---
title: "From Conflict To Compassion"
episode: 133
date: 2024-11-07
guest: "Maria Arpa MBE"
canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/133-from-conflict-to-compassion
audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-133/audio.mp3
---

# From Conflict To Compassion

Joanne Lockwood is joined by workplace culture innovator and conflict resolution expert Maria Arpa for a wide-ranging conversation about how conflict can become a route to compassion rather than retribution. Maria challenges adversarial approaches that focus on “winning” and argues for connection before correction, creating the conditions for people to be heard, receive empathy, and rebuild trust. Together they explore the difference between debate and dialogue, and why many workplace processes escalate division by rewarding competing stories rather than shared understanding. Maria describes how mediation and facilitated dialogue can help people find a shared, factual truth, make space for emotion, and then address both the practical mechanics of a situation and how it has impacted people. The discussion also touches on how power imbalances, psychological safety, and language shape what people feel able to say at work and in society. Joanne and Maria reflect on the impact of labels, the narrowing definition of “normal,” and why human connection and community are essential for healing and lasting change.

## Chapters

- 00:00 — Introduction and Welcome
- 02:00 — Conflicts are a resource for authentic creativity.
- 08:42 — Connection before correction: Meet in our humanity.
- 11:04 — Adversarial processes hinder reconciliation and healing.
- 15:56 — Individual experiences shape perceptions; differences are inevitable.
- 21:29 — Assess intentions and impacts to avoid harm.
- 29:55 — Humankind explores humans' generosity and collaboration.
- 35:47 — Embrace disruption creatively for healing and growth.
- 41:13 — Empowerment, internal change, media addiction, breathe.
- 47:52 — Evolving perspective through decades of reflective practice.
- 51:12 — Man feared losing first house key experience.
- 55:09 — Focus on personhood, not labels or categorisation.
- 01:01:55 — Life is simple; unnecessary suffering complicates it.
- 01:05:05 — Joanne Lockwood promises enriching, inclusive narratives.

## Key takeaways

- The importance of balancing Aristotle's three pillars: ethics (ethos), logic (logos), and emotion (pathos) in communication and decision-making.
- How moving conversations from intellectual debates to embodied experiences helps create deeper understanding and compassion.
- Tackling the challenge of implementing theoretical knowledge in practical situations and recognising the gap between advising and acting.
- Understanding the nuanced difference between homelessness and rough sleeping, and the importance of careful terminology.
- Addressing power imbalances in conflict situations and the role of mediators in fostering human connections and empathetic solutions.
- The fluidity of identity and how labels can both shape and limit personal growth, promoting the necessity of recognising shared humanity.
- Using dialogue over debate to encourage collective problem-solving and moving beyond adversarial stances to find mutual understanding.

## FAQs

### What are Aristotle's three pillars discussed in the podcast?

Joanne Lockwood talks about the importance of balancing Aristotle's three pillars in communication and decision-making. These pillars are:
Ethics (Ethos): How a speaker's character influences their credibility.
Logic (Logos): The use of reasoning and evidence to support arguments.
Emotion (Pathos): Appealing to an audience's feelings to persuade them.

### What does Maria Arpa mean by 'embodied understanding'?

Maria Arpa emphasises moving conversations from the intellectual realm to embodied experiences. This involves paying attention to physical and emotional signals, making interactions more genuine and empathetic.

### How does the podcast differentiate between rough sleeping and homelessness?

Joanne Lockwood shares insights from her work with rough sleepers, pointing out the nuanced differences between rough sleeping and homelessness. Rough sleeping specifically refers to living on the streets, while homelessness can include those in temporary shelters or unstable living conditions. Simplistic solutions often fail to address these complexities.

### Why is language important in shaping perceptions according to Maria Arpa and Joanne Lockwood?

Both speakers stress the need for careful terminology in conversations. For example, using "rough sleeping" instead of "homelessness" can more accurately capture the specific experiences of individuals, thus shaping a more accurate and compassionate perception.

### What critique does Maria Arpa offer about traditional approaches to conflict?

Maria Arpa criticises traditional conflict resolution methods that focus on avoidance or legalistic measures, noting that these often lack healing or compassion. She argues for seeing conflicts as opportunities for authenticity, humanity, and creativity.

### How do adversarial systems like courts exacerbate conflict according to Maria Arpa?

Maria Arpa explains that adversarial systems can worsen divisions as parties aim to win support for their narratives, leading to potentially exaggerated or untruthful portrayals. Mediation, in contrast, aims to foster dialogue and mutual understanding, not victory.

## Transcript

Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging, and societal transformation. Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world where everyone not only belongs but thrives, you're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo, and share stories that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in. Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect, and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.lochwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show. So just your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites. And today is episode 133 with the title, from conflict to compassion. And I have the absolute honor and privilege to welcome Maria Arba. Maria is a workplace culture innovator and conflict resolution expert. When I asked Maria to describe her superpower, she said that is she is able to help people find healing for themselves even when people believe they have tried everything. Hello, Maria. 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 hour, 2 takes, and neither recorded properly. And I was absolutely devastated because it was, as I remember remarking at the end of it, one of the best podcast recordings I've I've ever made, and I was really looking forward to listening to it back. And I didn't have it. Scream for your 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 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 you. So it's I think it was a bit like a karma kicking in saying, well, you 2 are destined to have another conversation. So this is it. This is it. And this I'm I'm sure we'll have more conversations after this as well. Yeah. It's a joy to be invited. Thank you. And thank you for coming back. So, Maria, for conflict to compassion, tell me more about the work you do.

Maria Arpa: Thank you. Yes. So I work wherever people gather, and so in workplaces is a particular interest of mine, and places of community and family and, you know, all sorts of places where people gather, there are going to be tensions and disagreements and inability to trust things that pop up that were not expected, you know, expected and unexpected disagreements. And what I've learned is that we can treat those conflicts and those disagreements and those tensions actually is an amazing resource for us to find a way to become authentic, to navigate into our common humanity, and to be our most creative. Whereas most of what we've been taught is that the minute tensions arise and the minute we disagree, we're frightened of the pain so we can become either conflict avoidant or use a sledgehammer to crack a nut and and divide and separate and then go into kind of legal processes or, you know, processes that are destined maybe to get some kind of a re result, but definitely not healing and compassion and care for our humanity. A bit of retribution, bit of payback, bit of

Joanne Lockwood: you've you've offended me or you've cast dispersions on my credibility, and I want to make you pay for that. Is is that kinda how people escalate? Yeah. It's and sometimes it's

Maria Arpa: as aggressive as that, but, you know, settling scores and holding people accountable in ways that are very painful. And sometimes it's fear because sometimes I I feel that, actually, if I don't 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 past, you haven't this time, you want to make a you want to make a 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 all, change generally comes when there has been some kind of escalation. You know? It's very rare in places where there are power imbalances for someone to say, oh, mister person with the power, could you just change this? And the person came, yeah. 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 belief. The 2 2 parties or multiple parties can all be entrenched with their own view. How do we release our prisoners of belief, if you like, and and get around the table? Because that's the hard thing is is, letting go of that I must win at all at all costs or compromises. Compromise means I lose.

Maria Arpa: Yeah. So so for me, it's about going in and remembering that we are going to just about how much we love each other, how much we cooperate, how much we share the same ideals or the same purpose or the same mission. There are going to be times when we don't agree or when I want change ahead of you. And the the the important thing to remember is as soon as a conflict or attention or disagreement has arisen, change has already taken place. Something has already changed. What we need to do is find our most compassionate selves to figure out how we're going to talk 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 disputes with people, family, friends, work colleagues, whatever it may be. And I I sometimes find it really difficult to to deescalate because because I it's not that I want to win. I just don't want to be I just don't wanna lose. I think the difference between wanting to win and not wanting to lose, and you're hoping the other person if the other person can can try and meet you on that journey where they they don't wanna lose, but they don't want to win, It's trying to find that middle ground where you can both say how you feel without feeling like you're you're you're sorry because you're not actually sorry. You're just trying to resolve the conflict. So I think there we have to start

Maria Arpa: thinking about what do I mean by resolve. So is the resolve having a third party who, you know, like a judge or an adjudicator come in and decide on an outcome for us that we both obediently uphold. And and, you know, that is that is generally the way things are done in our mainstream society. You know, we go to a court or a tribunal or or there's some senior manager or somebody that sort of says, well, you know, no. This is how it's going to be. But I believe that as humans, we can actually do better. And so, you know, I've spent the last 30 years proving that that when we let go of the need to win, when we let go of, you know, believing that some kind of result will resolve the conflict, then we can actually start to see that we're all human. Sure. We may have differences about the way we want to go about things, but you have needs and I have needs. And and the the simple, you know, the simple kind of guideline for this is connection before correction. So what I want us to do and that's why, you know, there are people like me exist. You know, people that can mediate and people that can, take that impartial view is is let's let's meet in our humanity first. Let's be human. Let's remember that you need to sleep and I need to sleep, and you need to eat and I need to eat, and you need to go to the bathroom and I need to go to the bathroom, and you need to breathe and I need to breathe, and you want respect and I want respect. So let's build those layers up first so we can see each other as human. And then we can begin rather than rather than seeing you as an attacker or a predator or or somebody I have to defend against, I see us as humans that just don't know in this moment. And there's a real beauty in going, wow. We see this so differently. I don't know what to do next. Let's just sit in that stew for a minute together. Yeah. Recognizing there is no one

Joanne Lockwood: answer. There's no final solution. There's no definitive outcome. It's around about finding, you say, the humanity in each other rather than the stereotype or dehumanizing name calling. Attack the situation, not the person sort of thing. It's it's trying to understand about the issues we're trying to discuss and resolve. Because I found that sometimes when these in these situations, you you try and gather your own army, don't you? You want people to agree with you and sort of like, I'm right, aren't I? I'm right. This this person this person's against me. If are you against me or you're are you for me? Where do you sit? Are you in or out? And that's what we end up doing. I guess that's why we're being out to mediation or adjudication is we we want someone else to agree with us who has the final the final solution for the final the final say in all that. Yeah. Well, that's what's interesting. Because the judge says so. Yes. What's interesting about these pros

Maria Arpa: adversarial processes where someone else is going to decide the outcome is now it's even worse because now I'm competing with you to get the person on my side. I'm I'm going to tell the best version of my story. And and now shall I slip into making you sound really bad? So so that will divide us even more because then at the end when the judge says this is what's going to happen, and we look at some of the perhaps suboptimal truths that were told across that across that meeting, the the hope for reconciling so we can get an answer to the problem, but did we heal? Did we reconcile? Did were we able to go, okay. You know? That's where we are, and how do we feel about it? So when we mediate so the distinction for me is a mediator or a facilitator is not there to make any decisions. What I do is create the conditions in which a group of people, 2 people or a group of people can sit down and start to talk about something through dialogue, 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 is that in our mainstream society, the model of conversation that we've mostly been exposed to is debate. And the debate is where the idea is for one argument to prevail over all others. And we see this in academia, in the legal profession, in our government, in the military, you know, and in script writing, in in the films that we watch, you know, the goody and the baddy and someone prevails over over everyone else. And so this is what we've been exposed to without having it explained to us. Now if I'm in the science laboratory and I want to prove a point, well, happy days. But if I use that model when human emotions are at stake, when how we see each other as people is at stake, then you can I don't have to spell out where this leads in our world, in our society? So I started to realize that there's another way of conducting conversations, which is dialogue. And dialogue is where we accept that we all hold a piece of the answer. So there isn't anything to win. There's something to build on. And then we can all participate as equals in the conversation where we're we're focusing on what's the best we can manage, not what's the best argument. Yeah. I see I see what you're

Joanne Lockwood: saying there, and I think what what I've realized as well, a bit like you about the debate and the dialogue side, is that much of our conversation is around trying to sell our perspective on something. Even if it's a case of what it's nice weather outside. I'm trying to tell you what I believe the weather is. You can either go, oh, it's lovely to stay or you go, it's it's warmer than last week, and we can end up with this debate about, yeah, who's who's more who's more right about the weather from their perspective. And that's that's what we fall into is perspectives and beliefs, not objectivity. We could become very subjective through our own lived experience, things like that. And so we're always gonna cloud for judgment. I think what you were saying there about this trying to yeah. You're very polite in not calling it a lie, just a a story you tell yourself and trying to sell to other people. Because we can also, if we're not careful, we rewrite our own version of the truth in our head. We reinforce our our our bias, our confirmation bias, whatever you wanna call it. And then that that story becomes the story in our head because it's become so well practiced. And we now get invested in this version of a story that isn't actually the true story. And that's another part of this challenge, isn't it? Trying to get back, peel those layers off. And there's no it gets to a point where there's no point in trying to debate the original conflict because everyone's moved so far forward with their beliefs becoming entrenched. It's about trying to find what do we wanna do next.

Maria Arpa: So I liked, you know, the the example you gave about the weather, which seems really innocuous. But a a really good way of how I would look at that is, you know, you tell me the weather's a certain way and that, and I say, well, no. It isn't. It for me, what's really important is to allow you to fully have your experience of the weather. It might not be my experience of it even if we're standing on the same paving slab in the same street at the same moment. How I experience the world is a result of everything that ever happened to me from birth and maybe, you know, maybe even actually intergenerational stuff that's come down the line. But how I experience the world in any given moment is a result of everything that I've ever experienced, and we could be standing you know, it's like when parents say, oh, I treat both my children the same way. It's actually impossible. It's impossible. Just because you gave them the same amount of pocket money or whatever, that's not treating them the same. How a child experiences their upbringing is unique to them because they've also got all the other people that came in their lives and gave them messages. So for me, it's like how wonderful or or how terrible that you're experiencing the world in this way. I'm experiencing it differently. 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 for the hood. Yeah. And you're standing there in a in a pair of shorts, a T shirt, and and sandals, and it's pouring down with rain. Our experience of that weather is completely different and our perspective is completely 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 conversation till you've got a shared truth. And the shared truth is always observational and factual. It is not evaluated. So the shared truth is rain is falling and wind is blowing. So we could agree that. Now from there, how are you experiencing that, and how am I experiencing that? That's the richness of life. Otherwise, we're gonna become Stepford wives. Yes. So so we want to have the discussion, as

Joanne Lockwood: you say, about how I'm experiencing the weather today. And I can say, understand, oh, wow. I see how you're experiencing that. 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 why or how I'm experiencing it or why I experience it or why I believe something than just what I believe in. And and the interesting thing is this this

Maria Arpa: for me, you know, I come from a really rough upbringing. Right? I had you know, it was a it was suffice to say it was a rough upbringing. And so I'm not sort of, you know, your armchair liberal kind of, you know, make everything fluffy and nice. The point is, for me, is you are on this planet and I am on this planet, and I haven't yet found a way to defy gravity and cut you off gravity and send you away. So whether I like it or not, we share the space. So I wanna make that joyful. Why would I wanna make that hateful? Because when I make it hateful, I'm poisoning myself. So even in my worst kind of most selfish moment, I find it's better to wanna share the space in 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. The more distasteful, the more opposing the other. The harder that statement is is to sort of reconcile. But I think the problem that comes down to sometimes is when people want to convert you or or weaponize that belief. I'm I I can stand on the same page as I have with you, and you believe it's sunny and I believe it's raining, and we can just laugh about that. But as soon as you're trying to push your belief onto me, then it becomes problematic if I'm not buying it. If I don't if I don't buy into that that reason, then that's a lot of where the woke politics are coming out these days where you have these 2 2 opposing views that are seemingly unreconcilable where people want to win and, and weaponize and change opinions or gather their armies. Yes.

Maria Arpa: So for me, the the way that I measure you know, I heard you say, you know, some opinions that are really distasteful, for example. So you can have any opinion you want. What I'm looking out for is what is the actual or potential for injury, loss, or harm if you act on that. And that's for me, that's the measurement. That's the conversation. So you have an opinion, and I don't like your opinion or your opinion hurts my feelings. That's work for me to do. I mean, I can spend my whole life having my feelings hurt. If I perceive, though, that you're about to take an action or do something that creates injury, loss, or harm, then, of course, the next thing is we have to decide, is that injury, loss, or harm real or perceived? If it's perceived, then we can get into a dialogue and we can do some risk managing. And, you know, some risk managing is to shut the door in someone's face or run away. So nobody needs to put up with stuff that they don't wanna put up with. In workplaces, of course, you know, that's a whole another part of the conversation because we have to look at power imbalances. But but if there's going to be injury, loss, or harm, then you should expect me to want to ask you about your intentions, to ask you about the impact you're about to have, and whether you want to proceed with that. And if if after that discussion you still want to proceed, then you're going to have to expect some opposition. Does that make sense? But it's not coming out of hating 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, and it's just past the anniversary of the, October 1984 Brighton bombing, the attempt to take Margaret Thatcher's and the conservative party's lives. And, I think we're we're both aware of Anthony Berry's daughter, Jo Berry. Yeah. And she's advocating reconciliation, and I've I've heard her speak several times. And she talks about this creating a a destination planning or destination vision of where you want this to end and focusing on that shared or acquiesce around the shared goal of we want our children to live in peace. We want a society where I can walk down the street. I want this. I want that. I want that. And we can all agree with those high level destinations. And it's moving towards that and and letting go of the the unsolvable history, if you like. History has happened. It's done it. We can be sorry or not, but we can't take it back. And that that's what we wanna sometimes do. That's where the retribution comes in. I want payback for that thing which stops us finding the dream or the vision, the future. So, yeah, so I don't want

Maria Arpa: payback. I want a genuine expression of regret and remorse and education for the person who who did the injury, loss, or harm, and I want them from their heart out of the quality of connection that we form to offer something up. Making somebody do something doesn't mean we change their attitude.

Joanne Lockwood: No. No. It it's framing it in a way. I mean, I I was listening to this some of the news the other day about that time back in 1984, and the people involved, they have regret about maybe the loss of life, but they don't regret what was going on at that time. You know, they were they were in a a war for one of the better way of describing it. And they they were part of that conflict and conflict happens and things, people die. So they don't regret being there. They just regret maybe some of the outcomes of it. And it's it's it's trying to work out what I want someone to be sorry for. Again, humanizing the process again. The loss of life, you know, as you say, injury loss or harm. The the harm was the injury was getting the empathy to acknowledge what that injury loss or harm is, and then we can move forward. But I don't have to understand your motivation for that, but I understand that you have some remorse or empathy for how I feel about that. Yes. And the question is, given

Maria Arpa: what you've heard, you know, and I bring people together to have these very tough conversations. You know? I have brought people into prison to come face to face with people that may have directly or indirectly been impacted. And after that understanding has has taken place, the question is, if we were here again today, would you do the same thing, or what would you do differently? That's a real indicator of the journey.

Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. That that's, rehabilitation. That's self awareness, isn't it? That's EQ, most intelligence. That's that's appreciating 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 workplaces and anywhere that people gather because you you cannot put a group of people together and expect that it's all going to be harmony. And in fact, actually, as I as I you know, to sort of go back to the beginning, for me, the diversity of opinion, the the different lived experiences, the way I see the world, and the way you see the world is what makes this life worth living. Imagine living in a world where everybody thought the same as 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 holidays to the same place. We're very busy and crowded. 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, different opinions. But as you say, dialogue, debate is gonna occur where we have those different viewpoints. And when they're healthy, we grow. When it's not healthy is when we kinda get locked into wanting to win. Yeah. So it only becomes

Maria Arpa: unhealthy when we see the world from an adversarial perspective that that you're either with me or against me. And then and then we have a further problem because you see, if I see the world from an adversarial perspective, if I only see sides, then now I need to know what kind of competition are we in. Are we competing to be the best we can be, or are we competing in a winner takes all competition, or are we 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 got one person who's actually they they act as if their life depends on. You know, they'll fight to the death, and and you'll have another side that just literally just wants some resolution. Yeah. I would see the film gladiators yesterday, the first

Joanne Lockwood: one, the Russell Crowe. And that that is very much win at all costs, isn't it? You know, you your life depends on it, and either you die or they die. And it's hard to find the compromise in that situation. And if you go into your problem or conversation with that, I have to win at all costs, then you're never gonna compromise, and you probably aren't even gonna listen to the 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 that, just think about how much you're poisoning your own life. You're just going to be in 1 life is just gonna be one constant battle. I mean, I have met people who actually can't define themselves unless they have an adversary, And they they sort one thing 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 our public life and things? They're career career adversaries, aren't they? Or people who are in the legal profession spend their whole life advocating for for a 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 at, you know, when people choose that that's the path they want their life to go down, you know, what 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 read many books. I listened to them by Rooker Bregman, and, his his second book is called Humankind. And it's really interesting to to hear his analysis around, you know, the fact that our human species is largely generous and kind. And we're one of the reasons that the Homo sapiens effectively wiped out the Neanderthals is we were more community focused. So we have strength in numbers with them. The pandasals were more intelligent, bigger, stronger, faster, but more individualistic. So we as a society thrive in a collaborative space. We're not alone, are we? We're definitely not. I

Maria Arpa: mean, look. If you really believe that people are a pain in the butt and you don't like being around them, then, you know, go and live on your own in the cave and find out how you can survive without some form of connection and collaboration and participation, you will shrivel. Yeah. We

Joanne Lockwood: saw Tom Hanks do that in castaway, and we've recently seen, Philip Scofield, I think, doing his own mini castaway. I think Tom Hanks took to 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 about being around people and feeling the tensions that arise. If you're frightened of that or you've been trained to treat that as dangerous and unsafe, that's what causes all the problems. Yeah.

Joanne Lockwood: Anxiety about engaging, as you say, the power of privilege dynamic kicks in. Yeah. If you're feeling subordinate or subservient to somebody, it's hard for you to push back without feeling bullied or yeah. You're you're you're worried about the consequences as well of of speaking up. Yeah. We talk about psychological safety. Part of that is, will I be thought less of? Will I be dismissed for what I'm saying? And so that's why we could become invested in a in an outcome because we we hold on to these prisoners really tightly because we we have to win because we have to win. The the alternative is in our heads. We die. We're

Maria Arpa: in our own hands. Yeah. Yeah. And and so for me, you know, like, if we come on now to the idea of power imbalances, you know, there are there have been great power imbalances. There are power imbalances in workplaces. But think about it. Who can tell the 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 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 conversation. It's a pattern of conversations. It's a history of relationships. It's that one remark there that gets amplified by another remark, becomes a pattern. So we talk about the me too movement, sexism in the workplace. It's an escalation of inappropriateness rather than just a one off instant in many cases. Yeah.

Maria Arpa: Well, the other thing that I, you know, I really believe creates a lot of problems is people form clubs. And and once you start forming clubs based on beliefs and that you're, you know, you're forming a club and you're building your membership based on an ideology or a belief, and you're not open to the idea that there are other ideologies and beliefs and we can still love each other, still coexist, still, you know, do things together, still cooperate as humans, then you have a problem because firstly, there's the otherizing. But then with these clubs, you get an inner sanctum. And first of all, there's the purpose of the club, then the somehow the inner sanctum become as important as the mission, and then there's a point where the inner sanctum and protection of the inner sanctum becomes more important than the mission. And that's where you see the real corruption. Yeah. People

Joanne Lockwood: become really invested in that belief because it's a career, it's a it's a status, it's a it's a and I don't want to specifically single out religion as such because there are lots of other beliefs out there that that have the same sort of impact, but you become invested in the momentum of this belief. And then you're back

Maria Arpa: in an adversarial world because you only you only live while you have the bigger membership than the other people or you've got the bigger weapon or the more money or the more tools. And so, actually, what you're doing is you're actually underlying while you may have the bigger army, you're actually growing the fear. You're not Yeah. I've 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 you barricade, you pull the drawbridge up, and you're on the ramparts with your boiling oil and your rocks. You're chucking at the people down below who want their rights. They wanna be heard and they're peasants with their swords and things. And all you're doing is you're pouring boiling oil on them. And it's really hard to just lower that drawbridge, isn't it? Because you're so invested in your sanctimony of the castle or your sanctimony of attack and being marginalized that you can never actually sit down and and, again, the destination planning, the thinking about the vision, the future, because your vision is so tightly bound in your belief system. Yes. And there's a fear of having

Maria Arpa: that disturbed or disrupted. And, of course, if we think that we can live on this planet from birth to death and never encounter disruption, well, it's not in reality. And and if there isn't gonna be you know, there's enough kind of you know, mother nature gives us enough powerful messages and disrupts us enough to say, you know, don't take me for granted here. You know, you have to honor the resources I give you. You, you know, you have to live in a in a in a decent way with what's been provided. So if we start fighting amongst ourselves in that way, it's distractive and not creative. And that's really my message is there are far better ways to use our suffering and our pain to develop something that is healing and something that is creative and something that takes us to a better place. It's not just the

Joanne Lockwood: so these political tribes or that develop that that are invested in it. There's also in many cases, you think about the media or the observer or the reporter or whatever you want to describe the person observing these two tribes with their different views. If there's money to be made in clicks, in advertising, in promotion of one view versus another view and it becomes sort of self filling there. They're almost fueling the arguments of division, making people become more polarized because they're they're actively collecting people and pushing them to the side to say, you have to decide whether you're for or against. And if you're for, you're on this side of you, against you're on that side. And we have a whole political media base that is pushing people to these edges and 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 in a lot of people's interest to keep everyone fighting each other because if if if we stop fighting each other and we actually look at each other eye to eye, we would look at the mainstream world that that we're invested in, and we'd see that there is this superficial layer of governance and rules and all the rest of it that we're all supposed to live up to, and we all pretend we're living to that. But, of course, we can see, you know, in the recent years, we can see that actually it's a it's a very thin veneer that doesn't exist. There are all sorts of corruption and, you know, terrible things that have happened that that we're starting to see are more normal than we realized.

Joanne Lockwood: Again, I go back to I mentioned earlier in this humankind book. He talks about the this reality TV myth. The, you know, we we've got big brother. We've got I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Whatever whatever your chosen reality TV habit is, inherently, if we put people in a room, they're gonna start getting on with each other. But what we have to do is then we have to create a a love triangle, deploy people of food, create a competition, give someone a fake hierarchy, put them in charge, have to defend that position, give them the blame when things go wrong. We have to create that social tension to to then stir up people into a way that makes reality TV interesting. Otherwise people would just sit around there having a cup of coffee and having a chat. So it's they're creating the debate, not the dialogue. And they're forcing the debate to occur, the polarization to occur. And that's what I think the media do. The government have invested interest in the masses fighting amongst themselves or worrying about, you know, keeping I I need my money. I need to be paid. I need a roof over my head. Because if I suddenly had all that sorted, there'd be no way of controlling me because I'm I'm independent. Absolutely. You know, one of the things that I do

Maria Arpa: when I work with people is I show them that most people in our mainstream society have more power than we recognize. We allow others to tell us that we are powerless, and we allow others to create stories of victimhood in our position in the world that disempower us, and there are very good reasons for holding people in that place. Yeah. I've always thought the the world

Joanne Lockwood: is run by the 2 poll 2 polls. 1 being the government, and then the other poll being, say, religion for sake of argument or some sort of faith and belief that sits in parallel. So you you need this to survive economically, but you also need spiritual or or faith based. If you look at, you know, if you look at tribes and people around the world, you have the the the chief and the witch doctor, the chief and the medicine person or whatever it was. And again, you're creating that power base to to control people and to keep the incumbent in privilege if you want. Yes. Absolutely.

Maria Arpa: To make sure that the people that hold the power retain the power. And, you know, obviously, it's been shown and it and it can happen where people who have least amount of power decide to fight back and get change, and and I'm all for that when it's justified. But there are other things that we need to do internally to find our own empowerment to be able to look beyond, you know, what you were talking about with the media and and this addiction to watching other people in adversarial positions, watching the love triangle, watching the gossip, watching one person triumph over another in the sub diffuse. And that and it's there's a sort of it it does something to the nervous system, and it creates an addiction. And so one of the things that I find is that by the time people come and see me, often, the way they speak, because their nervous system is so stressed, they speak really quickly. And one of the first things we do is just breathe. Just breathe to try and get off the addiction to chaos and stress. I found that when

Joanne Lockwood: I'm dealing with or talking to people who have something to say, you've almost gotta let people have their say and then let them have their say again, and then let them have their say again. And then and then what eventually, you say you can calm people down. They feel they've been listened to. They've been heard. And now you can shift it from emotion to more logical thinking or to more structured objective thinking, but you have to let the emotion out sometimes. You have to meet people at that place. Otherwise, you you end up if you don't let it out, you never let it out, and it it will always be there. So I always call that an emptying out.

Maria Arpa: An emptying may take more than one session because a person who hasn't been heard or has has no evidence that they've been heard for most of their life will need some time to empty out. And then when only when the person's emptied out can we start to connect as humans, start to build that connection and safety, and and then we can start to talk about what could be different. So I have a I have a key principle that a person needs to empty out and they need to trust that they've been heard, and we need to demonstrate to them that they have been heard, and then they need to receive empathy. Like, empathy is really important. And only when a person has received empathy, and empathy is not sitting in the other person's shoes. Empathy is saying, you come in all shades of dark and light. You have you have a light part of you. You have a shadow, and however you come today in this moment is absolutely fine. We have enough love for it. And only at that point have I found then that can a a person or a group of people go, I actually matter. Oh, you know, now let's think what it could be what could be different. Yeah. That's when I when I work with

Joanne Lockwood: companies around having challenging conversations and resolving something, You really gotta be creating the right space for these conversations. And sometimes it's better to defer and say, actually, we get together to call it quality time, private space, both be in the right frame of mind. We both go there with resolution in mind, not just a vent. Because sometimes we shoot from the hip, don't we? We we react to that moment. The we're triggered. We the the vagus nerve kicks in. Our adrenaline flows. We can put it in our stomach, whatever it may be. So we've we've we've got us 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 of connection and empathy and we've and we've shown each other that there is enough love, no matter how bad it is, there's enough love in this moment for both of us, for everyone. Then we can start to you know, you said logical or rational. So what I do is I like to divide divide it up into 2 things. The first is what are the practical issues here? You know, is there a systemic problem that needs to be addressed addressed? You know, do we keep doing things in a way that brings us back here, in which case there's a system change? Maybe the framework that we built is no longer fit for purpose. You know, there's the mechanics, the business, the technical part of whatever it is, and then there's how we feel about it. And we must attend to both. Yeah. You're right.

Joanne Lockwood: We we've gotta satisfy both. And I often talk about the, was it the 3 pillars of ancient Greece of Aristotle? Was it egos, logos, and pathos? You have to you have to sort of satisfy all of those, the ethical compliance element, the logical outcome, as well as the human factor, the pathos. And we've got to recognize that all of those things need to be in place for us to come together as one. Because if we're too heavily people focused, the other person may be compliance or logical focused. So we've gotta recognize that we gotta meet people where they are and those 3 pillars. Yes. And so often stopping

Maria Arpa: in those conversations and saying, okay. So right now, where where are you now? You know? From from where we were 10 minutes ago, has something shifted? What is so we take it out of the head, and I get very into an embodied what is going on through the body. What is your body 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 find it harder to put it into practice myself because it's easier to be a tennis coach than a tennis player because we can all sit in a football stadium and be a better football manager than we are actually. We've all got better ways of doing things. How do you find putting into practice what you coach? Because I find it really difficult sometimes to separate that that side of it. I know what I should 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 say, perhaps even longer. And for the 1st 10 years of it, you know, couldn't manage any of it. But I'd say my insights have come thick and fast in the last 10 years and in the last 5 years, really taking the time to reflect, really always going beyond my current thinking. So, you know, one a a really good example of that is once upon a time, if somebody presented me with something that I couldn't understand, I might just write it off. You know, if somebody went into the spiritual realm and I wasn't there, I would just write it off. You know? She this person's, you know, away with the angels or whatever. What I've learned to do now is to understand that maybe I haven't reached their point of evolution. Maybe I'm so far behind that it's not tangible for me and I reach it because so many times I got there later on. And that's a really wonderful thing to be. This is where I am today. This is what I understand today, and I love for me, I love sharing this. You know? That's my whole raison d'etre, you know, is I like to share what I've learned and put it out there and see if it's useful to anyone. I mean, you know, the first time I went into a prison, I had some ideas around gangs and conflict and violence and, you know, I just someone said, oh, you know, you should bring this into a prison, and I sat with 12 people who had, you know, like, very, very long sentences. And and, you know, what I said is, look, these are some things that I've learned and tried out in the community over the last few years. I've come here to ask 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 who did a lot of work with the rough sleeping community. So I I I would say I'm still relatively ignorant around rough sleeping. It's not my field of expertise. There's some things I picked up and it's a change of nuance between homeless and rough sleeping. These people are not homeless, they have a home. This is not the home that I would identify with. It's not the home the government identify with, it's not the home that society represents. Some people choose that way of life. And when we have former former home secretaries thinking the solution to rough sleeping is destroy the tents, that's almost like carpet bombing Dresden by saying if we carpet bomb we'll destroy the morale. Taking someone's tent away isn't going to stop them living that life. There's no rehabilitation, there's no encouragement there, it's just destruction and creating conflict. So it's around trying to meet them where they are. My understanding people who love sleep have complex needs, the same as all of us, but food, water, security, safety are the are the basic needs we all have. How can we help these people to achieve basic human standards without using our privilege to look down and say, well, they must wanna live in a house or 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 a long time ago. And it was someone it was, the organization I was working with provided shelter for people who rough who were rough sleepers. And they managed to find somewhere to live, a more permanent place to live for this particular person. And then 3 months later or 6 months later, he he was he came by and and someone said, you know, how are you getting on? And and he said, oh, terrible. Terrible. So what what's happened? We've you know, you've got a home and you're off the street. And he said, every day, I worry about losing this key because I've never had owned a key before. I mean, you didn't know that you could get another one cut and all the rest of it, but, you know, that's all 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 lost the people they hang out with, their their their support network because they're now living in a premier inn somewhere in temporary accommodation. And everybody they care and love for is is not with them. And suddenly so you take them out of the heart of the people that supported them and put them in this sterile environment 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 much about, you know, and this using this term rough sleeping rather than homelessness just really landed well for me. It named something for me. And you're really touching on how language controls. Our use of language controls what we see, how we see it, how we understand something, and why that is so important because the way we use 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 to win. It's designed to promote conflict or a situation where you keep drilling into it and drilling into it, not reconciliation language. Yes.

Maria Arpa: Absolutely. And and labeling people in a way. You know? I mean, I think that there's a lot to answer for in language of the verb to be. I think the verb to be creates many, many problems when we say, you know, you are angry, you are narcissistic, when we we describe an entire person's life by one label. You are a murderer. Well, that's really interesting because, generally, the act of murdering someone may take a few minutes, and we may be defining an entire person's existence by an act that took a couple of minutes. I'm not saying that that excuses it. I'm not saying that we don't have conversations about injury, loss, and harm and and, you know, compensation and what we're gonna do to put things right. But it's really interesting. I think the verb to be causes many problems in the 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 murderer. Actually, I was a murderer when it happened. Yeah. But I'm not actually murdering 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 can change and evolve. And if you're not careful, you get stuck in the I am where actually that's who I was, who who I were. That's bad English in it. Who who was I? So, yeah, it's it's recognizing the whole of somebody, not just your perception or stereotype, isn't it? And even with

Maria Arpa: diagnosis, you know, I am autistic. I'm a person with autism. We have to start with I'm a person because one of the other things that's happening in our society is categorizing people and, you know, making people less than by titles and labels rather than you're a human, I'm a human. You know, there is a really good book called The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szaszczak because the idea of mental illness only exists because a few people decided that people who act in a certain way have got mental health problems. You know, it's a big concept, but we need it's you know, this use of language is really important. Maybe there's supposed to be a variety of people acting in different ways and with things that maybe I can't understand. So and maybe maybe it's all okay. 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 term neurodiverse or neurotypical. Mhmm. I think in our evolution as a species, did someone actually say to us that we had to sit down and read a book or write something or develop a report or sort something or have conversations or paint? We've we've kind of created this social constructs of how we're supposed to behave. Whereas our human evolution, we had different people who were good at different things. Dyslexia. Can't read a book. Can't read words. What in my human evolution of 3,300,000 years ago was writing and reading ever on the evolutionary times go? It's something that has occurred probably in the last 100 years, a 150 years since people expected to read and write. Going back previous to a 150 years, many people who lived in poverty would never ever been allowed or chosen to read or write. Girls, certainly not. So, yeah, it's just suddenly society is now saying, well, this is what a typical human should be. Oh, yes. Let evolution catch up. So I see I

Maria Arpa: see this, shift and I've seen it. And for having done a lot of work on housing estates, council estates, and and looking over the years, what I see is there are 2 sort of tracks that are creating aiming to create the model citizen. And the first one is antisocial behaviour. So we have this track of antisocial behaviour. I went into a school and there was a sign in the dining room that said pushing in the queue is antisocial behavior to 14 year olds. You know? Okay. Let's not go. That's a whole another workshop. But, okay, so so antisocial behaviour, if you go to a public meeting and you start yelling because you can't get hurt, you it's antisocial behaviour. The other one is mental health issues. So as soon as if you go to a meeting and you start yelling, somebody somewhere is going, so this person's got mental health issues. And so the the the the box is getting narrower and narrower of what makes you normal. Yeah. And this is really of normality shrinking, isn't it? Yeah. Yes. The normality. What's normal is shrinking.

Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Yeah. And we're all normal. Because I think yeah. We we we just ask, as you say, go away from that I am, and and it's it's it's almost like this collection or hierarchy of adjectives to describe yourself. And before you know it, being human is so far down the pile. It's you've been lost in tall, fat, thin, skinny, autistic, disabled, trans, non binary, whatever you wanna put in there. African, British. So you're questioning these adjectives, and human should be at 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 worrying is where where, you know, the the the statutory agencies of society are persuading people that it's a really good thing to get a label because then you can get some rights. And then and and not seeing that the long term damage of that when we just need to start as human and we need to a better sharing of resources. Is that linked to

Joanne Lockwood: impostor syndrome or being valid? You know, so if I don't have a diagnosis or a bit of paper to say who I am, who am I? We need that to to well, maybe we need that to join our collective support group in order to be part of this belief system and and and social construct. I need to be valid enough. Otherwise, I try and knock on the door and go, Well, you're just self diagnosing there. We're not sure about you until you got a bit of paper to say you're you're you're good enough for us. It becomes this, again, hierarchy of good enough, doesn't it? Well and also it means

Maria Arpa: that we're rationing healing. Yeah. Healing is rationed, and it's only given out to those who can prove that they need it. Yeah. Yeah. I was seeing a a

Joanne Lockwood: lot of short shortage in diagnosis for people with neurodiversity, ADHD, autism. People need the validation, though. They need to have the bit of paper. They need to be able to go to their employer, go to their their family and friends and say, look. It's official. I'm officially diagnosed. And I I can I 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 the system. I'm I'm saying though that the leaders that are that are pushing this agenda need to look at the long term damage that will come back on them too.

Joanne Lockwood: Mhmm. Because people could become so transfixed on this identity and this tribal, if you like, support through that identity that it becomes very difficult to sort of to engage without bringing that part of your lived experience into the conversation or the debate or the discussion. So yeah. Yeah. What what a mess we 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, the more I reflect, the more I, you know, go back over the way I've led my life and the things that I wanna change and the healing processes. Life is actually incredibly simple. Life is really, really simple, but for some reason, we seem to have made a complete and utter mess of complication that's that's you know? And this is my work. My work is the alleviation of unnecessary human suffering. You know, some some human suffering is going to happen. No one promised birth to death was gonna be a fun ride, But there's a whole heap of unnecessary human suffering that 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 conversation. It's been fascinating again. How 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 to converse and talk about, you know, whatever workplaces and and communities, and basically just Google my name. I happen to have an unusual name, Maria Arpa, A-R-P-A. And if you just Google my name, I come up. And whichever website you find, you know, you'll find your way to me. I, you know, I do answer my own emails. So I'd love to hear from anyone that was moved, inspired, or or aggravated 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 centerforpeacefulsolutions.org. Is your website. So search for Maria Arpa. Yeah. That's

Maria Arpa: for peace. Anyway, just Google my name. I come up. And that's just been wonderful, Jo. I mean, really, we went there. It's been really fantastic. Thank you 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, this is the final one, is each time we've talked about Tom Hanks and Wilson. We've managed to get that into all three recordings organically without it being forced, which is which is fascinating. So there's obviously 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 express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to Inclusion Bites and become part of our ever growing community, driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family, and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter. Got thoughts, stories, or a vision to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk, and let's make your voice heard. Until next time. This is Joanne Lockwood signing off for the promise to return with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire, and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world, one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.