The Doug Noll Show

Kimmie Weeks has worked to alleviate poverty and human suffering in Africa and around the world since he was fourteen. At the age of nine he came face to face with civil war, human suffering, and death. At age eleven, he committed himself to creating a better world for children. Ever since, his life has been a journey toward fulfilling this commitment. Over the years, Weeks has formed partnerships and led organizations that have provided education to thousands of students in West Africa, lobbied the disarmament of child soldiers, and provided health care and recreation supplies to children. At 26 years old, Kimmie is a graduate of Amherst College and is now completing his Masters Degree. He will be entering his Ph.D. program this fall. Join us for an uplifting, powerful conversation about what one person can do to change our world.
http://www.youthactioninternational.org

Kimmie was targeted for assassination by the Charles Taylor regime in Liberia for his outspoken leadership against Taylor’s enslavement of children to fill his mercenary army. Kimmie was 16 years old at the time. Kimmie and I also talk about his organization to help children in Africa.
http://www.youthactioninternational.org

Conflict usually involves a lot of emotion and reactivity. When we are reactive, we lose our ability to think things through clearly. Aleya Dao and I will be talking about these common experiences in this show and invite you to email me at info@lawyertopeacemaker.com with your comments and questions.
Reactivity is controlled by deep brain functions located in the amygdala. We have two amygdalae, located in each brain hemisphere. The amygdalae act as early warning systems and trigger us into action if a threat is perceived. Interestingly, the amygdalae cannot distinguish between a physical threat, a social insult, or a bad memory. The opporutnities for triggers is therefore plentiful. Anger and Inner Peace, Finding Peace Within, Reactivity, Difficult People Forgiveness

Conflict escalates in five stages. As people enter the next higher stage, their reactivity is more intense and their ability to reason their way out of the problem diminishes. The only way to de-escalate is work back through the stages one at a time.

The tools for dealing with triggers and reactivity include self-awareness, feeling emotions and identifying them within you, looking for the lessons to be learned from the moment, and practicing that which you wish to master. Aleya tells us about the energetic fields that can be used to shift reactivity.

Learn to read emotional data fields to help others who are reactive and triggered. The emotional data field consists of the layers of emotions a person is experiencing in conflict situations. We can help people de-escalate by acknowledging and identifying their emotions for them in the moment.

Many of us have experienced a need for vengeance—to get back at the other guy. Sometimes it is a passing desire and sometimes it becomes an all consuming goal. What is vengeance, where does it come from, and what is its relationship to retribution, justice and forgiveness. I will be talking about these common experiences in this show and invite you to email me at info@lawyertopeacemaker.com with your comments and questions. We start by looking at vengeance in literature, particularly as described by Alexander Dumas’ in his famous novel The Count of Monte Cristo. Vengeance arises from a sense of lost honor identity that has been severely attacked. Vengeance is a powerful emotion that cannot be assauged with persuasion or logic.

Vengeance is often wrapped around identity. Identity is at a primal level a right to claim group resources. When identity is threatened by violence or some other act, deep resentment can arise.

Recall how Ahab, the captain of the whaling ship Pequod, is driven to madness in his desire for revenge against the great white whale Moby Dick. In the end, his desire for vengeance destroys him, his ship,and all of the crew except for Ishmael. The key to dealing with this deep vengeance is through empathy. Empathy has its roots in mirror neurons. There are many levels of empathy and the greatest gift is to be able to create an empathic space for a person with deep resentment.

Forgiveness is a process not an event. The transformation from rage, anger, and the desire for vengeance through the process of forgiveness can be profound as witnessed by the story I tell.

There are many conflicts in our lives that go unresolved and unreconciled. Sometimes, time heals. We can forgive and move on. However, what happens when a mother or father, brother or sister, or other close relative or friend is dying and you have unresolved issues between you? Is it possible to find peace, to reconcile, and to let go? In this show, we look at making peace with the dying. We talk about how to reconcile old injustices, fights, disputes, and issues with people who are dying. Join us for a conversation about how to make peace with the dying.

How to reconcile old injustices, fights, disputes, and issues with people who are dying.

How to reconcile old injustices, fights, disputes, and issues with people who are dying.

How to reconcile old injustices, fights, disputes, and issues with people who are dying.

Anger and conflict go hand in hand. Every argument involves anger and anger is part of life. Why do we become angry? How can we deal with our own anger? How do we deal with the anger of others? And how do we deal with people in our lives that are perpetually angry? In this show, we look at anger from the perspective of the peacemaker. There are four kinds of anger and each reflects a very different behavior. Of course, angry behavior is rooted in neuropsychology, so we look at the brain’s fear response system as a source of anger in the brain. In dealing with anger, we look at our own anger and its causes. Likewise, we look at other people’s anger and talk about how we might work with it. Finally, we consider the problem of violent anger and how to respond and not respond to it. Tune in for an informative show.

Continued Anger Discussion

Continued Anger Discussion

Continued Anger Discussion

We expect kids up through their teens to fight with their parents. Its part of growing up and learning. But what we don’t expect are the fights between adult children and their parents. In this show, my co-host, Aleya Dao, and I take up this troublesome issue. Why do adult children fight with their parents? And how can those fights be transformed into peace. We start by identifying some of the common themes of fights between adult children and their parents, including health, money, alcohol and drug abuse, second (or third) spouses, child rearing including discipline, education, and religion, opinions about children’s spouses, and politics.

What are the hidden relationship issues? These issues drive many of the fights, and we are not aware of them. They include respect manifested by disrespect, insults; freedom manifested by unhealthy control; autonomy manifested by unhealthy or manipulative power; safety manifested by fear; love manifested by smothering and guilt; and abundance manifested by hoarding, stinginess, not being generous.

What are the hidden identity issues? They include self-esteem manifested by competition, self-worth manifested by arrogance rather than humility, gratitude and appreciation manifested by resentment, commitment to self manifested by selfishness, self-control manifested by guilt, healthy pride and self-esteem manifested by shame.

Some simple questions indicate much about how adult children respond to their parents. For example:
• Who am I if I am not my mother?
• Who is my father closer to - me or mother?
• What can I do so that my mother accepts me as an adult?
• Is it OK to be happier than my mother?
• Why do I want my mother's approval?

What a great Valentine’s Day topic! Mars vs. Venus. Men and women fighting. It seems like every couple, whether dating, committed or married, at one time or another has a fight. In many relationships, the conflicts escalate until the relationship feels like it is not worth preserving. What is going on that we fight with the person we love the most? My co-host is Aleya Dao and together we explore the war between the sexes. Men and women have different perspectives, different communication styles, and different needs at different times. Aleya and I talk about these differences from the female and male perspective.

It’s not about the money! Aleya and I talk about symbolic content issues like shopping, sports, money, sex, children, parents. These seem to be what the fight is about, but not really. Tune in and find out what is really going on.

Learning to make peace with your partner. Aleya and I have some basic tools for you to make peace with your partner and we demonstrate in actual conversations how to do it. Learn how and why to create a safe space for difficult conversations, set some ground rules, and engage in various kinds of empathic listening.

Continuation of Segment 3

Violence is an all too common response to conflict. Doesn’t matter whether the violence is at home, on the streets, or between countries… it doesn’t solve conflicts. So why are we violent? What are the causes of violence and what can we do to transform potentially violent situations into peaceful resolutions? In this show, we will take some time to understand what violence is all about.

In our culture, violence is strangely seductive. Take last summer’s Bruce Willis movie, Live Free or Die Hard also known as Die Hard 4. People really enjoyed it as a fast-paced, action movie. What they don’t realize is that the Die Hard movies are a perfect example of the Myth of Redemptive Violence, a social theory that describes why violence is so seductive in our culture. Let’s learn how, as a society, we vicariously revere violence and find it deeply satisfying. We even teach this to our children in the cartoons they watch.

What can we do to stop the violence? It’s easy and it’s hard: Love the children … do everything you can to love them, hold them, hug them, and make them feel safe and protected, especially when they are very small and vulnerable. The children in your life need your time and energy. Your sons, daughters, grandsons garnddaughters, your niece, younger brother. The children you teach, coach and mentor. All need you to help them grow into healthy young adults. We learn how loving children stops violence..amazing isn’t it—that love can actually stop violence..Tune in and learn why.

Continuation of Segment 3.

What’s the first thing that happens to you when you get into a fight or conflict? If you are like me and most every one else, you get mad. So the first thing I tell people is that Serious Fights Will Piss You Off! Once you can recognize that fights, conflicts and disputes are emotional events in our lives, things can shift and with this awareness come choices. So in this show, let’s explore some of the emotion around fighting and see what can be learned from it.

Our early warning system is programmable by life experience. That programming starts at birth and continues as life experiences accumulate. Most importantly, the programming occurs without our conscious knowledge or choice. Let’s look at how this happens.

While bad news is that we have been programmed without our consent or knowledge, the good news is that we can re-progam ourselves. The first step in re-programming our brains is gaining awareness of our reactivity. Learning to be aware is simple because many of the things that trigger you repeat themselves over and over. All you hav