The Art of Difficult Conversations
Here is another free (open to all) practice offering to power up your relationships in 2026.
AR practice seems pretty sweet during that honeymoon period where we are meeting and interacting with lots of new and interesting people. Right? That's one of the gifts of online practice work.
However, after the passage of time relationships start to form, and more or less inevitably, little frictions start to develop. Without a capacity to repair, its tempting to just let these relationships go, and to continue our pursuit of those 'perfect' people that will make our life 'complete'.
And, of course, there's that other way to have zero relationship friction. Just go and live in a cave on one's own. Problem solved :)
Thankfully there is another approach. This six session series will enhance our ability to hold a space for difficult conversations in our life. So that we can work with difference without relationships falling apart. And so that we, paradoxically, can use friction to actually deepen our relationships, and also to clarify our purpose, values and dreams.
We will work with actual difficult conversations and get to practice new approaches to being with them.
Heads up for attendees
Do you want the good news, or the bad news?
The bad news is that being able to successfully repair, requires us to gain some familiarity with feelings, both ours and theirs. And also with that thorny question which just wont go away: "what do i want". That's why we got to practice that so intensively in the last series.
So here is the nervous system heads up: This series while not specifically a shadow work series, does have some potential to put us in touch with unresolved emotion and unmet developmental needs. So, come prepared to be watchful for that.
The good news is that, any kind of conflict tends to involve some element of projection of old issues onto someone we care about. So to be able to repair, in a funny kind of way, is to be able to heal. The series offers us a practical model for recognizing each others feelings, aspirations and values.
The model is based on the work of Stone, Patton and Heen with their 'third chair' perspective, combined with the way that Sue Johnson distinguishes the noisy surface emotions from the tender primary emotions that typically lay beneath. This combination offers us a great set of tools with which to practice the Art of Difficult Conversations. Like so much in AR, its a skill that we can learn.
The series
The sessions will be 75mins in length, start with 2 or 3 slides that outline the framework that we will then practice in pair breakouts.
Some courses on difficult conversations involve lots of role playing. We know that's not for everyone, and we will be keeping that to a minimum. Instead we will work with your real life sticky situations. Perhaps there are some magical folk among us who are completely free of tricky relational moments (and if so, we would love to meet you!) For everyone else, try to bring along a couple of situations from your life that you'd like to work with. Ideally they would be:
- Not your biggest real life drama (the principle of titrating the work)
- Not about the person in your breakout (same reason, we have to learn to crawl before we can walk)
As always, this is 90% experiential. So, bring along your practice hats.
While it is not required, reading any of these will help you:
- Stone; Patton & Heen (1999), Difficult Conversations,
- Ryel Kestano (2022), Authentic Relating, Chapters 19-21
- Jason Digges (2020), Conflict = Energy, Chapters 11-12
How to join the calls
The first session is:
- Wed, 21 Jan 2026, 18:00 - America/Los_Angeles (PST/PDT)
- Wed, 21 Jan 2026, 21:00 - America/New_York (EST/EDT)
- Thu, 22 Jan 2026, 03:00 - Europe/Berlin (CET/CEST)
- Thu, 22 Jan 2026, 13:00 - Australia/Sydney (AEDT/AEST)
- Thu, 22 Jan 2026, 15:00 - Pacific/Auckland (NZDT/NZST)
We'd love it if you could, well ahead of time, read the practice guidelines. You'll need a user account, then you can join the calls using the schedule.
