. If anything, I hope people will walk away with more of a sense of hope. We have a lot of powerful tools. We just got to go get them out there.

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Chris: Amen.

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Dr. Reiss: Amen.

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Chris: I'm Chris Meek. We're out of time. We'll see you next week. Same time, same place. Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.

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Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward. Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10:00 AM Pacific time and 1:00 PM Eastern time on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. This week, make things happen in your life.

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