Harvesting the Fruit of Your Own and Other's Conflict

Did you know that you can make your conflicts and all the emotions it brings your friend? Untransformed conflicts put us on hold, close doors and push others away. When this happens, we end up in resignation, apathy, depression, and eventually give up on ourselves and lose out on our relationships because we cannot transform our conflicts constructively. Led by Doris Wesley, a compassionate communication practitioner, attendees will identify and work on transforming at least one unresolved conflict situation they are experiencing during this season or gain a deeper understanding into an already resolved conflict. Drawing from the four principles of nonviolent communication (observation, feelings, needs, and requests), attendees will learn how to transform their conflicts into a guide for change, see conflicts as a passion for something that touches us deeply, and use conflicts as an invitation and positive force to find new creative solutions. By the end of this session, you will find new ways in old conflicts and develop more appreciation for the negative emotions that our conflicts bring. Come along with your full presence, a working conflict situation, and an open mind!

Speaker Biography: Doris Wesley is a doctoral candidate and an intercultural communication and conflict transformation scholar in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) program. She teaches lower and upper-level communication-centered courses and researches communication's role in transforming conflicts and extreme violence in traditional and online intercultural spaces. Doris is passionate about equipping individuals, organizations, institutions, and communities with the necessary skills to transform conflict at any level using proprietary methodologies and proven multimodal communication strategies. Doris serves on the advisory board of NCSU Feed the Pack initiative, is the former President of CRDMSA, and a recipient of the diversity grant by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHASS), which funded the designing of the Compassionate Communication course at NC State.