Skip to content
With the right approach, it can become the spark for clarity, collaboration, and lasting change.

There is a strong tendency in the media to focus on solutions to problems rather than attempting to understand the problem fully and thus being able to craft both emergency short-term responses to a crisis but also a longer term strategy at shifting the influences that caused the problem. In this blog Delphine looks at the failure to consider the factors underpinning the rise in family violence, and makes a case for deeper more deliberate exploration, in addition to offering the short term solutions.

Family Violence Is Rising—But Are We Brave Enough to Name the Real Causes?

  • 9 min read
MEDIATION IS LIKE MAKING COMPOST

Finding Insights in the Garden: Lessons from Mediation   Before convening a formal mediation meeting, I always have several private conversations with each party. This approach allows me to delve deeper into their perspectives and uncover the underlying issues. I ask questions that provoke introspection: Did the other person make… Read More »MEDIATION IS LIKE MAKING COMPOST

MEDIATION IS LIKE MAKING COMPOST

Difficult conversations are those conversations that can be emotionally charged and can result in conflict or discomfort. In such conversations, context plays a crucial role in providing meaning to what is being said. In fact, context is often what makes these conversations difficult in the first place. Without the proper… Read More »Yes, Context is Very Important

Yes, Context is Very Important

  • 4 min read

It’s a short trip from contemplating physical pain to reflecting on psychic pain. What is the evolutionary purpose behind emotional pain? If evolution has brought us to where we are now, with our anxieties, fears, anger, depression and drug dependency, what were the original benefits of such emotions?
Consider how readily you reach for a painkiller when you have a bit of a headache, a spell of arthritis or a sprained ankle. You’ve experienced the pain and had enough of it. Your primary desire is to suppress it – if you can’t make it go away then at least you can suppress it. Perhaps there’s a deeper message in the pain though –

Feelings are a life-saving device

I keep learning the benefits of choosing how to respond to a conflict situation. I learnt the truth that there is no single objective truth; just a range of perspectives. I also learnt the healing power of truth and reconciliation. The peace of mind that comes from taking time to understand and to be understood is one of the greatest destressors I have ever come across. It is a cornerstone for good mental health.
This isn’t a newly invented “app”: aboriginal societies and the major world religions know the value of dialog and creating common understanding.

I can walk away…I always walk away.

  • 4 min read


 My soul is full of longing

 For the secret of the Sea,

And
the heart of the great ocean

 Sends a thrilling pulse through me.

         The Secret of the Sea – Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow

I’ve spent quite a few
hours in the past week mindlessly staring at the movement of the Atlantic Ocean.  I normally live on the edge of the same ocean some 21 degrees of latitude to the north, but I don’t do this at
home.  I stopped just gazing out at the ocean for hours about six weeks after I moved in.

Sure, I still look up out
of curiosity when a container ship passes too close by the house for my liking. Every time I see a submarine slink in or out of the harbour I think of the U-boats and the net spanned …

Atlantic Meditation: from mindless to mindful

Google is no longer impressed by SEO and key words.  Its bots focus on websites that are active:  regular updating of information through
content refreshing, blogging, articles posted, and the like.

When did you last post a blog or an article on your website?  Do you have it built into your schedule or is it one of those things that started as a
good intention but keeps sliding?

A SIGN OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IS PATTERN RECOGNITION  

When I visit a …

TELL-TALE SIGNS OF STALE BLOGS

Sir Winston Churchill was prone to depression. He called his depressions his ‘black dog’. Now, I know that not all black dogs are miserable or skulk around in corners, but imagine what you
feel like when you are depressed. More than that, maybe you’re depressed right now, so you don’t even have to imagine it – you can just experience it. I’ll connect the black dog dots for
you.

It starts without you knowing that it has started: Something distant and abstract – remote, even, in your subconscious. A sense of unease swirls around you like …

Don’t feed the Black Dog of Depression