In fact, when word got around that I was researching humility, I suspect more than a few choked on their coffee. 

And even though I have spent over a decade exploring the concept as an attribute and as a practice, it wasn’t until I recently reflected on my own professional challenges that I truly understood how to embrace humility.

I want to share my journey, but first it is important to understand what humility is—and isn’t. It’s been extolled as a virtue for centuries, but it’s often mischaracterized.

In today’s culture, it can be mistaken as a humblebrag, which disguises a boast as modesty—for example, “I really hate talking about myself, but people keep asking how I managed to run a marathon while working full-time.” Or it can resemble impostor phenomenon, the persistent experience of feeling intellectually or professionally fraudulent despite clear evidence of competence or success.

But research finds that humble people hold accurate views of their own abilities and achievements. They openly acknowledge their mistakes and limitations, and are receptive to new ideas. Overall, they recognize their places within a larger whole and genuinely appreciate the value of others.

Humility doesn’t always earn praise. Sometimes the humble may be seen as meek, subservient, or self-abasing.

For instance, many people praised former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s empathetic, self-effacing leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an openness and deference to experts. But some critics dismissed it as weak or soft. These negative views show the various ways people “see” humility.

Generally, though, when humility is understood as grounded self-awareness rather than self-erasure, it’s viewed as something worth cultivating and practicing. We see openness, curiosity, acknowledgment of others, and a lack of ego in fictional characters like Ted Lasso, hero of the same-titled Apple TV series; Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings books; and Jean-Luc Picard, commander of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Humility is also evident in public figures, such as former President Jimmy Carter, children’s television host Fred Rogers, and Nelson Mandela, the Black nationalist who served as the first Black president of South Africa. 

I’m a sociologist with a focus on medical education and health care providers. At Arizona State University’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation, I explore issues including causes of burnout, elements of team-based care, and opportunities for emphasizing the human side of health care. In recent years, my work has focused on humility.

From my research and my own experience, I’ve learned that true humility isn’t self-erasure. It’s a sense of security and confidence that your value doesn’t depend on recognition and that you are just one member of a larger system with a multitude of contributors. By removing the need to dominate, humility fosters openness to collaboration, innovation, and an awareness of how the systems around us work.

Still, in a world of Instagram likes and LinkedIn accolades, humility can be the virtue everyone seems to admire but few practice. It’s the one we say we want—until it requires us to confront the parts of ourselves that crave affirmation.

Climbing the professional ladder

I tend to stand out in a crowd. I’m 6-foot-4, with close-cropped hair, a heavy beard, and tattoos. I also push myself to stand out professionally.

Starting in graduate school, I was determined to make my voice heard and sought after. I pursued nearly every opportunity, committee, and position that came my way. No role was too small for me to accept.

I strived to present my work in top-tier journals and at conferences, and I cold-called prominent scholars to propose working together. And I constantly shared my findings and thoughts on social media.

Like many workplaces, the academic world has a set of defined success metrics, such as publications, citations of your work, grant funding, and teaching evaluations from students. School culture and leadership influence what each college or university considers more or less valuable among those measures. To advance and get promoted, particularly to get tenure, it’s important to learn at an early stage what one’s department, college, or university truly prioritizes.

I wanted to get tenure but also to be seen as an active citizen of academia—energetic, outspoken, and unafraid to push boundaries. When my department chair described me as having my hair on fire, I took it as a compliment. I called it “making positive noise.”

Initially, the system rewarded that noise. I earned tenure at the University of Delaware and received departmental, college, and national awards. I also was appointed to serve as associate dean and to direct a new research center. I felt validated, visible, and valuable.

The sociology department at the University of Delaware had a typical academic culture that’s often summarized as “publish or perish.” The most important measures of scholars’ work were writing, publishing their work in respected journals, and having other researchers cite those studies. Securing external funding from government, private companies, or foundations was valued but was not as high a priority as publishing.

A new beginning that felt like an end

In 2020, I received a new opportunity at Arizona State University, a much larger school that branded itself as a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship. I was offered the chance to direct the Center for Advancing Interprofessional Practice, Education, and Research and to step into the shoes of a leader I deeply admired. I arrived expecting to be a big fish in a bigger pond.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I showed up imagining there’d be a bit of buzz around my arrival given my time at the University of Delaware. But reality didn’t match the script: No greeting, office, or nameplate marked my place when I arrived.

Early conversations with administrators weren’t about my research or teaching visions—the things that I thought set me apart. Instead, I felt they tended to focus on how much external funding I could raise from foundations and government agencies. My new colleagues often spoke in a shorthand of grant-based acronyms when referring to what projects they were working on, a “language” I was woefully unfamiliar with.

To make matters worse, I arrived during COVID-19, with classes either canceled or taught online and faculty members working mainly from home. The hallway chatter, open doors, and spontaneous collaboration that I was accustomed to were absent. I began to feel alienated and disoriented as a scholar.

Even after ASU resumed in-person classes in the fall of 2021, I felt like the silence and distance lingered. No students waited for office hours. I struggled to make connections with my colleagues. I eagerly proposed collaborations when really everyone was just trying to find their footing in this new era of education.

My proposals for new classes and curricular programs hit up against institutional barriers I was unaware of. At one point, a college administrator asked, “How do we get you on other people’s grants?”—a question that I took to imply that they felt my research wasn’t strong enough.

It appeared that my colleagues in Edson College were accustomed to these values and spoke the language. I was a stranger in a strange land. Although I was producing some of my best work, measured in terms of publications and citations, I felt no one seemed interested. I had come from an environment where I felt known and valued to one where I seemed to be a nobody.

I felt as though I needed to staple my resume to my forehead and parade around the hallways asserting, like Ron Burgundy in the movie Anchorman, “I’m not quite sure how to put this, but . . . I’m kind of a big deal. People know me.” 

The impact of feeling unseen

For people who have built careers by being highly engaged and visible, suddenly feeling unseen can be devastating. In any profession, a fear that you don’t belong at your workplace can be debilitating and make you question your own value.

I sought advice from peers and college leaders, and even hired a professional coach. Things only worsened. Curricular proposals were stalled or turned down. My center was shuttered in a restructuring, although it was meeting its goals and earning international recognition.

At first, I blamed ASU and Edson College for my feelings of disconnection. I thought the leadership structure and style was dysfunctional; that many colleagues were cold, unfriendly, and conformist; and that the college’s stated values were inauthentic. 

This series of what I came to call “unacknowledgments” sent me into a personal and professional tailspin. Negativity and self-doubt consumed me, and I truly worried that my career was over. Had I been blackballed? Why did it feel as though no one cared?

When the noise turns inward

I had spent years studying empathy—the ability to understand and feel what someone else is feeling—and how to cultivate it among health care professionals and students in order to support more patient-centered care. To that end, at the University of Delaware I had developed a program designed to foster empathy across health professions. It aimed to help students see one another as collaborators, build shared respect, and recognize their collective role on the same health care delivery team.

But when I further analyzed the program’s outcomes from my office at ASU, I realized that empathy wasn’t enough. It could help students feel with others, but it didn’t necessarily help them see themselves, or others, differently.

I realized that what I really wanted the students to develop was humility. This step would require them to recognize their limits, accept that they were fallible, see themselves as part of a larger team, and value others’ contributions.

That realization changed my research trajectory—and eventually, my professional life.

Research becomes a mirror

Initially, I approached humility solely as a scholar. I examined the history of the concept and gaps in existing research on it, and I analyzed how humility was connected to uncertainty and the impostor phenomenon. I explored how humility could enhance team-based care and developed a new way to define humility among health care professionals in order to promote more collaboration and patient-centeredness.

As my own professional world began to unravel, and as I dived deeper into the concept of humility through my research, something unexpected happened. I realized that humility wasn’t just an idea to study—it was becoming a mirror that made me rethink my own perspective.

Slowly, I began to see how pride and insecurity were entwined in my reactions to my new setting at ASU. I realized that my need to be noticed, and my insistence that others validate my worth, represented my own kind of arrogance.

Perhaps my ambition had been less about contributing and more about gaining external validation. I had lost the selfless wonder and awe that drive scholarly inquiry and curiosity. And now I had to confront what remained when the spotlight dimmed.

Humility, I began to understand, wasn’t just an abstract concept to explore “out there” among others. I needed to hone it internally by thinking beyond myself. By decentering my ego, I realized that I could nurture and sustain curiosity in its own right. 

In short, I needed to practice what I was preaching. It wasn’t an easy lesson. I assume that cultivating humility never is.

To that end, I felt that it was essential to develop a program to help build humility “muscles.” In 2024, I developed HIIT for Humility, an online training package for individuals or groups, modeled after the fitness concept of high-intensity interval training. This program provides evidence-based strategies to help users start building “habits of humility,” such as acknowledgment of others and self-awareness.

Just as physical exercise requires consistency to produce results, so does the cultivation of humility. Leaning into HIIT for Humility workouts gradually eased my sense of alienation and defensiveness. I became more appreciative of others, less quick to judge, and better able to listen to others’ perspectives. In doing so, I started to feel more confident and secure.

While I still took pride in my work, I began to see that my contributions were not the only ones that mattered. I also found that I could stretch into unfamiliar but necessary tasks, such as working harder to win federal and foundation grants and seeing the value of my colleagues’ contributions to science.

Why am I here?

Only a few years into this process, I can see that ASU and Edson College have unintentionally taught me humility by signaling, often quietly, which contributions are deemed essential and which forms of success carry the most weight. Navigating stalled proposals, shifting priorities, and structural reorganizations have required me to recalibrate my ego, expectations, and identity.

Not being seen as a “big fish” and being expected to persist without consistent recognition have required me to understand my work as part of a larger system with differing values and, at times, challenging constraints. Shifting to ASU forced me to rethink my identity as a professor and to reevaluate my sense of purpose from the inside out.

A colleague of mine often asks students who he feels are coasting along, “Why are you here?” Lately, I’ve taken that question personally. What is the point of being a professor—writing papers, submitting grant proposals, teaching courses? Why did I choose this path in the first place?

When I feel unseen, unheard, or unappreciated, pondering why I’m here helps ground me. For anyone who is struggling to feel visible or valued at work, I strongly recommend considering this simple question.

Over time, I’ve stopped needing to be the big fish in the pond and measuring my worth in titles and awards. I now see that my responsibility as a scholar, teacher, and human being is to stay curious, listen more deeply, and make space for others’ voices.

Embracing humility, and consistently using my humility muscles, have helped me realize that I’m here to be part of the creative energy of academia, do the work, and cultivate curiosity in my students, my peers, and myself.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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• April 2026 Happiness Calendar for Educators

Implicit is the idea that differences should not be entertained, that they are somehow threatening. To a growing extent, children are beginning to believe that differences should not be explored or embraced, but rather should be feared.

While there is no research examining these trends directly over time, there is no doubt that rates of anxiety are climbing in both American and U.K. youth and that contributing factors are the misinformation and social comparisons children encounter in mass media and social media. Children do not embrace cognitive complexity, so they try to construct a predictable and non-threatening reality. This reality can include the mindset that “difference” is a threat.

In 1994, Sally Smith, one of the most acclaimed educators of children with learning disabilities and the founder of the Lab School in Washington, DC, anticipated our current concerns with difference. She did not want children with learning “differences” to be regarded in any negative way, or to be excluded or shunned because of how they learned or expressed themselves. She wrote a book called Different Is Not Bad, Different Is the World targeted for children in grades two to six.

Because Smith was an innovator, her work was derived from case studies of the implementation of her methodologies, both her work with individual students and other people’s work with her Lab School model in other places. But subsequent research has supported her approaches to dealing directly with difference through supportive peer relationships and promoting an appreciation for varied students’ cultures and contexts.

Her book translates into a series of activities, all designed to illuminate the many meanings of the word “different,” and create a positive mindset toward it.

Definition of “different”

Begin by asking students to define the word “different.” Note that dictionary definitions have two foci—“not the same as” and “separate from.” 

The key point is to have students understand that difference is not “bad.” This can be emphasized by asking students, in small groups and then sharing with the whole class, to note all the things in the classroom that can be considered “different.” This would include things on the walls, books and other materials, and, of course, the students.

Follow up by asking students, with regard to what they have noticed as “different,” what are things about them that are alike. Using the earlier examples, “different” things on the wall, books, and students also share some qualities.

For example, if you focus students’ attention on where books are in the room, ask them what are all the things they notice about the books that are different. You can do this as a pair share or in small groups and have students report out. Then, ask them what is the same about the books. They will find that some of the things that are different also are commonalities (such as covers, binding, pages, author’s names, etc.). This helps them pay attention and, indeed, look for similarities alongside differences.

Things that are different

Then, ask students to generate examples of things within various categories that are different. For example, things that can be driven, favorite family foods, colors, ways to play, needing help, aspects of hair, things you are good at, hobbies, feelings. You also can add things relevant to curricular areas you are focusing on (e.g., people in certain historical periods, names of elements, types of clouds, poets).

The main point to communicate with this activity is that differences are not bad; they simply are “different.” In fact, “variety” can be an advantage. This leads to another activity.

Have small groups of students pick an area where they discussed differences and have them creatively generate new examples based on what they discussed—a new type of vehicle, new colors, a new way to play, new ways to give help, something new about hair, a different hobby, etc. With this activity, which brings about creativity and activates all of students’ social-emotional skills, you want to reinforce the value of variety.

People with differences

In her book, Smith identifies a number of individuals who made significant accomplishments despite differences in learning or particular abilities. Here is her list, but you should feel free to add people that would be more salient to your students. Better still, have your students do some research to find examples in various fields (e.g., science, entertainment, politics, sports, the arts, writing and poetry, computers, economics).

• Thomas Edison: invented electric light, had learning difficulties
• Auguste Rodin: sculptor who carved The Thinker, had learning difficulties
• Ludwig von Beethoven: composed many pieces of music while deaf
• Franklin D. Roosevelt: president of the United States with physical limitations due to polio
• Helen Keller: earned a master’s degree and became a writer while deaf and blind
• Nelson Rockefeller: governor of New York and vice president of the United States, had learning difficulties
• George Patton: general who helped win World War II, had learning difficulties

Here are some additional examples:

• Whoopi Goldberg: famous actress and Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award winner, had dyslexia
• Agatha Christie: wrote (or dictated) many mysteries despite dysgraphia
• Carly Simon: songwriter and performer, was affected by stuttering
• Keira Knightley: Academy Award–winning actress, had dyslexia

Create a quilt based on differences

Working in small groups, have your students generate a list of things they do well and things they have difficulty with, up to 30 in total. For example, students will mention hobbies they enjoy, subjects in school in which they do well or struggle, social situations they don’t feel comfortable in, and household tasks they do or don’t feel confident in, like cooking. Items students mention always stimulate additional ideas from classmates, either as things they also do well or things that are challenges.

Tell them they will be creating a quilt made up of both parts of this list, arranged as they wish. Give them 8.5” by 11” pieces of paper and have them put the name of one of these things on each piece of paper and, ideally, draw something on that paper to make the page colorful. Once completed, have each group arrange the pieces as they wish, in a six by five pattern, and share with the rest of the class, explaining how they chose to arrange the pieces as they did. Of course, if your circumstances allow and the students can use fabric instead of paper, you can strive to create a real quilt.

During the sharing, underscore how the collective quilts were all different, and yet all show how every group had a mix of things they did well and things they did not do so well. Help them see that this also is true of each person. Every student could make a quilt with things they are good at and not so good at. Everyone’s quilt would likely be different, but, to use Smith’s phrase, everyone’s quilt would be good.

Through these relatively innocuous activities, educators can set the stage for students to recognize differences, appreciate them, and not fear them or see them in a negative way. This will be of particularly great value to young students as they enter the middle and high school years, and encounter yet wider ranges of difference than they will have seen in their lives to that point.

In spite of these frustrations, I’ve come to accept that we have to collaborate if we want to build the greater good for the greatest number of people. Decades of facilitating group projects across the arts and media taught me that healthy conflict is a necessary part of collaboration. It’s only been in recent years, however, that I’ve learned it’s possible to intentionally develop my body’s capacity to engage in conflict without abandoning myself or my relationships. Apparently, I can build this skill systematically, not haphazardly over time through trial and error.

That’s why I wanted to talk with Jazmin Pichardo and Beth Douthirt-Cohen. They’re frequent collaborators at the University of Maryland, where they both help people strengthen their capacity to engage across differences of power and identity. Their goal, Pichardo says, is “shifting our culture so that we can talk, work, and be better humans together.”

Jazmin Pichardo is faculty of practice and director of intergroup dialogue collaborations and partnerships at the University of Maryland College of Education’s Intergroup Dialogue Training Hub. Beth Douthirt-Cohen is the director of strategic initiatives for undergraduate studies as well as political faculty at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, where they support processes of truth and reconciliation that were initiated in the wake of a murder that was committed on campus in 2017. (Beth is also an alum of our Bridging Differences in Higher Education Learning Fellowship and their work is featured in our Bridging Differences in Higher Education Playbook.)

In this lightly edited conversation, Pichardo and Douthirt-Cohen take me step-by-step through their process of teaching folks concrete, embodied ways to face painful conversations and stay connected.

Kelly Rafferty: Over the course of a semester or a series of workshops, what is the primary skill you’re trying to help your students or participants develop? What are you training people to do?

Beth Douthirt-Cohen: Jazmin has a powerful way of saying it: “How do I choose relationship?”

“Choosing relationship” is not necessarily choosing you as my best friend. How do we choose to stay in relationship with each other and why would we make that choice? What is the groundwork we need to do in order to choose relationship when we come to a point where I’m like, No, it would be easier for me to peace out. Maybe that’s me leaving the room. Maybe it’s me leaving my body. Maybe it’s me pretending like I’m listening.

Jazmin Pichardo: It’s about facing the conflict rather than running away, freezing, feeling still, or even getting defensive and argumentative. Am I facing this situation with a desire to be right and shut this person down and prove them wrong? Or am I facing this situation with the intent to actually want to learn and understand their perspective, even if I don’t agree? Am I facing this conflict so that we can sit in it together and figure out where we have some shared understanding or some common ground?

BDC: Facing the conflict gives you more choice. You’re not just at reaction. Like, Can I have more choice in the way that I want to respond? And how do I build that capacity? It’s in micro-moments that we build that capacity. Our bodies are already practicing something. Can we try something new? There are more options for us than just seeing discomfort as danger.

KR: Very few people show up in the world, ready on day one to engage in deep, honest conversations about legacies of racist harm, or present-day experiences of ableism or gender-based violence. Your work is proof that we can learn how to do these things. How does capacity-building start? Are there specific things the group discusses or practices long before you ask anyone to jump into a challenging dialogue?

BDC: We name what is coming. Inevitably disagreement will happen, and inevitably there will be points where our bodies are feeling defensive, we’re uncertain, unsure. How do we prepare for that? How do we see those sensations as data, as information? How do you build the somatic awareness to be able to do that? Notice what happens in your body when you feel defensive, when you feel challenged, when you feel uncomfortable. What story do you tell yourself when that’s happening?

We also get clear on what the values are that will keep you in the room at that point. What matters to you? Is there an ancestor you want to call on or a value you want to call on that orients you in those moments?

JP: Yes, together we find a shared connection—a shared investment. We have some shared values, and that’s important enough that we’re going to work on not throwing each other away.

We also spend a lot of time being really clear with participants and our students about wanting to build a container. The classroom or the workshop space is a space where we can practice living into some different ways of being with one another. We know that out in the world, we can be conflict-avoidant and we can be judgmental and run with the stories we tell ourselves about other people.

With participants and students, we are deliberate and intentional in saying, “Let’s try to suspend that in this space and use it as a practice ground for different ways of being with one another.”

KR: When you’re teaching students how to develop self-awareness around their reactions to conflict, what are some of the things you ask them to pay attention to?

JP: Early on, I will often ask students and participants, “Who are you in conflict?” If we’re opening up the conversation by saying conflict is normal, and the work that we want to be able to do together is figure out how we navigate conflict together before we can even have that conversation, then there is a need for a level of self-awareness and reflection around who I am in conflict. What are the stories I tell myself about my relationship to conflict? Before we even have the conversation—whatever is the focus of our course or topic—we’re giving participants time to really think about how they get activated. What are their stress responses? Do you fight, flight, freeze, fawn?

We start with, what do you know about your responses? And then what do you need to feel grounded and secure enough to face conflict instead?

BDC: And how do I build the somatic awareness and skills to do that? It depends on the level of the stress response, but maybe I have a sense that I’m a “toward” person. In conflict, I’m more likely to be like, “No, Jazmin, I do agree with you.” That’s a “towards” shape. That’s very adaptive. That has kept you safe and alive and kept your ancestors safe and alive. And can I have more choices? Maybe I can say, “Actually, I really disagree with you here.” I’ll notice that when I say that, my body is going to freak out because it might not feel safe. But how do I stay in it and believe in the possibility of Jazmin staying in it with me, for example?

As much as we try to normalize strong feelings, students will still come out of a very difficult conversation and they’ll be like, “Why did I have such a strong reaction? I know that people say these dumb things.” As much as we can, we normalize. That’s your body protecting you, trying to keep you safe. And your brain-body doesn’t distinguish between a lion coming over the hill and this threat. They’re just both threats in the body. As much as we can increase that awareness, it tends to reduce shame.

KR: I know you encourage students to pause and breathe when they’re feeling activated in a conversation. What other practices, tools, or techniques do you teach them to help them respond instead of react?

JP: Early on, we start talking about emotions. Emotions are information. In the traditional academic classroom, you get taught that there is head and logic, and you separate that from your emotions or bodily reactions. In dialogue, we bring both in. We teach that head and heart, that thinking and understanding together actually support deeper learning and greater self-awareness. We model that for the students.

We provide them with emotion wheels. Sometimes they really struggle with naming emotions. They’ll say, “I feel like sometimes we need to rethink things.” And I’ll say, “That sounds like an ‘I think’ statement, not an ‘I feel’ statement.” We support students to identify the emotion, and if they’re not in a place where they can identify that emotion, we come back to sensations. Where are you feeling a sensation—a kind of tension—in your body around this topic? When a peer shared this comment, where did you feel the reaction in your body internally?

BDC: We’ll also say things like, “Feel your feet on the ground. Notice your breath.” One of the things that’s most important to me is the fact that we’re modeling it. We will lower our voices. We will get more in our bodies. We will name what’s going on for us. It’s almost like facilitator-as-tool or model. I’ll sometimes say, “I really feel my heart beating fast right now. That tells me my body’s feeling stuff, things are happening.”

Sometimes people think somatic work is supposed to calm people down, and that’s actually not our purpose. We also try to be really clear about that. It’s never about calming people down. You can be centered and grounded and full of rage and still in dialogue, still facing. The goal here is not harmony. Harmony might come, but that is not the purpose of this.

Whatever you’re feeling, you can be centered and grounded and have choice. Our goal is that you have more capacity, more choice in these moments so that you can turn towards or face the possibility of relationship in the midst of profound differences.

KR: In what you’re describing, I see the dance of patience and courage that the psychologist and neuroscientist Sarah Schnitker and her colleagues articulate in their work. They understand patience and courage to be complimentary virtues. Too much patience can be apathy, which is also the deficiency of courage. Conversely, too little patience is recklessness, which is also excessive courage. In a recent conversation Sarah said, “We find, empirically over time, that if someone has both of these virtues . . . they’re able to do what is needed to act in service of love and justice because patience allows them to take that space [to make a conscious choice] and courage allows them to act even when it’s really difficult.”

I’m curious if you’ve noticed this dynamic at play in your classrooms and workshops. Have you witnessed students drawing on their patience and their courage in complimentary ways during dialogues?

JP: I think a lot about our students who, in a moment where I’m noticing emotional elevation, take the deep breath and say, “Actually, I’m not OK with that. Actually, that feels really harmful.” Not in a way that is intended to be judgmental, but in a way that is intended to bring our awareness to the impact that our words can have.

Dialogue is a process that allows you to speak your truth while also being able to stay in relationship with folks during tension. Those are moments where I see our students leaning into some courage, holding that patience and that grace for others, particularly when they’re calling people in while not losing sight of the dignity they inherently hold and that they want us to be able to hold for them, as well.

BDC: Yes. The only thing that I’ll add is patience for self. I’m thinking about our dialogues that are more about race, and I’m thinking about myself, in particular, working with white students or white faculty and staff. I see people practice patience for self, for not already having arrived, for not being perfect, for not knowing what to say.

I also see participants—not just white participants—say, “I am feeling something and I need us to slow down,” which feels so brave. With the power dynamics of higher education classrooms, that rarely happens. It feels powerful to me because it says to me that they’re honoring where they are. Because we co-regulate, and we’re all doing it together, they’re honoring other people in the room by extension. Patience for self and patience with each other feels incredibly important. This is really brave work, to have conversations where you’re not pretending to get along.

KR: You bring a great deal of intention and skill to how you prepare students for dialogue and how you support them all the way through the conversation. What happens when it’s time to end? What do our bodies and relationships need at the end of a session or a semester?

JP: From the get-go, we are really clear with participants, whether they be students, faculty, or staff in a workshop or training. Expect and accept a lack of closure. That can be really unsettling and hard, in particular when we’re talking about identity and power differences and inequities. We close out by acknowledging that this can feel unfinished. We ask, “What parts of this feel unfinished for you in this moment? What do you want to take away from this space? What’s something that you want to leave here?”

Closure in this work isn’t always a neat bow. But we can acknowledge the ongoing work that we all have to do. We can acknowledge that some kind of progress was made in the time that we had together. I think adrienne maree brown says, “People are gonna have the conversation that they need to have in that space.”

BDC: Yes. Closing each dialogue session and closure at the end of a class is important, partially because there is a rhythm to all of this. We’re honoring our humanity. In this culture, you just run from one thing to another. You switch jobs. You finish a class and you’re on to the next one. Part of honoring the humanity of self and other is doing some kind of closing ritual practice. We have a few activities that we typically use. One of our colleagues, Dr. Carlton Green, does something that feels so humanizing to me. We stand in a circle and express gratitude. Gratitude as a somatic practice can shift mood and shift possibility—not to paint over difference, not for harmony, but actually to be in relationship and in connection with each other. We ground it always in the humanity of ourselves and each other.

For a firsthand experience of some of these techniques, listen to Beth Douthirt-Cohen guide us through a centering practice in a recent GGSC skill-sharing session.

On April 20, 2026, please join us for our free community meeting to learn from a panel of educators about how to center well-being for neurodivergent students and everyone who teaches and learns alongside them. In this session, we’ll explore how the science and skills of well-being can support neurodivergent students while strengthening the wellbeing of the entire classroom community. Learn more and register here.

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For years, political scientists, security analysts, and financial gurus have tried to understand how information can be used to forecast what comes next and, through post-mortems, diagnose why certain predictions fail. “But psychologists, who have deep expertise in emotions, have not looked into this,” says Nir Halevy, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). “I thought that perhaps we needed to join the conversation.”

Halevy and Stanford GSB research assistants Elizabeth Miclau and Serena Lee immersed themselves in the literature on strategic surprises. They found paper after paper about problems with the acquisition and use of information—either available information was overlooked or the information on hand was inaccurate. But the research was missing a key consideration.

“What we realized by doing this was that so much attention is focused on the process of failure, on ignoring signals or misinterpreting data,” Miclau says. “But nobody looked at how people were doing what they did: what they expected as they looked at information, how they structured these expectations, or construed the situation.”

Into this gap, the researchers brought construal level theory, a psychological framework that rests on two key insights. First, people represent objects and events in the world around them along a sliding scale that runs from abstract to concrete. Second, psychological distance from these objects and events—temporal distance, social distance, spatial distance, and uncertainty—can shift how abstractly or concretely people think. Greater psychological distance tends to promote abstract thinking, while proximity promotes concrete thinking. Both approaches have unique blind spots.

Applying this lens to strategic surprises, the researchers suggest that people and institutions can be caught off guard when they think too abstractly or too concretely about the information related to a particular situation. The quality of information matters, but so does the framework in which it is interpreted.

Overly abstract thinking relies on broad schemas that can lead decision-makers to apply poorly fitting mental models, misjudge possible threats or opportunities, or assume that others will behave in stereotypical ways. Concrete thinking, on the other hand, involves being deeply immersed in the minutiae of a specific situation, which can lead people to ignore broad trends.

Managing expectations

“A CEO, for example, might focus in on a handful of tweets from a rival CEO, placing too much weight on these local signals while missing or misinterpreting broader industry patterns,” says Lee. Conversely, the CEO might look at the historical culture of a rival company and, based on this, assume its leadership will take a certain course of action that falls in line with this abstraction. Either approach on its own may be insufficient to avoid undesirable strategic surprises.

Minimizing strategic surprises thus requires not only gathering the best available information but also moving between concrete and abstract frames of mind when analyzing it. Miclau, who currently works at the consulting and training company Vantage Partners, noted that despite the high levels of competence among her clients, they often find themselves surprised during negotiations, which leads them to inquire how to better collect and elicit information.

“Our paper shows that it oftentimes may not be about that,” she says. “You may simply need a team that is toggling between these different frames during a specific negotiation as a way to see more options.” Or perhaps one team is tasked with thinking abstractly about a situation while another team thinks concretely about it.

A range of exercises can help people move between abstract and concrete frames of mind. Considering “why” people engage in an activity, for instance, encourages abstract thinking, while considering the “how” encourages concrete thinking. Thinking about possibilities in the more distant future engages abstract thinking, while generating ideas for the near future engages concrete thinking. For example, when trying to anticipate a business rival’s behavior, try to think about both what they might do tomorrow and what they might do next year.

Halevy notes that these exercises should not be reserved for war games at the Pentagon or high-stakes decisions in corporate boardrooms. They hold value across a surprising number of domains. How might a film crew continue its work if several members resign? How will a collegiate sports team adapt if the competition shows up with an atypical lineup?

“Thinking strategically basically means reasoning about how our actions help or hurt other people in our lives. So every social situation is an opportunity to think strategically,” Halevy says. Thinking about strategic surprises is not only for attorneys during litigation and PR teams in tech corporations thinking about the worst-case scenario. Our brains constantly try to predict what lies ahead, preparing us for everyday social interactions at work, at home, and on the road.

This article was originally published on Stanford News. Read the original article.

I completely understand those concerns and recognize that it can be tempting to write off those with whom we disagree. On many days, I am tempted to do the same. Yet I firmly believe that now, perhaps more than ever, is the time when we need to build stronger connections across lines of difference in this country. And I believe it’s possible.

My optimism comes from more than a decade of work bringing together people on opposite sides of contentious issues: college students from liberal and conservative campuses; progressive leaders heading to Israel and the Palestinian Territories; formerly incarcerated criminal justice reform leaders and union leaders representing correctional officers; Trump and Harris supporters leading up to the 2024 election; and many others. Time and again, the people I engage with come away with a deeper understanding of one another, less hostility, and a greater likelihood of finding solutions to shared challenges—or at least of preventing their disagreements from spiraling into further rupture or even violence—without abandoning their values or beliefs. How does this happen?

My approach rests on four main principles—the four components of what I call The Invitation. When I invite people into dialogue, I do it with these four basic terms:

• My intention is to take seriously the things that others hold dear. If it matters to you, then it will matter to me;
• I am not here to convince anyone they are wrong or to try to change them. I am curious why people think the way they do;
• Rather than thinking I am diminished by listening carefully to ideas I might disagree with, I trust that I am enhanced by listening to them; and
• I believe there is more common ground and experience than I anticipate. And when there is not, I can fundamentally disagree with someone and still respect–even love–them.

While many of the stories shared in this piece come from the realm of organized “courageous conversations” that I facilitate as well as public programs I host, my experience is that as the toxic rhetoric increases and polarization drives us further and further into our camps, some of the most powerful rewards of practicing this invitation start personally and build out from there. From the dinner table to the classroom then on to our congregations and our workplaces and eventually into our local and even national politics, if we think differently about how we relate to those we disagree with, we can begin to transform not only our immediate relationships but also our broader culture.

This way of engaging is not going to solve all the challenges we face in our country. Conversations alone are not enough to reduce extreme polarization and partisan conflicts. We are in a very difficult time. I too would like to see greater economic opportunity, greater worker ownership, a primary system that doesn’t play to the extreme voices and an election system that incentivizes collaboration. I long for social media platforms that reward nuance rather than outrage and a rededication to national community service that would knit future generations together.

Those structural solutions to the crisis we have created seem like a far off fantasy today. And, I believe that we first need cultural shifts in how we see and talk to one another. That can start with how each of us relates to that uncle who voted differently, that colleague who posted something on Slack that rubbed us the wrong way, or a fellow congregant who spoke disparagingly about a point of view that we hold. If we weave these four principles into our everyday conversations, we can promote cultural shifts that build the foundation for broader movements for change.

1. Take seriously what matters to others

My intention is to take seriously the things that others hold dear. If it matters to you, then it will matter to me.

It’s tempting to overlook this step, but it’s crucial. If you share something important to you and I dismiss it—rushing to refute it or shift focus to my own priorities—why would you be interested in hearing from me? Taking your concerns seriously doesn’t mean agreeing; it means recognizing their importance to you. This is a key point that is often overlooked. If I can convey to you, honestly, that I hear the value, for you, of what you are saying and because of that I will pay attention to it, that earns trust.

This principle often arises in my work with Evangelical Christians. As a Jew, Jesus is not central to my life or theology, but for my Evangelical friends, he is the Christ—and nothing is more important. If I were to dismiss their discussions of their relationship with Jesus, it would quickly undermine our trust. Listening attentively and valuing their perspective, even if it isn’t mine, fosters trust, respect, and understanding. In turn, this openness encourages them to honor and acknowledge my deeply held beliefs.

Later, down the road, we can unpack our differences and be direct with each other about the tensions we might have, based on these deep differences, but that will go much better if we have acknowledged those things that we each hold dear.

2. Cultivate curiosity over convincing

I am not here to convince anyone they are wrong or to try to change them; I am curious why people think the way they do.

Initially, many of us who are committed to pushing back against the current political crisis might find this approach challenging. For those focused on changing hearts, minds, and behaviors to address perceived injustices, it can seem counterproductive to commit to conversations without the goal of at least pursuing change. I tried leading with persuasion for many years and learned that, instead, exhausting my capacity to understand others transforms the conversation’s potential.

When I enter a conversation with the sole aim to convince, discussions often become narrow and rigid. Approaching a conversation with curiosity instead opens space for it to evolve. Letting go of the belief that success requires winning someone over broadens possibilities. Adopting a posture of authentic openness—acknowledging my own blind spots and willingness to be changed—significantly shifts the conversation’s energy.

I’ve witnessed this repeatedly in my work with corrections officers. Those working in prisons and jails often feel so under siege that exploring new possibilities can seem impossible. However, when I invest time listening, show genuine curiosity about their experiences, and avoid pushing my own views about the terrible flaws in the system, I find that they don’t just open up to new ideas but also have plenty of them. If I focus on persuading a corrections officer about the need for more programming for people who are incarcerated, I’m likely to encounter arguments about staffing shortages and safety concerns.

But if I approach the conversation with sincere interest in understanding their work, the risks they face, their analysis of the problems and their definition of success, the tone shifts. They often share moments when they felt supported, safe, and able to help an incarcerated person transform their life. They actually long for those moments as well. Being truly curious about their challenges creates space for meaningful dialogue and the potential for new solutions.

I’ve seen a similar dynamic unfold in the wake of the 2024 election and the beginning of Trump’s second presidency. Many liberals find it hard to see common ground with those who support Trump, and when they talk with a Trump voter, are often quick to detail all of the crimes that they see the administration perpetrating.

But just as I’ve learned in other challenging conversations, curiosity goes further than trying to convince. If you approach this moment determined to change minds, you’re likely to meet, or even deepen, resistance. What’s important is to stay present with the specific individual who is in front of you. Remain curious about how this person came to this position and avoid lumping all Trump voters with all MAGA enthusiasts and with President Trump himself. This flattening of 75 million Americans into one narrow identity does them a disservice.

If you take time to understand the fears, frustrations, and hopes that influenced people’s votes, the conversation can expand. In that expanded conversation there is at least the possibility of getting beneath the headlines, understanding the deeper motivations and the underlying worldview that leads to their positions.

If nothing else, from there you are better positioned to engage meaningfully about the things that matter rather than exchange jabs over headlines based on a caricatured understanding of the other person. Maybe you will learn something that surprises you or maybe you will just be better equipped for more effective persuasion the next time around. Maybe they will surprise you and the very places where you thought the deepest divisions would show up are actually places with more common ground than expected.

3. Be enhanced by disagreeable ideas

Rather than thinking I am diminished by listening carefully to ideas I might disagree with, I trust that I am enhanced by listening to them.

A common perspective today views exposure to opposing opinions as harmful. Some people argue that allowing the expression of differing views can amount to platforming hateful ideas or threatening deeply held values. As a result, organizations—from college campuses to radio shows—often refrain from featuring unpopular perspectives, for fear of criticism, protests, or other social consequences. However, as research by Cass Sunstein and others has found, these kinds of ideological echo chambers exacerbate polarization: When groups wall themselves off from opposing views, their own beliefs tend to grow more extreme.

In this third element of The Invitation, I advocate a different approach to ideas that we find disagreeable, uncomfortable, or even insulting. Rather than viewing these ideas as threats to be shut down, we can see them as valuable sources of information. While some may fear that exposure to opposing ideas will spread them further, and do greater harm, my experience suggests the opposite in two important ways.

First, when the mean, inaccurate, or even hateful thing gets said, if I give it space, it often doesn’t gain momentum but rather peters out, reveals the cracks in its own internal logic, or leads to a qualification or seed of doubt shared by the very person who said it. That is not the case when I try to land a quick counter punch or turn away from the person.

Second, counter intuitive as it may be, engaging with deeply divergent ideas often clarifies and sharpens our own beliefs. It can help to refine our own thinking and allow us to explore our blind spots. While we may not always become more receptive to those with whom we disagree, at least we will know accurately where we, and they, stand.

Recently I met a colleague in the West Bank who over the course of a conversation said something about how “Jews here are a cancer in the West Bank.” Though painful and unsettling to hear in a living room in Ramallah, I still felt a strong sense of intrigue as her blunt perspective washed over me. It was raw and real and I felt my senses light up. But, more important than how I felt, this is her true viewpoint—one that is indeed quite widespread—so it is something we must engage with if we are to find security and peace in the region.

Some would say that I should have written her off. And with her, anyone else who feels that way.

But, I felt that I must meet her where she is, using this invitation to engage and then, based on some level of relationship, try to move forward constructively. Some would ask “why?” Can’t we just turn away from those who might say dehumanizing things or take what we believe to be extreme positions? What comes to mind is the line, “You don’t make peace with your friends, you make it with your enemies.” That starts with meeting them where they are; not where you wish they were. As I followed up with her, reflecting back what I heard and commenting on how it sounds like Nazi rhetoric to me, she opened up. Explaining how she didn’t mean to express hatred, but rather her feeling that the land is disappearing before her eyes. No, this did not entirely heal the wound I felt. And she and I do not see eye to eye on even what to call this land.

Still, one of the biggest questions facing us all isn’t just where can we find common ground, but how do we live together when our differences may indeed be irreconcilable. In this time of extreme partisanship, when it feels that the very foundations of our democracy are under attack, it can seem almost ludicrous that listening to ideas that seem antithetical to one’s values may be good or healthy. But it may well be that this apparently irrational move is the only way to find a path to lasting solutions, enter into constructive relationships with those where we have the deepest disagreements, and turn the tide away from hate and division.

The immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. point us in this direction: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” And, in my experience of working very hard over the years to convince people to see things my way or to confront their blind spots, it was when I slowed down, listened more, and opened up that those I disagreed with actually became more open to examining their own blind spots, revealing nuance, and shifting their ground.

4. Love your neighbor

I believe there is more common ground and experience than I anticipate. And, when there is not, I can fundamentally disagree with someone and still respect—even love—them.

My approach to this work and The Invitation is not about seeking watered-down compromises or some vague kumbaya middle ground, but rather about managing deeply held, fundamental disagreements. While I am, of course, a fan of bipartisanship focusing on collaboration where we can find agreement, this invitation centers more on pluralism—the way we live together with our deep divides. In this fourth element, we are hopeful that we will find more common ground and agreement than expected. Research on moral foundations theory shows that people across ideological divides often share core values—such as care, fairness, and loyalty—but prioritize them differently. Recognizing these shared values can foster respect and rapport, even in the midst of disagreement.

Still there will be times when we have no common ground or shared experience and face fundamental disagreements. For example, my friend Elizabeth is Evangelical and believes I will not have eternal life because I have not accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. My colleague Danielle believes we need to strongly defend the second amendment to keep our communities safe. My friend Lori works faithfully as an ultrasound technician in the pro-life movement.

In each case we have deep disagreements. The popular wisdom today is to walk away from these people, call them out, or cancel them. But I am of a different mindset. In these cases, I have actually learned from them and I believe they have from me as well. Our positions on the issues that divide us have not transformed, but our relationships have. By going further than simply respecting or tolerating those differing views, by committing to love those people, we rebuild our capacity to live together, lean into our differences, solve problems, and ultimately, change the culture.

I know this can be hard to imagine as it appears to many that the foundations of American democracy are being washed out to sea. But often, those who voted for and support these changes are not haters seeking our country’s destruction. Renowned civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson often says: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done” as he advocates for the humanity of those on death row. He challenges us to see one another not through the lens of our mistakes or disagreements, but through our shared humanity. Too often, we reduce people to a single belief, political stance, or moral conviction, allowing those differences to define the entire relationship. If we can remember that those convicted of murder are more than that heinous act, then can’t we conjure up the belief that those who vote differently than we do, who advocate for different policies, and who understand right and wrong differently are also more than what we view as their worst political deed?

This can serve as a reminder that each of us is a work in progress, not a static fixed figure. We are not each a voting block, but an individual. Given different inputs, experiences, and exposure, our positions and attitudes shift along with our hopes, fears, and dreams. This invitation asks us to have a little more faith in each other and trust that we can each do our part to still bring out the best in each other and together turn our country around.

In an age of polarization, it can feel naive to believe that listening, curiosity, and love can make a difference. But science tells us otherwise. Active listening builds trust. Curiosity reduces defensiveness. Exposure to diverse ideas counters confirmation bias. And there is nothing more powerful than love when it comes to stamping out hate, even amid intractable disagreement.

These principles are not just aspirational; they are practical tools rooted in decades of psychological and social science research. If we embrace them, now more than ever, we can begin to heal divides, build bridges, and create spaces where all people feel seen, heard, and valued. We can make sure that America lives up to its promise.

Techniques for practicing the invitation

Practice taking seriously what matters to others: A practical technique I call “The Footprint” draws people into sharing more deeply and revealing a bit more. Rooted in active listening, this approach can foster trust and reduce defensiveness. The technique is straightforward but challenging to master: The listener reflects only the speaker’s exact words without adding opinions or trying to steer the conversation. For example, recently I asked an Evangelical leader in higher education, “Are you a Christian nationalist?” He answered quickly, “I couldn’t be.” While I felt a tug to push him about the rising tide of Christian nationalism in our country, I caught myself and simply said, “You couldn’t be.” He carried on, “I am a Chistian and I am a proud patriot. But, my loyalty could never be to a single nation or anything else of this earth. I am ultimately loyal to Jesus Christ.” This is not what I expected. I hadn’t heard this point of view before. By staying true to the speaker’s words, I conveyed curiosity, attentiveness, and non-judgment—avoiding steering the conversation. He went in a direction I hadn’t expected and the learning grew from there.

Practice curiosity over convincing: A simple way to practice this second element of the invitation is by asking open-ended questions—those that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” These questions encourage the speaker to delve deeper and share more, rather than feeling defensive. Examples include: “What was that like for you?” “Can you tell me more about that?” “What would an example of that be?” “To what extent do you…?” “In what ways might you?” and “How did you come to see…?” These questions invite the speaker to move beyond their standard answers or headlines, to share something deeper. Curiosity can generate openness to nuance where there may have been none initially. Research by political scientists David Broockman and Joshua Kalla suggests that open-ended questions foster connection, reduce polarization, and create space for nuance.

Practice strong back, soft front: Stay rooted in your beliefs while remaining open-hearted. Imagine standing tall with a “strong back,” firm in your values, while maintaining a “soft front”—a posture of curiosity and compassion. In your next challenging conversation, pause and breathe. Ask yourself: “Can I hold my ground while staying open to this person’s experience? If I know where I stand, then maybe I can be a little less rigid, a little less defensive. Maybe I don’t have to be so quick to throw my jab because I can rest assured in my values and remain curious.”

Practice loving your neighbor: When speaking with those interested in exploring bridge-building, I often ask them to recall a recent time when they learned something from a conversation with someone whose views differ greatly from their own. If they can’t recall such an example, I encourage them to seek out these opportunities—within their families, workplaces, congregations, or neighborhoods—and invest time in listening as a place to start. The 16th-century Persian poet Hafiz wrote, “How do I listen to others? As if everyone were my most revered teacher speaking to me their cherished last words.” By committing to spend time with those who see things differently and practicing this kind of deep listening even when it is really hard, we can begin to make meaningful progress toward solving the problems we face together.

Minor annoyances like this happen all of the time in life. We’re on a long hold with a customer service rep, forget our wallet at the store, stub our toe on an uneven surface, or find ourselves in a traffic jam. Whatever the cause—ourselves or someone else—these small hassles upset our peace of mind.

While we can’t avoid daily nuisances, we can change how we respond to them—and evidence suggests we should. The way we react to annoyances can be more important than how many we actually face. If we don’t know how to lessen the impacts, it hurts our personal well-being in the moment and it can affect our long-term health and relationships.

“It’s surprising, but research shows that [daily hassles] have as much, and sometimes more, effects than major life events on our well-being,” says Melanie Greenberg, clinical psychologist and author of the book The Stress-Proof Brain.

The likely reason for this is that major life events, like a divorce or death, are rare, while minor hassles can occur every day. Learning how to let go of our annoyance more easily is good for us and for others. Indeed, letting go can be an act of kindness to the people we love.

How daily hassles affect us

There’s no such thing as a stress-free life—and that’s a good thing. Moderate amounts of short-lived stress can help us to perform better and become more resilient.

But if we characteristically react poorly to minor annoyances—if we let them get the best of us—it can it affect our physical, mental, and social well-being.

Feeling irritated sets off the release of stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, that prepare our bodies to respond to danger. While not problematic in itself, a stress response than happens too frequently or doesn’t dissipate quickly can cause wear and tear on our bodies and exhaust us. That’s why daily annoyances may harm our well-being, lead to depression, worsen our long-term health, and decrease our overall life satisfaction.

Less direct, but no less consequential, is how feelings of irritation can spill over into our relationships. If we’re stressed out by minor things, we may react badly, says Greenberg, by “saying the wrong thing or taking things the wrong way.”

“If we’re not calming to be around, people may not feel as close to us,” she says, which could lessen the kind of social support we need for good health. Lashing out at others when we’re annoyed is more likely to backfire than help make an irritating situation better. It can even be dangerous, like when our inability to curb our frustration over a reckless driver turns into road rage.

Not taking out our frustration directly on other people can have social consequences, too, though. For example, wallowing in a bad mood, muttering to ourselves, or slamming a door in frustration is bound to put the people around us on edge. Even those folks we don’t interact with much—like the barista at your coffee shop—may read our tense body language and behave differently, says Greenberg.

“We [humans] react to the way others respond to us. So, if we emanate a more chronically stressed-out vibe, I think we’ll get more stressed out or negative responses in return,” says Greenberg.

Trying to keep our irritation bottled up and letting it simmer isn’t the answer, either. Repressing our feelings stops us from recognizing what we need in the moment and can lead us to disconnect from others—or, worse, result in outward aggression.

Luckily, there are better ways to handle everyday annoyances that protect us and the people around us from harm.

How to handle annoyances more wisely

It’s important to note that we can’t always control how much we will experience hassles in life or how we’ll respond to them. Individual differences in our age, gender, education, environment, genetics, and past experiences may all contribute to how many everyday annoyances we’ll face and how we’ll react in the moment.

But even when our individual characteristics or experiences make annoyances harder to handle, there are tools we can use to soothe irritation before it creates more problems. Here are four suggestions for doing that.

1. Practice mindful acceptance. Mindful acceptance entails recognizing present thoughts and feelings and accepting them as they are. If we can mindfully tune into our bodies when faced with minor stressors, it can help us relax and manage the hard feelings better.

“At the first sign of going into an activated, stressed-out state, you can pause and do a mindful check-in—ground yourself, feel your feet on the ground, slow your breathing,” says Greenberg. “The earlier you catch yourself, the easier it is to do something about it.”

Research suggests that people who practice mindful awareness may be less triggered by everyday frustrations and better able to let them go. This can help our interpersonal interactions.

“When we’re mindful, when we’re present, we can soothe each other and connect. When we’re in a state of stress, it’s much harder to do that,” says Greenberg.

2. Reframe the little things. The second major technique is to reframe annoyances. Part of the reason a minor hassle can become more upsetting is that we overlay it with harmful interpretations. For example, if I take my husband’s lapse as a sign that he doesn’t care about my feelings, I may become more upset than if I put it down to something innocuous, like fatigue and distraction. Not every annoyance, however it feels, is a personal affront.

“A lot of the stuff [couples] argue about is just stupid stuff,” like replacing the toilet paper roll or how to load the dishwasher, says Greenberg. “But it takes on this huge significance because of how they’re seeing it as evidence that person doesn’t care about them or they’re not being heard.”

Reframing is similar to a technique used in cognitive-behavioral therapy, where patients are taught to question their negative interpretation of events and consider alternate explanations. While reframing won’t change the annoying situation itself, it can help negative feelings dissipate more quickly.

Another way we can reframe our experience is by seeing an annoyance as just an unavoidable facet of life or small in the face of other concerns, says Greenberg. When triggered, she suggests asking ourselves, What’s the big picture here? How important is this, really, especially compared to everything going on in my life? Is this something I even have control over? Asking questions like these helps us see our situation more objectively, as a small blip that doesn’t need to hijack our mood.

“Trying to take a step back and broaden our view can help us be like a fly on the wall, giving us a more distanced [perspective],” says Greenberg.

3. Practice self-compassion and empathy. When things go wrong, we can sometimes be overly critical of ourselves. Greenberg warns about the problems with being perfectionistic and assuming the world will always run smoothly when that’s just not realistic.

“Sometimes we’re stressed out by the small stuff because we are being hard on ourselves,” she says. “Instead, taking a step back and telling yourself that you don’t have to do it all perfectly, that you’re doing a pretty good job given all that you’re facing, can calm the nervous system.”

Practicing self-compassion—being mindfully kind to ourselves and recognizing our common humanity, where no one is perfect—can help us let go of perfectionism and manage our everyday hassles better, keeping us happier, too.

Similarly, we should remember that other people are also imperfect and need our empathy.

For example, if a customer service person is keeping you on a long hold and you feel your frustration rising, you can try to think of the situation from their point of view: Maybe they’re trying to solve your problem and it’s taking more time than they thought. Perspective taking can go a long way toward diminishing our negative feelings in an annoying situation.

4. Don’t forget the good and practice gratitude. Coping with hassles is always easier if we can keep in mind that there is also good happening around us. Yes, I picked the longest checkout line at the grocery store, but look at the amazing produce I’m buying. Yes, I stubbed my toe on the bed frame, but at least it’s not broken and I can still walk. Opening the lens of our experience and seeing what we can be grateful for can help take the sting out of common annoyances.

If this seems too Pollyanna or trite—or just too difficult to do in a moment of agitation—try practicing gratitude in the rest of your life. Having a grateful attitude can lessen the effect of daily hassles on our life satisfaction and improve your mood. This is likely because the positive feelings gratitude engenders help us broaden and build our personal resources for coping with common stressors when they arise.

Letting go for the good of everyone

Of course, there are other ways we can manage our minor upsets better besides these. Taking good care of our bodies (by eating right and getting enough exercise and sleep), heading out into nature when we can, practicing awe, and spending time with supportive people can all help keep our nervous system calmer and in better shape for managing daily stressors.

Some tactics might work better than others for you, and that’s fine. The key isn’t perfection, but intent. The next time you’re annoyed, try calming yourself rather than cursing for missing a tennis shot, or tailing a slow driver, or stewing over your friend being late. Doing your best to let it go, using whatever tools work for you, is an act of love that others will appreciate.

“We’re living in such very stressful times—antagonistic, hostile times—and people are under a lot of stress,” says Greenberg. “We need to try to think of ways, even just in your own network, to help people feel better.”

If we could all do that, think of how much kinder and more loving our world could be.

At the time, I was a mindfulness educator and was adapting the Mindful Self-Compassion course, developed by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer, into a class for parents and children. Lessons in the Mindfulness and Self-Compassion for Children and Caregivers course include kid-friendly messages and practices centering on anger. The program, along with the two-volume Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Workbooks for Kids that I wrote, helps children and caregivers notice anger, understand its messages, and use it as a bridge to connection rather than division.

I’ve since begun teaching Neff’s Fierce Self-Compassion program, which helps people transform emotions like anger into courage, strength, and protection. Fierce self-compassion invites us not only to comfort ourselves when we suffer, but also to stand up for ourselves and others in the face of harm and injustice. The energy that empowers adults to act with integrity can also help children to channel anger into clarity and caring force.

Through teaching mindfulness and self-compassion programs to caregivers and youth over the years, I’ve helped thousands of kids learn how to understand and work with anger. Here are five steps that can help kids (and us) channel the power of anger wisely.

1. Help kids understand that anger is human

Many children, especially girls, are socialized to believe that it’s not OK to express anger with peers and adults outside of the home. Chronic suppression of anger can lead to negative health outcomes for all genders, though for girls and women, suppression can sometimes turn inward as self-blame or sadness.

To help children open to the emotion of anger, it can be helpful to remind them that anger is neither good nor bad, but rather evidence of being human. While there are more and less helpful ways of expressing anger (we’ll touch on that more in later sections), the emotion itself is wired into humans. Remembering that others sometimes feel like us is part of practicing self-compassion, and this acceptance can help with emotional regulation.

Graduates of my parent-child mindfulness and self-compassion course have shared how remembering that challenging situations and emotions are human helped them feel calmer in the presence of anger. “I noticed I didn’t get so mad like I used to get,” said one child. “You’re not alone. I notice myself sometimes saying that in my brain.” Another child blew up less frequently at a sibling by remembering that “other people also have sisters who make them mad.”

Helping kids understand that everyone gets angry is critical in developing a healthy relationship with anger.

2. Notice how anger feels in the body

To respond to anger skillfully, kids first need to notice it arising. Paying attention to how anger feels in the body helps children recognize early signs of frustration.

We can start children on this path by modeling mindfulness of anger—sometimes easier said than done! We can share our own experiences with anger, not in the heat of the moment, but at other times that invite reflection. For example, a parent might say, “I felt angry earlier today when someone cut me off in traffic. My shoulders got tight and my heart was racing, so I took a few breaths before responding. Everyone feels angry sometimes.”

Our modeling can help kids learn to accept their anger and also be mindful of their sensations. In my workbook for kids, I invite children to share about how anger feels in their body. “[When I’m angry] my face gets tight and hot,” said River, age nine. “And my breath feels suffocating.”

Aarya, age 10, shared this story: “My sister messed with my game, and my hands tightened into fists.”

It can be challenging for kids to hold anger sensations in awareness during the heat of the moment. It usually works best to practice mindfulness of anger sensations during neutral times, intentionally calling up a frustration and helping kids narrate how the body responds.

We can also help kids notice neutral sensations, like feeling the soles of their feet. Drawing awareness into the feet can help us stay grounded in the presence of strong emotions. With repeated practice, mindfulness of these sensations can help create a pause between an angry impulse and a reaction.

3. Regulate the intensity of anger

Anger is a powerful emotion, and when it surges through the body, it can overwhelm kids whose prefrontal cortex is still developing. As Khalil, age eight, puts it: “When I get angry, my whole body gets tight and I feel red. Like a bomb that could explode.”

In volume 2 of my workbook, children decode this message: “Anger is like fire. Use it with care.” Kids intuitively understand this metaphor. Out-of-control anger can burn down houses and villages. But when tended wisely, the flame of anger can warm, protect, and even light the way for justice.

Anger can be a force for good or cause damage depending on our ability to regulate and channel it. When anger feels too intense to navigate skillfully, it can sometimes be helpful to move, distract ourselves, or breathe deeply.

For Josie, a child in my parent-child class, movement was helpful. “My favorite thing I learned was 7 Shakes.” she said. “It taught me how to shake away my anger.”

For other kids, stillness serves them better. Marcos offered this reflection:

If you let [anger] get too out of control, it gets bigger and then you can’t control it. . . . My breath gets quick but weak. My hands get really warm, and my body gets really tight. . . . I don’t think it would be helpful to shake it off because it will be too out of control.

Some studies suggest that males are more prone to aggression with anger than females, and physically releasing anger may be more helpful for some than others, regardless of gender. Rather than teaching kids a single “right” way to calm down, we can invite them to notice what helps them stay steady. Sometimes that’s movement—running, shaking, or scribbling hard with crayons. Other times it’s stillness, like feeling their feet on the ground or taking a slow breath. Another helpful strategy is a squeeze and release exercise, guided playfully in the book The Angry Octopus.

In the context of empowerment, the goal isn’t to get rid of anger but to let its intensity move through the body without causing harm. When kids learn how to regulate anger’s intensity, they begin to experience anger not as something to fear or fight, but rather as a power they can learn to use with wisdom.

4. Look under anger for softer feelings and needs

Expressing anger can be complicated for children of all genders, though the impacts can sometimes be different. When children aren’t taught how to work with anger skillfully, the emotion can explode outward, creating interpersonal conflict, or turn inward as self-criticism. Both anger expression and anger suppression have been linked to depression, especially in females.

We want our children to learn constructive ways to express their anger interpersonally. Non-Violent Communication (NVC) is an effective approach for teaching kids to express anger in healthy ways. One great resource, Giraffe Juice, takes children on a playful adventure while they learn the steps of NVC, which include communicating feelings and identifying unmet needs.

When I teach caregivers and kids mindful self-compassion, I explain that anger is a hard emotion that often hides softer feelings and needs. Learning to identify the feelings and needs under anger helps kids view anger as a helpful messenger. In volume 2 of my workbook, a wise chick helps children explore the layers under anger. In the comic below, a child who feels furious is invited to look beneath the surface and notice softer feelings and needs.

On the surface, the child was angry because his friend won’t work with him, but underneath he felt sad and wished for belonging. When children learn to look beneath anger, they discover that it’s often pointing to what they value most: friendship, fairness, belonging, or care. Helping kids identify and express these underlying needs is one of the most powerful ways to transform conflict into connection.

5. Teach repair and empowered action

Even with preparation and the best of intentions, anger can sometimes lead us to do and say hurtful things. This is why, in addition to teaching our children to express anger constructively, we can also help them learn to repair. Modeling is one way we can help kids learn to own anger mishaps.

While I was writing this article, my older daughter came into the office with a huge request that completely derailed my focus. I blew up and yelled, practicing destructive rather than constructive anger. I saw that my behavior impacted my daughter negatively, and I went for a walk to cool down.

As I walked, I thought about both my daughter’s and my own needs. I saw my daughter’s need for help with a big task, and I saw my own need for focusing on a project that I wanted to complete. Both mattered. While my anger expression was unskillful and required an apology, the need for boundaries was real. This is how anger’s energy can be helpful: It can motivate us to protect or provide for ourselves and set boundaries when needed.

When I came back from my walk, I sincerely apologized for my anger outburst. I also let my daughter know that I needed more time to work on this task before I helped her. I assured her that I genuinely cared, and we both agreed that in the future, she would ask if the timing was right before unpacking a big project.

When we as caregivers cause damage with our anger, we can model owning our mistake, reestablish connection, and also communicate about feelings and needs. Children need caregivers who model both tender care as well as confidence and strength.

When children mess up and their anger leads to hurtful words or actions, we can guide them towards making things right. We can also help them be curious about what their anger was trying to tell them. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean the anger was wrong; it means they’re learning to use it wisely.

As caregivers of children, we can help children understand that anger’s energy empowers us to…

• Notice what is not OK;
• Say no to bullying;
• Be motivated to stop harmful behavior;
• Set boundaries; and
• Learn about what we value.

When anger shows us what matters, it becomes a compass for positive action. Kids can learn to speak up, set boundaries, or advocate for themselves and others. We can let children know that we believe in their strength and will support them in using their anger wisely. This builds a foundation for them to rise and stand up for themselves and others.

My younger daughter Anjali, now 13 years old, is already using her anger to stand up to injustice. She does this through collective social action, as well as advocating for others who are being mistreated. Last year, when a friend of hers was being bullied, she stood up—unafraid of being displeasing—and the bullying stopped. This is what I had wished for Anjali, and it is what I wish for all children: the ability to turn fierce anger into strength, clarity, and a force for good.

Now, bring to mind an educator you felt close to. Someone who saw you for who you were and even who you could be. What did it feel like to be around them?

Next, shift your attention to an educator you were not close to. Someone who couldn’t or wouldn’t see you. How did it feel to be near them?

Most of us still carry these experiences with us, decades later. We know firsthand that these relationships shape us long after we leave the school building. The good news is that we know a lot about what makes the positive ones so powerful and how to build them.

Research consistently finds that positive student-teacher relationships have a significant impact on students’ engagement, social-emotional development, and academic success—as well as physical and mental health in adulthood. And the benefits go both ways: For educators, positive student-teacher relationships predict greater teaching efficacy and higher levels of well-being.

Of course, building these relationships isn’t always easy or straightforward. One of the biggest barriers is implicit bias, which refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that unconsciously affect a person’s perceptions, actions, and decisions. For example, educators might consciously hold egalitarian personal beliefs while unconsciously associating Asian students with being quiet, compliant, and self-sufficient or Black and Brown students with being loud, disruptive, and aggressive.

Implicit bias can make it harder for us to see our students for who they truly are and could be. But the more we understand about how these biases work, the better equipped we are to move past them and toward the kinds of relationships that change lives.

Implicit bias in education

So, where does implicit bias come from—and how does it show up in schools?

Implicit bias is the result of our brain’s natural wiring for quick, automatic processing and living in a society permeated by the smog of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of prejudice.

Due to our frequent exposure to bias, our brains encode these prejudiced ideas for when we need to make split-second decisions. Because none of us are immune from breathing in the smog, no one is immune from implicit bias—not even well-intentioned, caring educators.

There are certain conditions called “vulnerable decision points” in which people rely more heavily on quick, unconscious processing. These conditions include time constraints, exhaustion, frustration, stress, and even hunger. In her article “Understanding Implicit Bias: What Educators Should Know,” Staats writes: “Given that teachers encounter many, if not all, of these conditions through the course of a school day, it is unsurprising that implicit biases may be contributing to teachers’ actions and decisions.”

In K–12 education, implicit bias contributes to disparities in academic achievement as well as discipline. When looking at relationships, students of color are less likely to have close connections with their teachers, and implicit bias is suspected to be a major contributing factor. In other words, implicit bias can determine whether a student experiences us as the adult who saw them or the one who didn’t.

A plethora of trainings and interventions focus on identifying, reflecting on, and excising implicit bias. Unfortunately, implicit bias is resistant to removal.

Luckily, researchers have found a more effective intervention that focuses on disrupting the implicit bias before it becomes behavior. Even better news? Focusing on changing behavior can weaken implicit bias over time, making it possible to build the positive relationships we hope for with all of our students.

How educators can counter implicit bias

According to neuroscience, there are three ways to disrupt implicit bias before it becomes behavior:

• Identify the disconnect between implicit bias and your values. Implicit bias often operates in direct conflict with what we consciously believe. The first step in disrupting it is recognizing when our automatic reactions don’t match the values we hold.
• Prevent reactive behavior stemming from implicit bias. Once we notice the disconnect, we need the ability to pause before acting on it. Regulation strategies like pausing and breathing give us the chance to stop our automatic reaction.
• Choose a values-aligned response. With that pause, we can deliberately choose a response that reflects how we actually want to show up for our students: one rooted in the beliefs and commitments that brought us to this work in the first place.

Just as we plan for our students’ needs, we as educators can plan for our own needs, too. We’re going to suggest a three-step reflective process for educators that turns these neuroscience insights into a self-awareness that can help replace behavior influenced by implicit bias.

This process can be used at any time during the school year and with any student. To get started, consider a student who is on your mind right now. Maybe it’s someone you’re struggling to connect with at the start of the year, one whose behaviors you find challenging midway through, or one who continues to mystify you as the year winds down. The best time to get started? Right now.

Step 1: Get curious and name what you want to change. The first step is to get curious. There are a series of activities and reflection prompts below that will guide you through looking closely at yourself, your student, and your relationship.

Ground yourself in your values. Before looking outward, look inward and start with what matters most to you. Your values are the foundation for the kind of educator you want to be and the relationships you want to build.

• Identify your top three to five values as an educator by completing this values-based exercise.
• Take a minute to visualize the settings in which you work with students (e.g., class, hallways, after-school club, etc.). What do these values look like in practice? What do you want your relationships with students to look like? How do you want your students to feel?

Choose a student and reflect on your relationship. Now that you have a clearer picture of your values and your vision, it’s time to identify a student you’d like to build a stronger connection with.

Select a student. How would you describe your relationship with them right now? How do you feel about them?

Look at your patterns. When things get difficult with this student, how do you tend to respond? What do you do or say? To what extent are you practicing your values in these moments?

Consider the role of implicit bias. Next, look beneath the patterns you’ve identified. Implicit bias often operates outside of our awareness, so this step asks you to consider what might be fueling those behaviors.

• Think about your and your student’s social identity markers. Which ones feel salient to this situation? What unconscious beliefs might you have absorbed about these identities?
• Reflect on when you’re most vulnerable to snap judgments. Consider the time of day, location, and your state of mind. When are you most tired? Hungry? Stressed? These are your vulnerable decision points.

Name what you want to change. At this point, you’ve grounded yourself in your values, looked honestly at a relationship, and considered how implicit bias might be showing up. Now get specific: What is one behavior you want to stop, and what values-aligned behavior do you want to replace it with?

When I reflect on my values, connection and inclusion rise to the top, and yet (for example) when I think about my student Justin, I can see I’m not living those values. We’ve butted heads since his first week in my class, and somewhere along the way, I stopped asking about him or his interests and shifted into conflict-avoidance mode instead. Thinking about the role implicit bias might be playing, I notice that Justin is a tall Latino male who looks older than his 15 years, and I wonder if I’ve unconsciously held him to a standard of maturity he doesn’t have yet.

As a first step, I want to focus on transitions, which have been the source of most of our tension lately. When I ask the class to shift tasks, Justin resists, and I get frustrated. My new approach is to give him a quiet heads-up before any transition so he has time to prepare, and if he still needs a moment, I’ll check in with him one-on-one rather than calling him out in front of everyone. The goal is to replace my reactive pattern (frustration, public correction) with something values-driven: a genuine invitation to join the class in what comes next.

Step 2: Tune in and try out the response you want. The first step happened in a reflective space. This step happens in real time, in the moments that matter most. When you notice that reactive behavior coming up with your student, that’s your cue to pause and practice. The following process is adapted from Zarretta Hammond’s SODA Strategy, which is described in her 2015 book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.

Tune in. Your body often registers implicit bias before your conscious mind does. Learning to notice those signals gives you the chance to choose your response rather than react on autopilot.

• Tune in to your internal landscape. What thoughts are you having? What emotions are you feeling? What is your body telling you? A flash of heat, a rolling stomach, a clenched jaw? These are all data.
• Take a moment to ground and care for yourself. Grounding practices could include taking a few deep breaths, thinking about a soothing place, washing your hands, or stepping outside. Even a small pause can help you shift from reactive to intentional.

Try it out. Once you feel a little more grounded, try the replacement behavior you identified in step 1. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The goal isn’t to get it exactly right the first time; the goal is to practice responding with your values instead of bias. Pay attention to what happens; these observations will be important for step 3.

Here’s how this might look in practice with Justin: I give him a heads-up that we’ll be transitioning in a few minutes. He nods, but when the time comes, he still isn’t ready. I feel that familiar frustration tightening my jaw, but instead of calling him out, I walk over and quietly check in. He grumbles a little, but starts packing up.

No matter the outcome, you’ve gathered valuable information about yourself, your student, and the relationship. Move to step 3 to continue the learning.

Step 3: Reflect in community. This step invites you to bring all the work you’ve done so far to people you trust. Other perspectives can help us see what we can’t see on our own, especially when it comes to implicit bias. Find a trusted colleague or group to process with. This could look like a regular check-in with a teaching partner, a group chat with colleagues you trust, or dedicated time in your professional learning community meetings. Whatever it looks like, these are your thought partners.

The process below—adapted from Barbara Dray and Debora Basler Wisneski’s mindful reflection protocol—uses description, interpretation, and evaluation to help you and your thought partners separate what actually happened from the stories you might be telling yourself about it.

Describe your experience. Walk your thought partners through the interaction you had with your student, focusing only on the objective facts of what happened. For example: “I gave Justin a heads-up about the transition, and when he did not transition with his peers, I gave him a private, follow-up reminder, and he then transitioned.” Your thought partners’ job is to listen, ask clarifying questions, and gently flag if you’ve slipped out of description into interpretation or evaluation.

Surface your interpretations. Next, name the meaning you’ve assigned to your student’s behavior. For example, I might say: “Justin didn’t transition with his peers even with the extra reminders. It feels like he doesn’t respect my time or his classmates’ time.” This is where thought partners can be especially useful. By listening and offering alternative interpretations, they can surface possibilities you might not have considered on your own. A thought partner might share, for instance, that they themselves struggle with quick transitions, finding it jarring when lessons shift repeatedly over the course of an hour. Another might wonder whether students sometimes struggle with transitions because they are still deep in learning and not ready to switch gears yet. Could either of those be part of what’s happening with Justin?

Examine your evaluations. Finally, look at the judgments you attached to the interaction. Did you attach positive or negative significance to what happened? My evaluation of Justin’s behavior as disrespectful is a negative one. Your thought partners can help you examine whether your evaluation is grounded in what actually happened, or built on interpretations that may be shaped by bias. Is there a more generous way to read the last interaction with Justin?

Plan your next move together. Come back to the values you identified in step 1. With those values and your thought partners’ fresh perspectives in mind, work together to consider what comes next.

• How do you want to respond the next time you’re in a similar moment with this student? Do you want to try the same thing again? Is there another approach to take?
• What support do you need to make that possible? Can your thought partners offer advice, tools, or positive encouragement?
• Commit to trying again and bringing what you learn back to your thought partners.

After processing my interaction with Justin, my thought partners could help me see that his willingness to transition, even with some grumbling, was actually progress, and that quick transitions may genuinely be hard for him. Next time, I want to try acknowledging his effort in the moment, something as simple as a quiet thank-you. I also might think about how I can design my lessons with fewer transitions to support learners who need more processing time. It might not seem like much, but every time I choose to respond in a values-aligned way, I am getting closer to being an educator who sees Justin.

Author and activist adrienne maree brown reminds us that “how we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale.” Every time we choose our values over our bias, we’re not just changing one relationship—we’re shaping the kind of classroom, school, and community our students carry with them. We won’t always get it right, but this work helps us see our students for who they are and who they could be. And in the process, it helps us become the educators we want to be.

In that book, Steele introduced the concept of stereotype threat—the idea that people can underperform when they fear confirming a negative stereotype about their group. The research helped explain disparities in academic testing, workplace performance, and many other settings.

Steele is a social psychologist and professor emeritus at Stanford University (and a former executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Berkeley). Over the past three decades, his work has influenced fields ranging from education to organizational leadership.

His new book, Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How to Overcome It, serves as a kind of sequel to Whistling Vivaldi. While stereotype threat focuses on how stereotypes affect individual performance, Churn explores the broader tension that can arise when people from different backgrounds interact in situations that matter.

When the Commonwealth Club World Affairs, in San Francisco, invited me to interview Steele about the book, I jumped at the opportunity. Our conversation explored how identity, anxiety, and trust shape interactions in classrooms, workplaces, and everyday life. What follows is an edited version of that on-stage discussion.

Jeremy Adam Smith: Before we talk about your new book, I want to start with Whistling Vivaldi, which came out back in 2010.

Claude Steele: That book described the research journey that led me and my colleagues—Steve Spencer, Josh Aronson, and others—to the concept of stereotype threat.

That’s when someone faces a negative stereotype about one of their identities—such as race, age, or religion—in a situation that matters to them, like a job interview or a test. In those moments, the possibility of being judged through the lens of that stereotype can be distracting and upsetting. It interferes with your ability to perform in the moment. And if you expect to encounter that pressure repeatedly in a particular environment—say, a profession or a field of study—you might decide not to participate at all.

The research became widely known because it showed that stereotype threat could affect something as important as standardized test performance. For example, a highly motivated African American student taking a difficult exam might experience normal frustration and start wondering, Am I confirming that stereotype about my group? Will others see my performance that way? That extra pressure can undermine performance.

Over the years, researchers have seen this dynamic in many contexts—athletic performance, negotiations, academic settings, and more.

Eventually, I began to think people were missing the broader significance of the idea. The same kind of tension often appears in interactions between people of different identities. In diverse settings, people may worry about being seen through negative stereotypes. That concern can make them hyper-aware of how they’re behaving, what they’re saying, and how they’re being interpreted.

JAS: You’ve compared that experience to multitasking. A person under stereotype threat is juggling extra mental tasks while everyone else can focus on the main activity.

CS: Exactly. If I’m in a group composed entirely of people like me—say, a group of older men—I don’t feel much anxiety about ageist stereotypes. But if younger people join the group, I might start wondering: Do they think I have outdated ideas? Do they assume I’m not technologically savvy? I know what the stereotypes of older men are…and that I could be judged in terms of them.

Diversity brings us together with people of different identities. When that happens, we lose the security that we won’t be judged by outgroup stereotypes. That worry is experienced as tension. 

JAS: Your new book introduces the concept of “churn.” What does that mean?

CS: “Churn” is my term for exactly the tension I just described. To illustrate, let’s begin by imagining a seventh-grade parent-teacher conference. The parents and student are African American; the teacher is white.

The parents know the stereotypes about African Americans, about their intellectual abilities, about their aggressiveness, etc. So on the way to the meeting, they may worry: Will the teacher see our child’s real potential? Will ordinary mistakes be interpreted as signs of aggression or lack of ability?

As they walk into the meeting then, they’re in a state of churn—a kind of vigilant anxiety about how their and their son’s identity will shape their experience in the meeting and their son’s experience in the school.

Meanwhile, the teacher has her own form of stereotype threat. She knows the stereotypes about her racial identity. She may be deeply committed to fairness but nonetheless worried that anything she says—even constructive criticism—could be interpreted as racism.

Both parties enter this conversation in that state of tension I am calling churn—an agitated concern about how their identities will affect how they are judged and treated (and for the African American parents, how their son’s identity will affect his experience in the school). Both parties wonder: Will I be judged and treated fairly in this meeting? Is there some way I should behave, or not behave, to ensure this? Will I be given the benefit of the doubt? Etc.

Most approaches to diversity stress the need to reduce intergroup prejudices—something I heartedly endorse. But churn is different. It affects the prejudiced and non-prejudiced alike—arising as it does not from prejudice per se, but from the identity threat that all parties in a diverse setting can feel.

Churn is a form of social anxiety tied to identity.

JAS: And you argue that churn shows up especially in important situations.

CS: Yes. In low-stakes settings—riding the subway, sitting in a crowd—it usually isn’t a factor.

But when the stakes are high, the threat of being negatively stereotyped increases. That’s when churn becomes more powerful.

Churn isn’t inherently bad. It is simply the effort to cope with identity threat in a situation. It reflects the existence of that threat—and that the person can’t yet trust the situation enough to feel safe from it.

JAS: Another way of putting it might be that churn prevents people from entering a state of flow, where they’re fully immersed in the task.

CS: Exactly. Let me describe an experiment that illustrates this.

My colleagues and I asked white and Black Stanford students to write an essay about their favorite teacher. We told them that strong essays might be published in a campus magazine. Two days later, they returned to receive feedback from a white evaluator.

When feedback was delivered in a straightforward way—or preceded by generic praise—white students trusted it. But Black students trusted it much less.

Why? Because they couldn’t be sure whether the criticism reflected the essay itself or stereotypes about their group’s abilities.

But when the evaluator said, “I’m applying high standards to these essays, and I believe you can meet those standards,” Black students’ trust changed dramatically. They trusted that feedback more than anyone else and were far more likely to revise their essays using it.

Why did that work? Because it signaled clearly: I’m not judging you through those stereotypes of your group. I believe in your ability.

That kind of communication builds trust—and trust is the antidote to churn.

JAS: So how do individuals build that trust?

CS: At the individual level, it often comes down to conveying that you see someone’s full humanity.

There’s a term in the research literature—“wise.” It originally came from an ethnography of gay communities in the 1950s. A “wise” person was someone outside the group who understood their humanity and didn’t reduce them to stereotypes.

When people feel that recognition, they begin to trust you. Often the simplest way to show that is through genuine curiosity—listening, asking questions, taking an interest in someone’s experience.

JAS: So curiosity helps create trust.

CS: Yes. When you feel churn, it can be a signal to adopt a learning mindset. Instead of defending oneself, or retreating, ask questions. Be polite. But be curious. People can sense genuine interest, and that can transform the interaction.

JAS: Some people might say that sounds like a lot of work.

CS: Remember, I’m talking about important settings in our lives—classrooms, workplaces, boardrooms, athletic teams, and so on. In those places, showing respect and interest in others can be far less work than dealing with the consequences of not doing these things.

Moreover, in these settings, I think many people really want to have ways of reducing churn and feeling more comfortable with and connected to others across identity divides. The chief mission of this book is to give people concrete ways of doing that, of feeling more comfortable in diverse settings, and better able to enjoy their great benefits.

JAS: Let’s talk about how power differences might affect churn and trust.

CS: Sure. I think it’s a lot to expect the groups that have historically been the most disempowered to be the first to trust. That’s a big ask.

And in the current divisive era—when we have leaders who don’t even bother with dog whistles in preference for openly racist messaging—it becomes even harder. For African Americans, for example, but for other groups, too, this kind of behavior and rhetoric makes it difficult to trust that their full humanity is appreciated or even recognized.

I don’t want to diminish that troubling reality in any way. But I don’t want to lose hope either. I still have to get up every day and go to work, and so does everyone else. So the question becomes: What do we do in our everyday lives?

That’s really what this book is about. It’s not about somehow directly fixing the political climate, for example. It’s about what we can do within the diverse settings and relationships in which we actually live our lives, to feel more comfortable and able to engage the riches that our differences can offer us. That’s what motivated me to write the book.

JAS: Do you experience churn? When?

CS: Of course. I’m older, and I work in a world full of young people. Sometimes the question is, “Does he even know how to use a computer?” There are moments like that.

JAS: One of the things I appreciated about the book is that it really made me reflect on my own experiences with churn. As I read it, I found myself developing a sort of taxonomy of churn in my own life. Some of it was trivial, some of it more significant—but I realized I hadn’t thought about it very consciously before. It feels like you’ve put your finger on something we all live with.

CS: I’m glad to hear that. In many ways, this is the American experiment. We’re trying to build a democracy that integrates people from many different backgrounds. That’s inherently challenging.

JAS: There’s something a little neurotic about it. From the outside, people sometimes look at the United States and think, “You people are obsessed with diversity”—and they have a point. Many Americans want a very diverse society, but at the same time we’re afraid of what that diversity means, and we must fight against feeling threatened by people who are different from us. Those two impulses are constantly in tension within the American mind. And the truth is, as a people, we seem to want two contradictory things at once. We want the comfort of sameness and we want the vitality offered by living with many different kinds of people. I think that’s part of what’s going on right now in the United States.

CS: Exactly. And that’s why I keep emphasizing the importance of focusing on the worlds we actually inhabit—the classrooms we teach in, the workplaces we’re part of, the systems of hiring and promotion we help shape.

When you talk only about the larger society, the conversation can start to feel abstract or utopian. But when you focus on concrete settings, that’s where real progress can happen. That’s where the strategies I talk about—practical forms of wisdom about trust—can actually make a difference.

The United States made a legal commitment to a multiracial, multiethnic democracy in the 1960s when we dismantled the laws that upheld segregation. When I was a child, the system was so rigid it could fairly be called apartheid. Legally, we changed that—one of our society’s greatest achievements. Now the challenge is making equality of opportunity real in everyday life.

And that happens in relationships—through the small things people do that make it easier to trust each other and work together. Some of the examples I describe in the book involve university programs that created conditions where students could genuinely trust their institutions. In those environments, diversity became a treasured feature of their experience, not a problem.

One reason I’m hopeful is that building trust may actually be more manageable than trying to directly eliminate prejudice. Changing someone’s beliefs is incredibly hard. As a social psychologist, I know how difficult that is.

But trust is different. Many of us have done that in our lives. We have fairly good intuitions about how to do it and what’s required. And then, as the trust between us builds, our attitudes and beliefs begin to change naturally. Prejudices start to loosen their grip when there’s a genuine human connection.

JAS: It also seems like there’s an ask here—especially for white people—to try to be trustworthy.

CS: Right. And to understand that the issue isn’t all personal—it’s largely historical. The question is: Can I trust you? Do I carry the memory of the past into this interaction, or can I begin to set it aside with you?

When trust starts to form, the door opens to a very different kind of relationship.

JAS: Whistling Vivaldi spurred years of research about stereotype threat. What would you like to see researchers study about churn?

CS: I’d love to see research testing whether a focus on building trust is an effective way of reducing prejudice. I’ve suspected this for a long time now. It could be the focus of a whole research program.

My intuition is that trust-building has been an under-appreciated factor in bridging identity differences. I heard colleagues say, “I explained everything clearly to my students—why don’t they listen?” But if the students are wary about trusting you, information alone won’t help. If we really talk to them and listen, we may see, as in the experiment I mentioned above, that they are in a situation that makes trust difficult. Before they can fully absorb the information we’re trying to pass on, they need some evidence or signal that their full humanity is appreciated—that they’re not being reduced to those stereotypes that they know exist, and that they know you know.

Once a foundation of trust is there, the road to learning becomes easier. My hope is that this book encourages researchers, and the rest of us as well, to explore that road more seriously in the settings where we live our lives.

In this challenging environment, a new book by Berkeley law professor David B. Oppenheimer is a compelling exploration of an idea that has galvanized some of the most grinding political and cultural conflicts of our time. The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea follows the history across a surprising 200-year span. Along the way, it profiles the famous scholars who gave birth to the idea and shaped its evolution, and details the essential role of universities and the law in its advance.

At such a fraught time, the book could have been a partisan argument, but Oppenheimer’s approach is scholarly and accessible. The study is deeply documented, and the tone is measured. While he does not hide his embrace of diversity and his opposition to those who want to cancel it, his focus is on the philosophy and practical application of an idea that is too often oversimplified beyond recognition.

Oppenheimer describes diversity as the foundation for the “marketplace of ideas”—the clash of assumptions, hypotheses, values, and knowledge that demands intellectual rigor and creates a real-life laboratory for understanding the world and solving its problems.

“The diversity principle holds that when you bring together people with different backgrounds and experiences, including people of different ages, of different religions, of different races and ethnicities and genders, when you include people with disabilities, when you include people who are perennially outsiders and make them all part of a group, they will be better problem-solvers,” he explained in an interview.

“In a classroom, they’ll generate more ideas. In a science lab, they will come up with more significant discoveries. In government, they will develop more original public policy initiatives. In a business, they’ll make more money.”

And, Oppenheimer says, there’s extensive scientific research to prove the point. What remains to be seen is how much evidence will be needed to persuade a powerful corps of diversity opponents.

Oppenheimer is a clinical professor of law and codirector of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law, and he has written extensively on issues of discrimination and how to address it through the law. His latest book was released on February 24 by Yale University Press.

Legal issues of race and fairness have been a flashpoint throughout U.S. history, and certainly in the political and cultural wars since the zenith of the Civil Rights era more than 50 years ago. Despite steadily advancing support for the principles of diversity, the idea has faced a growing backlash from critics who suggest it’s a ruse for advancing people of color and women unfairly, at the expense of white people or men.

Initially, Oppenheimer was skeptical. If diversity was just a device for enrolling or hiring a few people from marginalized groups, he worried the approach would lead to tokenism. But some years ago, a colleague urged him to look more deeply. That challenge led to a sustained, deep dive—and to the discovery of a remarkable history that has propelled the idea through two centuries.

Tracing the history: Prussia, Washington, Berkeley

Wilhelm von Humboldt was a visionary educator in early 19th century Prussia. He defined the early principle of diversity, and after founding the University of Berlin in 1810, he applied it there in faculty hiring and student admissions.

In Oppenheimer’s telling, the story begins with Wilhelm von Humboldt, the Prussian polymath, diplomat, and educator. He founded the University of Berlin in 1810 with a revolutionary plan: fewer lectures, less memorization. More debate, more experimentation. Such a culture required more diverse voices, so enrollment was opened to Jewish and Catholic students and faculty.

John Stuart Mill and his wife, fellow philosopher Harriet Taylor Mill, embraced those ideas. Nearly 50 years later, in their seminal work, “On Liberty,” Humboldt’s words are featured in the epigraph: “The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.”

The Mills were enormously influential in American life in the mid-1800s, and especially in the anti-slavery movement. A central conclusion of their work, Oppenheimer said, is that the quest for truth requires people to test their own ideas and beliefs with people who have different ideas and beliefs.

“The only way to see the world through the eyes of others,” he explained, “was to create what we now call a ‘marketplace of ideas’ by including a diverse group of people—not just Anglicans, but Unitarians and Catholics and Jews, and people from other countries.”

The Mills’s idea had revolutionary implications: Creating a free marketplace of ideas meant giving women the right to vote and allowing Jews to run for Parliament. It required freedom for Black people in the Caribbean and freeing Ireland from strict British rule.

In subsequent decades, the idea continued to unfurl. Charles Eliot was named president of Harvard in 1869 and is credited with transforming it from a sleepy college to a great center of learning. He opened Harvard to Catholics and Jews, Black people, immigrants, and low-income students.

The famed jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes was educated at Harvard. He mentored two young attorneys, Felix Frankfurter and Harold Lasky, and together they read “On Liberty.” The book shaped Holmes’s landmark Supreme Court rulings on freedom of speech, and, later, when Frankfurter was a Supreme Court justice, it shaped his writing on academic freedom.

Oppenheimer credits Berkeley-educated attorney Pauli Murray with a profound impact as a scholar and activist focused on racial and gender diversity. She was Black and queer, and today, many scholars believe, she may have identified as a transgender man. She faced a gauntlet of discrimination as she made her way through university and law school, but the experience forged a committed legal scholar. While earning a master of law degree at Berkeley in 1944 and ’45, she wrote the first law review article on sex discrimination in employment.

Through that paper and others, Oppenheimer writes, Murray’s work had an influence on legal titans such as Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Murray’s “hard-earned insights,” he writes, “made their way into some of the most important Supreme Court cases of the 20th century.”

Archibald Cox, famed for his role in holding President Richard Nixon accountable for the crimes of the Watergate scandal, was a student of Frankfurter’s. Returning to Harvard after Watergate, he wrote a legal rationale for affirmative action that was influential in the 1978 landmark case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action in college admissions.

That precedent held for 45 years, until 2023, when today’s conservative Supreme Court majority reversed it in two cases that effectively barred colleges from using racial considerations in student admissions.

A fundamental confusion

The core of the diversity principle is that diverse minds and diverse experiences, when applied to a problem, will lead to better understanding and better solutions for challenges across day-to-day life.

In the marketplace of ideas, competition sharpens insight and drives success. It’s an essential benefit, Oppenheimer says, that this opens the door for marginalized groups to have a stronger voice in the affairs of the nation.

Not so long ago, influential conservatives and Republicans embraced the idea. Supreme Court justices Lewis Powell, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Anthony Kennedy each were appointed by Republican presidents, he writes, and each had written opinions upholding the right of colleges and universities to consider race and ethnicity in assembling a diverse student body.

Today, however, the terms of our debate—literally, the words we use—can reflect a fundamental confusion. Many contemporary critics of diversity use the word interchangeably with “affirmative action” or “quota,” though there are significant differences between them. In the Supreme Court’s 2023 case prohibiting affirmative action, the conservative majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, insisted that the law must be “colorblind.”

“But ‘color-blindness’ in a society with pervasive systematic racism is not a form of opposition to racism,” Oppenheimer writes. “It is simply racism-blindness.”

Oppenheimer drives home the point: In law and politics, diversity opponents are advancing the view that acknowledging race as a critical issue is itself racist, and that idea now inflames our politics. What does he see as the core of that paradox?

For some opponents of diversity in higher education, he writes, “it appears that the ultimate goal is to enroll fewer minority and more white students.”

The value of diversity, proven by research

While opponents often believe that diversity values unfairly put white people or men at a disadvantage, Oppenheimer argues that everyone stands to lose if the principle is undermined.

A significant section of his new book explores the growing body of research that shows how diversity creates advantages across a range of sectors: business, the military, health care, education, civic engagement, and others. He details how leaders in those fields have embraced the principle in their own operations.

He identifies another UC Berkeley connection to the evolution of diversity values: Victoria Plaut, a social and cultural psychologist at the law school and vice provost for the faculty, has pioneered the field “diversity science.” Her work has explored the idea that for diversity to produce its best results, marginalized groups must have equity and inclusion.

“For the first 180 or 190 years, diversity was a philosophical theory,” Oppenheimer said. “It had not been empirically tested. But then starting about 30 to 40 years ago, people started testing the idea. We found that it really does work.”

His book details research that shows the diversity principle in action. For example, diverse groups do better in creative tasks than homogenous groups. The most successful scientific research labs are more likely to be diverse. Students in a diverse environment come up with more ideas—and they’re more comfortable in diverse environments.

“The science,” he concludes, “just gets stronger every year.”

Can our diversity inspire us to listen?

After his work on The Diversity Principle, and after years of research into discrimination law and policy, Oppenheimer knows that progress toward racial equality in the United States moves predictably from advance to backlash, in recurring cycles. Slavery, then an anti-slavery movement. Freedom for people who’d been enslaved, then the rise of Jim Crow. The passage of historic civil rights laws in the 1950s and 1960s, then campaigns to tap racial resentment among white voters. Barack Obama, then Donald Trump.

And so, while the landscape is challenging today, he is optimistic that, in time, diversity will return to favor.

“Unless we’re re-experiencing the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages,” he said, “I have to think that we’ll come to our senses as a society and recognize the importance of this powerful idea.

“Does a country that has become the richest country in the history of the world—in significant part because of the strength of our diversity—decide to give that up and become a poor country? Does the country with the greatest universities in the world decide to disassemble those universities so that other parts of the world can be the home of the greatest universities?

“Diversity contributes so much to our success,” he said. “I hope it will help to put us on a path in which we do a better job of listening to each other.”

This article was originally published on Berkeley News. Read the original article.

Beyond the simple joys of grandparenting, a new study finds that being an engaged grandmother may also be helping protect her from cognitive decline.

In this study, researchers pulled data from almost 10,000 grandparents who were part of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (and didn’t live with their grandchildren). Three times in six years, the grandparents were asked if they’d looked after their grandchildren without the child’s parents being present over the prior two years. If they had, they also reported on how often they provided care, under what circumstances (e.g., during school holidays, weekends, weekdays, or throughout the year), and what kinds of activities they did with their grandchildren (e.g., caring for them when ill, engaging in play or leisure activities, or picking up or dropping them off at school).

At each time point, grandparents also underwent cognitive testing that included a verbal fluency test (how many animals they could think of within a minute) and an episodic memory test (how many words they could recall from a list, both immediately after hearing them read out loud and after a five-minute delay).

Having a large group allowed researchers to compare caregiving and non-caregiving grandparents on cognition. After ruling out other differences in the two groups that could influence their caregiving status or cognition—e.g., their age, number of children and grandchildren, education, physical limitations, or depression—the researchers found that caregiving grandparents had greater cognitive strength at all three assessment points than matched non-caregiving grandparents.

Why would this be? According to lead researcher Flavia Chereches of Tilburg University, this finding is not too surprising, as it reflects a larger body of research on the role of grandparenting in healthy aging.

“We know that staying active as we get older is good, by moving our bodies and by engaging in cognitive-stimulating activities,” she says. “Grandchild care can offer older adults opportunities for such activities.”

Not only that, happiness may play a role in these findings, too, she adds. While she and her team couldn’t assess how much grandparents actually enjoyed caring for their grandchildren from the data they had, other studies have found that positive emotion and better cognition go hand in hand. Also, caring for a grandchild can bring grandparents a sense of meaning and purpose—both known for helping us age well.

“Research shows that having a sense of meaning and purpose is linked to better cognitive and overall health. If grandparents perceive caregiving as meaningful and fulfilling, that may help explain some of the benefits,” she says.

Even a little caregiving is good

Chereches also looked more granularly at the types and frequency of caregiving activities that grandparents were engaged in. Her analyses showed that neither mattered much to the outcome; any amount or type of caregiving was tied to better cognition at a given time.

However, when considering whether caregiving prevented cognitive decline over time, only grandmothers who provided care were protected in comparison to other grandparents. Grandfathers were not.

While unsure why, Chereches speculates that it could be a reflection on how caregiving activities may not be the same for both genders and, therefore, not provide the same benefits.

“Past research suggests that grandmothers often coordinate caregiving, making plans for how caregiving would look, while also performing more hands-on care—for example, cooking for the grandchild,” she says. “Grandfathers often take on a more supportive and recreational role.”

It’s also possible grandfathers consider caregiving to be more of an obligation rather than freely chosen, she adds. Or perhaps it’s more stressful for them or interferes with other things they’d prefer to do.

“What feels manageable and meaningful for one person may feel overwhelming for another,” says Chereches. “When caregiving becomes more of a source of strain rather than fulfillment, we would not expect positive effects,” she adds.

Caregiving may improve cognition, but it’s not the only way

Chereches is careful to say that no grandparent should feel badly if taking care of a grandchild is not for them. Caregiving is a complex task, she says, and some people benefit more than others. Some grandparents may live far away from their grandchildren, too, making it nearly impossible to step in. Or they may simply prefer to spend their time other ways.

But her results do suggest a hidden benefit for grandparents who choose to spend time with their grandchildren. It’s likely to improve their cognition and, in some cases, protect them from cognitive decline.

That’s nice to know. If you care for grandchildren, not only will you be creating a relationship with them, you will be helping yourself stay fitter in life—and not just cognitively. Caregiving can also provide greater social connection and physical activity, too.

“For grandparents who enjoy providing care, staying involved with grandchildren may be a meaningful and engaging way to remain active in later life,” says Chereches.

No doubt, my sister-in-law would wholeheartedly agree.

While popular culture may lead you to believe that love and sex addictions are not only accepted conditions but also quite prevalent—think Frank in season 3 of White Lotus; Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest memoir All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation; and pretty much any cultural analysis of the actions of Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw around Mr. Big—the scientific understanding of problematic behaviors related to love and sex is far more nuanced.

Researchers and clinicians hesitate to characterize obsessive love or serial, overly consuming relationships as love addiction, for fear of feeding misinformation or encouraging people to adopt untested treatment regimes. And consider the many varying characteristics. Think about the intensity of your first crush or your devastation after ending it with your three-month situationship. Sure, you might have demonstrated some very concerning behaviors, but would it be fair to call it an addiction? A 2025 systematic review of research noted the growing interest in understanding love addiction and found a significant relationship between love addiction and attachment styles, concluding that a broader lens than addiction is needed to understand and treat harmful relationship behaviors.

Sex addiction, on the other hand, has gained more traction in the scientific community, particularly in the last decade, although clinicians still urge caution as the field comes to consensus. The term itself, along with hypersexual disorder, was denied inclusion in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), when the American Psychiatric Association published an update in 2013. But in 2019, a closely related diagnosis—Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD)—was formally recognized in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), which the World Health Organization publishes.

Compulsive sexual behaviors can cause very real distress, change brain pathways, and disrupt people’s entire lives, just as with behavioral disorders such as gambling and harmful Internet use. While many addictive behaviors can be addressed through abstinence, sex and love are important parts of many people’s healthy and fulfilling experiences of life, making recovery more complex than simply achieving sobriety. Individuals struggling to manage unhealthy behaviors must find a way to reintegrate love, intimacy, and sex into their lives without triggering the addiction cycle.

So as researchers work to gain clarity on how sex addiction fits into existing addiction frameworks, clinicians continue to work with clients to build their self-regulation skills, reduce harm, and support healthy intimacy. Seeking to understand harmful sexual behaviors encompasses addiction medicine, behavioral disorders, and a range of treatment options, including psychological, biological, and social. Ultimately, both diagnosis and treatment of sex addiction are complicated because of the unique role that sex and sexuality play in our lives, our deep need for connection to others, and our evolving understanding of sexuality. Whereas in a prior generation, you’d be pathologized simply for having multiple sexual partners, in modern times we understand polyamory, for example, as one expression of the vast range of normal sexual behavior and relationships.

“In reality, people vary widely in desire and behavior,” explains Kerry McCarthy, a Denver, Colorado-based licensed mental health counselor, who warns against labeling “frequent masturbation, pornography use, or diverse sexual interests as unhealthy. . . . Those differences aren’t inherently problematic.”

What is addiction?

Addiction is understood as a “treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences,” according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. In addiction, normal drives and desires become harmful, changing a person’s brain so they lose control of their behaviors, explains Margaret Jarvis, psychiatrist and chief of addiction services at Geisinger Addiction Medicine in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.

“They are pushed . . . by the disease to do things that really are contrary to their own values, contrary to their own interests,” Jarvis says. “It becomes very, very hard for that person to use their brains to do other things, to plan other activities, to engage in other work.”

Researchers first described addiction in the context of substance use, with early 20th century medical and psychological research focusing on behaviors of compulsion and loss of control in relation to alcohol and drugs. In 1960, physiologist and addiction researcher E. M. Jellinek framed alcoholism as a disease with identifiable stages—pre-alcoholic, early, middle, and chronic—marking a shift to viewing chronic substance abuse as a medical condition rather than a moral failure.

In subsequent decades, psychologists including William R. Miller and Mark Griffiths expanded the understanding of addiction to include behaviors such as gambling, overeating, and sexual acts. Griffiths characterized addiction with shared components of salience, tolerance, withdrawal, mood modification, conflict, and relapse. That means the substance or behavior becomes increasingly important, requires escalating intensity to achieve similar effects, causes distress when stopped, alters emotional states, causes interpersonal or functional conflict, and persists despite attempts to abstain, respectively.

Today, the DSM-5 identifies substance use disorder through patterns of impaired control, physical dependence, social problems, and risky use. People diagnosed with the disorder often struggle to cut back or stop using the substance, require ever-higher doses, and continue using it despite negative repercussions in their life or to their health. This diagnosis is made via an 11-question yes-or-no checklist that assesses the prevalence of these symptoms in a patient for the past 12 months. Two or more “yes” answers point to a possible substance use disorder. It’s then up to the clinician to assess the severity. About 48.5 million Americans received a diagnosis of substance use disorder in 2023, according to the United States National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

The one behavioral disorder that is included in the DSM-5—gambling disorder—follows the framework of substance use disorder. However, tolerance and withdrawal are not included. This is because you don’t develop a tolerance to gambling, just as you don’t necessarily display withdrawal symptoms when you stop. Bottom line: Addictive behaviors are not going to impact your brain in the way alcohol or drugs do.

In the 1980s, psychologist Patrick Carnes was among the first to conceive of sex addiction as a behavioral disorder, describing it as a pathological relationship to sex. He defined sex addiction as a person persistently failing to control a specific sexual behavior, continuing that behavior in spite of its harmful consequences, giving up other activities, and distress if unable to engage in sex. He described this specifically in relation to marriages, and the harmful effects of sex addiction on spouses and family.  Carnes and his colleagues urged caution in diagnosing sexual addiction based on frequency of sex, promiscuity, or novel expressions of sexuality, because of the range of normal human behavior.

Only in the most recent 15 or 20 years have researchers begun to understand behavioral addictions, Jarvis says. “The evidence base for substance addictions is really still pretty poor compared to cardiology, cancer treatment, etc. We just don’t have the volume and the depth of research that helps guide clinical decision making,” she says.

How love and sex addiction fit in

The claim of love addiction crops up in pop culture more than in research. Gilbert’s memoir follows her relationship with Rayya Elias, a woman who suffered from drug and alcohol addiction. After Elias develops pancreatic cancer, Gilbert uproots her entire life to take care of her, resulting in compulsive behaviors, codependence, and grief—symptoms she compares to Elias’s substance use addiction.

Science and research have yet to define the contours of love addiction, although the 2025 systematic review noted growing interest in the most recent six years. The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 15 studies with 3,628 participants and found a positive correlation between love addiction and anxious attachment, as well as a negative correlation between love addiction and avoidant attachment. They concluded that it would be too narrow to view problematic behavior around love solely through the addiction lens. By including frameworks and therapies from the attachment literature, clinicians might more effectively diagnose and treat addictive behaviors around love, they suggest.

People with personality disorders might appear to be addicted to love because they passionately fall into new relationships, only to disrupt them or end them abruptly, says Michigan-based therapist Taryn Sinclaire. But actually, that’s part of the unhealthy attachment pattern characteristic of a number of personality disorders, which Sinclaire treats. “I frequently see clients who are swept away at the beginning of a relationship only to end up chasing this initial high for the rest of the relationship, or rapidly devaluing the partner and moving on to someone new in order to feel this yet again,” she says.

University of Nevada associate professor and clinical psychologist Shane Kraus published research that informed the diagnostic criteria for CSBD. His work found that compulsive sexual behavior mirrors addiction in key ways: impaired control, continued engagement in spite of negative consequences, and the development of hard-to-break patterns.

“If you do a behavior over and over and over, your brain will form patterns and habits, and some of those can become compulsive or problematic, and that’s what happens with gambling,” he says. “Same thing for sex. Originally, it’s fun, you’re enjoying it, but now you’re having sex when you don’t want to. You’re having sex when you’re stressed.”

To be sure, high levels of sexual activity alone don’t qualify as problematic. A 2018 paper Kraus coauthored for World Psychiatry states: “Individuals with high levels of sexual interest and behaviour (e.g., due to a high sex drive) who do not exhibit impaired control over their sexual behaviour and significant distress or impairment in functioning should not be diagnosed with compulsive sexual behaviour disorder. The diagnosis should also not be assigned to describe high levels of sexual interest and behaviour (e.g., masturbation) that are common among adolescents, even when this is associated with distress.”

Kraus helped create the 19-item CSBD scale that clinicians now use to diagnose the disorder. Rather than answer yes-or-no questions, patients assess statements based on how much they agree with them (totally disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, totally agree). Scoring 50 or more points indicates a high risk of CSBD. Like substance abuse disorder, it’s up to the clinician to diagnose.

“In real clinical work, people rarely present exactly as diagnostic manuals describe, and diagnoses always need to be understood in context,” says Martha Koo, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer at Your Behavioral Health, a clinic in Torrance, California. “Loss of control, failure to change on one’s own, and functional impairment are important to arrive at a diagnosis and determine the need for treatment.”

A scientific review committee convened by the International Society for Sexual Medicine in 2024 concluded that clinical expertise is crucial to differentiate “out-of-control sexual behaviors,” understand their impact on mental and sexual well-being, and refine best practices in care and treatment. “Treatment centers have profited from it being labeled an ‘addiction,’ and current social media, periodicals, and online self-help forums have provided a venue for an enormous spread of misinformation,” the committee wrote. “Evidence-based, sexual medicine–informed therapies should be offered to achieve a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences.”

Treatment

Treatment for compulsive sexual behavior focuses on working with patients to reduce distress, create coping mechanisms around problematic sexual urges, and find a way back to healthy intimacy that aligns with a patient’s own values.

Clinicians support patients in learning to regulate their problematic sexual behaviors. For some, this means a temporary break from certain sexual behaviors to help clients interrupt compulsive patterns. Melissa Febos, in her memoir The Dry Season, writes about voluntarily abstaining from sex and romantic attachment after a breakup because she believed it would be a way to reconnect with her own desires and intimacy. Similarly, Jessica Steinman, a Los Angeles–based certified sex addiction therapist, recommends short-term abstinence from behaviors such as dating apps, masturbation, hookups, or sex altogether, paired with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

“Abstaining from sexual acting-out behaviors can help reset those pathways and allow the brain to rewire, which takes time,” Steinman explains. This approach draws from research that shows that compulsive sexual behaviors are reinforced through repeated exposure and habit formation. Some clinicians, like Steinman, use abstinence as a way to reduce reinforcement—though studies measuring the effectiveness of this method are still sparse.

Other clinicians focus more on helping clients regulate behavior while still engaging in sexual expression. “The goal is not abstinence but helping clients manage urges, reduce problematic patterns, and engage in healthy sexual and relational experiences,” says Denver counselor McCarthy.

Michigan therapist Sinclaire finds that clients using regulation strategies may fare better than those pursuing strict abstinence, especially when their sexual behaviors are otherwise healthy and consensual. This may involve identifying triggers, planning for relapse, and setting personal boundaries. The main goal is to reduce harm related to these sexual behaviors.

Koo emphasizes that compulsive sexual behavior resembles other addictions in the way repetitive behaviors can dominate a person’s life. “All addictions, whether involving substances or behaviors, are most effectively treated when treatment includes psychological, social, and biological interventions,” Koo says.

Psychological interventions include CBT, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and narrative therapy, while social interventions include 12-step programs and academic or occupational support to help patients advance their careers, which may have been disrupted by a pattern of sexual acting out. Biological interventions vary depending on the severity of the behaviors and whatever mental health comorbidities exist. Some patients grappling with CSBD may consider medications for depression, anxiety, or insomnia.

“There is not one cookie-cutter combination of bio-psycho-social interventions I would recommend. Rather, it is important to understand that an eclectic, comprehensive treatment approach that addresses the individual’s needs in all three of these areas leads to best outcomes,” she said.

Research suggests that treatment for compulsive sexual behaviors can be effective. A systematic review of 24 studies found moderate to large reductions in symptom severity—particularly with CBT, though much of this work focuses on problematic pornography use. In a randomized controlled trial of group CBT for men with hypersexual disorder, researchers observed significant drops in compulsive behavior and psychiatric distress that persisted over time. In hypersexual disorder, an individual loses control over sexual behaviors, leading to distress and negative impacts on key life areas.

If you’re concerned about your own or a loved one’s sexual behavior, it’s worth taking a step back. Are you worried because the behavior challenges social norms—or because it has truly become disruptive, consuming, or uncontrollable? Care should focus on helping you regain control, not labels.

“What you do, what kind of sex you have, and how you sexually express yourself, is important,” Kraus says. “For engaging in something that doesn’t make you feel good about yourself, how do we shift you to do something that makes you align with your values?”

And that’s just with people we know. What about strangers, people across the political divide, or even those with very different backgrounds and cultures than your own?

My field, philosophy, offers a tried-and-true answer to what we need to do in order to understand people and texts from very different backgrounds and cultural assumptions than our own. We need to be charitable.

Charity in this sense isn’t a matter of giving money to those who need it more. Instead, it’s seeing others in a favorable light—of seeing the best in them. In my work, I think of this as seeing other people as protagonists: characters who “do their best” with the predicament in which they find themselves. Interpreting someone charitably doesn’t require agreeing with them. But it does require doing our best to find merit in their point of view.

Of course, people and ideas don’t have unlimited merit. We can err by failing to see the merit of someone’s point of view—or we can err by finding merit that isn’t really there.

But the idea of charity is that it’s worse to make the first kind of error because it prevents us from getting along and learning from one another. By seeing the best in someone else and in their ideas, we can learn productively from engaging with them. Protagonists are people we can learn from and cooperate with.

Taking them seriously

It doesn’t take a genius to observe that we are all better at seeing the best in the people we agree with—and worse with those across the political divide. Political discussions on social media are often dominated by competing attributions of more and more insidious motives to people on the other side. We see them not as protagonists, but as antagonists.

By seeing the worst in someone else’s ideas, we let ourselves off easy. We dismiss them when instead we need to be taking them seriously.

So why, if charity requires seeing the best in others, are we so often tempted to see the worst in them?

A better understanding of charity provides the answer. Seeing the best and the worst in others are not opposite ways of interpreting someone, but simply two sides of the same coin. Here’s why:

Interpretation trade-offs

Interpreting someone isn’t all about figuring out their motives. Sometimes it’s about sorting out what is signal and what is noise. If I snap at you, you could spend a lot of time fixating over whether to be angry or embarrassed. But sometimes the right move is just to pass me a Snickers bar and move on. Our moods and actions are influenced by hunger, hormones, alcohol, and lack of sleep, just to name a few. Overinterpreting a snap after I missed breakfast treats as signal what is really just noise.

Overlooking a thing or two when I am hangry can be the best way to see the best in me. When you interpret my snap as merely the result of missing a meal, you don’t really see it as coming from me, the protagonist; but as the result of my predicament. You will judge me, not by whether I am hangry, but by how I overcome that. Your interpretation sees me in a more positive light, by taking away some of my agency.

By “agency,” I mean the extent to which someone gets credit for what they do. You have greater agency over something that you do on purpose, and less if it was a foreseen but accepted side effect of your plan. You have less agency if it was an accident, but more if the accident was negligent; less agency if you just snapped because you’re hangry, but more if you know you get hangry and chose to skip lunch anyway.

A perfect agent wouldn’t be affected by hormones and hunger. They would simply make rational choices that advance their goals. But humans aren’t like that. We are imperfectly embodied agents, at best. So interpreting one another well sometimes requires seeing the good in one another, at the cost of agency. In other words, it has to balance agency against the good, as I have argued in my recent work.

But you can’t find the best in someone by just ignoring more and more until all the bad things are trimmed away and only something good is left. Your interpretation has to fit with the facts of what they do and say.

And sometimes the trade-offs between agency and the good go the other way—we interpret each other in ways that attribute more agency but less good. If passing me a Snickers bar seems to calm me down, you might try it again the next time I snap. But one day you realize that you have started carrying extra Snickers bars everywhere you go in case you run into me, and a different interpretation presents itself: Maybe instead of being a decent but mood-challenged friend, I have just been using you for your candy bars.

This creates tipping points for charitable interpretation. When we cross the tipping point, you switch from seeing someone as an imperfectly embodied protagonist to seeing them as an antagonist.

Charity without a cost

All of this is a way of arguing that it is sometimes right to see the worst in others. Sometimes other people really are the worst, and understanding them requires understanding their agency, not what is good about them. Protagonists and antagonists are just two sides of the same coin: The very same interpretive process can lead us in either direction.

Unfortunately, this means there is no simple test for when you are doing well enough at seeing the best in others. In particular, there is no test that we can agree about across our political differences. Interpreting someone charitably requires looking hard enough for good in them, but part of what we disagree with one another about is precisely what is good. So we are bound to disagree with one another about who is being sufficiently charitable.

But as a personal aspiration, a little more charity can go a long way. We can be generous not just with money, but in how we interpret others. But unlike giving money away, we don’t lose anything when we try harder to see the best in someone else.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Purpose Award: The Alabama Solution

This heart-rending documentary (directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman) brings us deep into Alabama’s prison system, primarily as seen through the eyes of inmates. Their contraband phone footage documents horrendous conditions and violent abuse by prison guards. As prisoners and family members struggle to make the state accountable for violations and create a more just situation, they run headlong into discriminatory biases.

Early in his novel, Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens writes that “[l]ike a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside.” It’s impossible to not agonize in such imposed darkness. But as we see in The Alabama Solution, the men find their own light, in solidarity, knowledge, and purpose in fighting for civil and human rights. It’s humbling to see these men, suffering and even in solitary confinement, keep kindling hope and inspiration for one another.

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl argued that our primary drive is in finding purpose, even in the most extreme circumstances—and subsequent research has found that purpose is crucial to survival.

Sometimes, that purpose can be self-improvement and education. As it turns out, the most successful rehabilitation program is earning a college degree while incarcerated. But inmates also find purpose in trying to transform the prison system. We have alternatives to the ways we currently see and treat people accused of breaking the law—and choosing those alternatives would require us to include their well-being as part of our societal purpose. — Ravi Chandra

The-Art-of-Surrender Award: Come See Me in the Good Light

Once upon a time, two poets fell for each other on a dance floor in Oakland, CA.

Andrea Gibson was the James Dean of spoken-word poetry, and Megan Falley was the scene’s red-lipped, intellectual pinup. Andrea eventually asked Meg to come live with her in Colorado. As relationships often do, theirs got rocky–and then, when they were on the verge of a breakup, Andrea was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Come See Me in the Good Light documents the joys and struggles of life with Andrea’s cancer. These days, big studios and streamers are not forking over millions to make documentaries about queer poets navigating cancer treatment. Come See Me in the Good Light got made because a bunch of Andrea and Meg’s friends signed on as Executive Producers, assembling the considerable requisite finances and relationships.

Together they made a subtly instructive guide to the art of surrender. Throughout the film, Andrea and Meg show us how honing a creative practice trains us to accept life on life’s terms. To feel it all. To let other people be part of it. Andrea and Meg share how they used poetry to survive suicidality and the torment of anti-fatness. We watch them use their creative skills to stay present and feeling in the face of bad news, dance parties, and a comically dysfunctional mailbox.

This sacred collaboration between Andrea, Meg, and their friends proves that all art-making can equip us to surrender to mortality and stay alive, all the way to the end. — Kelly Rafferty

The Extraordinary Courage Award: Homebound

Homebound is the story of two childhood friends who face the harsh realities of life in a small village in North India with remarkable courage and unwavering friendship. Shoaib, a Muslim, and Chandan, a Dalit (among the most oppressed castes, once considered “untouchable” by society) are both exhausted by their daily encounters with caste and religious discrimination. They try to join the police force because it appears to be their only path to the dignity they have never known.

But life has other plans, as a broken examination system and the sudden COVID-19 lockdown bring their dreams to a halt.

Inspired by a 2020 New York Times article by Basharat Peer, the film reflects the struggles of millions of migrant workers in India who were devastated by the nationwide lockdown. Work had disappeared overnight. Many had no means of remaining in the cities, and transportation home was nonexistent. With no options left, many began walking back to their distant villages, braving the blazing summer heat on foot, much like Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa). As the story unfolds, we witness up close the painful uncertainty of finding one’s way back home amid a global pandemic.

What makes Homebound so powerful is the many forms of courage it reveals: the courage to dream big despite overwhelming obstacles; loyalty to one another across social divides; the willingness to leave the familiarity of the village to build a life in an unfamiliar city; the bravery to risk everything to return home with only the slimmest hope of safety; the strength to endure a journey few of us can imagine; and the resolve to embrace one’s social identity and shed guilt and shame that were never theirs to carry. Even as the journey takes an unimaginable toll, they continue on their path, one step at a time. — Aakash A. Chowkase

The Embrace-Your-Demons Award: KPop Demon Hunters

Superstar singing group by day, demon hunters by night—this is the double life of the KPop trio HUNTR/X. Generations of women have occupied these roles, using their singing voices to fight demons who prey on human souls. Now, it’s Rumi, Mira, and Zoey’s turn to carry this legacy.

When a new boy band, the Saja Boys, hits the scene, HUNTR/X realizes they are more than just cute competition…they’re actually demons, and stealing the souls of the HUNTR/X fans!

Thus begins a battle between good and evil, both on-stage and off. But another battle is coming to a head. You see, Rumi has a secret… one that could change everything. Keeping this secret strains her relationships with her friends, her fans, and (most of all) herself.

As the members of HUNTR/X continue their quest to take down the Saja Boys, Rumi’s internal conflict also comes to a head. Anxiety and shame cause her to lose her voice. She self-isolates from her friends, who become increasingly worried.

We see that hiding the messy parts of yourself works…until it doesn’t. Eventually, you break. And, like Rumi, you have to decide if you will embrace all of those broken parts or let them stay a mess. The ultimate message? Accepting yourself, demons and all, is how we thrive. – Mariah J. Flynn

The Ordinary Courage Award: The Librarians

“I never imagined what’s happening right now could ever happen,” says an anonymous librarian at the start of The Librarians, directed by Kim A. Snyder. “We just never imagined we would be at the forefront. We’re not necessarily supposed to be seen and felt. We’re stewards of the space, stewards of the resources.”

This documentary follows public and school librarians in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and other states as they battle in a quietly principled way against MAGA-fueled book bans and other forms of censorship. The books targeted include histories of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and desegregation, as well as any book about gender and sexuality.

I watched The Librarians with my partner Michelle, who is a public librarian. To her, book bans are just one front of the assault on libraries, which are facing profound budget cuts at just the moment when they’re besieged by every social problem facing American society. Every day, librarians encounter patrons with serious mental illness, children and the elderly needing social services, immigrants trying to navigate an overly complex system, unemployed people seeking jobs who have no computers at home, and much more.

“Going into this field is like getting into any relationship: you never know how fierce you’re going to have to be,” she told me afterward. “I have a ton of respect for the commitment of so many of my colleagues. And just as much respect for the ones who have had to walk away from the abuse to retain their health and their sanity.” I have a feeling many teachers, doctors, nurses, and journalists would say the same thing.

The Librarians ultimately becomes a chilling portrait of the rise of fascism in America—but the most important thing about this documentary is that it shows how many ordinary women (and some men) are being drawn into a struggle they never expected and would never have chosen. Their ordinary courage is an example that many of us may need to follow in the coming years. — Jeremy Adam Smith

The Connectedness Award: Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

Have you ever felt that you were the center of the world? Little Amélie or the Character of Rain explores that feeling through the life of Amélie, following her from infancy through childhood, and tracing the inner life of a child who experiences the world with overwhelming intensity.

Directed by Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han and based on a novel by Amélie Nothomb, it’s a portrait of what it feels like to be a child–not the sentimentalized version, but the real thing, in which one is the absolute center of the universe and hasn’t yet learned otherwise.

I watched this movie with my kids and I felt kind of like a kid watching it, growing at an accelerated pace through the phases of childhood.

Amélie says, “When you are three, you see everything, and understand nothing.” It’s a lot to carry alone. And when her first taste of white chocolate welcomes the divinity of momentary self-annihilation, it’s powerful. And so are the first experiences of life: one’s first time being seen, the visceral, vibrant colors of spring; the wonder of animals, books, a spinning top, deciphering your name and what you might become.

For much of the film, Amélie experiences herself as godlike and refers to herself as God. And aren’t we all God at some point in our childhood–full of power, possibility, the absolute center of everything else? It’s a terrific, terrible feeling–and it’s linked to loneliness, anxiety, and depression. As Amélie weathers beauty, grief, love, and loss, she learns that she is not the center of the world–and that our connection with others is what gives life meaning. — Lauren Lee

The Prosocial Deception Award: Rental Family

Rental Family is about a small company in Japan that creates artificial family situations in service of various emotional or practical agendas. If that sounds weird to you, then you stand to learn a lot from this story.

“We sell emotion,” explains the boss, Shinji Tada (Takehiro Hira). “We play roles in clients’ lives. Parents, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends. And help them connect to what’s missing.” He adds: “Mental health issues are stigmatized in the country. So people have to turn to other things, like us.”

Shinji is trying to recruit struggling actor Phillip Vandarpleog (Brendan Fraser) to be the “token white guy” on the team. After Phillip accepts the job, one woman hires him to serve as an affluent white dad so that her biracial, “illegitimate” daughter can get into a good school. As Phillip and the child develop a connection, the storyline goes to a heartbreaking place—and raises questions about the morality of what they’re doing.

Indeed, as the story progresses, the characters make mistakes as well as some pretty unethical decisions. But what’s most interesting is how Rental Family leads us to accept that it’s sometimes necessary to lie to ourselves or others in order to achieve happiness. And at the same time, the movie shows that lies can have serious consequences. Rental Family doesn’t try to resolve that contradiction; it just allows us to see that it exists.

The question at the heart of the story is: How do we tell the difference between lies that are selfish and antisocial—and deception that is prosocial and kind? As the characters struggle for answers, Rental Family asks the audience to find their own. — Jeremy Adam Smith

The Melancholy Love Award: The Secret Agent

Kleber Mendonça Filho is Brazil’s leading filmmaker, and his latest work, The Secret Agent, is a nominee for this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture.

The film is primarily set in 1977 Brazil, a time of “great mischief,” as the film tells us, defined by corruption, state-sponsored violence, and dictatorship. Armando, brilliantly portrayed by Best Actor nominee Wagner Moura, is a research scientist with a big soul and warm heart.

At the beginning of the film, he’s also on the run from assassins, for reasons we only later learn. Marcelo’s son is tellingly obsessed with the poster for 1977’s hit film Jaws, in which a giant shark courses upward from the depths toward an unsuspecting swimmer. The poster represents the reality and the fear of violence that surrounds this family.

One of my favorite scenes comes early in the film, where he meets the residents of a house run by Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), a wise, generous 77-year old who has seen it all. As she takes him under her wing, Armando adopts the name Marcelo to live under a false identity.

Even in the stress of the situation, Marcelo still greets every individual as precious, emphasizing the loving, almost doting quality of Brazilian culture, one mixed with saudade, the Portuguese word for tragic melancholy, longing, and also acceptance.

Through many twists and turns, The Secret Agent reveals the real secret agent that anchors all our lives: love, which can bring ripening, rest, safety, and healing. This film will leave you determined to love every person through difficult times. — Ravi Chandra

The Greater Goodness Award: Superman

Over the past quarter century, it’s been something of a trend to turn Superman into yet another violent, grim, dark superhero. When Superman battles General Zod over Metropolis in the 2013 movie Man of Steel, thousands are killed—and Superman ultimately murders his enemy.

To me, that’s not what superheroes are supposed to be about. These are fantasies about people with power being good; these stories are ideals of how people with power in real life are supposed to behave. If you turn Superman into Donald Trump (as they did with Homelander in the Prime TV series The Boys) then you’re reflecting the real world, and you should be entering the savage land of satire.

There’s nothing satirical about the 2025 Superman movie, written and directed by James Gunn. It’s just sincere, good-hearted, silly fun.

Exhibit A: In the movie, Superman (David Corenswet) saves a squirrel from sure destruction. I’ve read that Gunn got pushback on that scene from test audiences and he kept it anyway—and he was right to do so, because it really draws a line of demarcation between his Superman and recent iterations of the character. Yeah, it’s ludicrous, but more than that, it’s good. To this Superman, all life is precious.

Exhibit B: Krypto the Superdog. Every single scene with this dog who has the powers of Superman is delightful. Krypto is a GOOD DOG, and is anything better than a good dog? Reader: No, there is not.

Please don’t approach this version of the Superman myth expecting an intellectually stimulating evening. What you’ll get instead is a viscerally relatable vision of goodness that just might make you feel a little bit better about the world.

As Superman says at the film’s conclusion: “I’m as human as anyone. I love. I get scared. I wake up every morning and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other and I try to make the best choices I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human. And that’s my greatest strength.” — Jeremy Adam Smith

The Braver Love Award: Together

With marriage rates declining among Gen Z and millennials, you could say we’re suffering from a generational failure to commit. That’s the theme of Together, a body-horror film from Australian director Michael Shanks.

This flick stars Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie), a long-time couple who are failing to tie the knot. But when they move out to a rural community to start a new life, they happen upon a supernatural force that seems intent on bringing them together in a way that is frighteningly literal.

Together is on its surface a sometimes-grisly thriller that aims to shock its audience with imagery of two humans slowly being physically fused together. But beneath the macabre elements hides a smart and compassionate look at couples who are afraid to truly open up to each other and take the next step in their lives. 

There is perhaps no theme that animates more fictional stories than that of love. The quest to understand why and how we’re drawn to each other is eternal. From the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to the endless romantic comedies we find on streaming services, there are a million different stories to be told about why people fall in love with each other.

Together offers an unconventional look at what is perhaps the most powerful force in the world and challenges its audience to rescue themselves from aimless relationships. Taking the leap of faith into committing to a life with someone else can be scary, suggests this movie, but being too cowardly to do so can create a much more horrifying outcome. — Zaid Jilani

For Christians, forgiveness and love are the two cardinal virtues. Even back then, however, that prescient administrator could see where the country was heading: toward increasing political polarization and more frequent mental health problems. He wanted to engage the methods of Christian practical theology to heal minds and relationships, and he wanted to start by joining his faith’s conception of forgiveness—prayer, restraint, looking to mature models, seeking God’s help—with the burgeoning science of forgiveness. He reached out to me as both scientist and Christian because I had published and spoken in both secular and religious venues about forgiveness.

We shaped a two-week forgiveness campaign. We worked with staff and students to design many activities that they thought would increase awareness of forgiveness—newspaper articles and ads, debates, chapel speakers, banners adorning a popular walkway, an endorsement from the university president, and more.

During the weeks of the campaign, I also trained about 50 group leaders to run secular and Christian-oriented REACH Forgiveness groups, which are psycho-educational interventions that have been found in over 30 studies worldwide to be able to help people forgive, flourish, enhance their well-being, and reduce depression and anxiety. The acronym REACH stands for five steps:

R = Recall the hurt;
E = Empathize with the offender;
A = Altruistic undeserved gift of forgiveness;
C = Commit to the forgiveness experienced; and
H = Hold on to forgiveness when doubts arise.

The aim: to help participants to make a decision to eschew payback and to treat the offender more humanely. Other activities surround these core steps, such as identifying the most difficult event a participant has successfully forgiven, defining emotional and decisional forgiveness, identifying the benefits of forgiveness to the forgiver, and working through other hurts and offenses to generalize gains.

Some students were randomized to either complete a six-hour REACH Forgiveness group or serve as the control group who were exposed only to the campaign (without the REACH group). Unsurprisingly, we found that the REACH Forgiveness groups—my principal focus at the time—were more effective than the campaign alone.

After we published the results, I was contacted by leaders at Asbury University, a Christian university in Kentucky. They wanted to conduct a similar campaign, and they also wanted to test the effects of writing forgiveness essays against the REACH Forgiveness groups. Again, we found that the groups were more effective than both a writing exercise and the campaign that everyone on campus experienced.

However, I also found that just being exposed to a campus-wide forgiveness campaign had helped the two communities become more forgiving. So, I applied to the Fetzer Institute for a grant to assess forgiveness campaigns at nine Christian universities. I compiled a list of potential forgiveness-promoting activities, and I encouraged each school to select half of their activities from the standard list and use their creativity for the other half.

At the same time, I was working with faith leaders in churches to design campaigns around forgiveness. I consulted with a large church in the Philadelphia area and a medium-sized church in Adelaide, Australia. I directed a campaign at the church that I attend in Richmond, Virginia, giving me a hands-on slant on running deeper dives. Those projects were done simply as service in congregations who were interested in them, and not for publication. By 2018, I did an after-action review of the campaigns at both faith-based universities and congregations. We assessed forgiveness of a target offense, dispositional forgivingness, well-being, hope, and reduced depression and anxiety. 

What emerged from this work are some insights into how to build forgiveness in faith-based communities—and which can be applied to secular ones, as well.

The elements of deep dives

I came to refer to the combination of a public-facing campaign, REACH groups (and later workbooks), and scientific assessment as “deep dives.” At that point, all completed deep dives were in faith-based communities that already valued forgiveness. I had learned things pertinent to those communities that I hoped to use in the future in secular communities.

First, we learned that it was essential to have leadership at the highest level of university president and provost or senior pastor and other assistant pastors engaged in active advocacy and support, not just a token endorsement.

Second, deep dives needed to focus on clear messages. We used three:

• Forgiveness has benefits to the forgiver;
• There are two types of forgiveness that are not always experienced in tandem—a decision to treat the offender more humanely and an emotional change; and
• There are local resources available to help.

Third, in faith-based communities, we had emphasized awareness-raising over actually practicing forgiveness. Awareness-raising is important, but we found that many students and religious attenders did not have skills to forgive, suggesting a fourth element was needed: to help people go beyond awareness-raising and to actively practice forgiveness in various contexts.

We also discovered that church-based campaigns were different from university-based counterparts in age distribution and living environment. Activities had to be tailored to more diverse living situations in congregations than in universities. Also, universities had an educational mindset and on-campus living compared to a community church with a geographically distributed congregation and educationally diverse mindsets. In congregations, people might only come together once a week and perhaps a second time in a small group. With a university, though, interactions were more frequent and more diverse. Sporting events, encounters in dormitories or other living units (like fraternity or sorority houses), classes, and extracurricular activities provided many opportunities to interact in educational and non-educational ways each week.

Secular applications

Another grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF) helped extend this work to secular venues in Indonesia, South Africa, and Colombia. We have (so far) published the results of our effort in Colombia.

There, we conducted a four-week community-wide forgiveness deep-dive involving students, faculty, and staff at the Universidad del Sinú in Monteria, Colombia, a private secular university. We started by assessing 3,000 of 9,000 students at the beginning and end of the deep dive, looking for changes in forgiveness, mental health, and flourishing. We also evaluated their engagement with, and the effectiveness of, the 16 types of activity, such as getting at least nine out of 10 answers correct on a forgiveness-knowledge test, completing a REACH Forgiveness workbook, attending a forgiveness webinar, watching and discussing forgiveness-themed movies, listening to forgiveness podcasts from world-renowned experts, sitting under a “forgiveness tree” to reflect on forgiving an offender, and writing about one’s experience and posting it at a “forgiveness wall.”

In examining the results, we addressed three main research questions.

The first: “Did the deep dive successfully foster increased forgiveness, mental health, and flourishing?” It did. In fact, averaged across all of the students, the effects were half as large as participating in an intensive forgiveness intervention. That is astounding for a public health intervention in which, like many public health initiatives, not every student got engaged.

The second research question was, “Did the number of types of activities affect the amount of forgiveness, mental health, and flourishing that people experienced?” Again, the answer was yes, and we found engagement matters. For three or fewer activities, people experienced essentially no gains. But from four to 16 types of activities, each additional activity they completed yielded more forgiveness and flourishing—and less depression and anxiety.

The third research question was, “Which types of activities were most effective at promoting forgiveness, mental health, and flourishing, and most popular in attracting users?” We found that if an activity took more than about four hours, students rarely used it—but those who did benefited. If it took less than an hour, many students used it but it had little or no effect. Those that were both often-used and effective took between one and four hours. (So, as you plan your own deep dive, you should opt for interesting activities. Like the baby bear in The Three Bears, they are not too brief, don’t take too long, but are just right!)

Practical lessons

Putting all of our experience together, we have learned several practical lessons. These can help you design an effective and efficient forgiveness deep dive for your organization:

1. Identify a limited community for intervention—ideally one that wants to become more forgiving.

2. Leaders are crucial. Engage lay leaders who can galvanize people to act and have large personal networks. Encourage administrators to actively advocate participation, not merely give token endorsement. Recruit enough leaders that work gets distributed and you don’t end up doing all of it.

3. Establish three types of goals: awareness-raising, education (i.e., how to define forgiveness, know the benefits, and know where to get free interventions), and skill-development in forgiving and maximizing mental health.

4. Tailor activities to your community. Make sure the activities are ones that your people want to engage in! In addition, include proven effective activities that require people to spend time actively trying to forgive particular hurts. Choose activities that require time, but not too much time; effort, but not too much; variety, but not too much.

5. Seek to convince people that they can forgive more if they work at it. Few activities (up to three) over the course of the deep dive won’t benefit them much; four to 13 have increasingly larger effects.

6. To prevent dropout or missed sessions, use existing groups to which people already have a loyalty and set a time limit for the deep dive at no more than seven weeks for faith communities and one month for universities. For ad hoc forgiveness-related groups, limit time commitments per meeting and number of meetings, and make sure people know they are time-limited.

7. Deep dives for churches should be timed for events like Lent, Advent, or the approach of Yom Kippur. University deep dives should try to avoid midterms or finals.

We all live in many communities. We know too well that in each one, people harbor grudges that can make things unpleasant for others within the community when the grudges leak out. Public health and mental health campaigns almost never eradicate the target maladies.

But it’s fun to ask ourselves what-if questions. What if one local forgiveness campaign could stop half of the unpleasantness that leaks out this year? What if the person inspired to forgive more were someone holding a grudge against me? What if it affected my romantic partner or children? What if I could become a more forgiving person? What if this became a widely used community intervention? Could this actually make the world a better place?

At 17, Amanda sat with her family, her counselor Lisa*, and her parents’ marriage counselor David* in front of a group of trainees taking a 2002 class at an Indiana church’s large counseling center. The church’s counseling program takes a particular Christian approach to counseling, which tends to be popular in conservative Reformed traditions—an approach that sees the Bible as the ultimate authority on problems and values theology over psychology.

The counseling trainees ate while observing the family’s session. “It was dinner and a show,” Amanda recalls, calling the dynamic “coercive.”

At this point, Amanda’s mother had known about the abuse for two years, but her father avoided criminal charges after hiring a lawyer and moving out. Amanda worried that her dad would abuse others; she couldn’t forgive him with this awareness.

Earlier that day, Lisa met with Amanda and her mother, separately, trying to prepare them to include her father at her grandma’s funeral—the extended family did not know her parents were separated. When she was done, Amanda waited in the car during her parents’ marriage counseling. “My mom came out and said we had another session with [David] and Dad that I needed to come to. [Lisa] met us at the side door and let us in and led us into a big room,” said Amanda. The adults held the extra session to elicit forgiveness from Amanda, which turned out to also be a training lesson.

She recalls that her father hemmed and hawed when David asked him to start the session. David said, “Don’t you mean…” and prompted her father to repeat lines after him to ask for forgiveness. Then, it was Amanda’s turn. She couldn’t bring herself to grant it, so David filled in the silence by asking if Amanda forgave him. She nodded and said nothing.

Then the counselors defined forgiveness as never speaking about the abuse again. To close the session, David prayed for restored trust to the point that Amanda would one day set her future daughters on her dad’s lap.

Not long after, when Amanda was in college, Lisa terminated counseling. “I did not agree with their definition for forgiveness,” Amanda says. “I don’t think we should use Christian words like that without defining what they mean.”

Can forgiveness be authentic if it feels forced? From a child forced to say “I’m sorry” by a parent to a survivor pressured to reconcile with their abuser, a coercive dynamic to forgive exists in many settings. But research and individual experiences show that people can still find and practice real forgiveness after being harmed by these dynamics, when handled with care. It requires understanding the contexts in which pressure to forgive exists and the patience to move slowly through the process.

What is genuine forgiveness?

Psychologist Loren Toussaint, a professor at Luther College, says an unequal power dynamic can pressure us to let people off the hook for the sake of social harmony. Aside from extreme cases like Amanda’s, “the two places you see that are in parent-child relationships and employee-employer relations,” says Toussaint. “There’s a certain sense of uneasiness. . . . If I don’t forgive, there’s going to be ramifications because I’m subordinate to this person. In that case, especially, it’s really hard to guarantee and know that someone is engaging in authentic forgiveness.”

Real forgiveness cannot be rushed. It can begin with a decision not to retaliate. Or it can be an early declaration to forgive or at minimum not to be unforgiving. Yet it may take years of processing the harm—feeling anger again and again, seeking justice or accountability, wrestling with whether any form of reconciliation is safe or healthy. Ultimately, you might arrive at a place of seeing an offender in their full humanity—thinking honestly about their capacities and limits—and wishing them genuine growth and wellness. Forgiveness is a process.

Toussaint recalls a promotion denied years ago and the offense he took from his dean’s decision. Yet after the slight, “the very first time I ran into him in person, I ran over with my hand extended,” says Toussaint. “The problem is that if you’ve been hurt by someone who is still in power over you, it’s really hard to know that you’re not forgiving out of perceived obligation to protect yourself.”

For Toussaint, who is Catholic, he also felt compelled to forgive because of his own faith’s teachings. “That’s probably true for a lot of people even if they might not claim a faith,” he says. “They have a spiritual view on life or a philosophical view on life where they feel this is important: Somewhere we should find the will to forgive.”

Realistically, though he intended to forgive his dean early on, he did not notice that he had released the resentment until years later.

Amanda’s case also contains unequal power dynamics—religious settings uniquely hold additional authority that at times can lead to serious harm.

How coerced forgiveness causes harm

Spiritual and moral authority in religious institutions can slip into coercive dynamics that perpetuate violence—including psychological, sexual, and even economic violence, posit attorney Renato Vera Osuna and Anahi Martinez Zuniga, in a 2025 paper for the International Journal for Research and Innovation in Social Science. They draw from sociologists who conceptualize structural and symbolic violence to describe how spiritual harm can manifest. Spiritual harm can become obscured, they write, since laws do not encompass it as a crime. They argue for legal recognition of spiritual abuse, “the creation of independent oversight bodies, and institutional reforms grounded in transparency, horizontal governance, and human rights principles.”

Osuna and Zuniga reviewed reports where coercion or cover-up occurred in Catholic, evangelical, and non-denominational contexts in North America, Latin America, and Europe. Then, they interviewed victims, legal practitioners, psychologists, and clergy in specific cases. Many cases silenced or re-victimized people who tried to report abuse or challenge authority. Osuna and Zuniga identified control mechanisms such as various ways of concealing perpetrators (including transferring leaders to new locations), threats of exclusion from the community, accusations of attacking the church, and theological reinterpretations.

Psychologists have also worked to define the unique contours of harm that might arise in these settings. Since 1994, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses, which helps mental health professionals accurately diagnose problems, has included “religious or spiritual problem.” Recently, in fall 2025, the manual added “moral problem” within the same category. People experiencing religious problems may develop post-traumatic stress or they might not—either way, they will benefit from counselors with specific clinical training on these kinds of circumstances.

“Sometimes clinical work has neglected the moral dimension . . . many world religions point to the moral dimension, and we cannot bring about full healing without addressing the moral dimension,” said Tyler VanderWeele, the director of the Human Flourishing Project at Harvard University, during a 2024 conference.

Religions provide a strong social identity for people and become the lens through which people understand the world. Religious leaders and institutions uniquely wield a particular kind of spiritual and moral authority.

VanderWeele and other psychologists are defining and measuring the newer concept of moral injury. Moral problems do not only arise in religious settings, but they can be a prominent part of a religious experience. However people perceive rightness and wrongness in the world, a transgression can violate their deeply held moral assumptions.

While originally conceptualized in the context of veterans, and then health care workers, and usually focused on perpetrating or witnessing wrongdoing—moral injury has expanded more recently to include the experiences of victims. When people question their own goodness, or the goodness of God or a higher power, or of their faith leaders or faith system, it can upend their mental health.

VanderWeele described a moral trauma spectrum of severity and persistence that could cause you to struggle with forgiveness, and lead to a number of other symptoms, such as guilt, shame, and powerlessness, experienced across a range of debilitation.

Harvard psychologist Heidi Ellis and her colleagues have also attempted to define and measure how religious abuse uniquely entangles people, but research is in the beginning stages of developing assessment tools. Prevalence may vary based on demographic factors—with relatively high rates within specific populations, such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals in Latter Day Saints communities and Native Americans who have experienced foster care. Their review of this small body of literature found three consistent factors at play: misuse of power, psychological harm, and spiritual harm.

In Amanda’s conservative evangelical context, the word “forgiveness” meant something theologically that protected her abusive father rather than holding him accountable. Her counselors wanted her to believe the best about him because forgiveness meant a relationship could be restored.

“I’ve heard many, many stories that abuse survivors were counseled” in similar ways, she says. Amanda stays in touch with other abuse survivors and continues to advocate for victims in the church when fresh stories surface. She believes forgiveness is possible, but if handled improperly, the intention to reconcile can actually cause harm.

How positivity and spiritual bypassing cause harm

One common error in Christian contexts is to move toward forgiveness too quickly or aggressively, without first addressing practical issues or abuse survivors’ concerns. “I have never had to tell a survivor who is a Christian, ‘Hey, it’s about time you have to talk about forgiveness.’ I usually have to hold them back a little bit,” said Justin Holcomb, a Florida bishop in the Episcopal Church, during a 2019 conference talk.

He explained that’s because they hear about forgiveness all the time. He also reprimanded those in survivors’ support systems, including pastors: “When they come to you with their story, the first word out of your mouth better not be to heap burden on them with the command to forgive.”

That resonated with Amanda, who referenced his talk as supportive of her experience. Survivors first need time to process what happened to them, she says. “We can’t forgive until we understand what’s happened . . . . Thinking about forgiveness can’t be the first thing that we do because it minimizes the sin.”

We wouldn’t put a Band-Aid on a nine-inch gash on our kid’s leg, she pointed out. “We have to be able to understand that weight.”

Focusing on healing problems at the spiritual level while ignoring the practical solutions—called spiritual bypassing—can stymie efforts to look honestly at what is needed when an offense takes place.

Whether in religious settings or not, Ellen Sinclair writes how forgiveness interventions can frame difficult events with positive thinking but miss treating the actual problem of relational harm. An artificially positive outlook can blind people from taking the realistic view of an abusive situation. In a review, Sinclair found that domestic abuse victims who were optimistic were more likely to miscalculate their risk, and spouses who forgave an unremorseful partner were also likely to experience continued abuse. Misapplied, a positive approach might have the impact of blaming the victim for not being able to cope in the face of injustice.

Toussaint says forgiveness within faith communities can be difficult because teachings can be inadequate. “There is a tendency especially in a religious setting to be prescriptive about forgiveness,” he says. Sacred text in Christian traditions and others suggests that forgiveness is not optional.

“But the second reason is that most people are being told what to do and they’re confused about what they are being asked to do,” says Toussaint. “Most people believe they are being asked to, number one, forgo any simultaneous requirement of justice and that they are to reconcile and even . . . to immediately reconcile.”

Growing and finding meaning after forced forgiveness

Amanda actually stayed at the same church and found growth through a full understanding of who Jesus is to her. She is among those who find strength and resilience within their faith community. People can have seemingly opposite responses to religious abuse, found psychologist Paula Swindle, who wrote her dissertation on the subject. Some, like Amanda, make their faith even more central to their identity but others leave their faith group—either disaffiliating altogether or changing to a new church or denomination.

Here’s how Amanda stayed: A new pastor took leadership of her childhood church, knowing that many people had been harmed by the church culture. So, he sought out Amanda, got to know her, and waited patiently for her to share her story. When Amanda was 23, her youngest sister revealed that she’d also been abused by their father and came to live with Amanda, bringing the family’s whole history to light.

Her pastor began talking with Amanda about the real meaning of forgiveness. “One of the things we talked about: that David’s view of forgiveness actually makes the offended party have to be the savior,” says Amanda. “When you forgive someone, you take the relational weight upon yourself rather than putting it on the offender. I was expected to carry the uncomfortableness and not make my dad carry it.”

Amanda explained that she’s come to believe the Christian scripture’s understanding of forgiveness, but that actually means not standing in the way of who can carry that relational weight. Her father needs Jesus’s forgiveness, she says, but we can’t offer a watered-down version. Jesus does offer forgiveness, but “he doesn’t take away the consequences for sin here in this world,” says Amanda. “Relational consequences stay.” She referenced the biblical story of David murdering Bathsheba’s husband to cover up his predatory relationship and adultery, which resulted in losing his son and his kingdom’s unity.

When her father repented, Amanda’s counselors wanted her to believe the best about him. Her response: “I say we should believe the truth about others. I need to believe that my dad has abused multiple children, and there’s no reason to believe that he will stop if given access to children. It’s having a realistic view of what is best for him. I think that does mean making sure he doesn’t have access to children again. I don’t think that’s in his best interest,” she says.

Since Amanda began sharing her story almost seven years ago, she receives requests from churches to consult on behalf of victims. As a victim, “you don’t even know what you need. But you need someone else to be able to say it for you,” she says.

First, she cautions churches about the power dynamics unique to religion and faith leaders that law scholars and psychologists are working to describe.

In addition, she points out how abusers can manipulate communities. Many churches love to help people who admit they are sinners, says Amanda. When an abuser acts repentant—in a conservative Christian context “repentant” means not only feeling sorry but also intending to do no wrong again—this almost invites wrongdoers to manipulate that good faith.

Lastly, she advises clear definitions of forgiveness. Genuine forgiveness is more like a seed, says Amanda. It lodged in her years ago, but decades later “it’s something that continues to grow, and I continue to deepen that understanding.”

From the late 1990s through 2014, violent crime in Northeast Park Hill declined from its peak in the early ’90s but remained persistently higher than city averages. In 2016, Northeast Park Hill recorded 1,086 youth arrests per 100,000 young people. The arrest rate for the combination of the other 76 Denver neighborhoods was 513.

With a population of approximately 9,600, 19% of families in the neighborhood lived below the federal poverty line, 39% of residents identified as Black, and 27% identified as Hispanic.

Yet Northeast Park Hill is also a community defined by collective action. In 2013, residents started organizing in response to a series of violent events. They laid the foundation for an emerging movement committed to rebuilding community safety.

Building on these community strengths, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence partnered with local leaders to implement Communities That Care in 2016. The program is a science-based prevention process designed to help communities use data, evidence, and collective action to reduce youth violence.

As a sociologist and director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, my work examines the root causes of youth violence. I study how community-led, data-driven prevention efforts can reduce risk and build supports that help young people stay safe and connected. Working alongside leaders and residents in Northeast Park Hill, I’ve seen firsthand what’s possible and what their remarkable success can teach all of us.

A welcome change

After just five years, the youth arrest rate in Northeast Park Hill fell to 276 per 100,000—a 75% reduction.

This drop in youth arrests reflects a decades-long nationwide trend. Across the country as a whole, juvenile arrests peaked in 1996 and then began a steady decline.

But not all neighborhoods benefited equally. To measure the impact of local prevention work in Northeast Park Hill, we compared its arrest rate to a carefully constructed “look-alike” community made up of similar Denver neighborhoods that did not receive the intervention. We found Northeast Park Hill saw a sharper and earlier decline than its comparison community—pointing to an impact beyond national trends and tied to the local interventions.

Impacts of youth violence

Youth violence is a major cause of harm.

This is especially true for urban communities that have endured decades of chronic disinvestment. That includes neglected infrastructure, deteriorating housing, and long-standing environmental and health inequities. Such environments often lack the opportunities, resources, and support that are essential for healthy youth development.

Young people in these neighborhoods are more likely to face increased exposure to violence and daily challenges associated with navigating violent communities, such as witnessing shootings near their homes and schools. They also face ongoing experiences of marginalization and discrimination. Many young people move through daily life in a constant state of vigilance. Some youth withdraw, carry weapons for protection, or turn to substances to cope with chronic anxiety.

Building a prevention infrastructure

As part of Communities That Care, the community formed a prevention coalition of approximately 25 members, known as Park Hill Strong, to guide the work.

Three Black leaders, Troy Grimes, Jonathan McMillan, and Dane Washington Sr., who grew up in the neighborhood and experienced the violence of the 1990s firsthand, chaired the coalition.

Following the Communities That Care model, they began by creating a community profile. They used local data, including youth and parent surveys, and neighborhood indicators, such as access to safe parks, after-school programs, and healthy foods. The data helped the coalition identify the biggest sources of risk and what protective supports were available in the community.

That data pointed to several factors that increase the likelihood of youth violence. Many youth felt disconnected from their community and had limited supervision or inconsistent support at home. The data also highlighted early and persistent problem behaviors among youth, including aggression and defiance, which can place young people on a pathway toward later violence.

The data also revealed protective supports to build on. It showed that opportunities for young people to participate in positive activities were limited. Community recognition of youths’ healthy and constructive contributions was also low—highlighting important areas for improvement.

Once the profile was complete, the coalition developed a community action plan describing the community prevention strategies the coalition would use to address their prioritized risk and protective factors.

Community-level prevention strategies

The coalition selected three community-level prevention strategies.

First, a youth-led media campaign called the Power of One (PO1) addressed the risk factor of low neighborhood attachment. The campaign challenged the idea that young people themselves are the cause of violence, instead highlighting how decades of redlining, concentrated poverty, and limited access to quality schools and jobs have shaped the conditions they are navigating. The campaign also highlighted positive stories about young people and their communities. The Power of One has reached more than 3,000 youth and adults through social media and hosted six community block parties.

Second, the coalition selected Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies, known as PATHS. This evidence-based program aims to reduce early and persistent problem behaviors. It was implemented in all three of the elementary schools in Northeast Park Hill. PATHS helps students learn social and emotional skills, including managing strong emotions by recognizing when they are feeling angry and using calming strategies before reacting. Strengthening these competencies is associated with lower rates of aggression.

Third, pediatric health care providers identified youth at risk for carrying out future serious violence through the violence, injury protection, and risk screening tool. Youth identified as high or medium risk after completing a 14-item screening tool that assesses violence and victimization history and other risk factors are referred to appropriate services. A total of 222 youth ages 10 to 14 were screened between 2016 and 2021.

Funding is in jeopardy

For more than two decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has funded the National Academic Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention, which includes programs like ours. But recent CDC funding cuts threaten the continuation of this work.

Since 2000, these efforts have contributed to reductions in violence in communities across the nation, including Chicago; Denver; Flint, Michigan; Richmond, Virginia; and Youngstown, Ohio.

In Flint, community groups mowed and removed trash from vacant lots between 2009 and 2013. The surrounding areas saw 40% fewer assaults and violent crimes between the months of May and September compared to areas surrounding unmaintained lots.

Likewise, in Youngstown, during the summer months from 2016 to 2018, violent crime fell at twice the rate on streets surrounding vacant lots transformed into gardens and play spaces by community residents than on streets where professional mowers did the greening.

Funding for programs like these is critical for neighborhoods where resources are already scarce and the burden of violence has been concentrated for generations. Without continued investment, communities risk losing hard-won gains and the capacity to create safe and supportive environments for young people.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If only we can bottle up our children’s school-aged years and savor them forever! As our kids grow into their own personalities, they’re (often) a delight to behold, and we, as parents, can become aware of the ever-present potential to strengthen our connection with them, build resilience, and help them experience awe.

Unlike toddlers, school-age kids have developed some of the skills needed to manage their feelings and work out conflicts on their own. And unlike teens, they’re also more apt to welcome adult intervention. 

This makes for “a unique window of opportunity” for parents to teach children how to navigate sticky situations, says Diana Divecha, assistant clinical professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University—balancing their own needs while also maintaining relationships.

This is when children really do want to figure out what ideals like fairness, justice, and “good” behavior actually mean. To help parents help their kids navigate this stage, we’ve provided scientifically backed advice to seven common bumps on the road—based on common questions we get our readers!

Click to jump to a topic:

Curbing screen time
Bullying prevention
Cultivating patience for special needs
Talking about weight and health
Homework resistance
Sibling fights
Dealing with a child’s anger

Curbing screen time

Q: All my eight year old wants to do is play video games. I’m trying to curb screen time by setting limits, but it’s a struggle. What can I do better?

A: While the American Academy of Pediatrics doesn’t prescribe a specific limit, they do suggest that school-aged kids balance time on their devices with other in-person activities.

The current recommendations are open-ended perhaps because (as any parent knows) the emphasis on reducing screen time alone is too simplistic. As research suggests, there’s a difference between scrolling through social media and connecting with far-flung real-life friends and family; between watching an educational video that supplements a class lecture and playing video games.

“Although well intentioned, rigid screen-time limits often feel unrealistic for parents, and attempts to restrict children’s screen use are frequently accompanied by conflict and guilt,” says Marina Torjinski, a research fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child at the University of Wollongong, who has authored papers on the topic. Worse, she says, negative messaging rarely results in long-term changes in behavior, especially once a child grows up and harnesses more independence.

With that in mind, Torjinski looked to nature as a strategy to help kids explore the world beyond screens. In a scoping review, she found that spending time with kids in nature, compared to other activities (such as playing sports or board games) taps into the well-being of both parent and child—so that it doesn’t simply displace the time spent on screens but motivates your child, indirectly, to pursue other activities. “Approach” goals like this one—where you set out to pursue something as opposed to avoiding a negative activity—are easier to stick to than “avoidance” goals, and help foster good feelings.

What’s more, unpublished preliminary findings (on 334 parents of children ages five through eight) also suggest that even when actual screen time doesn’t decrease, problematic screen-related behaviors (such as irritability or family arguments) do. Explains Torjinski, “For children, nature promotes imaginative play and prosocial behavior; for parents, it can increase parenting confidence and reduce guilt.”

And you don’t have to live in the country to make this happen; noticing nature together on your walk to school with your child counts, too. The trick is to make it something you and your child both enjoy and can take part in together: Have a picnic in the park. Enjoy a sunset together. Build a snowman. “The pathway to positive behavior change is relational and emotional rather than prescriptive,” says Torjinski. “Parents can help promote children’s nature-based interests by finding activities that represent a point of social connection, as well as role modeling care for the natural world.”

Of course, parents shouldn’t feel alone in finding a solution. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics just released a policy statement in February acknowledging that digital media “can no longer be thought of as ‘screen time’ for families to manage.” Designed intentionally by industries to be immersive and commercialized, things like video games and social media lie “largely outside the control of individual families”; in other words, helping kids live life beyond screens is something our schools, community, and society as a whole should take part in, too.

Industries should refocus their engagement-based designs on children’s well-being. Schools and neighborhoods should create programs to help children and families to balance digital and non-digital time. Communities should create safe, accessible third spaces for children to play and learn. By communicating with teachers and local leaders about their needs, families are more likely to attain and enjoy an environment that motivates kids to appreciate a world beyond screens.

Bullying prevention

Q: My 12-year-old told me that some kids at school are repeatedly being mean to a particular child at recess. My son isn’t taking part in the nastiness, but he isn’t stopping it either. How can I encourage my child to be a positive agent of change?

A: According to Signe Whitson, author of 8 Keys to End Bullying: Strategies for Parents & Schools, other kids are around nine out of 10 times when bullying happens, but they help the victims only 20% of the time. When Whitson talked to the kids themselves, she discovered that kids often want to help—but don’t know what to say.

She also found that kids often don’t speak up because they assume someone else will. So it’s important to let them know that when they witness bullying, it’s their responsibility to say something. What’s more, when someone steps in, the bullying behavior typically stops within 10 seconds, and kids should know that.

“When kids have confidence that their actions will truly make a difference, they are more likely to step up,” says Whitson, who is also the director of a Massachusetts K-through-8 public school.

In your situation, where your son is a bystander, ask him how he thinks the child who is the target feels, says Diana Divecha. “Try to ascertain if it’s just mean behavior or bullying.”

Bullying is repeated aggression in the context of a power difference—for instance, a difference in size, age, or social currency. “Kids can try to resolve conflicts with your assistance in the context of fairly equal power dynamics,” she says. “But kids need more adult intervention in bullying cases because of the unequal power dynamic.”

If the situation turns out to be mean behavior or bullying that’s very low-level, it may be safe to problem-solve together. A child with higher social status might feel confident enough to call out the kids doing the bullying. Others might want to make friends with the victim and make him feel better, or talk to a teacher (in which case you might encourage him to work on a script, and you can provide suggestions as needed). With older kids, including your 12-year-old, try to “respect their problem-solving efforts, nurture that, and bring that out,” says Divecha. (But, of course, if your child is younger, provide more guidance, support, and protection, she adds.)

Beyond the situation at hand, parents can prevent bullying by encouraging conversation and pointing out behavior that is not OK. Guidance from adults is crucial. “Kids need practice discerning what to say and when to say it and they only get this from their caring adults around them,” says Divecha. She notes that school programs, such as RULER, developed at Yale, are also helpful for creating “a climate and culture where it is normal and expected that people are kind and we resolve conflicts constructively.”

Cultivating patience for special needs

Q: I am a parent of a 10 year old with special needs. It can be challenging, with all the doctor’s appointments and hands-on care. Sometimes, I lose my patience and I fear that my child might feel as if he’s a burden to me. How can I assure him that this isn’t the case, and that I love him unconditionally?

A: Parenting is hard, and when it entails more than the usual doctor’s visits and school activities because of a child’s special needs, it can feel understandably overwhelming. At the same time, children, especially those who require additional medically complex care, are particularly sensitive to a parent’s nonverbal cues. They “often assume that they are the cause of what their parent or caregiver is expressing,” explains Maurice Elias, professor of psychology at Rutgers University.

To prevent such misunderstandings, grant yourself a few moments to take a few deep breaths and recharge when you’re feeling stressed. With 10 year olds or older, you can also give them a heads-up. Tell them that if you’re short with them, it’s not their fault—you’ve just had a tough day. Agree on a sign (such as raising hands) when things get heated and a reset is needed.

Related, kids—and again, especially those with special needs—are sensitive to whether you’re paying attention to them or not. So don’t put your phone ahead of your child. If you’re constantly distracted by whoever or whatever is on screen, it’s possible that “kids will wonder where they stand relative to the phone,” says Elias.

Finally, make room at least once a week for “family fun” time. “This should happen even when the child misbehaves. It can sustain them through difficult times in the preceding week,” says Elias. And “it’s a reaffirmation of family as a priority and is another important family and emotional reset.”   

Talking about weight and health

Q: My seven-year-old daughter is slightly overweight according to her pediatrician’s growth tracking at her annual well-child visit, and she feels bad about it. I am trying to tell her that she is totally fine the way she is, but she doesn’t believe me. What else can I do?

A: You’re on the right track: It’s important to show your child that you support them, especially if they are hearing negative comments about different body sizes from their peers.

“The solution to being teased is not to lose weight but to know that being teased for your weight is not acceptable,” says Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, a professor in the epidemiology and community health division at the University of Minnesota, and the principal investigator at Project EAT. “Let your child know they look beautiful just as they are, and that you’re sorry that someone made them feel bad, and that you’d like to brainstorm about how to approach the situation.” (Also see the second question above, about bullying.)

In the process, you can reinforce the point that people come in different shapes and sizes, she says. “But also, listen, and try to figure out what’s going on. Sometimes ‘I feel fat’ means something else, such as ‘I think my friends don’t like me,’ or ‘Someone teased me at school today.’”

Parents might think that they should or can “fix” a weight issue by encouraging a child to diet, but research shows that it clearly does not help. In fact, children may end up gaining weight, having an unhealthy preoccupation with weight, or even having an eating disorder.

Instead, what helps is to talk less about weight and do more about what is under our control, says Neumark-Sztainer. As a parent, model the healthy behavior you’d like to see in your child, she advises. Create an environment that makes choosing healthy food easy, and focus more on general health than weight.

As a family, try to create pleasant feelings when gathering for food (such as family dinner, where you’re not talking about weight) and find physical activities that you can do together because they’re fun, not because they burn calories.

Every stage of life presents unique challenges and opportunities for families to help and guide their child, says Neumark-Sztainer. “Here, parents have the opportunity to limit exposure to unhealthy influences”—and to build a strong foundation for healthy attitudes toward food, exercise, and weight.

Homework resistance

Q: I can’t get my 10 year old to take homework seriously. But my nagging and disciplining are negatively impacting our relationship. What should I do?

A: Well-meaning parents often try to help their kids with schoolwork. And when that’s met with conflict, they feel they have to manage the situation with punishment. Unfortunately, that can have negative repercussions, says Harriet Tenenbaum, professor of Developmental and Social Psychology at the University of Surrey.

Instead of control, aim for connection. One of Tenenbaum’s papers, currently under review, suggests that the more children perceive their parents as supportive about schoolwork, the more effort kids tend to put into their work.

That means starting with the basics. Work with your child to create a comfortable space at home that your child would like to study in. Ask him what would he like you to do that would be helpful (for instance, “Would it be helpful to you if I checked your homework?”), and try to delineate what those boundaries are. Perceptions and needs differ, depending on the child. Some kids want parents’ help, others don’t, explains Tenenbaum.

In some instances, articulating your confidence in your child’s ability to do well in the homework (for example: “I believe in you; if you try, you can get it done”) can help. An earlier study performed in China and England by her team suggests that the more children perceive that their parents think they’d do well in the homework—and the more they also perceive that the teacher provides feedback on that homework in class—the more they are motivated to do their homework.

Sometimes, however, an aversion to homework may be a sign of a mood disorder or another condition. To know when to get professional help, pay attention to patterns, says Valentina Tobia, associate professor of psychology at San Raffaele University, in Milan.

For instance,  if resistance decreases when the learning format changes (such as using videos instead of textbooks), “this may suggest that the difficulty lies in a specific skill rather than in motivation,” she says. Or if behavioral problems emerge mainly during structured academic tasks, but not in less structured situations, that may be another clue that an underlying cause may be at play.

It also helps to consider the child’s history. If avoiding schoolwork follows repeated experiences of failure, the failures themselves may be linked to a learning disability, in which case “what appears to be ‘laziness’ is sometimes a protective response to frustration,” Tobia explains. When the behavior seems to go beyond the occasional avoidance of homework, talk to your child’s doctor about seeking additional testing and professional help. 

Sibling fights

Q: I have daughters, ages six and eight, and they are always fighting. How can I get them to stop?

A: At this age, children are still learning how to navigate conflict. Learning to do that within their family as they grow up is a great opportunity. “It’s a gift to all the relationships in their lives,” says Diana Divecha.

The middle childhood years are a unique opportunity to foster positive sibling relationships. That’s because “siblings are still spending a considerable amount of time together in shared activities,” says Holly Recchia, professor of education at Concordia University. At the same time, “their interactions are becoming more egalitarian, and they are developing greater socio-emotional capacities like perspective-taking and conflict resolution abilities.”

It’s helpful to put fighting into context and know that siblings often show more positive than negative behavior—demonstrating warmth, care, and concern for each other. And these behaviors are relatively independent in a sibling relationship, says Recchia: Siblings who fight a lot might also show a lot of support for each other. So, create opportunities for these positive exchanges to occur, like pretend play. We tend to notice fighting because that often occurs loudly. But look and listen for the positive behaviors, too, and praise them when they happen.

When you notice your children fighting, start by “staying calm and neutral,” says Divecha. Then ask what happened, what would they like to happen, and what ideas might help work this out. Give each child a chance to speak. “Let the child generate the options, so you’re more of a mediator or coach, as opposed to a referee or judge,” says Divecha.

Of course, don’t show any favoritism toward a child during this process, and in general. “One child consistently getting the short end of the stick is a consistent predictor of sibling relationship issues,” says Recchia.

It also helps for parents to model healthy conflict resolution behavior. In fact, there is research showing that kids benefit when they see how parents fight constructively. This entails such behaviors as keeping calm, listening to the other person’s point of view, and sharing yours in a respectful way, says Divecha. “Problem-solve together,” she says. “Repair by expressing remorse, acknowledging the other person’s feelings without blame-shifting or excuses. And commit to change to prevent recurrences.”

Family meetings can also be helpful. Divecha suggests building a Family Charter, an agreement that all family members create and uphold, so that everyone is able to feel the way they want to feel at home, such as calm, happy, or valued. How something is discussed is more important than what is discussed—whether it’s where to go on vacation or whether to get a dog, or exploring a question like “What kind of magical animal would you like to be.” 

“Every person has a voice to say how they feel and what they want, in a calm, fun space that reinforces democracy in a family,” says Divecha.

Sometimes it’s important to consider professional help. This is particularly true if one child is being bullied by the other or you notice a behavior change—for instance, a child starts to regress, act out, withdraw, or do poorly in school. Seeking therapy can help ease the tension at home and help establish better sibling relationships. 

Dealing with a child’s anger

Q: My nine-year-old son gets angry very easily when things don’t go his way. I feel like we’re constantly walking on eggshells. What can we do to help him regulate his emotions?

A: Children come with their unique temperaments, and some are biologically wired to react more intensely. But these inherent tendencies also get shaped and altered through their experiences and key relationships.

In infancy, it’s the close family members, the people he spends time with at home, who have the most influence. Once kids attend school, teachers and peers play a big role, too, says Liliana Lengua, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Child & Family Well-Being at the University of Washington. Some children tend to be more anxious when confronted with novel or unexpected situations; others get easily frustrated or angry.

Consistency helps. Informing teachers and caregivers about tendencies toward strong emotional reactions allows them to provide the support your son needs, so that this care holds steady across the home and school settings. If strong emotions lead to strong, possibly dangerous, behaviors, then consistent consequences across settings is also important. So is providing support tools, such as teaching your child to stop and think before reacting, take deep breaths, or stepping away to gather oneself.

Just as crucial is setting aside time every day to do something the child enjoys doing, even if it’s only five to 10 minutes. Let your son take the lead. When children know they can rely on that time every day, a lot of behaviors that may be done to win attention may be reduced, says Lengua.

Finally, remember to communicate acceptance, warmth, and affection on a consistent basis. Be present whenever talking with your child (no sneaking glances at the phone or laptop). Praise and reinforce what is done well: “I really like your idea,” or “This is fun; I really enjoyed spending time with you.”

From a distance, two children can look almost identical—quiet, withdrawn, their voices disappearing the moment someone speaks to them. It’s easy to think we understand what silence means just by looking at it. I used to believe that, too. Then two little girls taught me that silence can be holding completely different stories, even when the room sees only one.

The first girl arrived in my class in early winter, small for her age and careful in the way she entered the room, almost as if she had practiced taking up less space. At home she moved between two languages easily, switching between them the way other children switch between toys. In school, all that language seemed to vanish. She didn’t ask for the bathroom; she held it until she cried. If an adult asked a question directly—“Do you want water?”—a visible tension passed across her face, something like a wince she swallowed before anyone could name it.

People slowed their speech for her. They repeated everything twice. They thought they were helping, but all that effort made her shrink even more. She understood everything. The silence wasn’t about vocabulary. It was about finding a place where she could exist without feeling examined.

For many bilingual children, silence is not a lack of language—it is a safety response in a new environment, a nervous system choosing observation over expression until trust takes root.

For a long time, she didn’t look at me at all. Then one morning, during quiet work time, she lifted her eyes just enough to meet mine. It lasted no longer than a breath. I smiled—not the bright smile we use to encourage a child, but a slow one, light enough to carry no request inside it. I went back to what I was doing. That was our first conversation.

In the days that followed, those glances returned, small and quick, like tiny tests she was giving the room. So I changed my approach. I stopped asking questions with answers I already knew. Instead, I narrated what was in front of us: “You’re stacking the blue block on top. You’re watching how it wobbles. You’re sitting beside me.” She wasn’t being asked to perform language, only to be seen. I accepted a nod, a point, a hand on the table as an answer.

Weeks later, she whispered a word. I almost missed it. Then another, a few days later, always alone, always with a pause first—as if she were looking for permission in my face. Her voice returned in pieces, like something fragile she was learning to hold again. She never became loud. But she no longer cried when she needed help. She started smiling without checking who might be watching. The classroom had stopped being a place she survived, and had become a place she could enter fully, one small moment at a time.

A few months after that whisper, something shifted. The girl who once entered the room like she hoped no one would notice now lifted her hand during circle time, not to answer, but to straighten the picture book we were reading. It was small, almost invisible if you weren’t watching—but it was her way of stepping forward.

Some years later, another quiet girl walked into my classroom. She was silent, too, but not in the way that hides from attention.

She played alone as if the world in her hands was safer than the world around her—rocking gently from side to side, turning objects over as if she were trying to understand their language. She watched the other children’s games with an expression that was part curiosity, part distance.

Everyone assumed she didn’t speak English. So one day, I asked a classmate to talk to her in her home language. She answered immediately, clear and calm. Language wasn’t the barrier. For many young children who are adjusting to a new environment or new language, silence is not a lack of words—it is a safety response, a way of holding their voice close until the room feels familiar enough to use it.

Young children learn to speak in places where they feel secure. When that security is not yet there, their nervous system chooses observation over expression. What looks like a “delay” often begins as a strategy: Talk later, learn now.

For weeks, she stayed on her island, surrounded by the noise of her peers, but untouched by it. And then one afternoon she crossed the room with sudden purpose, clutching a small plastic figure so tightly her knuckles were pale.

“I want to play,” she said.

“You are playing,” I told her, gently, glancing at the toy in her hand.

She shook her head. Her eyes filled.

“No. I want to play…with those girls. I don’t know how.”

The tears came fast, as if she had been holding them for days. She pressed her face into my chest and sobbed in a way that startled everyone in the room, because until that moment she had seemed so self-contained. It wasn’t fear. It was longing—the kind that hurts when you finally name it.

She didn’t need more time alone. She needed a bridge.

So we built one. I gathered the girls she had been watching and told them something simple: “She wants to play with you. She’s still learning how to start. You can help.” And they did what children do when you give them a way to be kind. They shifted their chairs to make room. They offered a marker. They saved her a turn. Little gestures, but huge in the language of belonging.

She never became the loudest voice in the circle. But she stopped living outside the group. She stopped watching from the edge. She found a doorway into other children’s worlds—and learned that someone would walk through it with her if she asked.

What struck me later was how similar they looked from the doorway of the classroom: two quiet children, both holding their voices close. Yet one was using silence like a shelter, a way to stay safe until the room earned her trust. The other could already see the world she wanted to join, but needed someone to show her how to step into it. Their silence was the same shape on the outside, but it was protecting opposite needs. Responding to them the same way would have meant missing both of their truths.

Those two girls changed the way I understand quiet children. When a child’s voice disappears at school, I don’t start by looking for what is missing. I look for what the silence is doing for them—what it’s protecting. Is it helping them stay afloat in a place that still feels new, or hiding a wish they can’t reach alone? That small shift keeps the focus on meaning, not performance, and it reminds us that silence can be a strategy, not a deficit.

I still think of those two girls when I see a quiet child, because they taught me something I didn’t learn in any training: Sometimes the smallest sound a child makes is the breath before a whisper, the moment they meet your eyes to see if you’ll meet them back. And sometimes the bravest sentence in the room is not a story told to everyone, but a quiet “I want to play,” even when the child doesn’t yet know how.

Modern clinical trials appear to support this. Several studies suggest that the intensity of a “mystical-type experience” during a psychedelic session predicts the degree of improvement in depression, anxiety or addiction. A recent review, for example, reports a consistent statistical link between mystical experiences and improved mental health.

It is an enticing idea: that healing comes through a profound encounter with unity, sacredness or ultimate reality. But do we really need mystical experiences to get better?

To understand why this question matters, it helps to step back. Long before psychedelics entered psychiatry, philosophers and theologians were fascinated by mystical states. In the early 20th century, the psychologist William James argued in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience that mystical states should be judged “by their fruits, not by their roots”–meaning by their effects on people’s lives rather than by debates about their metaphysical truth.

Others, including the British writer on Christian mysticism Evelyn Underhill and the philosopher of religion Walter Stace, developed what later became known as “perennial philosophy”: the idea that a common core experience lies at the heart of the world’s religions.

This way of thinking has quietly shaped modern psychedelic science. In 1962, the psychiatrist Walter Pahnke conducted the Good Friday Experiment, giving theology students psilocybin in a church. Many reported experiences that were strikingly similar to those described by classical mystics.

Around the same time, British-born psychiatrist Humphry Osmond–who coined the word “psychedelic”–developed treatment approaches designed to induce powerful “peak experiences” that could trigger lasting psychological change.

Today, large clinical trials at universities such as Johns Hopkins and Imperial College London have revived this approach. Researchers routinely measure whether participants have had a “mystical-type experience” using a standardized questionnaire known as the mystical experience questionnaire, or MEQ.

Participants are asked to rate statements such as “I had an experience of unity with ultimate reality” or “I had an experience which cannot be described adequately in words.” The higher the score, the more likely someone is classified as having had a full mystical experience.

But this raises a conundrum. If an experience is supposedly “ineffable”–beyond words–how accurately can it be captured by ticking boxes on a survey?

Some critics argue that the MEQ builds in assumptions drawn from perennial philosophy. By asking about “ultimate reality” or “sacredness,” it may reflect a particular interpretation of mystical experience rather than a neutral description. As one analysis notes, there is a risk that the scale partly reproduces the very theory it aims to test.

Complicating expectations

Many participants in psychedelic trials arrive already primed for transcendence. They have read glowing media coverage, listened to podcasts or watched documentaries promising life-changing breakthroughs. Research shows that such expectations can significantly shape subjective drug experiences.

My colleagues and I saw just how powerful suggestion can be in a study nicknamed “tripping with the god helmet.” Participants wore a sham brain-stimulation device that we described as capable of activating their “mystical lobes.” In reality, no stimulation was delivered. Yet nearly half reported mystical-type experiences, some describing them as deeply meaningful.

In another experiment, placebo psychedelics administered in a carefully staged environment–complete with evocative music and imagery–produced strikingly similar reports. These findings suggest that context and expectation are not minor side notes. They can play a central role in shaping what people experience.

None of this means psychedelic therapy is “just a placebo.” The drugs clearly alter brain activity and experience in powerful ways. But it does raise the possibility that mystical experiences are not the sole or even primary driver of therapeutic change.

After all, correlation does not equal causation. A large body of psychiatric research warns against assuming that because two things occur together, one must cause the other. Mystical experiences may simply be one visible marker of other processes, such as increased emotional openness, the development of new neural connections or changes in entrenched beliefs.

Super placebos

Some researchers have even described psychedelics as super placebos: substances that amplify expectancy effects rather than bypass them. That may sound dismissive, but it points to something important. Expectations, beliefs and meaning-making are not incidental to healing; they are often central to it.

When used carefully in structured settings, psychedelics may act less like magic bullets and more like catalysts. They intensify whatever psychological processes are already underway.

For some, that may include feelings of unity and transcendence. For others, it may involve confronting grief, fear or long-buried memories. Stanislav Grof, a pioneer of psychedelic therapy, once compared these substances to microscopes for the mind–tools that reveal otherwise hidden aspects of experience.

The key point is this: while mystical experiences often go hand in hand with improvement, they may not be essential. And on their own, they may not be enough to create lasting change.

Lasting therapeutic benefits appear to emerge from a web of interacting factors: brain changes, emotional breakthroughs, supportive settings, skilled therapists and the integration work that follows the session. Focusing too narrowly on whether someone scored above a mystical threshold risks oversimplifying a complex process.

The psychedelic renaissance has opened exciting possibilities for mental health treatment. But if the field is to mature, it may need to move beyond the assumption that transcendence is the secret ingredient.

The future of psychedelic therapy may depend less on chasing mystical peaks and more on understanding the conditions that help people translate intense experiences–mystical or otherwise–into durable, meaningful change.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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I first considered living kidney donation years ago when my aunt was diagnosed with kidney disease. That decision was easy; I love her dearly and I’d give her any part of me if she needed it. Fortunately, she recovered without needing a transplant, but the idea lingered, popping up from time to time.

Signs at an intersection near my daughter’s high school asked passersby to register for the National Kidney Registry so a local woman might receive a much-needed donation. I saw a video about a man who walked up and down the side of a road near his home wearing a sandwich board with the message, “NEED KIDNEY 4 WIFE” and a phone number.

On a flight home from a speaking trip, I discovered the documentary Confessions of a Good Samaritan among my seatback viewing options. In the film, director Penny Lane explores the process, psychology, and ethics behind altruistic kidney donation while undergoing the evaluation and surgery herself.

Every time kidney donation faded out of my awareness, some sign came along to remind me that just because kidney donation had disappeared from my thoughts, the need for living donors had not. Currently, over 90,000 people are on the transplant list waiting for news of a donor and for many of them, chronic kidney disease means dialysis, chronic illness, and financial hardship.

The final nudge I needed came via my TikTok feed. The algorithm presented me with Chandler Jackson, or @ChandlerTheKidneyGuy. Chandler has kidney disease and makes videos to help others understand what it’s like to be a college student with chronic illness.

Through his videos, I learned about his onerous daily peritoneal dialysis routine: sanitize his dorm room and hands, glove up and mask, prime the dialysis machine, attach the cartridges and tangles of tubes, and warm three massive bags of dialysis solution. Sanitize hands, glove up and mask again before attaching the entire contraption to the dialysis port in his abdomen so he can begin the nine-hour process of using that fluid and his own peritoneum as a filtration system for the waste his kidneys can’t eliminate.

By the time I’d scrolled through Chandler’s feed, I was resolved. I would donate one of my kidneys in 2026. I likely could not donate to Chandler directly due to geographical and biological limitations, but I could gift him a kidney donation voucher that would move him up the transplant list or start a kidney transplant chain on his behalf.

My life, in contrast to Chandler’s, is much less complicated. I spent most of my time speaking in schools and community organizations about topics from my books: learning, school engagement, substance use prevention, and parenting. When I’m not on the road or writing at my desk, I’m heaving boulders out of my gardens, tending to my bees, or splitting next winter’s firewood. Relatively speaking, kidney donation would have a minimal effect on my life.

Yes, I would have to endure a fairly intense medical workup culminating in a day of testing at my closest transplant center, about four hours away from my home. If I passed that physical and psychological gauntlet, I would undergo laparoscopic surgery under general anaesthesia and spend a couple of days in the hospital. Recovery would take about four to eight weeks at home, so some time off of work would be required.

Consequently, my speaking agent was one of the first people I told about the potential donation. She shared that she, too, was intrigued by the idea of donating and promised to reschedule my existing events. If my screening went according to schedule, I might be able to donate during the cold, dark winter in Vermont, recover while knitting by my wood stove, and be ready to get back out into the garden, forest, and bee yard by spring.

Filling out the kidney donor registration form was easy. I completed it on my phone in under ten minutes while waiting for a flight home from a speaking event. A few days later, a nurse navigator from Mass General Brigham in Boston, my closest kidney transplant site, called to discuss altruistic kidney transplantation and take a more detailed medical history. Once she’d determined I was a viable candidate, she arranged my first battery of blood and urine tests through a local lab, and encouraged me to move up some of my preventative medical tests like my mammogram and colonoscopy.

For the first 55 years of my life my kidneys warranted little more than a passing thought, but once testing began I thought about them constantly. Are they healthy? Donation-worthy? I’d read that my transplant team would determine which of my kidneys is healthiest and most robust and I’d keep that one, so will I keep Right or Left? Should I name them? I’d already started to think of my kidneys as something shared, something I was caretaking for a stranger, and keeping those two fist-sized organs healthy became a bit of a preoccupation.

A week later, after I’d had many vials of blood drawn and collected 24 hours worth of my urine in a large orange jug, I drove to my local medical center for my mammogram. I even took a jaunty picture in the changing room mirror to post on my Instagram feed, captioned with something happy and encouraging like, “Don’t forget to schedule your mammogram, ladies!”

When the breast care clinic messaged to let me know I’d need a follow-up mammogram and possibly an ultrasound, I wasn’t worried. I’d needed them before, and it had always come to nothing more than irregular breast tissue density. I showed up at the University of Vermont Breast Care Center for another gown, another waiting room, and another mammogram.

I’d always been released after the repeat mammogram (“It’s nothing, just some areas of irregular density, have a great day!”), so when the team asked me to stay for an ultrasound, concern started to creep in. I masked it by chatting with the ultrasound technician about our kids as she thoroughly scanned my left breast and lymph nodes.

The technician sent me to a small consultation room to wait, and as soon as the radiologist entered the room with that concerned-yet-caring expression on her face, I allowed worry to blossom into full-on panic. I texted my husband, who was seeing patients in his clinic a few floors up, and asked him to come down to the breast center so I could have a level-headed, rational witness to what I now understood was life-changing news. 

While I waited for Tim, I picked at my cuticles and took stock of the tiny consult room. That’s when I noticed the box of tissues placed prominently on the table next to my chair, at the ready. When he arrived, I saw Tim notice it, too.

The radiologist told us I had a mass in my left breast, one that was almost certainly invasive due to its irregular, spiculated, or spiky, appearance. I’d need a biopsy as soon as possible. Once we knew what we were dealing with, she continued, I could talk with a breast surgeon about my surgical options.

No, I wanted to tell her, she misunderstood. This was not supposed to be about me. I was meant to be giving life to someone else, not weighing the mortality benefits of lumpectomy versus mastectomy.

Thirty years and another ultrasound ago, when we discovered the baby I was carrying had no heartbeat, I remember feeling a similar sense of nonsensical unreality. This is fine, I thought, my baby would be fine without a heart. We’d adjust.

Reality, in both cases, comes later. Tim and I hold hands. We talk. We question. We research. In time, I grasp the full implications of the news and my future. I’d be having surgery and those four to eight weeks of recovery, but it would not culminate in the joy of granting someone else a chance at life.

I was devastated, both for myself and for the stranger I’d already granted a small claim on my body.

And yet.

And yet.

That mammogram, a test I would not have scheduled for at least six more months, caught my cancer early. I was eventually diagnosed with invasive lobular breast cancer, a type that can be difficult to spot in its early stages.

I did, in fact, have surgery–a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction–during the cold, dark Vermont winter, and spent much of December and January near my wood stove, knitting a very lumpy and misshapen shawl. By the time the ground thaws and the trails dry this spring, I will have healed enough to go trail running, split firewood, and heave giant stones out of my garden.

What’s more, Chandler received his kidney transplant this winter after all. Someone else stepped up around the same time I dropped out. She filled out her registration form, went through rigorous medical testing, and successfully donated her kidney. Because her donation was part of a transplant chain, her direct recipient and Chandler Jackson have a chance at life free from kidney disease.

My initial motivation for donating a kidney may have been altruistic, but in a reversal so common it’s cliché, I gained everything I’d hoped to give.

A new survey from the Society of Human Resources Managers (SHRM)–which represents over 300,000 people working in the human resources field worldwide–finds that incivility in the workplace continues to be a major challenge, particularly as generational and political differences come to the forefront for employees.

The top contributor to workplace incivility in the SHRM index? The answer might surprise you: political differences. In fact, 41 percent of workers said they experienced or witnessed incivility related to politics.

“The workplace is kind of a hub for what’s happening out in civil society,” says Sara Rahim, who serves as a social impact strategist and program manager at SHRM. “So if we’re seeing greater polarization just in the state of America right now, naturally that’s going to translate into the workplace. She also cites generational differences as a point of tension.

Heidi Brooks, a senior lecturer in organizational behavior at Yale University, who has spent years working on how organizations can improve employee culture, argues that promoting civility is often overlooked as an organizational goal.

“We pay a lot of attention to productivity,” she says, “but we often overlook accountability for creating a workplace where people can thrive.”

Could America’s colleges and universities train the next generation of workers to be a little more civil with each other? With such a large number of Americans now pursuing higher education, these institutions can play a major role in preparing students to navigate differences in the workplace.

Indeed, that’s the goal of the Bridging Differences in Higher Education Playbook, released last year by the Greater Good Science Center. The playbook features science-backed strategies that administrators, academics, and students can use to build their skills for bridging differences.

One way to navigate personal differences is to explain how you came to a belief or worldview and explore how others did the same–rather than simply debating them. By questioning your assumptions about other people, you can help create a less threatening environment. Here’s an overview of key practices that can be cultivated in school and imported to the workplace.

Focus on personal stories

Mark Urista is a communications professor at Linn-Benton Community College in Oregon. The campus sits between two politically polarized counties. The famously liberal Portland, Oregon, is around 70 miles away. Benton County has voted for the Democratic candidate for president every year going back to 1988. On the other side is Linn County, which Urista describes as “very blue collar, very conservative,” adding that the last time it voted for a Democrat for president was in 1976.

“So if you think about some of the major tensions right now in this country I kind of feel privileged to be at a college that serves as a laboratory for how to bridge them,” Urista says.

He teaches speech communications classes at the college, largely focused on public speaking and argumentation. In order to help students broach thorny topics, he encourages them from the beginning of the course to humanize themselves.

“The very first day, I get students to start engaging in self-disclosure so they can reveal a little bit about themselves, make themselves vulnerable, understand who their classmates are,” he explains.

The students are then assigned to give a speech advocating for the class to take action on an issue they care personally about. The rest of the class is expected to offer constructive feedback and let the speaker know whether they were persuaded or not.

As one example of how this program worked in action, Urista says that in the spring a female student decided to deliver a speech about how men are struggling in society.

“I love my friends. Back in high school, I had a close group I laughed with, vented to, made the kind of memories that last forever,” she said in that speech. “But when we all moved to college, something shifted. The girls in the group stayed in touch, but the guys, slowly, just… disappeared. Not out of malice or drama. They just stopped reaching out, stopped responding, and stopped showing up.”

She went on to call attention to the epidemic of loneliness among men. She asked her classmates to “be vulnerable,” to “check in on their friends, plan a hangout, start an awkward conversation,” do any small thing they can to help reduce the loneliness among American men.

“I’m sure you can imagine, this created quite the controversy,” Urista says. “You get a lot of students saying, ‘Well, males, they’re part of the historically privileged group, you know? Why should we be making an effort to support them when we see all these other groups that are struggling, right?’”

As the class civilly debated the issue, eventually some men in the class spoke up and said they appreciated the student for giving her speech.

“Sharing that comment openly in the classroom helped shape a climate that allowed us to have a more productive discourse,” Urista says.

Urista’s work is backed by social psychology research around the world that has found benefits to opening up to one another.

For instance, in Europe, the Roma people have long been marginalized, with many Europeans holding contemptuous attitudes toward them. But using an exercise called 36 Questions–where you ask a conversation partner a series of questions to get to know more about them as individuals–Hungarian students who held negative attitudes towards Roma people became more positive towards them after just an hour of conversation with a Roma student.

Similar exercises elsewhere have produced similar outcomes.

One 2015 study found that when college students were assigned to strike up friendships with gay and lesbian people, they grew closer to those people, showing greater closeness and improved attitudes towards gay and lesbian people more broadly.

A separate study from 2008 found that cross-group friendships helped reduce cortisol levels–that’s the hormone tied to stress–between whites and Latinos.

Understand values

Another way to promote civility in the workplace is to encourage employees and employers alike to understand the values of others. After all, cultural and social differences mean that we don’t all even necessarily agree on what constitutes incivility–one person’s habit may be another’s faux pax.

When we discuss our differences, we often focus on positions or beliefs without thinking about the underlying values we ourselves and other people hold. This makes it more difficult to understand where other people are coming from and relating to their experiences and beliefs.

This is a practice that Justin Turpan honed as a student at Tulane University. Working with the bridging-differences organization BridgeUSA, he helped organize events where students discussed contentious social and political topics. Focusing on understanding the other person’s values helped make these conversations more meaningful and less combative.

During one discussion on gun control, for instance, a supporter of gun rights and a backer of gun control were able to both acknowledge that they valued the same thing: safe and secure communities. Acknowledging these values helped them have more constructive conversations.

To make this practice work, it’s important to avoid our conversations devolving simply into debates.

“Debate was not designed to create a group that works well together,” explains Heidi Brooks. “It was designed to help us be more rigorous with thought and to be able to have the issues on the table.”

She imagines her classrooms as miniature societies.

“They’re micro-socities designed for learning,” she says. “And so these micro societies need some practices…listening and curiosity. And that’s not the same thing as judgement, and as critique and analysis.”

But understanding someone else’s values can also help you be more persuasive when you are making an argument. One study published in 2015 found that when arguments were framed in ways that appealed to someone else’s values, they were more convincing. For instance, framing an argument for gay marriage in terms of values that conservatives hold dear–like loyalty or patriotism–was more persuasive than making those arguments rooted in liberal-leaning values like fairness.

Find shared identities

We often find ourselves at loggerheads with our colleagues on campus or in the workplace because we view ourselves as coming from distinct groups. We think to ourselves, that other person is nothing like me.

But when we look closer, we can often find that we share more in common than we think.

GGSC Senior Fellow Allison Briscoe-Smith put this skill into practice by starting a series of interfaith events at the Wright Institute, where students and other civic leaders across the spectrum of faith and spiritual beliefs convened to discuss their distinct practices and where their traditions overlapped.

The series of events helped people across campus connect across religious differences when they saw themselves not just as followers of different religions but collectively as people of faith.

One 2001 study found that building a common identity can go a long way in healing even racial differences.

Researchers had interviewers post up outside of a college football game to ask participants to answer questions about their food preferences. They found that Black interviewers netted interviews more often when they wore paraphernalia associated with the same university as the interviewee. This helps demonstrate how the shared identity of supporting the same university helped bridge the racial divide.

What we can all do

The SHRM Index isn’t all bad news. In a section where employees were asked about how their managers are addressing workplace incivility, 51% said that their manager “actively helps to guide employees through acts of incivility” and 54% said that their manager “actively encourages employees to address incivility through talking and having conversations,” just as Urista does with his class.

The survey finds that employees who described their work team as civil were much more likely to report positive team cohesion. For instance, 86% of workers who said that they belonged to a civil team said their “team members celebrate one another’s successes,” as opposed to just 47% of those who belong to uncivil teams.

But challenges remain, especially as Generation Z–whose school life and work life was intimately shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and remote learning–enters the workplace and encounters the norms that older workers have.

Rahim says that it’s important for people to ask themselves how they can contribute to building a culture of civility: “How am I showing up in the workplace? How am I building psychological safety for my team? How am I creating a space in which feedback is welcome?”

Brooks agrees.

“We all have a responsibility to bring some positive energy… into work spaces,” she says. “It’s part of what it means to be a citizen.”

Beverly Daniel Tatum is president emeritus of Spelman College and author of the enormously influential book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race. In her new book, Peril and Promise: College Leadership in Turbulent Times, she offers real-life examples of education leaders who successfully faced these challenges and in the process transformed their institutions.

Drawing from her years as a college psychology professor, trustee, and president, Dr. Tatum brings a breadth of experience to her analysis of the current state of higher education—covering everything from defending free speech campus protests during the War on Gaza to reallocating Spelman’s resources in 2012 to create a broad wellness initiative that swapped varsity sports for campus-wide fitness.

We talked about her new book and how leaders can help chart a path through today’s turmoil. Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity.

Hope Reese: In 1997, you published Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together at the Cafeteria. More than a quarter decade later, where are we with the public conversations around race?

Beverly Tatum: Since 1997, our population has gotten a lot more diverse—a lot of immigrants from places like India and China—and the Hispanic population is growing fast. Today, the population in the United States is maybe 50% white, a little bit less, and children of color are the majority in the school-age population.

In 2001, we had the 9/11 attack. There were the wars that came after that and in 2008 the economy tanked. All of the anxieties associated with a challenged economy and a nation in conflict with other nations made it a hard time to have a conversation about race.

Fast-forward to the election of Barack Obama. Many people saw that as really a culmination of the civil rights movement. But the pushback against the Obama election was quite dramatic— the Tea Party movement and the racialization of him and his wife and the family, all of that. And of course he was followed by Donald Trump. Trump’s rhetoric, from his announcement of his candidacy, evoked racialized images. The conversation has gotten a lot harder. And it has been symbolic of the nation’s polarization.

HR: Amid these changes in leadership and wars, we faced the murder of George Floyd, too.

BT: Yes–on the one hand, after Donald Trump’s first election, there was a rapid decline in talk about race. Even in his first term, Donald Trump was saying at the federal level, “You can’t talk about race; shouldn’t talk about privilege.” There was a list of words that weren’t supposed to be used in Trump’s first term. But when the George Floyd murder happened, it was so horrible and dramatic—on everybody’s phones, right, in their social media—and there was a great awakening of racial awareness, racial consciousness.

HR: Trump has attacked diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on campus. What are the effects we can see?

BT: In his first early days in office, Trump issued an anti-DEI executive order. One of the really unfortunate things has been the overreaction of colleges and universities to comply. Nobody wants to be a target. And so people have been scraping their websites and changing the names of their programs—or eliminating programs. Maybe there was an office for diversity, equity and inclusion, and that office has just been eliminated. In some cases it’s been renamed or reorganized. But there are lots of places where they just said, “You know what, we’re just gonna eliminate this.”

That’s really unfortunate. Even if you are a staff person working in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and you’ve now been reassigned to the Dean of Undergraduate Studies Office, and you’re still trying to work with students who are experiencing marginalization on your campus, they may not know how to find you. Programs like the Black Student Union that might have been supported by the division of student affairs, maybe they have a small budget for programming. And now those funds have been completely cut off and the students have to do them on their own—which is an added burden for those students, yet important to their sense of belonging.

So there’s a way in which the structural changes and the fear of being targeted—forced to pay a big fine, or even threatened with loss of accreditation—those things have, particularly at public institutions, really put a damper on the student experience.

HR: What about at the classroom level?

BT: One major thing that has changed is the fear for faculty members. Now you’re not supposed to talk about certain things—free speech and academic freedom are under attack. If you’re working in, say, Georgia, there’s a law that says you’re not supposed to talk about “divisive” concepts. What is a divisive concept? If I’m talking about American history, I am challenging conceptions of the Confederacy and what it meant. Is that a divisive concept? Can a student report me as having broken the law? There are cases like that where faculty members are being removed from classrooms because a student was upset about something they said and felt it was “against the law.” This is a really crazy time for classrooms. I don’t know if I would be able to teach today my “psychology of race” class in some states.

HR: Why is there so much resistance to D.E.I, and what can colleges do to promote these values?

BT: There’s a need for courageous leadership. We need to reframe the conversation. On the face of it, some people are unhappy with those letters, D.E.I. With “diversity,” some people feel left out. If you’re white and male and heterosexual, where do you fit in when someone’s talking about diversity? But of course, diversity includes everyone. I fault the users, us, for how the language has evolved. Some people use “diversity” as a substitute for more racialized terms, like when someone says, “There was a diverse job candidate”—what do they really mean? There was a Black candidate, maybe. Well, just say so.

Inclusion is so important. When you see a photo, you look for yourself. But what happens when you can’t find yourself in it? You say, “What’s wrong with me?” This is the experience of marginalized people on campus.

We need to ask: Who’s missing from our picture? Institutional leaders can foster inclusive communities by their own example (what they talk about, the language and examples they use), through their hiring decisions, and through the use of budgetary resources within their control.

For example, if increasing STEM participation among students of color is a goal, investing in professional development for faculty to learn from experts in inclusive pedagogy could be worthwhile. Launching a speaker series and inviting prominent STEM scholars of diverse backgrounds to campus is another tangible action. Lending support to faculty who are successful mentors of underrepresented students through campus recognition and the allocation of resources signal that those activities are valued. Strengthening connections between alumni and current students through campus programming can also give visibility to underrepresented groups.

HR: How should colleges handle the extreme polarization, which may take form in campus protests against the war on Gaza, for instance?

BT: Dialogue helps. We must create a community, a climate where the expectation of respectful dialogue is our way of being. With the Gaza protests, some campuses were more successful at this—I’m thinking about an example of two students, on Jewish and one Palestinian American, who formed Atidna [a reference to “our future” in Hebrew]. They really wanted to create a space where Palestinian-supporting students and Jewish-identified students could come together and have conversations. They did so without much help from the university, but it’s a model that universities can use.

Presidents can offer support. They can sponsor all kinds of things; they can show up to the talks. Cultivating leadership is not just about the exercise of your own leadership but helping people on your senior team, students, and faculty. To show faculty that it’s possible to disagree with the president. To model it, to give other people space. Students have a right to express their concerns, and we’re not just going to panic when that happens.

HR: In 2012, you reallocated Spelman College’s NCAA budget into a wellness initiative to campus. How did that go, and what lessons did you come away with?

BT: Intercollegiate athletics was not a big part of the Spelman experience, which was one reason it seemed like, “Why are we spending money on this?” Students weren’t coming to game; there weren’t many students playing. But it was not without controversy. Student athletes were not happy with me. Many people didn’t understand that there are no NCAA scholarships.

The main thing was framing it; that led to the success. We talked about not what was going away, but what would come instead. With the same resources, we could create a program to benefit all students. It was a population that really needed to move more, to be more active, to counteract the health trends that were plaguing Black women. We also offered yoga and meditation and sound healing. The big lesson was how to communicate.

HR: Artificial intelligence has entered college campuses. What do you think about this?

BT: It’s amazing how fast this has unfolded. In the spring of ‘23, the conversation the faculty were having was focused around cheating behavior. Fast forward to today, it’s about how we teach students to use AI responsibly. It’s important for us to all get up to speed. We must invest in faculty development so they can do the work with AI that is helpful to students.

A bigger question is what does artificial intelligence mean for work? How do we, as a society, accommodate people whose work has been taken over by machines? It speaks to the importance of colleges as the place where that question is explored, and the exploration of what it means to be human in an AI-dominated world. What are the things that humans most need to know? What are the enduring conversations, critical thinking, problem solving? Where are the empathy and compassion?

The skill of dialog is so important because you develop empathy, you develop mutual understanding. And it seems to me those are the capacities that at least to date AI doesn’t have. I can’t think of a better place to be than a college or university at such a difficult and potentially challenging time.

In fact, a recent Rand Corporation survey found that even in states without formal curricular bans, two-thirds of K-12 teachers have chosen to limit classroom instruction on social issues. In essence, the presence of state-specific restrictions has silenced even teachers who are not subject to them, limiting students’ access to learning about race, gender, historical events, and social movements nationwide.

In our own work, we have spoken with many educators who are feeling overwhelmed, uncertain, or discouraged in this moment. Yet, as James Baldwin argued in 1963—a year marked by both profound struggle and collective resilience—moments of social crisis are precisely when educational justice work becomes most essential. In a speech to teachers in New York City, Baldwin challenged educators to remember that the obligation of anyone who considers themselves responsible is to examine society and to work to advance justice.

If we take Baldwin seriously and understand the present moment as one in which examining society and advancing justice are especially urgent, the question becomes how educators and students can engage in this work amid intensifying social, political, and legal constraints.

We have spent years researching and writing about how educators across grade levels, from elementary school through college, can nurture students’ capacities to examine society and work toward its transformation. Through this sustained study, we have learned that even in moments when schools and educators are prohibited from explicitly drawing on justice-oriented curricula, pathways still exist to cultivate students’ motivation and foundational skills to recognize, analyze, and challenge injustice and to create spaces that value all human beings.

As teachers, we retain meaningful agency and power in our classrooms. Beyond teaching content, educators are responsible for shaping interactions, relationships, and critical skills—domains through which we can continue to prepare young people to analyze and engage the world around them with clarity and purpose. Here are suggestions for cultivating critical thinking in a challenging time.

1. Use your classroom to model community and practice connected living.

In dozens of ways, through the news, social media, their own communities, and perhaps even in their own lives, young people right now are witnessing people treat other humans with callousness and cruelty.

The ability to truly see one another as human beings and recognize each other’s humanity is the foundation of a just world. Equally important is the ability—and the will—to treat one another as human beings. We likely wish this came as second nature to everyone, yet the world around us, both historically and today, shows us that it does not. Or if it does, we submerge that nature in favor of other things.

Educators have the power and space every day to offer young people relational tools and help them practice the basic skills of communal human living. Even as specific content in curriculum is being sidelined, we can insist that students learn and speak each other’s names, create space for students to meaningfully hear pieces of each other’s histories and stories, and set expectations/norms for how students listen to each other, disagree, and engage with each other.

These small practices strengthen students’ ability to build just relationships and communities outside of school—and each models what connected human engagement can look and feel like. We should not underestimate the power of this skill and desire; relationships are the foundation of a transformed future.

2. Teach analysis skills and frameworks that students can apply to exploring and understanding justice issues.

Most teachers are guided by state standards that call on them to support students’ development of strong analytical skills, whether they are examining literary texts, historical events, scientific hypotheses, or mathematical approaches.

Within these expectations, teachers often have flexibility in choosing the analytic tools and lenses they introduce to students. Educators can make use of that flexibility to introduce students to analytic tools relevant to academic tasks that students can also apply to making sense of the wider world and the social and political forces shaping our lives and communities.

For example, political scientist Iris Marion Young offers a framework in her 1990 book, Justice and the Politics of Difference, with several key questions (see streamlined version below) that can be applied to any number of ideas, histories, or academic concepts:

• Who benefits?
• Who is excluded?
• Who has less power?
• Whose experiences are being discounted or attacked, or who is harmed?

History teachers might introduce this framework to their students to support their rigorous analyses of historical events not currently omitted from the curriculum, ranging from the Industrial Revolution to westward expansion to women’s suffrage.

Science teachers might draw on Young’s framework to ask students to analyze environmental issues (e.g., air or water pollution) by examining who benefits from industrial practices, which communities bear the most significant health risks, whose voices are excluded from decision-making, and whose lives are the most harmed.
Educators can also remind students that these frameworks can be used to analyze any event, including events happening in the present day. As educators, we need to remember that critical questions about power, voice, fairness, and justice are not bound to particular content; they are intellectual habits that can be practiced across texts, disciplines, and genres.

3. Leverage schools themselves as sites for practicing critical social analysis skills.

Our own classrooms and schools can also serve as sites for this kind of analysis, offering students meaningful opportunities to explore fundamental concepts and levers in creating and sustaining injustice, such as power.

For example, teachers can invite students to explore who sets classroom rules, who enforces them, and whose voices shaped the rules in the first place. Students can be invited to analyze a school dress code, asking whose forms of expression are policed or excluded. This practice of noticing and observing power in the everyday spaces they inhabit helps students see power at work in tangible ways and supports their understanding of a fundamental principle of justice. 

Some teachers may have the opportunity to engage students in applying these same questions to events shaping their local or neighborhood communities, but even teachers who cannot have access to ecosystems within schools themselves that provide ample opportunities for critical questioning and reflection. These opportunities build students’ muscles to do this critical questioning in other domains.

4. Teach something you can teach and make it matter.

Almost anything we are charged with teaching can be grounded in concepts related to civic engagement, social change, or justice, even without using commonly associated justice language. No text, theory, or equation exists outside of time, place, and power. Literary canons, scientific paradigms, and mathematical methods reflect decisions about whose knowledge is preserved, valued, and taught.

In conversations about chemistry, we can discuss quantification and precision as epistemic power, or explore how foundational concepts such as yield, waste minimization, and optimization may harbor hidden values. We can teach a Shakespeare play or a Robert Frost poem and invite students to consider: whose interior life is being explored, and whose is not? In history, humanities, or anything that involves text, we can employ resistant reading strategies, documented practices that develop students’ critical thinking. Resistant reading consists of asking students to interpret a text from a different perspective or to scrutinize a text for pre-existing beliefs. This can be done in any text across a wide range of content and perspectives.

Any canon or content can be taught in a way that offers students an entry to deep criticality and consideration of the fundamental questions of civic and just life. This may require some creativity on our end or collaboration with other educators to think outside the box, but we can use anything we teach to build students’ habit of asking questions as they encounter information in the world around them.

5. Leverage schools and classrooms as sites for practicing social action.

To truly advance justice, students also need chances to use the relationship-building and critical thinking skills they are developing, not just talk about them. Shifting from thinking to doing helps students see that their voices matter and that they have infinitely more power when collaborating.

For some of us, the opportunity for students to practice doing already exists in the curriculum. For example, in Massachusetts, all eighth graders complete a student-led civics project focused on real-world topics. The goal is simple: students learn how change happens by actually trying to create it. And for many other educators, current restrictions limit or prohibit this kind of student-led civic work.

Yet, we don’t actually need state-sanctioned curricular projects to provide opportunities for students to practice acting on something they care about or to give students places and spaces to exercise their power.

Fortunately, we have learned from our two decades of research in schools that civic action within the school community or even in the classroom can be as real and meaningful to students as civic action out in the “real world” (because school communities are students’ real worlds). Importantly, civic action within the school or classroom can help students develop the real-life skills they need to engage in social action more broadly.

In a high school in Rhode Island, for example, a history teacher provided her students the opportunity to go through the school handbook to identify a policy they believed was unjust or unfair, and then come up with a plan to change that policy. The students collectively decided to try to change their school’s technology policy governing when they were allowed to use phones, iPads, and laptops, and then set about researching the topic, developing a presentation proposing a new policy, and lobbying their school’s administration to consider these changes. When the school leadership team ultimately agreed to enact the students’ proposed technology policy on a trial basis for the remainder of the school year, the students described surges in their confidence in their ability to effect change.

They also learned essential skills for social change: how to use research to make a compelling argument, how to make a pitch to various stakeholders, and how to write a policy that meets the needs of a wide range of community members. Importantly, they will bring these skills into other communities they are part of, now and in the future.

In times of consistent constraints and change, it can be easy to focus on the power we feel we are losing and to lose sight of the power we continue to have. Alongside the real reasons for concern that educators have, there are also enduring reasons for hope.

As classroom teachers and school leaders, it may be that some of the familiar ways we have supported students in critically analyzing society or preparing for civic and social engagement are no longer available to us.

But educators have always been masters of creativity and adaptation. History reminds us, again and again, that when the outside world closes in and places deep constraints on our work, educators remember the creative power that they have; they innovate, reimagine, and persist. In remembering and reclaiming our power, we help our students recognize the power they inherently hold and can harness to shape the world around them.

However, the reality is that there are two facets of a truly resilient workplace. Employee resilience, yes. But organizational resilience is even more important.

When we speak of employee resilience, the focus is on the individual—their personal resources, knowledge, and skills that enable them to adapt and recover from challenges. In contrast, organizational resilience operates at the macro level, reflecting the collective strength of the organization’s planning, systems, and processes.

The two are deeply interdependent: resilient organizations foster resilient employees, and resilient employees, in turn, reinforce organizational resilience. Yet too often, employees are expected to shoulder the full burden of resilience in workplaces where organizational resilience is lacking. In fact an Accenture study of 1600 companies across 18 industries suggests that only an estimated 15% of companies are highly resilient, implying that for many companies organizational resilience is more aspirational than operational.

In this article, I’m going to focus on organizational resilience: what it is and how we can increase it. A definition of resilience that I really appreciate comes from a 2012 Argonne National Laboratory report: “the ability of an entity…to anticipate, resist, absorb, respond to and adapt to and recover from a disturbance.” A disturbance can also be thought of as a stressor or a challenge. Common organizational stressors can include shifts in the industry, loss of revenue or donors, reputational risks, loss of talent, and so much more.

What I like about this definition is it recognizes all facets of resilience: anticipatory, preparatory, response, and recovery. All of which are necessary to build a truly resilient organization.

Anticipatory resilience

Anticipatory resilience involves building in regular opportunities at the leadership level to discuss organizational risks that could affect “business as usual.” This can be done by keeping a pulse on your industry, looking at trends among competitors, and understanding volatility in the levers that allow your business to function, such as government policies, regulations, community shifts, and markets.

Unfortunately, an over-focus on the bottom line keeps leaders with their gaze downward, focused on patterns in spreadsheets and reports, instead of looking up and outwards strategically to see what may be on the horizon. A 2024 PWC pulse survey found that only 11% of Chief Risk Officers and Risk Leaders, whose jobs are to assess organizational risks, spend more time on proactive or anticipatory risks than reactive risks.

Anticipatory resilience activities should be ingrained in the way organizations operate and take place in more formalized settings, like leadership meetings, at a regular cadence. During such meetings leaders can ask the following questions:

• What emerging trends or disruptions could challenge our mission, revenue, or operations in the next 12-36 months?
• If our largest funder or client disappeared tomorrow, what would we do in the next 14, 30, 60, 90+ days?
• What assumptions about our operating environment are we relying on that may no longer hold?

The answers to these questions help to build an action plan for strengthening preparatory resilience. Building anticipatory resilience is not an exercise in doom and gloom, but a disciplined practice of preparing your organization to navigate uncertainty with confidence and clarity.

Preparatory resilience

There are many ways organizations can strengthen preparatory resilience, all linked to the organization’s policies, systems, procedures and management, that strengthen operational functioning and contingency preparedness. Preparatory resilience decreases the likelihood that a challenge occurs or reduces the distress it causes when it does. I’ll use two preparatory aspects of organizational resilience as an illustration: employee well-being and financial resilience.

1. Employee well-being

Organizations often overlook or simply omit employee well-being, which is largely a function of the macro conditions of the organization. At my organization, Yes Well-being Works, we define employee well-being along four aspects: Basic Needs, Psychological Safety, Belonging, and Esteem.

Collectively, fostering employee well-being entails the implementation of operational and management frameworks that intentionally support how employees experience their work which affects their psychological functioning in the workplace.

The reality is that when most organizations enter a crisis many employees are feeling burned out, undervalued, fearful to speak up, and disconnected from the work and their colleagues–they’re in distress, which weakens resilience.

I once gave a keynote to a sub-section of the U.S. Department of Defense on employee well-being. A soldier in the audience raised his hand and said, “But we can’t do this on the field in the middle of warfare.” I responded, “You’re absolutely right! It has to be cultivated before the crisis occurs.”

Organizations interested in building a strong workplace culture rooted in employee well-being can start with assessing the following:

• Are employees empowered with all of the resources they need to do their jobs?
• Do employees speak up when they see a problem, have a question, or need support?
• Are our managers incentivized to use employee-centric strategies, tailoring their approach to each one?
• How do we show employees they are valued in our organization?
• Is work designed in a way that employees constantly have to manage high workloads?

Employee well-being pays dividends during times of stability, by increasing employee productivity. But it’s also key to preparatory resilience in numerous ways.

From our research with clients we have found that when employee well-being is high, employees are more likely to stay, which reduces the likelihood of talent disruptions. When their well-being is high, employees report lower levels of stress during challenging moments, suggesting they are able to be more resilient, staving off signs of distress.

2. Financial resilience

This involves managing cashflow and debt, diversifying revenue, forecasting, and more—processes that can often go overlooked when operating on thin margins. One of the biggest consequences of organizational financial volatility is job loss for employees. Ideally the goal is to avoid such volatility at all, but recall resilience can also involve reducing the impact on employees.

I’ll share an example of the latter from my work with a client. Several years ago a mid-size company reached out to me to support them in designing a minimally traumatic “reduction in force,” which is sometimes called a RIF in the human resources space. They lost a large source of revenue and as a result had no choice but to layoff a sizable portion of their staff.

Together, we designed a process that provided the affected employees with five months’ notice, internal support, outplacement services, severance, and extended benefits. The employees who were not laid off also received support to cope and manage with a common trend in layoffs—survivor’s guilt, which involves feeling guilty because you were able to keep your job. The company was unable to avoid the financial shock, but through financial pipelining and planning efforts they were able to mitigate the impact on employees.

The challenge with the preparatory aspects of resilience—like employee well-being or financial resilience, which ultimately protect employees—is that in an at-will work environment, employers are not incentivized to invest in this form of resilience. Those that do, do so of their own volition and internal values. There are no national laws in the U.S. (as there are in Europe) that says employers have to consider the psychological and financial well-being of employees (although there is momentum gaining for the Workplace Psychological Safety Act). Thus, if preparatory resilience isn’t hard baked into the organization’s values, it often goes overlooked.

Responsive resilience

Responsive resilience describes how organizations respond once a challenge is already underway. When anticipatory and preparatory efforts fall short—as they inevitably sometimes do—the question becomes: What happens next?

In many organizations, the reflex is panic, cascading from the top down. Panic is a form of distress that constrains the very cognitive capacities—discernment, judgment, and clear decision-making—that are most needed during crisis. At the organizational level, panic often shows up in predictable ways:

• Leadership defensiveness: Organizational leaders lashing out at employees or assigning blame without fully understanding the complexity of the issue from an operational perspective.
• Threat-induced effort escalation: Employees encouraged to work harder, faster, or longer, without clarity about what increased effort will actually produce—or whether it meaningfully addresses the crisis.
• Heightened organizational amygdala response: On both organizational and individual levels, experiencing distress over an extended period can increase the excitability of the amygdala—the part of the brain responsible for discerning threats—to the point that everything feels urgent or dangerous.

What’s the alternative to panic? It’s critical for leaders to ask: Are we responding from a place of fear and panic or from strategic discernment? Here are the strategies required for a resilient response:

• Proactive communication: In crisis, many organizations stop or significantly limit communication with employees. This is counterproductive. In the absence of clear information, employees are likely to construct their own narratives about what is happening, often far worse than reality. Regular, transparent communication, even when there is “nothing new to share,” helps to stabilize the crisis and temper widespread panic.
• Emotionally regulated leadership: Organizational crises are frequently exacerbated by leaders who lack the emotional intelligence skills of self-awareness (understanding how they are feeling) and self-management (choosing how to respond to those emotions). Emotionally dysregulated leaders can add fuel to an already volatile situation. Resilient leadership requires the ability to self-regulate or when that is not possible, to be surrounded by trusted others who can speak truth to power.
• Clarity of direction (over volume of effort): When a problem arises, a common fight-or-flight response is to throw more effort at it—more hours, activity, output—without pausing to assess whether that effort will actually resolve or meaningfully reduce the problem. Resilient organizations slow down to clarify direction and align effort with the outcome that will provide impact.

Recovery

The final, and most overlooked, component of resilient organizations is the recovery period.

Does this sound familiar? Your organization responds to a challenge, overcomes it, and immediately rolls into the next one. When the dust settles, the expectation is business as usual.

I work with many clients who recount that their organizations rarely pause to slow down, reflect, or recover. It’s go, go, go—all of the time.

There are two primary contributors to employee burnout. The most commonly understood is excessive workload, without adequate support. A lesser recognized contributor is the expectation that employees endure prolonged periods of organizational stress while continuing to produce as though nothing has happened. From a biological and neurological perspective, this is simply unsustainable.

When an organization moves through a crisis or major challenge, it is imperative to pause and recover—for the well-being of employees and the long-term sustainability of the organization.

Recovery is not a luxury; it is a necessary phase of resilience. Some ways organizations can support recovery include:

• Compensatory time-off: Actively offering and encouraging time off after periods of intensified effort—time that does not draw from limited vacation or sick leave banks.
• Leadership postmortems: Creating space to examine what happened, how the organization responded, and what was learned, without blame.
• Intentional stress reduction: Temporarily reducing demands to allow employees’ nervous systems to recover. What can be deprioritized? What can wait?
• Organizational retreats: Investing in connection, re-energizing, and realignment after sustained periods of strain.

If your organization is only investing in building employee resilience, without focusing on organizational resilience, it is asking people to carry what organizational systems should be designed to hold. Organizational resilience is not measured by endurance. It is reflected in the strength of the structures, decisions, and leadership behaviors that reduce how often crises arise—and how destabilizing they become when they do.

They cautioned that strange foreigners—the Spaniards—had invaded the land and posed a grave threat. The emissaries requested an audience with the Tarascan ruler, known as the Cazonci, King Zuanga. But Zuanga had recently died, most likely from smallpox brought by the Spaniards.

Relations between the two empires had long been tense. They had clashed on the western frontier since 1476, fighting major battles and fortifying their borders. The Tarascans viewed the Aztecs as deceitful and dangerous—a threat to their very existence.

So, when the emissaries arrived to speak with a king who was already dead, they were sacrificed and granted audience with him in the afterlife. In that moment, the fate of the Aztecs was sealed in blood.

The Aztec empire did not fall because it lacked capability. It collapsed because it accumulated too many adversaries who resented its dominance. This is a historical episode the U.S. president, Donald Trump, should take notice of as his rift with traditional U.S. allies deepens.

               

Carl von Clausewitz and other philosophers of war have distinguished the concepts of force and power in relation to statecraft. In the broadest sense, power is ideological capital, predicated on military strength and influence in the global political sphere. In contrast, force is the exertion of military might to coerce other nations to your political will.

While power can be sustained through a strong economy, alliances, and moral influence, force is expended. It drains resources and can erode internal political capital as well as global influence if it is used in a way that is perceived as arrogant or imperialistic.

The Aztec empire formed in 1428 as a triple alliance between the city-states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, with Tenochtitlan eventually dominating the political structure. The empire exerted force through seasonal military campaigns and balanced this with a power dynamic of sacrificial display, threat, tribute, and a culture of racial superiority.

In both its use of force and power, the Aztec empire was coercive and depended on fear to rule. Those subjugated by the empire, and those engaged in what seemed perpetual war, held great animosity and distrust of the Aztecs. The empire was thus built on conquered people and enemies waiting for the right opportunity to overthrow their overlords.

Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who ultimately brought large parts of what is now Mexico under the rule of Spain, exploited this hostility. He forged alliances with Tlaxcala and other former Aztec subjects, augmenting his small Spanish force with thousands of indigenous warriors.

Cortés led this Spanish-indigenous force against the Aztecs and besieged them in Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs had only one hope: to persuade the other great power in Mexico, the Tarascan empire to the west, to join forces with them. Their first emissaries met an ill fate. So, they tried again.

In 1521, Aztec envoys arrived once more in Tzintzuntzan and this time met with the new lord, Tangáxuan II. They brought captured steel weapons, a crossbow, and armor to demonstrate the military threat they faced.

                     

The Tarascan king paid attention. He sent an exploratory mission to the frontier to determine whether this was Aztec trickery or truth. As they arrived at the frontier, they met a group of Chichimecs—semi-nomadic warrior people who often worked for empires to patrol borders.

When told the mission was heading to Tenochtitlan to scout the situation, the Chichimecs replied that they were too late. It was only a city of death now, and they were on their way to the Tarascan king to offer their services. Tangáxuan submitted to the Spanish as a tributary kingdom the following year before being burned to death in 1530 by Spaniards trying to find where he had hidden gold.

Had the Tarascans maintained normal political relations with the Aztecs, they might have investigated the report of the first emissaries. One can imagine how history would be different if, during the siege of Tenochtitlan, 40,000 Tarascan warriors—renowned archers—had descended from the mountains to the west. It is unlikely that Cortés and his army could have prevailed.

American foreign policy

The failings of the Aztec empire were not due to a lack of courage or military prowess. During their battles with the Spanish, the Aztecs repeatedly demonstrated adaptability, learning how to fight against horses and cannon-laden ships.

The failing was a fundamental flaw in the political strategy of the empire—it was built on coercion and fear, leaving a ready force to challenge its authority when it was most vulnerable.

The foreign policy of the U.S. since 2025, when Trump entered office for his second term, has emulated this model. Recently, the Trump administration has been projecting coercive power to support its ambitions for wealth, notoriety, and to project American exceptionalism and manifest superiority.

This has manifested in threats or the exercise of limited force, such as tariffs or military attacks in Iran, Syria, Nigeria, and Venezuela. Increasingly, other nations are challenging the effectiveness of this power. Colombia, Panama, Mexico, and Canada, for example, have largely ignored the threat of coercive power.

As Trump uses American power to demand Greenland, his threats are becoming more feeble. Nato nations are abiding by their longstanding pact with economic and military resolve, with their leaders saying they will not give in to Trump’s pressure. The U.S. is being pushed toward a position where it will have to switch from coercive power to coercive force.

If this course persists, military engagements, animosity from neighbors, and vulnerabilities arising from the strength of other militaries, economic disruptions, and environmental catastrophes may well leave the world’s most powerful nation exposed with no allies.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

And yet many couples find that even after learning each other’s supposed love languages, something still feels off. They may be “speaking” the right language but not feeling deeply loved or satisfied, research suggests. Or they may feel loved in one moment and neglected in another, despite no change in their partner’s intentions. These frustrations raise an important question: What if the problem is not that we are speaking the wrong language but that we are using the wrong metaphor altogether?

What if love is not best understood as a language at all? An alternative view—one grounded in decades of relationship science—suggests that love is better understood as a menu, offering partners multiple ways to show care rather than a single mode to master. Healthy relationships, like healthy bodies, do not thrive on a single ingredient. They require a range of essential nutrients, offered flexibly and adjusted over time.

This mindset shift—from languages to menus—does not dismiss people’s experiences of feeling especially moved by certain acts of love. Instead, it reframes those experiences in a way that is more accurate, more inclusive, and ultimately more helpful for sustaining long-term connection.

Why the love languages metaphor stuck—and where it breaks down

To understand why the love languages idea resonated so powerfully, it helps to appreciate what it offered at the right cultural moment.

First, it gave people a vocabulary. Many couples struggle not because they don’t care, but because they lack words for what they need. Saying: “My love language is quality time” can feel easier—and less vulnerable—than saying: “I miss you even when we are together.” Second, it offered clarity and a framework. Five categories. One primary language. A clear diagnosis. In a domain as messy and emotional as love, that kind of structure can feel stabilizing. Third, it suggested a straightforward solution: Learn your partner’s language and speak it more often.

But these strengths are also where the metaphor breaks down. Framing love as a language encourages a narrowing logic: the idea that there is a “right” way to express care for a partner and that effort invested elsewhere may not register. It suggests stability, treating preferences as fixed traits rather than shifting needs. And it encourages matching: the notion that success depends on aligning your care with your partner’s “language,” rather than responding flexibly to what they need in each moment.

What research reveals about feeling loved

Relationship science paints a different picture. When researchers study how people actually experience love in their relationships, three consistent patterns emerge.

1. Most people value many forms of love, not just one. When we asked people to rate how meaningful different expressions of love feel—such as affection, support, time together, encouragement, or help during stress—they tended to rate all of them highly. Very few people consistently value only one type of loving behavior while finding others unimportant. In fact, when people are forced to choose a single “primary” love style, their choices often do not match how they respond when each form is measured independently. This suggests that love preferences are not zero-sum. We don’t stop needing emotional support because we enjoy physical affection, just as we don’t stop needing protein because we like carbohydrates.

2. Feeling loved depends more on responsiveness than matching. What predicts relationship satisfaction is not whether your partner expresses love in a specific preferred way, but whether they are responsive to your needs, engaged in the interaction, and willing to show care across contexts. Love does not falter when partners fail to express care, but when they fail to notice what care is needed. A partner who brings flowers every Friday may be “speaking” a love language, but if they don’t notice when their partner is overwhelmed, grieving, or quietly disengaging, the gesture can start to feel hollow. Recent interviews showed that small, consistent acts of effort—such as remembering a partner’s preferences or doing something meaningful without being asked—were experienced as deeply affirming, even when they were not tied to a partner’s “preferred” love language.

3. Love unfolds across situations, not traits. What feels loving in a relationship often shifts as life unfolds. A couple in their 20s might feel most loved through shared adventures and quality time, while the same partners years later—with demanding jobs, caregiving, or health challenges—may value practical help or emotional reassurance. After an illness, a loss, or a period of physical separation, expressions of love that once felt sufficient may no longer meet a partner’s needs.

In this way, relationship needs are not fixed traits but living responses to the circumstances of people’s lives. Any framework that treats love preferences as static traits risks flattening this complexity.

A better metaphor: Love as a menu

What might a more accurate metaphor look like? Imagine love not as a language you must learn to speak and decipher, but as a menu you return to again and again. In this framing, different expressions of love are like different nutrients. Some nutrients may matter more at certain times. Too much reliance on one “favorite” can leave other needs unmet. Health comes from balance, not speaking one language with perfect fluency.

You may love dessert, but you would not thrive on dessert alone. You may prefer protein, but you still need fiber and vitamins. Likewise, you might especially appreciate verbal affirmation, but without trust, care during hard times, shared joy, or accountability, affirmation alone will not sustain intimacy. This metaphor removes the pressure to “get it exactly right.”

Instead of asking: Am I speaking my partner’s language?, couples can ask more generative questions: What does our relationship need more of right now? Which forms of care have we been neglecting? How can we broaden—not narrow—the ways in which we show up for each other?

Expanding the menu: We show love in more ways than just five

When we asked people to describe, in their own words, how they give and receive love—an expanded menu emerged. Alongside familiar expressions like affection, gifts, or time together, people described love as showing up emotionally when life is hard, encouraging a partner’s personal goals, and taking responsibility when things go wrong. They also described experiences of playfulness, shared joy, and practical forms of care that support everyday well-being. Just as important, many people described feeling loved when they were welcomed into their partner’s circle of friends, family, and community.

These forms of love often matter deeply—sometimes more than the classic categories—but they are rarely highlighted in popular frameworks. Yet they are precisely the behaviors that sustain trust, resilience, and satisfaction in close relationships.

Why menus are more inclusive than languages

Another strength of the menu metaphor is that it is more culturally and relationally inclusive. The love languages framework emerged from a relatively narrow context and reflects particular assumptions about relationships—often prioritizing romantic exclusivity, traditional gender roles, and direct forms of expression.

But people’s relational lives are far more diverse. For some couples, love means cheering each other on from parallel paths; for others, it means dividing responsibilities and carrying the load together. Neurodivergent partners may find that touch, conversation, or time together require different forms of coordination and care. And when illness, disability, or caregiving enter the picture, love often shifts away from grand gestures toward reliability, flexibility, and staying present.

A menu allows for this diversity. It does not require identifying a single primary form of care or treating other expressions as secondary or optional.

When love languages become limiting

Although the love languages idea was intended to foster understanding, it can sometimes backfire in subtle ways. Some couples might use love language labels to avoid responsiveness: “That’s not my love language” becomes a reason not to stretch, adapt, or grow. Others might become overly focused on matching, worrying that incompatibility in love languages signals deeper relational problems, despite no evidence that matching itself predicts relationship success. And some people might begin to undervalue care that does not fit their label, overlooking meaningful acts simply because they aren’t delivered in the “right” form.

The menu metaphor gently disrupts these traps by emphasizing that love is not about specialization but responsiveness across domains. What matters is not whether care fits a category, but whether it meets a need.

Practicing love as a balanced diet

What does this look like in everyday life?

In practice, instead of asking, “What’s your love language?,” couples might ask more open-ended questions: When do you feel most supported by me? What feels missing lately? What kinds of care feel hardest for us to give or receive? These questions invite nuance and change, shifting the focus from fixed labels to lived experience.

Practicing love as a balanced diet also means building range rather than striving for perfection. No one excels at every form of care, and the goal is not mastery, but a willingness to offer different kinds of love over time. In our research, people who identified strongly with a single “favorite” love language tended to feel less satisfied with their relationships and less certain about their partner’s care, suggesting that rigid preferences may reflect unmet needs or inflexibility.

Preferences still matter. They can offer useful information about what types of care and affection are likely to land most strongly. But they work best as guides, not rules—helping partners decide where to invest effort without eclipsing other forms of nourishment a relationship needs.

Love as ongoing care

Perhaps the most important implication of the menu metaphor is this: Love is not a one-time translation problem to be solved, but an ongoing practice of care. Relationships thrive not because partners perfectly match, but because they remain attentive, flexible, and responsive as needs evolve. They flourish when love is treated not as a fixed style, but as a living system—one that requires nourishment, adjustment, and renewal.

When we stop asking whether we are speaking the right language and start asking whether we are offering a nourishing range of care, we open the door to deeper connection. Love, it turns out, is not about fluency. It’s about choosing what the relationship needs from the menu.

This apparent contradiction is at the heart of How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most, a new book by happiness scholar Sonja Lyubomirsky and relationship scientist Harry Reis.

The pair surveyed a representative sample of 1,998 American adults and found that two-thirds yearned to feel more loved or loved more often by the people in their lives, and 40 percent wanted to feel more loved by their romantic partner. The authors noted a strong negative correlation between loneliness and feeling loved, expressed qualitatively in comments like, “I have plenty of friends, and I spend a lot of time socializing. But honestly? I don’t know if anyone deeply loves me.”

How to Feel Loved vividly expresses the disconnect between people in our lives expressing love and our experience of feeling that love, and puts the power back in our hands. Lyubomirsky and Reis make a powerful case that by approaching our relationships with vulnerability, curiosity, self-acceptance, and optimism, we can get the love we need. They outline specific strategies for shifting our mindsets and interpersonal interactions to achieve more rewarding outcomes.

I spoke with Lyubomirsky and Reis about the research underlying their book and their recommendations for readers.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis: The collaboration at the heart of this book–a happiness scholar teaming up with a relationship scientist–seems long overdue. What are you trying to achieve with How to Feel Loved?

Sonja Lyubomirsky: A lot of people are loved, but they don’t feel loved. And if you don’t feel loved, it’s as though it’s not there. What I have discovered in my research is that feeling loved and feeling connected is really the key to happiness. Almost all of the interventions shown to make us happier, the reason they work is they make us feel more connected to and loved by others. We know relationships are so important to happiness; the Harvard Adult Development Study is very famous for showing that. Then Harry and I started talking and we realized happiness researchers and love researchers don’t really talk as much as they should.

KRL: Your book has such potential to make a difference because people have relationships, they have social connections, but they don’t feel loved, and that often leads to despair and spiraling. How does this connect to our epidemic of loneliness?

SL: Loneliness is such a huge problem, especially among young people, and really, a lonely moment is a moment where you don’t feel loved. So they’re very, very connected, very, very relevant to each other.

Harry Reis: Most people, when they go about trying to get more love, they do it in a way that not only is wrong, but may actually be counterproductive. And so what we’re trying to do is give people a new approach that we believe will be more effective.

One of the ironies in this is that when people are in unsatisfying relationships, that may actually be a more devastating feeling than not being in relationships. When you’re alone, when you’re isolated, you can engage in self-fulfilling activities. But when people are in an unhappy relationship, they begin to question: “Why is this unsatisfying? Is there something wrong with me? Am I not doing things right?” And that can actually be a more powerful negative feeling than being isolated.

SL: We also had this realization that for a lot of problems in relationships, often the source is a sense of not feeling loved, or not loved enough. Take the show Couples Therapy. You see the couple fighting and it’s so obvious that at the root of it is that no matter what he does, she’s not feeling loved; no matter what she does, he’s not feeling loved enough.

KL: In the book, you write about the relationship saesaw, which you intentionally misspell using the word “sea” to align with your metaphor that many of our personal attributes are hidden underwater. Can you explain what you mean by that, and how it functions when it’s done well?

HR: The relationship seasaw is the idea that there’s a reciprocal process of lifting and being lifted in this dynamic interaction. When you lift somebody up, meaning you support them, you encourage them, you show curiosity about what makes them tick, it makes them feel good, it makes them feel loved, but it also encourages them to reciprocate that feeling, and so then they can lift you up. There is this dynamic back and forth between opening up and then listening and encouraging the other. That gives people a sense of connection, a sense of chemistry.

SL: Another way to think about it is that the key to feeling loved is to be truly known to the other person, and also to truly know the other person. It’s like an underwater seasaw. Most of us are kind of underwater. We’re not really showing most of ourselves to the other person. We’re only showing the tip, maybe only the positive sides of us. By pressing down on the seasaw with curiosity and warmth and acceptance and listening, we’re helping the other person reveal more of themselves and to share more. Otherwise, it’s actually kind of hard to take down those walls we keep around ourselves. Fortunately, reciprocity is a really powerful norm of social behavior–it’s evolutionarily adaptive, obviously–and the other persons will reciprocate by showing curiosity and warmth and acceptance toward us, as well as encouragement and support, and by really listening to our story. That doesn’t actually happen that often.

KL: It really is a powerful revelation that feeling more loved is within our control. It has the potential to truly change lives through the new mindsets and the actions that you outline. So you can’t explain everything that took you 300-plus pages in the book, but can you give a brief overview of the five mindsets–Sharing, Listening to Learn, Radical Curiosity, Open Heart, and Multiplicity–and pull out one or two of them to discuss in more depth?

SL: I feel like our book has an empowering message, because most people, when they think about feeling more loved, they think, “I need to make myself more lovable, more desirable, more appealing, show off to the other person how wonderful I am.” But it’s not about changing yourself; it’s not about changing the other person; it’s about changing the conversation. Because a relationship really is a series of conversations.

The mindsets are five different perspectives that we encourage people to embrace as they approach their next conversation with their romantic partner, or their neighbor, or their mom, or their colleague.

I’ll start with the sharing mindset. I might feel that maybe you wouldn’t love me if you really got to know me, all my messy, complicated sides and contradictions and my negative qualities. Sharing allows us to take down our walls a little bit. But you have to share at the right pace. We’re not talking about revealing your deepest secret or trauma right away.

It might be starting small, like, you might ask me, “How are you?” And instead of saying, “Fine,” which is what we almost always do, I say, “Oh, well, I actually had kind of a rough morning,” or “I’m struggling a little today.” Or, it could just be saying something real, your true opinion about something that’s going on.

HR: When people don’t feel loved, often what they think is, “You need to make me feel more loved.” Of course, that kind of thing usually doesn’t work very well. It’s externalizing the problem. It’s putting pressure on the other person. It’s better to change the conversation in a way that can allow a loving conversation to happen, rather than waiting for the other person to do something, because that can often be more like waiting for Godot.

When we listen to another person, we’re often preparing our response. That distances you from the other person. It doesn’t allow you to connect with them. The listening-to-learn mindset is the idea that you need to really pay attention so that you can actually learn something about the other person. You need to be curious about what they’re saying. And then—and this is the important part—you need to encourage them to go deeper. One of the most powerful things you can say is a simple three-word phrase: “Tell me more.”

SL: The first step in helping yourself to feel more loved is to try to make the other person feel more loved, by listening to them, helping them open up, showing curiosity in them, and showing warmth and acceptance. But one thing that surprised us is when we wrote our first draft, we sent it to a few friends and colleagues. Two friends of mine wrote to me: they’re not psychologists, but they’re writers and smart people. They told us that our book led them to break up with their girlfriends. One guy said, “Your book made me realize that she’s not really sharing.” The other guy said, “I realized my girlfriend has stopped showing curiosity about my work,” which was very important to him.

So we created a diagnostic quiz. It’s on howtofeelloved.com, our book website. It will tell you what your strongest mindset is, and what’s the mindset that’s in most need of improvement, and then we give some tips on how to do that.

HR: If both people are committed to the relationship and want to work on it, this can be a powerful stimulus to improving the relationship.

SL: We have this sort of inner chatter. As I’m talking to you, even now, I’m thinking what I’m going to say next. I’m thinking what I’m going to have for lunch. To quiet that inner chatter and truly be present, we all can do that, but we just need practice. All of these mindsets are totally accessible.

KL: Finally, could you talk about the multiplicity mindset, Sonja?

SL: Actually, the word comes from trauma research. The idea is that when you have a trauma, it doesn’t define you. You are a person with many, many, many facets. We contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman said. We are like a quilt of both positive and negative qualities.

Sometimes I’m kind, and sometimes I’m selfish, and sometimes I’m loyal, and sometimes I’m narcissistic. We’re all of those things; they’re all a spectrum. Try to recognize that in other people. Sometimes they might reveal something a little bit uncomfortable, or a little bit negative. Try to look at that with this lens of multiplicity. Again, the idea is that one bad action doesn’t define us. We have these messy insides; we have a lot of contradictions. Embracing the multiplicity mindset really helps us feel more loved—not just by others but by ourselves, too.

KL: You are challenging people to grow and be their best selves. Even though many of these steps are simple, at heart, to accept your own self and be comfortable revealing, and then accept others is demanding a lot from folks.

SL: It takes a lot of effort. All of our mindsets take effort, they take intention, and they sometimes are challenging, but so worthwhile.

“I started practicing burlesque 25 years ago and it took me a solid 10 years to even understand what I was doing,” says Maloof, who founded the Hot Pink Feathers burlesque troupe in San Francisco in 2000. She continues:

In that time and space [rehabbing], I had profound reflection time at a depth that is not usually available to people for a variety of reasons, and I got it—how I had been using burlesque. In the burlesque act I am practicing being fully associated, being fully present and rather than following a strict choreography, what I am doing is checking in every second and every millisecond, ‘Am I here?’ Am I fully inhabiting my body? Am I choosing actively and consciously in this moment, with these people, do I consent and take joy and pleasure in removing this next layer?’

Maloof’s experience is not unique. In fact, there are lots of anecdotal stories written by women who have turned to burlesque to feel better about themselves—and there’s also a growing body of research.

With origins dating back to ancient Greek satirical plays, burlesque combines dance, music, and parody as a way to both celebrate and ridicule sexuality while also using exaggeration and mockery to make fun of social mores and push boundaries.

As Julia Persky, an assistant professor at East Texas A&M, writes, “For hundreds of years, the art of burlesque has offered to the poor and working classes–the marginalized–a place of entertainment and escape via theatrical presentations.”

When burlesque came to America in the 1800s, it came to be associated more with striptease and other forms of exotic dancing. Since then, it has gone through several iterations and has been discovered and rediscovered until it emerged in the mid-1990s as what’s considered “neo-burlesque.”

Since then, “the art form has embraced and repurposed many of its historical tropes for eager, often queer, and overwhelmingly female audiences,” writes historian Betsy Golden Kellem. “Burlesque resonates for audiences today in its celebration of variable bodies, its conscious ability to play with gender and mock power structures, and its ability to nurture both fun and transformation.” And neo-burlesque is overwhelmingly performed and driven by women and femme-presenting women for women.

While numerous studies highlight the benefits of dance and movement therapy as a way to address trauma, burlesque stands out as a type of dance that focuses on women’s sexual and sexualized body “to understand not only what that means but also what that feels like,” says Jacki Willson, an associate professor in performance and gender at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. She’s been studying the dance form for several years.

Burlesque is a safe place to heal from trauma because “it encourages and shares a different self-determination, consent, self-love, and care,” Willson says. “It performs the line between misogyny and sexual agency, between appropriation and self-possession. It does this by drawing on performance moves, techniques, props, and persona/tropes that… give the performer and the audience a new understanding of the way power has been taken away and an evolving palette of theatrical options for taking that power back.”

To be clear, not everyone is drawn to burlesque to heal and not every burlesque instructor approaches it as a healing space. And some may be where Maloof was years ago, unable to articulate or even be aware of their trauma, whether it’s what Maloof calls “boom-boom trauma,” a single event such as a sexual assault, or “drip-drip trauma,” which she says starts with attachment in childhood and results in being “chronically unseen.”

Which is why Maloof presents the lessons she’s been offering since 2010 as conscious burlesque. “It’s possible to consciously and specifically approach it as a coming home,” she says. “Everyone in the room is asking, ‘What does it feel like to be me?’ I’m inviting everyone over and over, what are the body sensations I have as I witness you or as you are being witnessed by me. It’s training us to come home in a very practical sense.”

Burlesque, she says, offers a chance to be fully seen and acknowledged, and that in itself is healing.

Dancing with yourself

That may be why many marginalized people, including gay and lesbian, Black, larger-bodied and people with disabilities, find burlesque as a safe place.

In her doctoral dissertation on current and past Black burlesque performers, Ashley Dunn writes that the dance form is “a site for Black women to redefine, and resist societal limits placed on them.”

While Black burlesque performers have been erased from the history of the dance form, she argues, many white performers copied their dance moves: “Black performers have repurposed, reappropriated, and transformed burlesque (the same platform used to appropriate them) into a site to heal from racialized trauma.”

Because burlesque is a dance form that welcomes performers to explore and play with gender, it often celebrates queer identities—identities that increasingly are under attack. One study observes that neo-burlesque functions as a “queer emotional theater… in which emotions and humor offer a temporary liberation from everyday wounds” and that “emotions and their embodiment in the performance of neo-burlesque offer a queer theatrical purgation, a temporary relief from everyday structures, and playful rewriting of these structures, both for performers and the audience.”

Laura C. Westmoreland, a therapist in Los Angeles, was drawn to burlesque after seeing performances by Dita von Teese, considered the queen of burlesque. “I was so impressed and amazed by the diversity of the performers,” she says. “I could see myself in some of the performers.

After taking private lessons, Westmoreland noticed a shift in how she viewed herself. “I was making eye contact with myself, a moment of extreme connection with myself—physically, emotionally, and it was like, whoa, what just happened here?”

It prompted her to focus her doctoral dissertation on the healing power of recreational burlesque. “As self-identified women, we move through this world and many of us have a separation between the mind-body just to be safe in this world, so what if there’s a space where we can engage in these sensual movements and feel safe and reconnected to our body? What would that do? Would it change us, would it change how we move through the world and how we think?” she says.

It’s affected her work as a therapist. She now helps clients focus on what their body is feeling and telling them, and if they feel safe in their body. Westmoreland also plans to use her research to develop a program that incorporates mental health interventions with burlesque choreography.

Burlesque as community

Kaitlyn Regehr, an associate professor of digital humanities at University College London, found that learning the dance form boosted self-esteem. In her study of eight women featured on ‘‘ReVamped,” a Canadian reality television show that houses women with a burlesque choreographer for six weeks, she discovered the participants had all been through challenging relationship breakups, including an abusive relationship.

“All the participants perceived the burlesque training to be empowering and asserted that the experience enhanced their sense of self-efficacy,” she writes, concluding that “it is possible that practicing burlesque with a group of women does offer individuals a safe environment for self-exploration and emotional support.”

Having community, a safe place to be seen, to support and be supported by others, to be accepted and validated, and to be included, goes far in helping anyone struggling with trauma and mental health issues.

“All bodies are embraced, encouraged, and represented within burlesque, but it achieves more than that,” Jacki Willson says. “The striptease acknowledges the sexual and gendered abuse and trauma that has been done to that body and that community, but this act of vulnerability, critique, and wound-sharing is also performed within a supportive inclusive environment that protects, respects, and recognizes that individual’s worth.”

Breaking stereotypes

Invisible Cabaret, a burlesque and vaudeville variety troupe in London, was formed to bust the stigma and shame around mental health issues. Some of the topics addressed by their performers include depression, anxiety, eating disorders, intrusive thoughts, and the importance of seeking medical help.

“When you see naked female bodies on our stage, it’s nearly always making a point about vulnerability, whether emotional or physical,” says troupe cofounder Rosalind Peters. “In some ways, this needs to be even more carefully curated as it’s important our performers feel—and are—absolutely safe in every respect to allow them to be that vulnerable.”

Caroline Adkins says that all the members of her Bump N Grind burlesque troupe based in Scotland “face challenges daily due to needs concerning mental and physical health. Becoming part of Bump N Grind has helped them with their anxiety and depression and general mental health. It has built their confidence and self-esteem and helped them to be comfortable in their own bodies and realize how much they are capable of.”

That’s what Susan Wolf discovered while filming her 2024 documentary Learning to Be Naked: The Healing Power of Burlesque. It follows five women from across the globe, including an amputee and multiple-cancer survivor who performs with her prosthesis and proudly shows off her scars; a woman who had a stroke at age 24, just after giving birth, who made her way from a wheelchair to the stage; and a plus-size, Black, nonbinary performer who is a fierce advocate for queer artists of color.

Not only did burlesque give each of them a safe space to heal from their trauma or marginalization, but it also helped them—as well as their audience—shatter stereotypes of what’s considered beautiful and challenge preconceptions about what types of bodies deserve to be seen.

“Going to a burlesque show is so different than going to a formal dance show. It’s very interactive … and the audience is so supportive,” Wolf shares. “It’s validating for audience members to see performers who have overcome some serious traumas and challenges in their lives and have found their way to self-acceptance and self-love and how that has empowered them and healed them. It’s uplifting.”

While attending a class for her study of fat burlesque, Yessica Garcia Hernandez, assistant professor of Latina sexualities, popular culture, and performance studies at UCLA, notes that body image is discussed frequently. When one burlesque student shared a story of being called “fat,” it opened up “a conversation about how curves get ranked and how even thin women get traumatized with fat shame. The hauntings of this trauma are heard in the studio, and the conversation about dieting lingers.”

The class helped her confront her own experiences of being fat-shamed, and how her plus size was framed as a personal failure instead of acknowledging the pressures of living in a toxic diet culture that elevates thinness.

“In a field like burlesque, where most professional stages are dominated by thin performers, the mere act of having fat women strip-teasing onstage creates ‘the possibility of a better future,’ particularly for plus-size students who wish to join but are discouraged because of size discrimination,” she writes.

Body diversity

Burlesque can also help women deal with the anxiety and depression many feel over their aging bodies and the invisibility many experience as they age in a culture that celebrates youth and beauty. Middle-aged and older women are often described as asexual, so connecting to a sensual sense of self is important for their well-being, writes Gemma Collard-Stokes, a performance artist and research fellow at the University of Derby who studied nine women aged 50 to 84 who attended recreational burlesque classes.

The women shared that they felt disconnected from their perceived sense of self and their bodies. “The desire to reestablish this lost connection between self and body comes from the need to dispel feelings of an inadequate body.”

Just as important, having a supportive community that validated their sensuality, femininity, and visibility allowed the women to develop healthier body image. As Collard-Stokes writes:

The findings demonstrate that the burlesque class, with its emphasis on establishing sensual connection with the body, [re]establishes the participants’ awareness of the body’s capacity for movement, expression, and fortification, instilling a sense of being happy in one’s skin. Feelings of disconnection are dissipated through the gentle [re]building of the participants’ sense of living within their body rather than with a body. As creative initiatives to support healthy and successful aging continue to expand, this study provides a clear demonstration of how sensual dance movement can be useful for women navigating the less desirable experiences of aging.

Maloof suggests anyone curious attend a show or take a class to see what emotions and sensations it brings up for them. “There are many studies and it’s very true that movement is healing, and dance is healing,” she says. She continues:

The extra element that I emphasize is being witnessed properly—not just our physical bodies, but our personalities and all the aspects of how we show up in the world. We are not seeing the deep and profound beauty that we are. We’re not seeing it, we’re not feeling it, and we’re not allowing it to come through. When you have an opportunity to dip your toe in, and have somebody see you from that place, it allows you to see yourself. I’m biased, but I think it’s the most important work to do.

At a time when the country feels more fractured than ever, this camaraderie among Americans is rare. It’s worth paying attention to the parts of American life where people still come together—where, at least for a few hours, they set aside the divisions that so often define our politics, because politics couldn’t be further from their minds. Sports fandom is one such phenomenon, one that’s baked into the habits of millions of Americans.

What’s striking is that this sense of connection extends well beyond the game itself. The biggest sports fans tend to be deeply engaged in their communities and civic life, and most open to connecting with people across political divides. Fans don’t just set aside political divisions for a few hours every Sunday, they tend not to let these divisions define them at all.

Research conducted by More in Common and FOX Sports in June 2025 found that the most dedicated fans—those who follow sports most closely and participate most actively—are also more likely to be registered to vote, to vote in local elections, and to follow politics regularly. They are also more likely to give to charity, attend political meetings, donate blood, and contribute to their communities.

What’s especially notable is that this engagement doesn’t come at the cost of openness. In much of American life, the people who are most politically engaged are also the most likely to misunderstand and distrust members of the opposing political party. Typically, the higher the political engagement, the deeper the partisan divide.

Sports fans are an exception. Despite their high levels of political participation, the biggest fans are more open to engaging across political differences, not less. And the more invested the fan, the more open they are to connect. Among the most passionate fans, nearly 7 in 10 say they’d be interested in a conversation with someone who holds opposing views, compared to just 46% of non-fans. And more than 8 in 10 say they’d be willing to work with someone from across the aisle to improve their community (compared to 65% of non-fans).

Crucially, these patterns appear across the political spectrum. Republican and Democratic fans alike have warmer feelings towards members of the opposing political party and are more open to collaboration than their non-fan counterparts.

This willingness to connect across divides is unusual in today’s political climate. And it points to a broader truth: sports are more than entertainment. In an era of polarization, it stands out as one of the few large-scale cultural arenas where people of different backgrounds regularly share space, build trust, and find connection. As one respondent said, “I live in a community where following our sports team brings us together and my parents were just huge on watching it.”

That spirit of connection matters even more when we consider who shows up most in these spaces. The most dedicated fans are disproportionately men, and in an era of rising male isolation, sports fandom offers a place where connection, conversation, and community are already happening.

According to Gallup, 25% of American men aged 15 to 34 reported feeling lonely “a lot” in their day‑to‑day lives, compared to 18% of women in the same age group and just 15% in peer democratic countries. Men are also less likely than women to turn to friends or family for emotional support and report having fewer close friendships.

In this landscape, sports fandom offers a rare pathway for connection. Sports remain one of the most culturally acceptable spaces for emotional expression among men, with three in four avid fans, male and female alike, agreeing that sports are a healthy way for men to express themselves.

Most men don’t proactively spend their time “thinking about healthy ways to connect.” They’re more likely to just sit next to a couple of buddies enjoying a game. Sports create the conditions for connection—offering structure, shared interest, and a sense of ease that makes openness feel more natural. And our data suggest sports fans may experience less loneliness. Specifically, fans are more likely to disagree with the statement, “There is no community where I feel a strong sense of belonging,” and fans are more likely than non-fans to see sports as a healthy outlet for male expression.

While sports fandom may not solve polarization or loneliness on its own, it shows us that there are still spaces where people of different backgrounds show up, engage, and build trust—even if they’re just cheering for the same team.

If we want to strengthen civic life, we should take seriously the places where Americans are already finding common ground. Sports fandom isn’t just entertainment—it’s one of our largest, most diverse, and most consistent shared rituals. And that makes it worth noticing, understanding, and cherishing as more than just a game.

This Sunday’s Super Bowl won’t fix all that’s broken in America. But for a few hours, it may remind more than 100 million Americans that coming together is still possible.

At the time, federal immigration agents were conducting military-style operations throughout the area, detaining both students and parents as they went to or from school, including a 5-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl in another town. In January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents killed two protesters and injured many others in Minnesota.

Principal Libby Huettl knew she had to do something. She worked with her school’s cultural liaison to gather volunteers to pick students up at their apartments and walk them to school bus stops. Other staff members stationed themselves at the stops. Some volunteers drove students directly to school. The goal was to make students—and their parents—feel it was safe enough to make the trek, however long or short.

By the end of January, she says their efforts were paying off: The number of kids not showing up to her elementary school was down to seven.

“We are spending a lot of our energy on getting students back to school, however that needs to look,” Huettl says.

Principals around the country report similar patterns in students missing school, but the fear that is keeping students home is especially acute in the Minneapolis area—though protesters and local officials have successfully pressed the federal government to scale back their presence. As of this writing, the federal government announced that 700 agents, out of about 3,000, will leave the area. But, given the Trump administration’s priorities, the overall campaign is unlikely to end anytime soon.

“This is a devastating time in the education space,” says Alejandra Vázquez Baur, the co-founder of the Newcomers Network, a coalition of educators, researchers, and advocates in 46 states. “Immigration is becoming one of the leading issues impacting schools.”

Experts and educators alike say that immigration raids are inflicting a terrible toll on children’s mental health and education. Some school systems have created new rules for addressing ICE visits to their campuses. Others are sharing information with families about their rights, and some parents signed power of attorney agreements that would give another adult the ability to take custody, even briefly, of their children should they be detained. Meanwhile, principals like Huettl are setting up plans in real time for dealing with immigration enforcement in their communities.

Here’s an overview of what ICE raids are doing to kids and how schools are responding to protect their students’ mental health and physical safety.

Immigrants in schools

The nonprofit KFF estimates that 1 in 4, or 19 million, children in the U.S. have an immigrant parent. While immigrant students and families are clearly the most affected by federal actions, schools may not know the backgrounds of some of their students—and cannot turn away students based on their status. Some schools use English-language abilities as a proxy, however, for counting how many immigrant students they enroll.

But Vázquez Baur notes the effects of immigration enforcement are hardly limited to these children. “It is not just immigrant students who are staying home from schools,” says Vázquez Baur, who comes from an immigrant family.

She ticks off examples: A whole group of students could find themselves stranded because their school bus driver was detained. One student’s babysitter, who helped with dropoff and pickup, is no longer around. Another may find that their best friend suddenly isn’t coming to school anymore.

“Your child is going to leave with the idea that school isn’t for some kids,” she says. “This will touch every child in some way—and that was before the violent escalation.”

What children are experiencing is manifesting itself in all kinds of ways. Pastor Sergio Amezcua leads the congregation at the Spanish-speaking church Dios Habla Hoy in South Minneapolis—and voted for Donald Trump in 2024 because he believed promises that any immigration crackdown would target criminals. Amezcua is now speaking out against federal actions, largely because the raids have also targeted families and people without criminal records. In a recent public radio interview, Amezcua said that he’d stopped allowing his four U.S.-born children to get to school on their own, instead driving them to and from school himself in order to avoid encounters with federal agents.

He reported that his children have become more fearful and vigilant. “Sometimes we get like an Amazon package and… they run to me and (say) like, ‘Dad! Dad! ICE is here!’” Amezcua recounted. “And I’m like, “What? It’s just Amazon.”

“They’re just traumatized, you know.”

Educational outcomes

The ways families are trying to cope create their own side effects, with high school principals telling researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles that when families shelter at home to avoid encountering ICE, their children don’t eat very well. Other kids have become caretakers for younger siblings overnight after a parent was detained.

And these students may not be able to do their schoolwork. Although schools in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas gave students the option of accessing classes online, the pandemic proved this was not a successful version of schooling for many kids. It can result in a slew of side effects, and the same problems during that era of virtual learning may exist now: limited or no access to high-speed internet and a lack of enough, or the right kind of, devices for kids to use for their lessons.

A spike in absences—what Huettl was working through—is one problem that can follow immigration agents’ presence and may involve students of any background. The Charlotte-Mecklenberg school district in North Carolina said more than 27,000 students were absent the first school day after U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived in the city in November. That amounted to nearly triple the number of students absent compared with a week before and was about a fifth of all kids in the 141,000-student district.

At school, the federal immigration onslaught has meant more bullying, high school principals told the UCLA researchers.

“There has been definitely an uptick in comments made by white students, white male students, to our Hispanic students: ‘Can I see your papers?’” one principal in the nationally representative survey recalled.

“The biggest impact I can speak to is other students making inappropriate comments,” another principal told researchers at the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, even telling friends: “‘You’re a border hopper, your parents are border hoppers, go back where you came from.’”

Mental health impact

Other research, including some that measured the effects of immigration enforcement during the first Trump administration, affirms what many educators already know: A ramp up in activity by federal immigration agents has a corrosive effect on children.

In a research brief last year from the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University, experts cited a study that found “children from immigrant backgrounds who witnessed their parent/s being arrested due to deportation tended to experience changes in sleeping, eating, and higher levels of fear and anxiety compared to children who had not witnessed this event.”

They noted that some amount of stress is required for the healthy development of children, but extended periods of stress or extreme stress can lead to lasting physical and psychological damage. That’s because that kind of exposure can disrupt the way the hypothalamus and pituitary gland in the brain and the adrenal glands, which sit atop the kidneys, interact. Together, these organs help the body respond to stress. Too much stress, especially in children, the ASU experts wrote, can lead to long-term issues that impair memory, language development, and learning abilities and increase the risk of heart diseases in young adults.

A study by researchers at the University of Georgia and Xi’an Jiaotong University in China analyzed data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System to understand the effects on young people after Trump revived the Secure Communities Program during his first term. Under that program, fingerprints collected by local police agencies and shared with the FBI were also shared with the Department of Homeland Security, then compared with its immigration databases. A match could have led to deportation.

The researchers compared what happened to Latino and non-Latino white students in places affected by the Secure Communities policy. Latino students, relative to white peers, reported persistent sadness or hopelessness; suicidal ideation; planning or attempted suicide; alcohol and cigarette use; fighting; and poor grades.

The findings, the researchers said, show that the more students were exposed to the intensified enforcement, the sadder or more hopeless they felt.

What’s happening in children’s minds

When children, and adults, see something that could be a threat, and an unexpected one, “it’s going to activate a whole set of evolutionary responses,” says Dr. Kerry Ressler, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of the Division of Depression and Anxiety Disorders at McLean Hospital and director of its Neurobiology of Fear Laboratory.

“It’s everything we think of as a panic attack,” he says: increased breathing, an upset stomach, a dry mouth, wanting to run away. And people don’t have to experience that threat directly to trigger this physical reaction, Ressler says. “A lot of studies have shown that secondary viewing of somebody else being threatened still activates a lot of your own systems.”

Images of the clashes between Minnesota residents and ICE agents have been difficult to avoid on television and social media for weeks. Beyond that, residents of all ages have witnessed agents driving through neighborhoods, waiting outside churches and near school bus stops, and taking into custody a 5-year-old child wearing a Spider-Man backpack and bunny hat.

That little boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, is one of at least six students from the Columbia Heights Public School District, north of Minneapolis, detained by ICE since the agency’s Minnesota operation began, school officials said. (Liam has since been released.) The others were a 10-year-old girl, a fourth grader on her way to school; a 17-year-old taken from his family’s apartment; another 17-year-old removed from his car as he was en route to school; and second- and fifth-grade boys whose mother was taken into custody and had no other local caregivers. Two school districts and a Minnesota teachers union are suing the federal Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, accusing immigration officers of breaking a pledge to keep away from schools. 

“​​The onslaught of ICE activity in our community is inducing trauma and is taking a toll on our children, taking a toll on our families, our staff, our community members. This surge has changed nearly everything about our daily lives,” Zena Stenvik, superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public School District, said during a press conference in January. “The kids just want to come to school. … They want to be in person learning. They thrive. They’re happy in school.”

Instead, “a lot of really core fears that kids have normally, and that we all have, are all being activated,” Ressler says. “Studies have shown that secondary viewing of someone else being threatened activates a lot of your own systems.”

For children from lower-resourced environments, where food, money, or family support are scarce, or those who have experienced other trauma, witnessing or learning about immigration enforcement activity “may trigger their own memories of being abused or tracked or not being safe or not being cared for,” Ressler says.

Ultimately, that will cause further trauma, regardless of how that looks from child to child.

What can schools do?

Vázquez Baur, who once worked as a math teacher, says her own training for the classroom didn’t prepare her for working with students learning English or immigrant children. She sometimes found herself acting as an interpreter for families and had no training related to immigration enforcement activity. This was during the first Trump administration, she notes.

Now, educators need practices specific to the circumstances of the modern era, she says. One of the second Trump administration’s early acts on immigration was to remove a policy that limited immigration and border agent activity in or near schools, houses of worship, and hospitals.

Some schools have tried to fortify their campuses in response. In Connecticut, for instance, last year the superintendent in New Haven began requiring school principals to handle any interaction with immigration authorities. A principal must gather warrants or other documents and send them to lawyers for review before any officer can enter a school building.

Long-term, however, the involvement of law enforcement in these operations makes things tricky for students and schools, Ressler notes. “When you grow up in a small town in which you know all the local police and they know you by name, it’s a sense of trust: We need to have these uniformed officers to protect us, rather than do something to us.”

Some communities have seen officers who are masked and essentially unidentifiable, sometimes not wearing uniforms, apprehending people. (The court system has reprimanded ICE for some of its tactics.) “If you’re a kid and you’re in a family and everybody’s scared and no one’s feeling they’re here to protect us, they’re not getting any of those signals,” Ressler says. “Everybody is just feeling scared.”

Schools regularly prepare students for other emergencies, he said, with fire drills, tornado drills, and increasingly, active shooter drills.

“One of the areas that I think seems to hold true in child psychology and stress literature is controllable versus uncontrollable situations. It’s sort of like basic training for the military: The more you can train for a certain situation, the less you are likely to panic,” Ressler says. “For the majority of kids that would be helpful.”

Schools are faced with raising the prospect of officers’ presence and explaining what might happen—in an apolitical way.

“Some language people are using that can be helpful for kids is things like: ‘Officers are here to arrest certain people, but they aren’t always being careful, and some people are scared that they might get hurt by the officers,’” says Hopewell Hodges, a therapist who is completing her doctorate at the University of Minnesota in clinical and developmental psychology. She was speaking during a January webinar on supporting children during immigration enforcement operations.

Ressler says he is hopeful that later on, in communities where immigration enforcement was pronounced, local police will go to schools and rebuild a relationship of trust with their local community, differentiating their work from other law enforcement officers. Otherwise, “what this sets up for is a whole generation of people who further distrust authority.”

For now talking early, and often, with kids is essential, Hodges said in the video. “A lot of research shows that when children go through tough or scary things, they are often a lot less afraid if grownups have prepared them about what to expect.”

It doesn’t have to be one big talk, either, she said, citing a metaphor once shared with her about a child eating an apple, coming back again and again for small bites. It’s important just to open the door at all, to offer the apple, in the first place.

“If a trusted grown-up in a kid’s life doesn’t bring something up, what a little kid is often thinking is one of two things: either this isn’t a topic that’s OK to talk about. Maybe it’s rude or offensive or wrong if I want to talk about it. I’ll just suppress it.

“Or they maybe think the grown-up isn’t ready to talk,” she said.

Overall, however, schools should do the things they always do.

“I have had a lot of feelings recently that these times are just extraordinary. We use words like unprecedented. We use words like record-breaking,” Hodges said. “And it can be tempting to think that what children need, in unusual or extraordinary times, is unusual and extraordinary.” But schools should concentrate on caring for kids’ bodies and brains in their usual ways, she says.

Even if schools feel compelled to create spaces for children to talk, they should also fortify opportunities for children to play, be creative, and feel grounded, in activities like sports, pottery, music, dance, and sensory play. They can promote regulation and connection to cultural practices, she said, channeling her colleague Dr. Robin Young, the chief psychologist at the Indian Health Board of Minneapolis, who often works with elementary school students.

Schools don’t always have to find all-new programs or strategies for times like these, but they can invest in staff well-being so that staff can keep showing up for kids and schools can keep doing what they do well.

Much of that has since been dismantled without a clear replacement, leaving us to reckon with the social and economic costs. This matters because relationships are not optional—they are foundational to how humans thrive.

It’s also something that virtually all Americans agree is of top importance. We feel better when we are connected, supported, and part of something larger than ourselves. Yet across the country, people are feeling more isolated than ever. Nearly one in three Americans say they feel lonely every week, and trust in neighbors, coworkers, and institutions has fallen to record lows.

New data from the US Chamber of Connection’s Six Points of Connection 2026 report paints an even clearer picture. More than half of Americans report patterns associated with higher vulnerability to loneliness and disconnection. Only 42 percent say they have a neighbor they could count on in an emergency. Twenty-seven percent lack reliable social support, and 45 percent say they do not trust others.

This is not because people no longer care about connection. Most people want more of it. They just do not know where to start, or they do not want to start alone.

At the same time, volunteering, one of the most enduring ways people have built trust and solidarity, is also underused. While more than 90 percent of Americans say they want to volunteer, only about one in four actually do, often due to a lack of free time and inflexible volunteering schedules.

The gap is not just about time. It is about how we design opportunities for people to come together.

Many volunteer activities focus on essential tasks, like serving food, supporting events, tutoring, or helping with logistics. These efforts make a real difference. But they are not always set up to help people connect with one another in meaningful ways. The human moments that turn service into belonging often depend on chance.

The good news is that when service is designed with connection in mind, volunteering becomes one of the most powerful tools we have for strengthening well-being, trust, and resilience.

The habits that help connection take root

Connection isn’t just a feeling. It’s something we build through everyday habits, not one-off moments.

Drawing from decades of research across psychology, public health, and sociology, the Six Points of Connection identify six ordinary, place-based behaviors that play a foundational role in helping individuals and communities thrive:

• Neighborhood contact: knowing and interacting with the people around you;
• Community of identity: belonging to a group shaped by shared experience or values;
• One-on-one relationships: nurturing close friendships over time;
• Third places: spending time in social spaces outside home and work;
• Community of play: gathering around shared activities that bring joy;
• Community service: showing up for others and the broader community.

These aren’t personality traits or special skills. They’re habits that anyone can practice.

Yet participation in many of these habits is surprisingly low. Fewer than half of Americans report regular neighborhood contact. Only about a quarter regularly spend time in third places or engage in community service. These gaps help explain why so many people feel disconnected and unsure how to rebuild a sense of belonging.

At a recent national convening hosted by the US Chamber of Connection, leaders from business, government, academia, and community organizations came together around a shared focus: community service. They explored how volunteering, when thoughtfully designed, can help people reconnect not just to causes, but to one another.

A shared insight emerged. Volunteering may be one of the most scalable ways we have to rebuild the muscle of social connection, if we design it for relationships as one of the core outcomes.

Designing volunteering for connection

Research shows that close relationships grow through three key ingredients: consistency, positivity, and vulnerability. Volunteering can naturally create all three, but only when experiences make space for them.

In many traditional settings, people volunteer side by side without ever really meeting. They complete tasks efficiently, then go their separate ways.

Connection-centered volunteering brings the human moments to the foreground. This might include:

• Working in small groups where conversation can unfold;
• Partnering people rather than assigning solo tasks;
• Sharing a meal or taking a few minutes to reflect together;
• Mixing people across roles, ages, or backgrounds;
• Inviting brief storytelling, such as why someone chose to show up;
• Creating opportunities for reciprocity, where everyone both gives and receives.

These choices do not change what people are doing. They change how it feels to do it together. When connection is intentional, service becomes something people return to, not just something they check off.

Connection as a cause

Many of today’s challenges, from loneliness and burnout to polarization and declining trust, share a common root. They are shaped by how disconnected many people feel in everyday life.

This is where the idea of “connection as a cause” comes in. It means treating social connection not as something that happens by accident, but as something we can intentionally build and sustain. For too long, connection has been essential but invisible, assumed rather than supported. Recognizing connection as a cause means valuing and reinforcing the everyday actions and social structures that help people feel welcome, known, and part of a community.

In practice, this is often informal and looks familiar:

• Checking in on a neighbor;
• Hosting a small gathering or shared meal;
• Starting a walking group or social club;
• Helping someone new find their footing;
• Showing up consistently in a park, library, or community space.

One example of this type of community service is the Welcome Committee, a growing national volunteer effort organized by the US Chamber of Connection. It modernizes earlier forms of civic service by training volunteers on the frontlines of their local communities to help people feel known and included in their neighborhoods through simple, regular, and intentional acts of connection.

These acts have always been foundational to community life. What has changed is the time people once spent doing this. Over the last few decades, that everyday civic labor has quietly dissolved, and now needs to be revived.

There is a growing opportunity to re-activate volunteers across the country to rebuild the muscle of social connection and welcome people back into community. Not to create something new but to restore what once held communities together and design it for the world we live in now.

Measuring connection

For a long time, volunteering has been measured by hours served or tasks completed. Those metrics matter, but they miss something essential: whether people felt more connected when they left than when they arrived.

Measuring connection does not take humanity out of service. It helps bring it into focus. It helps people choose experiences that meet their social needs, and it helps organizations notice and support what truly builds trust and belonging.

It also broadens what counts as service. Acts like block parties, walking groups, community meals, and social clubs can be formally recognized and encouraged. When trust deepens or people bridge across difference, connection itself becomes the service.

Tools like the Social Connection Index help make this visible. They give communities a shared way to understand how people are connecting and where support is needed, without turning relationships into something mechanical.

Why this matters for well-being

Building everyday connection isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s one of the strongest predictors of longevity, happiness, mental and physical health, and resilience during stress.

Volunteering sits at the intersection of purpose, empathy, and shared effort. Research consistently shows that people who volunteer experience higher life satisfaction, lower loneliness, and stronger social ties.

In places like New York City, volunteers who served together across differences reported higher levels of trust and empathy toward people with different life experiences. When service becomes a regular practice rather than a one-time event, it helps communities weather challenges and recover together.

Most people want more connection. They just do not know where to start, or they do not want to start alone. You might begin by looking for community service opportunities that invite interaction, making it a small but regular part of your routine, or showing up with someone you want to grow closer to. Or you might gather people around a shared interest, share a meal and conversation, or spend meaningful time with an older neighbor.

What matters is not doing it perfectly. What matters is showing up, together.

Dorriene’s partner, Diane, passed away in 2020. They’d been together for 40 years, and Dorriene was devastated. She couldn’t bear to stay in the house where Diane had died. She called her sister and asked, “Can you come get me?” The two retirees now live in Jo’s house with Jo’s granddaughter Breelyn and great granddaughter Soulann (a.k.a. baby Soso).

These days, Dorriene spends most of her time alone in her bedroom. When she emerges to interact with Jo and the rest of the family, the house fills with bickering and what Breelyn describes as “bad energy.” While Jo and Dorriene are physically closer than ever, they’re struggling to bridge the emotional distance. They recognize the impact they’re having on the household, but they don’t know what to do.

That’s where Queer Eye’s Fab Five come in. They’ve arrived in Washington D.C., ready to help Jo and Dorriene find their way back to each other or, at the very least, to create a more peaceful environment for baby Soso. Certainly, over the course of ten seasons, the show hasn’t always gotten it right on set or on screen. But in this episode, as the Queer Eye team works to help Jo and Dorriene reconnect, they demonstrate how transformative (and fun!) bridging practices can be when they’re implemented skillfully. Here are four research-backed best practices for bridging differences, all beautifully modeled in this episode.



1. Focus on common goals and keep trying

Jo and Dorriene disagree on a stunning array of topics–what to watch on TV, how to clean, and what kind of childhood they had growing up in a family with 18 kids. Queer Eye’s resident food and wine expert Antoni Porowski notices one thing the sisters can agree on: their mom’s pineapple upside down cake was delicious.

This rare moment of consensus sparks a fruitful idea (pun intended). Antoni surprises Jo and Dorriene with an outing to a restaurant where, in the kitchen, he has assembled all of the supplies one needs to bake a pineapple upside down cake. The sisters jump to it, explaining how much brown sugar to use (more than you think!) and whether to use milk or pineapple juice in the recipe (juice!).

The sisters work together seamlessly. There’s laughter. The jokes are gentler than the sharp barbs they exchanged in earlier scenes. Antoni notices the growing warmth between them and he casually floats a more meaningful question: When did you used to eat this cake growing up? Stories emerge. The conversation gets deeper.

In this scene, Antoni, Jo, and Dorriene show us the power of a common goal. Dorriene and Jo both wanted to make a pineapple upside down cake, and that common goal was enough to get them working together. As we explain in the Bridging Differences Playbook, a shared objective can help move us away from disagreements and toward collective action. We don’t need to agree on everything in order to make something happen. And actively engaging in making something happen can help warm us up to one another. It can also result in a delicious cake!

One of the other key aspects of the experience that Antoni facilitated is its repeatability. As social psychologists Linda Tropp and Trisha Dehrone note in Cultivating Contact: A Guide to Building Bridges and Meaningful Connections Between Groups, research shows it takes time and repeated interaction for members of different groups to build trust.

Antoni directly acknowledges that reality. With the sisters out of earshot, he tells the camera that he’s not trying to change a decades-old dynamic in one afternoon. If Jo and Dorriene keep cooking and baking together on a regular basis, their relationship will continue to shift. Before Antony’s time with Jo and Dorriene ends, the sisters decide what they’ll bake next–a quiche.

2. Give your perspective

Dorriene and Jo were born and raised in D.C. and they have a lot of family around. Jo is close with the family. Dorriene is not and hasn’t been for many years. Dorriene’s not up for something as simple as watching TV in the living room with Jo, Breelyn, and Soso, and she’s certainly not interested in attending larger family functions. Jo can see that Dorriene is lonely, and doesn’t understand why she won’t just leave the past in the past and come be part of the family again.

The Fab Five get it, though. They know it’s possible to grow up in the same house with someone and feel like your hearts are a million miles apart. For many of us queer folks, the feeling is all too familiar. We can share geography, skin color, faith, even the same parents and still not share a sense of belonging.

In an effort to build more understanding between the two sisters, Karamo Brown, the show’s culture expert, facilitates an experience that we at the GGSC call perspective-giving.

Karamo brings Dorriene and Jo to the D.C. History Center where they’re greeted by Ashley Bamfo, treasurer of the Rainbow History Project. As part of their mission to collect, preserve, and promote D.C.’s LGBTQ+ history, the Rainbow History Project maintains an archive of oral histories. Karamo reveals that he has brought Dorriene here to have her oral history recorded. He has brought Jo here to witness. He explains:

Dorriene, your story touched me because–to hear you say that you were in a relationship for 40 years–as younger queer people, the only reason I knew that I could find love and I could have somebody is because I see models like you. I want to make sure you have a chance to tell your story. I want us to document it because it’s important. As long as this country is around, they know Dorriene’s story.

While this episode’s primary focus is helping Jo and Dorriene build a stronger connection with one another, Karamo is also making it clear that he wants Dorriene to feel a sense of belonging to the queer community. Dorriene and her partner Diane belong to D.C. queer history. They are part of this long, storied tradition of love and resistance, and it’s important that this truth is preserved in the archives.

With all of this context set, Dorriene starts talking. We only see portions of what was surely a much longer experience, but even in excerpts, her stories do big work.

Dorriene tearfully opens up about “the things you had to do just to be loved.” How it felt to sneak around and keep secrets. How it felt to be treated poorly by their parents when she saw how much love and care her siblings got. She says: 


I remember my mom looking at me with such hatred. Like I did something wrong, you know. That she was ashamed of me. That I wasn’t part of the family. That I wasn’t her daughter. That hurt. [...] That’s why when I left home at 14, I never looked back. And I moved in with a drag queen!

She recounts the day she met Diane in their apartment building’s laundry room and the day, less than three weeks later, when she moved in with her! (They lived in the same building. No U-Haul required.) She even talks about the time she married David, one of her gay male friends, to protect him from getting kicked out of the military.

Dorriene shares her perspective, and Jo listens. Boy, does she listen.…

3. Listen with empathy

Throughout the oral history interview, Karamo and Ashley model a bridging practice that we call listening with empathy. Karamo and Ashley ask thoughtful, open-ended questions, but never interrupt. They affirm Dorriene’s experiences and feelings. They let themselves be moved, expressing empathy.

In this artfully edited scene, we get to watch Jo learning from Karamo and Ashley’s example. Instead of lecturing or offering solutions, as we’ve watched her do in the past, Jo stays curious. She listens. She opens herself up to Dorriene’s pain. When she does eventually speak, she expresses empathy. She says, wiping tears from her cheeks, “It hurts. I’m not saying it to take from you. I’m hurting for you.”

Dorriene has a strong response to receiving empathetic listening. She softens towards Jo and she’s willing to engage in deeper perspective-giving. She even shares information about her childhood that she had never revealed to Jo before. Dorriene’s reaction to being listened to is a response that’s reflected in the research. Studies show that when we listen to someone with empathy, it increases trust between us and helps them feel less guarded. They’re more likely to want to take the risk of connecting with us across our differences when they feel that we’ve listened to them and understand them. 

Everyone responds to different expressions of empathetic listening, but some combination of the following actions often helps people feel listened to:

• Be curious: Are you asking questions to encourage the other person to elaborate on his thoughts or feelings? Curiosity shows that you’re interested in what the person has to say and that you care.
• Be present: Are you actively engaged in the conversation, refraining from passing judgment, preventing interruptions, staying mentally focused, and avoiding the urge to give advice? 
• Affirm feelings/intentions: How are you affirming the feelings or opinions of the speaker? Do your best to try to find what you are able to affirm, so it doesn’t come across as insincere. 
• Express empathy: Why does the speaker feel or think the way they do? Think less about how you would feel or think in their situation, and more about them. 
• Use engaged body language: Are you using your body language and gestures to convey active listening?

It’s the pairing of perspective-giving and empathetic listening that prepares Dorriene to make a big leap at the end of the episode. 

4. Shift power imbalances

As even the most casual Queer Eye viewer knows, each episode ends with a big community celebration. Everyone gets to ooh and ahh over the makeover and the home renovations, but the real purpose is for the episode’s hero to be loved on and appreciated by their people. This episode’s final celebration certainly doesn’t disappoint. Karamo works with Jo’s granddaughter Breelyn to throw a family reunion at a gay bar, complete with a drag show.

When Karamo and Breelyn tell Jo and Dorriene what they’ve arranged, the sisters are delighted. Karamo is sure to clarify that they’ve only invited family members who affirm Dorriene’s humanity. He says, “The family members that love you and support you are there waiting for you.” We don’t see any of the pushback we might have expected from Dorriene. She’s surprised, but excited. At the bar, she and Jo seem to have a fantastic time with their given and chosen family.

In selecting this location and this form of entertainment, the show does something that researchers Linda Tropp and Trisha Dehrone characterize as a best practice for facilitating effective contact between groups. They shifted a power imbalance. In Tropp and Dehrone’s discussion of how organizations can design opportunities for contact between members of different groups, they write:

[W]e want to make sure that we envision and structure contact programs in ways that allow people from all groups to contribute as equal partners. [...] We can reinforce the equalizing nature of contact programs further by acknowledging and addressing ways in which broader societal inequalities might shape people’s participation in contact programs. [...] Rather than ignoring these differences, try to envision how you can address them directly as you consider what it will take for people from different groups to participate in your program.

It’s long been Jo’s dream to reunite Dorriene with their extended family, to bring her into the community that Jo treasures. It appears as though, with all of the progress they make over the course of the week, Dorriene might be ready to connect with more people. But it’s likely still a stretch for her. With an awareness of that reality, the Queer Eye team chooses a physical location and an activity that feel like home to Dorriene. She gets to regain some social power by being in that setting. By hosting the reunion at a gay bar and featuring drag performers, the crew addressed the impact that a broader social inequity had on Dorriene.

The Queer Eye team recognized the need to address this power imbalance because they understand that while the rift between Jo and Dorriene is personal, it’s also situated within a larger cultural context that includes systems of power.

One of the most noteworthy elements of the episode is the way the show invites the viewer to grow this understanding, as well. The episode is edited in such a way that interpersonal scenes are always connected to one another with references to the structural forces at play. Archival footage cut throughout the episode, paired with short, direct-to-camera interstitial commentary from the hosts, situate Jo and Dorriene’s personal stories within the contexts of D.C.’s civil rights movement, the gay liberation movement, and feminism.

By the time we get to the final party, the viewer has had an opportunity to repeatedly see and hear how Jo and Dorriene’s stories (and the differences that divided them) have both interpersonal and structural elements.

Healing can also happen in our connections to individuals and to movements. Being connected to histories and movements can help us feel less alone. It can connect us to resources that foster bridging, as well. As Don Martin notes in his book, Where Did Everybody Go?: Why We’re Lonely but Not Alone, the sites that nurtured movements of collective liberation–like gay bars and Black barber shops–can be powerful, effective locations for cultivating belonging more broadly. That’s not to say that every queer or Black space should be compelled to become a site for bridging work. Bridging is not everyone’s responsibility or calling. But for communities who are interested in connecting across differences, it’s nice to remember that these sites have a lot to offer, not least of which is FUN.

Practicing bridging differences can certainly make us more patient, curious, and courageous people. It can help us create a more loving and just world. The Diggs sisters and the Fab Five remind us that it can also bring more joy into our lives. As Dorriene says before going to the family reunion, “We had so much fun this week.”

Explore more keys to well-being with educators working for the greater good in our winter/spring communities of practice. Learn more and register here.

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While the advent of more accessible psychological principles and techniques can indeed further our own self-understanding, often popular media erroneously simplifies these complex theories. Additionally, family estrangement, known as going no contact, is climbing and becoming more socially acceptable. The deeply painful decision to distance ourselves from loved ones may indeed be warranted on occasion, even though it comes with ambiguous grief.

As a self-love researcher and psychotherapist, this cacophony of discourse alarms me because it risks harming people’s personal growth and exacerbating loneliness and disconnection. Some supposed self-loving acts, when administered without nuance, may actually encourage people to avoid hard conversations that could have deepened relationships and provided valuable insight. Moreover, when we do the difficult work to overcome discomfort with others, rather than dismissing behavior as toxic, we gain perspective on people different from us and make vital connections that build a more cohesive social fabric.

Human nature demands that we love; in fact, love periodically tops the most hashtagged words on social media. Part of self-love is strengthening our own understanding of why we are the way we are, of our internal emotions, bodily responses, needs like self-attunement, and the thoughts we tell ourselves. It helps us discern the accuracy of our inner monologue that echoes our beliefs, helpful and unhelpful, about how we perceive ourselves, others, and the world.

What self-love looks like online

My research examining the captions of approximately 188,000 Instagram and Twitter posts with the use of topic modeling demonstrated that #selflove was used in posts discussing four main themes:

• self-acceptance (e.g., self-validation and self-compassion),
• well-being and mental health (e.g., strategies to improve wellness and coping during hard times),
• self-care (e.g., baths, face masks), and
• engagement with others (e.g., greetings to the community, seeking followers on social media).

In the past five years of this research, I’ve largely come to see true self-love as having a relationship with oneself to ultimately further connection with others. When we love ourselves more, we cultivate trust in ourselves and make choices that are aligned with our values, which leads to more whole-hearted relationships.

Yet misconceptions about self-love prevail.

One is that self-love’s essence is selfish, and relatedly, capitalistic, promoted by a $500 billion U.S. wellness industry and an estimated $2 trillion market globally. My social media research found self-love to be used synonymously with self-care, the most hashtagged word in the #selflove posts, with some showcasing images of manicures and frappuccinos. There is a mass market of products seeking to soothe our discomforts, and a plethora of self-optimization apps that perpetuate the idea we are a problem to be fixed or that we must strive for more.

Not only are the myriad of self-care products and outlets affordable to only a certain socioeconomic class, we are seeing this idea of self-care being radically confused with self-love; replacing our social connection with solo retreats and ice baths, to name a few, and risking the depletion of our conflict resolution skills. We may then see the solution solely as the individual’s burden of responsibility, which may also lead to a sector of society less engaged in creating, improving, and overhauling larger community and societal systems. Taking steps to care for ourselves is essential and needs to include our ability to relate to, connect with, and grow alongside others.

A second misconception about self-love is that it is flowery, soft, potentially even weak. While self-love can look like soothing ourselves when we are stressed (e.g. binge watching Netflix), caring for ourselves also means taking responsibility for our lives. Changing our behaviors is hard because we are getting a benefit from our current actions—whether they serve us in the long term or not—otherwise we would not continue them. Consider wanting to keep the peace, known to some as people-pleasing. While we account for others’ needs, we disregard our own and prevent ourselves from fully showing up.

Ultimately, people-pleasing protects us from uncertainty and discomfort that others may be upset, at the cost of personal growth and authentic relationships. When examining 902 #selflove and alcohol and drug recovery social media posts, my team found that taking responsibility was one of the most frequent topics. Cultivating self-reflection and awareness, with compassion and curiosity, helps us understand which behaviors are serving us and which are not.

What self-love can be

Rather than self-love as a form of self-preservation to facilitate more connection, social cohesion, and collective activism, I see self-love being misunderstood as a protective blockade.

For example, the idea of “protecting my peace” has the intent of preserving one’s emotional labor but may have the impact of disguising our own discomfort and ability to take risks–with the consequence of stopping others from getting inside and seeing us. At a time of rising geopolitical conflict and domestic policies causing discord and marginalization, it’s natural to seek predictability and retreat from conflict. But it’s an illusion that reducing our connections provides safety. Signs that we may be falling into this trap include: telling ourselves a story about a person or situation and continuing to accrue supporting evidence without checking the facts; letting mind loops run rampant (rumination); and all-or-nothing thinking.

Instead, when a loved one doesn’t text us back or says a harsh word, consider a switch to curiosity rather than rush to judgement. If not, we may end up losing out on intimacy: knowing someone else more deeply, having them know us, and knowing ourselves more authentically. We are in a moment that calls for clarity and strategies for loving ourselves while still being in relationship with others. To move toward this goal, we can take steps that include the following.

Use sensory and cognitive supports to balance the strong emotions triggered when we feel discomfort, want to disengage, or experience a conflict–internal and external. These may be breathing techniques or hand on heart, or cognitive ones such as journaling to express our thoughts unfiltered and non-judgmentally. These techniques remind us: “In this moment, I am safe.” They teach us that we have the capacity to sit in discomfort. Play with various techniques to find which ones work best for you. If you notice that your nervous system is still struggling to feel safe in the present moment, seek out a trusted loved one, a trauma-informed somatic practitioner (e.g. breathwork), or an EMDR therapist.

Create space to decide how to proceed. When in a conflict, we can ask ourselves questions like:

• What is my first instinct when I think of this conflict? Is it a relationship blocker, such as one of the the four horsemen identified by psychologists John and Julie Gottman: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, contempt?
• Have I asked the other person about what has transpired and been assertive so they are aware of my needs?
• How might I have contributed to this conflict, and do I need to make amends for my part?
• Have they made efforts to repair with me in the past, or if this is the first conflict, do I think they have the potential to make amends and repair with me?
• What will the pitfalls be if I decide to end this relationship?

Asking questions and determining the extent to engage with the other person is courageous and gives us a sense of empowerment during uncertainty.

Get curious about our needs. This can be in the moment based on our current emotion or more long-term related to our values. For the latter, Acceptance Commitment Therapy provides worksheets online that help identify our values. A common challenge can be to determine whether a value is truly yours, or if you are selecting it because you think you “should” based on family or societal expectations.

When you are unsure how you are feeling and what your needs might be, use HALT, taken from recovery communities, to extract what may be bothering you. First, pause; then ask yourself: am I Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Or Tired?

If we are angry, we then know that a value of ours has likely been challenged or violated. It calls on us to acknowledge an underlying emotion (e.g. hurt, fear), an unmet need, and advocate for ourselves (e.g. having a conversation). If we are lonely, connecting with ourselves or with someone can help. If we are tired, then resting may bring ease. (A caution: sometimes tiredness can mask loneliness, so if you take a nap and you’re not rested, perhaps loneliness is the culprit.) Understanding our needs and acting from our values allows us to be clear with others and ultimately, connect more effectively.

Approach conflicts or decisions with a wise mind. Drawing from Dialectical Behavior Therapy, wise mind harmonizes rational mind and emotion mind. Emotion mind says, for example, “I’m hurt and I want them to feel hurt too”. This can lead us to take revenge, ultimately extracting more of our own emotional labor. Rational mind may say: “It only happened a few times; they didn’t mean it” or “The moment has passed and there’s not a good time to bring it up”. This can dismiss or invalidate our experience.

Instead, wise mind says: “I’m hurt and I’m strong enough to determine how my loved one views this situation.” Often when someone bothers us, annoys us, or angers us, the story in our mind continues to build, yet we don’t feel that we have the capacity or skills to actually check the facts with the other person. Wise mind allows us to take action from a balanced place.

Use assertive communication. This method respects yourself (not being passive) and the other person (not being aggressive). It demands that you risk to express yourself vulnerably, share how you’re feeling while making an ask of them for something you need, without knowing if they will be able to meet the request.

Setting boundaries is often pitched as a common solution nowadays when we feel wronged. A boundary represents our own values and needs, and is followed by action aligned with them. It’s a mistake to jump to cutting someone out of our lives or controlling them with rules on how to engage with us, prior to getting clear about our own needs. There are indeed abusive and unsafe situations that warrant rules of engagement or estrangement. Assertive conversation helps in the times when we are avoiding the hard conversation.

The DEARMAN framework is a useful tool to construct our ask: Describe, Express, Ask/Assert, Reinforce, (be) Mindful, Appear Confident, and Negotiate. This is done in the spirit of bringing two people closer together.
Examples of an Ask include:

• “When I ask for a time-out during our hard conversations, could you please let me have 20 minutes to myself and trust that I’ll come back to you to resume when I’m ready?”
• “Several times a week, could we share 30 minutes of uninterrupted time together in the morning to connect?” (Typically with a live-in partner.)
• “Would you consider going to therapy?”
• “Could you help me understand the reason that when I invite you to do (insert activity) with me, you seem to decline most times?”

When preparing to assert a need, it can help to ask ourselves several questions:

• How might having a conversation with them about the hurt bring us closer?
• Even though I am unsure how a conversation with them will go, am I willing to take a risk with the potential that it may go better than I can imagine?
• If the conversation does not go well, how can I care for myself?

Ensure you cope ahead and have a plan already in place to care for yourself when broaching hard conversations.

Strategies like these can help us avoid confusion amid messages about setting boundaries, prioritizing ourselves, and protecting our peace. Practiced intentionally, self-love can bring us closer to ourselves and one another. If we can sidestep the understandable tendency to disengage or avoid hard conversations, strategies that allow us to be seen and see others are sometimes the very medicine that our nervous systems need.

These interactions matter. They are where trust is built (or quietly eroded). They are also where school leaders’ nervous systems are most tested. Over time, the cumulative emotional weight of these moments can leave even experienced leaders feeling depleted, reactive, or disconnected. Many school leaders are left asking questions that rarely get named out loud: How do I stay grounded and compassionate in the moment, recover afterward, and continue leading well without burning out?

Research on mindfulness and self-compassion offers a surprisingly practical answer. Far from being a “soft” add-on, self-compassion is a skill that helps leaders regulate stress, stay present in hard moments, and model emotional steadiness for their communities. It allows leaders to stay present without hardening, to recover without withdrawing, and to model resilience without perfection. When leaders practice self-compassion in real time, they shape school cultures where care is embedded rather than added on. Where challenge is met with steadiness. Where humanity is not a liability, but a strength.

Here are three evidence-informed practices that school leaders can use to stay grounded during tough conversations, recover without carrying stress forward, and quietly cultivate a culture of care.

1. Staying grounded in the moment

When a conversation becomes tense, the body reacts instantly. The heart rate rises. The jaw tightens. Thoughts narrow. This is not a failure of leadership; it’s biology. The nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The challenge is not eliminating this reaction, but responding to it with awareness rather than being swept away by it. Here’s a simple grounding practice that might help you to do that:

• Feel your feet on the floor. Bringing attention to physical contact helps orient the nervous system to the present moment.
• Take one slow breath, extending the exhale. A longer exhale activates the body’s calming response.
• Silently name the experience. Try phrases like, “This is a hard moment,” or “This is stress.” Research by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer shows that naming difficulty supports emotional regulation and reduces reactivity.
• Reconnect with your values. Before responding, ask yourself: What matters most here: being right, or being steady and kind?

This pause may take only a few seconds, but it can shift the tone of an entire interaction. Over time, these micro-moments of awareness become a leadership strength, allowing you to respond from intention rather than impulse.

2. Recovering without carrying it forward

Most leaders move directly from one emotionally charged interaction to the next, leaving no space for recovery. Yet recovery is where resilience is built.

Without it, stress accumulates. Conversations replay in the mind. Tension lingers in the body. Over weeks and months, this unprocessed strain contributes to exhaustion and burnout. Here’s a brief recovery practice:

• Notice what remains. Tight shoulders, shallow breath, looping thoughts.
• Acknowledge the difficulty with kindness. “That was hard.” “Anyone in my role would feel this.”
• Offer a gesture of care. Placing a hand on the heart or taking a few slow steps outside can help activate the body’s soothing system.
• Consciously release the moment. Imagine setting the conversation aside before moving on to the next task.

Research on emotional schemas suggests that how we interpret stress, whether as evidence of failure or as part of being human, shapes our resilience. These small rituals send a different message: Struggle is part of leadership, not a sign I’m doing it wrong.

3. Modeling compassionate leadership

Self-compassion doesn’t stay contained within the leader. It spreads.

Schools often mirror the emotional tone of their leadership. When leaders are reactive or overwhelmed, staff feel it. When leaders are grounded and self-aware, others can exhale.

Modeling compassionate leadership doesn’t require new initiatives or extra time. It shows up in small, visible choices:

• Opening staff meetings with a brief moment of grounding.
• Naming tension gently: “This feels like a charged conversation, let’s slow it down.”
• Sharing, without oversharing, that you use simple practices to reset after hard moments.

Research on compassionate leadership consistently links these behaviors to higher trust, lower burnout, and greater psychological safety. When leaders embody calm and care, they give others permission to do the same.

4. Learning from the moment

Self-compassion is not only soothing and supportive, but it’s also clarifying. After you’ve grounded and recovered, reflection becomes possible. That’s when you can ask questions like: What activated me in that conversation? or How did I respond, and how would I like to respond next time?

This kind of reflection transforms stress into insight. It builds emotional literacy and deepens self-trust: I can handle hard things and keep learning.

Leaders can extend this reflective stance to their teams by inviting gentle questions such as, “What did you learn about yourself this week?” These moments strengthen connection and normalize shared humanity.

So, the next time a difficult conversation tightens your chest or speeds your breath, try pausing. Feel your feet. Take one slow exhale. Remind yourself: This is hard, and I can meet it with care.

That quiet choice, to slow down and respond kindly, has the power to change not just how you lead, but how your entire community feels in your presence.

It seems like enlightenment might be slightly more attainable without the daily annoyances of traffic, parking tickets, taxes, and endless commercials. For most of us, however, the realities of living in a society will naturally disrupt our peace and our responsibilities come with real burdens. Thus, mindfulness and other contemplative practices must exist within the context of others—of a society.

However, the way mindfulness is taught and described today often seems to reinforce an individualistic and secular conception of contemplative practices. This makes sense when clinicians like me hope to empower the individual to see the profound agency in their lives to make healthier choices. If you want to control anxiety, it might be easier to teach an individual to practice mindfulness to promote adaptive responding, rather than try to control the endless variables that can cause anxious spiraling or hope for some far-off social transformation that will make inner peace inevitable. But is the point of mindfulness and other contemplative practices (as we teach them in medicine) really to benefit yourself only?

This question has ignited healthy debate across various disciplines. Even within psychology, the way we study and measure mindfulness tends to reduce it down to facets such as observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judging and a non-reactivity of one’s own experiences. Notably, the five most popular mindfulness scales don’t exactly include compassion or other-orientation as a facet. But if mindfulness in the scientific-medical context is derived from the Buddhist philosophies, how did the scientists so clearly miss the relational aspects of mindfulness?

For instance, does it matter if an individual practices mindfulness but is a racist, xenophobe, or sexist? Is it possible to have a mindful society that hates its neighbors, chooses war over peace, and division over unity? The science of contemplative research has recently turned more toward exploring these kinds of questions about the relational aspects of mindfulness and other contemplative practices. The timing couldn’t be more important as society feels the intense burden of social division and an undeniable rise of authoritarianism.

Previous studies have shown that those who score high in social dominance orientation also have favorable views towards authoritarianism, sexism, racism, and xenophobia—to name a few—and less favorable views of traits like empathy. Indeed, empathy is an increasingly important societal topic and has even entered mainstream political discourse. For example, Charlie Kirk, an American conservative figure, once famously argued that “empathy is a made-up, New Age term that does a lot of damage.”

What is the relationship between these practices, traits, and orientations? Previous studies have routinely found that mindfulness and self-compassion appeared to be positively related to empathy. It seems intuitive that these intrapersonal practices could broaden to interpersonal attitudes. Could contemplative practices such as mindfulness or self-compassion not only affect empathy, but also broader social orientations?

This question motivated our latest study recently released in the journal of Mindfulness. Along with my talented collaborator Polina Beloboradova from the Virginia Commonwealth University, our exploratory study aimed to understand whether individualistic contemplative practices such as self-compassion were related to interpersonal or broader social attitudes, such as empathy and egalitarianism, or its opposite, authoritarianism.

Empathy and social dominance

Our exploratory study gathered two large groups of participants and asked them questions related to self-compassion, empathy, and a construct known as social dominance orientation, which measures the generalized belief that people are either equal or that some groups are inherently more dominant.

We understood the critical shortcomings of only studying mindfulness for its relational aspects, so we focused on self-compassion as a trait, which has only recently become a fascinating subject of psychology. More than “self-love,” self-compassion considers the relationship toward oneself. It includes aspects of mindfulness and self-kindness, as well as common humanity: the belief that experiencing suffering is normal in the human condition.

We used a statistical method known as network analysis. Think of a map that shows how major airports connect to smaller airports and how disruptions in one airport might affect the network of connections. The study grouped and visualized the variables based on the strengths of those associations. By doing so, we were able to reveal the complex network of influence of these variables. We ran the analysis across two samples, one before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the other after. We leveraged the once-in-a-lifetime unplanned timing of the pandemic to investigate whether the profound social disruption of COVID affected social beliefs. A strong body of evidence supports how threats and societal distress tends to negatively affect social attitudes.

Despite the differences of social contexts, our results indicated the same pattern where self-compassion was related to social dominance orientation, but only through empathy. Of the two components of empathy we studied, emotional concern appeared to have a stronger relationship to social dominance orientation than the cognitive component. The amount of emotional concern was a stronger predictor of how you perceive and care about other groups of people. The study found that higher levels of self-compassion and empathy predicted lower levels of authoritarianism, whereas low self-compassion and empathy predicted higher levels of authoritarianism.

Compassion and egalitarianism

These novel findings give theoretical support to how intrapersonal traits such as self-compassion are linked to broader social attitudes through empathy. Simply said, there is some relationship between the amount of self-compassion, empathy, and egalitarianism or belief that people are deserving of equality. Importantly, the study was unable to determine the direction of these influences, so it would be premature to claim that self-compassion definitively affects authoritarianism through empathy.

Our hope is that these insights inspire other researchers to test whether self-compassion interventions, such as the Mindful Self-Compassion program which teaches individuals to develop their capacity for self-compassion over an eight-week course, could be a fundamental aspect of social-emotional learning that could make individuals more tolerant to all groups of people. Researchers could examine whether self-compassion interventions incidentally affect empathy and egalitarian views over the course by including these measures before, during, and following the intervention. 

The potential impact of those follow-up studies could be profound. If self-compassion could be improved as a core element of therapy or social-emotional learning in schools, not only would the individual have increased self-compassion, which would mitigate the risk of some mental health challenges and promote well-being, but they might also develop greater empathy and egalitarian beliefs, effectively widening their aperture of concern for others.

By shifting toward a perspective that other people from different backgrounds are worthy of similar compassion and empathy as ourselves, we might be able to effectively address many of society’s ills such as racism, sexism, xenophobia, and the multiple forms of social division. As such, self-compassion as a focus may hold promise for fields like clinical and social psychology that support human flourishing across individual, interpersonal, and societal levels.

The Dalai Lama may have well understood this when he said in The Book of Joy, “It is clear that the only way to truly change our world is through teaching compassion. Our society is lacking an adequate sense of compassion, sense of kindness, and genuine regard for others’ well-being. So now many, many, people who seriously think about humanity all have the same view. We must promote basic human values, the inner values that lie at the heart of who we are as humans.”

This idea just might be something to sit with…not necessarily in a cave.

His book opens with a scene from “The Waiter’s Wife,” a short story published in 1999 by acclaimed writer Zadie Smith.

In the story, friends have a heated political discussion. As Fischer summarizes: “[T]he sudden quarreling…foreshadows the pessimistic feeling of many people today that sharp political differences are not only unresolvable, but they are inescapable, like a spreading wildfire burning out of control.” But in the story, the subtle empathy of a passerby changes everything, and “instead of consigning the other person to hell or false consciousness, [the women] become more willing to share the world with each other even as they disagree.”

Of course, our American story is not as simple as longtime friends who have hit a snag. But Fisher suggests that perhaps fostering that perspective would bring us round again towards the shared emotional journey of a nation of neighbors, if not necessarily friends. Perhaps that perspective could even help us forge friendship out of our clannish feud.

Drawing on the 2018 book How Democracies Die, Fischer highlights “two norms especially important to democracy: mutual toleration, which motivates competing political parties to accept one another as legitimate rivals, and forbearance, which encourages elected leaders to regard the holding of political office as a temporary privilege, not an opportunity to seize power once and for all.” In other words, just as in relationships, democracies founder on zero-sum, win-lose biases.

Fischer calls on distinguished Harvard professor and political theorist Danielle Allen to remind us of “practices of political friendship,” and what de Tocqueville called the “habits of the heart”: “the attitudes toward one another that citizens must cultivate in their daily lives to sustain democratic institutions.” In her 2004 book Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v. Board of Education, Allen invokes the nurture of trust, which is psychologist Erik Erikson’s earliest developmental stage — critical for any relationship. As Allen writes:

Trust is not something that politicians alone can create. It grows only among citizens as they rub shoulders in daily life—in supermarkets, at movie theaters, on buses, at amusement parks, and in airports – and wherever they participate in maintaining an institution, whether a school, a church, or a business.

Allen also chaired an American Academy of Arts and Sciences commission, whose 2020 report recommended significant democratic reforms that would advance the practice of democracy that “is not a battle whose purpose is annihilation of the enemy; it is, if it works, a game of infinite repeat play that includes ever-more participants.”

Advancing this case for a vision of democracy that works, Fischer turns to Robert Mnookin’s Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight. Mnookin, former chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, notes three core democratic values exemplified by Nelson Mandela: receptivity to compromise, readiness to ask for and extend forgiveness, and empathy.

Fischer also draws on Charles Dickens, Percy Bysshe Shelley, philosopher Martha Nussbaum, and others to underscore the importance of “nurturing the underlying relationships, values, and attitudes that sustain democracies.” The most important: becoming a person “on whom nothing is lost,” and cultivating attentiveness to relationships.

As I read these as a psychiatrist, these could be summed up as cultivating love, empathy, and compassion for both self and others, not as a panacea, but as a pathway, to our wellness and the wellness of the whole.

Wholeness must come out of our split, divided consciousnesses. In “The Most Important Writing Exercise I’ve Ever Assigned,” the novelist Rachel Kadish writes that she “asks her students to write down a phrase they find abhorrent”–and then “spend ten minutes writing a monologue in the first person spoken by a fictitious character that includes the offensive statement they have just written.” Fischer writes:

The exercise sparks an unexpected moment of empathy, as the students experience something they previously thought impossible: “repugnance for a behavior or worldview coupled with recognition of shared humanity.”

Kadish’s observations recall an influential 2013 study that suggests empathy increased when readers were emotionally transported by a short story. Emotional transportation is defined as “a convergent process, where all mental systems and capacities become focused on events occurring in the narrative.” Losing ourselves in a story helps us identify with the story’s characters, feel for their journeys, and amplify connection to a bigger, more inclusive picture.

Surely, literature, both fiction and non-fiction, can help us feel for our own shared journeys, grow our ability to mindfully observe unfolding narrative, and help us see that our enemies are not so much people as they are qualities of mind.

Fischer concludes, “If hatred can gather momentum and spread, so can compassion and understanding. The future of our democracy depends on it.”

You’ve tried facilitating talking circles and mediations, but the students aren’t interested. They trust you, but not each other. Plus, their past experience with discipline responses make them equate accountability with punishment, forgiveness with weakness. You can understand why they’re hesitant to trust adults to help them resolve the conflict they’re in. Heading to your car, you can’t help but wonder: “Does it have to be like this? Is there another way?”

This vignette represents the tension that educators often navigate when trying to support students through conflict and/or harm-repair. Often viewed as endpoint destinations, accountability and forgiveness can feel like faraway ideals. When framed as skillsets, however, they can offer relational practices that students will use for the rest of their lives.

The costs of punishment

Conflict and harm in schools aren’t just inconvenient. They strain relationships, undermine learning, and erode safety and belonging. When incidents occur, traditional responses often default to exclusion—detentions, suspensions, expulsions, and even arrests.

Research shows, however, that punitive responses often cause more harm than they do good. For example, research suggests that students who attend schools with higher suspension rates are 15–20 percent more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults and are also less likely to attend a four-year college, with male pupils and students of color being most affected.

These outcomes persist, in large part, because punitive policies and practices prioritize rules and punishment, and do not offer access to relational care or addressing root causes of behavior. As a result, accountability and forgiveness can often look and feel like superficial apologies and forced reconciliation. Accountability often feels synonymous with guilt, shame, and exclusion.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is an alternative: a restorative lens that approaches accountability and forgiveness as relational skills—ones everyone can learn, practice, and deepen together.

A restorative approach

Restorative practices are rooted in Indigenous philosophies and have been adopted by schools worldwide. Their central belief? We are all interconnected. Harm doesn’t just break a rule—it disturbs the social fabric and the well-being of a whole community. Thus the restorative responses aim for healing instead of punishment.

Traditional disciplinary systems view incidents of harm as acts of individual moral failing. A student makes a mistake, and the response is often to shame them and remove them from the group, isolating both the “offender” and those affected by the incident. But by sidelining relationships and focusing on punishment, these systems do little to teach, heal, or promote belonging.

Restorative practices take a different path, asking: What circumstances or unmet needs —internal and external—contributed to this incident? Through this lens of harm, the process shifts from “Who’s at fault?” to “What does healing look like here?” The goal isn’t just to move past the incident, but to attend to every person’s humanity, dignity, and need to heal.

Accountability as daily practice

We often imagine accountability as a one-time act—a confession, an apology, or a consequence. But restorative practices view accountability as a lifelong relational skill. Like any skill, it can be nurtured and developed through intentional practice. Accountability shifts from being an admission of guilt to an opportunity to make right: with self, with others, and with community.

What does meaningful accountability look like? It’s a lifelong practice that is built through everyday reflection and repetition, gradually shaping how we act and relate to others. Accountability is centered on connection, not coercion.

As a skillset, accountability includes:

• Honest self-awareness: Recognizing my actions and their impacts without defining myself by my mistakes.
• Accepting harm: Acknowledging what happened and how it affected others, moving toward empathy and responsibility.
• Identifying patterns and root causes: Understanding personal and systemic factors to make meaningful change.
• Unlearning old behaviors: Noticing harmful triggers and building healthier responses.
• Learning new behaviors: Practicing and reinforcing positive actions, supported by relationships and community.

How accountability fuels forgiveness

Forgiveness is often misunderstood in restorative practices. It’s not a condition of being restorative—and certainly not something that can be pressured or prescribed. Although not a requirement of restorative practices, forgiveness can be a potential outcome of genuine accountability: empathy, growth, and changed behavior.

Restorative justice explores harm, not as isolated incidents, but the surfacing of unmet needs often stemming from trauma, interpersonal dynamics, and broader systemic inequities. As restorative justice practitioner Danielle Sered says, “No one enters violence for the first time by committing it.”

By painting a fuller picture of the conditions in which harm happens, we are often able to develop more empathy for people and situations, which sets the stage for meaningful accountability, dialogue, and repair. Research backs this up. Studies show that when students experience empathy in the aftermath of harm—rather than being shamed or “othered”—they are more likely to take responsibility, repair relationships, and avoid future conflict.

Further, restorative justice believes that, because of the inequitable design of our systems, we all cause harm. Sometimes in small ways, other times in big ways. Acknowledging this and building our own self-awareness and accountability around this idea helps us build understanding that when harm occurs, the self is not the act.

When we can face the harm we’ve caused—without the shame—we can begin to reconnect with our own humanity. And once we can see ourselves with compassion, it becomes easier to truly see and care for others, even those that we’ve caused harm to. We are not the worst things that have happened to us–or that we have done–but we do have a responsibility to tend to the healing of both.

Cultivating accountability skills

In Barbara Coloroso’s discussion of discipline, she argues that punishment and discipline have been conflated—but in fact they mean very different things and have very different outcomes. Discipline, she says, is designed to do four things:


• Show a person what they’ve done without judgement;
• give them as must ownership of the incident or problem that they can handle;
• support them with options for problem-solving and repair; and
• most importantly, leave the dignity of the person intact.

What are some ways this looks like in practice? Consider these concrete steps:

1. Create safe, nonjudgmental spaces

• Ask, “What happened?” and not “Why did you do that?”
• Focus on listening—without interruption or judgment.

2. Reframe accountability and shame

• Shift language from “Who’s to blame?” to “What needs to change—in me, in us, in our school?”
• Normalize making mistakes and emphasize repair over punishment.

3. Address trauma and ownership separately

• Recognize that trauma can help explain actions but does not excuse harm.
• Offer support and guidance but hold space for responsibility.

4. Model honest self-reflection

• Educators and leaders can share times they’ve made mistakes and how they’ve tried to repair them.
• Students notice and emulate adult vulnerability and growth.

5. Practice community repair

• When conflict impacts a group, invite everyone to co-create solutions and agreements.
• For example: group agreements, joint service, or collaborative art marking repair.

6. Broaden the frame

• Ask what systems, conditions, or policies helped create the harm.
• Don’t place all responsibility on individuals; locate accountability in both people and structures.

7. Encourage repetition and small wins

• Treat each circle, check-in, or restorative dialogue as practice.
• Celebrate progress, and don’t expect perfection.

Accountability within a punitive system

Developing meaningful accountability skills is lifelong work that can often feel at-odds with immediate responses or urgent needs from people that have been affected by an incident of harm. As a non-prescriptive and often non-linear process, accountability looks different person to person, relationship to relationship, incident to incident. Trauma, certain belief systems, and lack of relational trust are all examples of barriers to meaningful accountability.

In all of these ways, restorative justice is not an easy fix. While accountability is a goal, healing for people impacted from harm cannot depend exclusively on it. It’s important to remember, as Dr. Fania Davis says, that multiple pathways to healing exist.

A broader challenge to meaningful accountability is the reality that most educators and students are forced to operate inside larger systems, beliefs, and practices that default to punishment. We may not be able to change policy overnight—but we can embody restorative ways of being in our everyday interactions, habits, and decisions. “Ways of being” refers to the overarching values, mindsets, and belief systems that inform one’s actions. At heart, restorative ways of being serve as a compass to guide leaders as they navigate the tension of operating restoratively inside punitive systems.

Instead of searching for “the answer,” ask: “What steps can I try first?” and “How can I center everyone’s humanity as I move forward?” How we make decisions, despite challenging circumstances, can move us closer toward greater alignment with a future world we believe is possible.

Schools as communities of healing

Meaningful accountability isn’t just about fixing the past. It’s also about investing in a future where harm is less likely to occur—by strengthening relationships, networks, and systems of belonging. Mia Mingus, a transformative justice and disability advocate, invites us to ponder:

• What if accountability was hard, but not scary?
• What would it look like if accountability was relational, not connected to exclusion?
• What would forgiveness feel like to be offered authentically, not demanded?
• What if, when harm happened, our default was to gather—to listen, reflect, and repair as a community?

When we offer connection instead of isolation, accountability becomes less about punishment and more about growth. The more we nurture and deepen relationships—the more resources we have for healing when harm occurs. By working to embed these practices, we lay a foundation where everyone—students, educators, parents—can heal, belong, and thrive.

Since then, having a work buddy has always been important to me, which is why I’ve cultivated friendships throughout my work career. Those special friends have helped me maintain my focus and commitment to the job and increase my sense of safety and belonging. When things got rough, I had someone to confide in, get perspective from, and count on in a pinch.

Researchers who study organizational health and friendships agree that having a work buddy is a plus, helping employees and their workplaces function better.

“Everything you do at work will be better when people get along well with each other than when they don’t,” says organizational scholar Stephen Friedman, of York University, Canada. “The things that are difficult become just a little bit easier.”

Why work friends matter

Workplace buddies can function like other friendships, helping us feel emotionally supported when we need it. They can provide instrumental assistance, too, like offering to cover our shift if we’re out sick or taking on some tasks when we’re overwhelmed. And, since we spend so much of our lives at work, having friends on the job can help stave off loneliness, contributing to our health and well-being over time.

Moreover, having a work buddy can also improve workplace culture and organizational health. As Gallup Poll researcher Tom Roth wrote in his book, Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford to Live Without, people who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to have high worker engagement. That higher engagement, in turn, has been tied to all kinds of benefits to the workplace, including less absenteeism, fewer safety issues, longer retention, productivity, and the ability to manage challenges on the job.

That makes friendships on the job a win-win for companies and their employees.

“There’s some really robust research that friendships at work improve workplace outcomes in ways that friendships outside of work might not, like productivity, performance, likelihood of retention, engagement, cohesion on teams,” says Marisa G. Franco, professor at the University of Maryland and author of the bestselling book Platonic.

Franco points to research by BetterUp showing how much companies save when people are connected and feel like they belong. People want to work with someone who’s competent, but also friendly and warm, she says.

“It definitely benefits a workplace a lot if they can be intentional about helping people form connections,” she says. “Their employees will perform better, their teams will be more cohesive, and they’re more likely to retain people.”

The challenges of friends at work

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to make those connections. In fact, Gallup recently reported that one in five employees worldwide feel lonely at work, and fewer people say they have a close friend on the job, especially among younger adults.

One potential factor making it harder to connect is proximity. More of us work remotely now (in part, a consequence of the COVID pandemic), which can decrease opportunities for casual contact between colleagues. If we aren’t bumping into each other at the water cooler or grabbing a spontaneous lunch, it might be harder to jumpstart a friendship.

Workers tend to change jobs more frequently than they used to, too, which can hurt or end a work friendship. People with temporary employment are lonelier, perhaps because they don’t have as much time to develop meaningful friendships.

But those factors don’t tell the whole story. Our own reluctance to prioritize social connection at work can also take a toll. We may worry that it’s not appropriate to make friends at work. Maybe we’ll be dinged by our employer, or maybe our friendship could cause conflicts or affect our productivity.

These concerns are not trivial. Indeed, they are part of the reason not all researchers say work friendships are beneficial. Sometimes, maintaining close relationships takes time and effort, which could mean less of each for reaching organizational goals.

Conflicts between friends at work might also spill out into the workplace. For example, what if you are promoted over your friend—or vice versa? Could that create bad feelings between you and affect your work and your friendship? Quite possibly, says Franco.

“It’s hard for friendship to happen in a hierarchy, because if we’re on the bottom of that hierarchy, we’re not sharing certain things about ourselves; we’re afraid of being judged,” says Franco. “If we’re at the top of the hierarchy, we may question whether that person can bring as much to our lives as we can bring to theirs; so, hierarchy can be really antithetical to friendship.”

On the other hand, she adds, it doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker.

“Don’t assume because of the title change that there’s going to be a change in your dynamic,” she says. You can always talk things through and decide how to be in relationship to these changes, potentially making it work, she adds.

It may be hard to be our true selves at work all of the time, though, she adds. A “guise of professionalism” may mean being less real or vulnerable, impinging on connection. Plus, self-disclosure can make people uncomfortable, perhaps especially in a competitive work environment.

“People [might be] afraid to share something with a colleague that can be used against them in the workplace and affect their professional success,” says Franco.

Workplace friendships can sometimes become insular, as we tend to form bonds with people who are like us in some way—for example, of the same race, ethnicity, generation, gender, etc. If work groups don’t feel welcome to everyone, it could make people feel like they don’t belong. That could create problems, says Franco.

Do benefits outweigh the problems?

Still, these potential issues shouldn’t stop us from having friends at work, says Franco. There are ways to connect across differences, manage emotional conflicts, and do our jobs well while having friends—to everyone’s benefit.

“There’s a misconception sometimes that when someone’s focused on friendships, they’re not focused on their tasks. But honestly, we’re not made to be completely focused on tasks for eight hours a day,” she says. “It’s kind of impossible, and [social] breaks actually make you perform better.”

Friedman agrees, saying that many reasons people give for forgoing work friendships are misguided.

“There is no relationship with another human, friendly or otherwise, that doesn’t contain risks,” he says. “It’s the same thing with workplaces. Like anything in life, [work] friendships have risks but can bring great benefit when they work out.”

Besides, he adds, when so many of us spend a lot of time at work, it’s important to cultivate positive social connection there in order to thrive.

“The idea that I’m going to go to work and cut myself off from having some friends is unreasonable and not a good idea,” he says. “Especially if you’re a working professional, you’re not going to spend nearly as much time at home as you will with the people you work with. So, it makes sense to have friendships at work.”

How to foster friends on the job

Of course, no one can insist you make a friend at work. But if we want our workplaces to be a caring, compassionate, productive place to be, fostering positive connection on the job may help.

To do that, Friedman suggests taking the initiative and making an effort to put yourself out there. If you can become more approachable and friendly, and “get your face out of your phone and notice the people around you,” it will improve your chances, he says.

Even in cases where companies have a lot of remote workers and less in-person contact, you can still build intimacy online, says Friedman. You just need to get a bit more creative.

“If you and I sat here for an hour and grabbed a coffee and shot the shit about life, I think we’d end up having some fondness and a connection,” he says.

Franco, who often works with companies to help build a sense of belonging, suggests making friends across differences by assuming people like you (more than you might think) and keeping an open mind. She says:

There’s this term in the research called “habitual open-mindedness” where you remind yourself that, just from looking at someone, you don’t know anything about them, and you can still give them space to unfold in their identity in front of you. That allows you to approach people that might not look like the typical friends that you have.

Organizations have a role to play in fostering workplace friendships and belonging, too, says Franco. She points to research suggesting that leaving it up to individuals alone is not enough to stave off loneliness, and that leaders can foster positive connection at work in several ways. For example, they can start work meetings with chit-chat, where people can check in about what’s going on in their lives. Or they can divide meetings into one part business, one part communal lunch, to encourage socializing.

“When managers make an effort to create opportunities for connection, there’s a 31% difference in how connected people feel in that place,” she says. “So, it does really make a difference if management takes it upon themselves.”

Buddy programs, kindness campaigns, or happy hours can also foster more sense of connection at work, she adds. Similarly, making sure people are recognized for who they are, not just what they do—by celebrating birthdays or offering to help when employees go through hardship, for example—can build a culture of care and inclusivity. Being intentional is key.

“If you want to create connections across difference, you often have to make [activities] more structured,” she says. “Let’s say, we do board game night, and then people are on a team with people that are of a different group than them. That’s really important for connecting.”

While Friedman is less sure about companies taking the lead in encouraging work friendships, he does think it’s important at least not to thwart people’s natural inclinations to affiliate with one another.

“We ought to build community . . . [to] have a group of people who are going to support us or advocate for us in our department, or stand by our side when we need support and encourage psychological safety in our meetings,” he says.

Both Friedman and Franco say people don’t necessarily need to be best friends at work, though. Just having a nice, friendly connection may be good enough.

“If you’re someone that’s really afraid of the risk of getting too close, then I would suggest not being black or white about it. Perhaps we can be friends, but just at a certain level of closeness,” says Franco.

Friedman warns that being too close to a coworker might cloud our judgment, just as being too distant from them can. It’s best to find a happy medium, he says—someone you’re friendly with and maybe hang out with a little after work, rather than someone who’s your bosom buddy. In that way, you can reap the benefits of having a work friend and, hopefully, avoid any pitfalls.

“When we’re friendly with people at work, we collaborate better, we solve problems better, we’re more forgiving of each other, we’re kinder to each other,” he says. “I think we need lots more of that everywhere.”

This happenstance involvement profoundly impacted the course of his life. Now living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he leads community members whose lives have been impacted by the criminal justice system through the same course.

Jackson understood forgiveness as a spiritual concept from growing up in the church, but it didn’t click until he was able “to connect the dots between the spiritual and the scientific part,” he says. For him, forgiveness applied to the hurt he had caused others but also to the hurt he experienced from others’ wrongdoing. You forgive, he says, “without trying to diminish [the wrong]. You’re not forgiving that person because of them. You’re forgiving them because of you.”

“I didn’t know the impact that anger could have on your physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. It takes a lot to hate people,” says Jackson. What did he learn? “The greatest enemy of hate is forgiveness. It has that much power.”

When he got out of prison, Jackson reached out to the psychologist who led his therapy to let him know what an impact it made.

Understanding why

In 1994, Robert Enright, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin, founded the International Forgiveness Institute, leading the scientific study of forgiveness. His books The Forgiving Life and Forgiveness Therapy lay out his groundbreaking work in the therapeutic field. In 2016, Enright’s lab began offering forgiveness therapy to men incarcerated at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wis., where Enright met Jackson. In 2018, Lifan Yu, one of Enright’s graduate students, continued that research with a new cohort of men there.

Building on Enright’s work, Yu’s therapy sessions did not focus on the crimes inmates committed but instead examined how their personal history of abuse led them to harbor anger and had negatively impacted their mental health.

“Why did they choose to harm others?” Yu wonders. “Prisoners themselves are victims before they committed a crime,” she says. “They bear that for their whole lives. ... That’s the reason they chose to hurt others.”

Similar to Jackson’s experience with Enright, Yu brought together a group of 12 men to read Enright’s book 8 Keys to Forgiveness alongside 12 others in a control group that used the Carey Guides, a collection of cognitive behavioral tools and worksheets for prison personnel to create positive change with inmates and used widely throughout the prison system.

“Everyone in the group had stories to tell about how they had been used, abused, and/or misused by those they trusted and/or looked up to. We became close like a family and knew the group was a safe place to deal with anger and resentment,” wrote one participant in an anonymous letter given to Yu at the end of the study.

Before the group met, individuals responded to surveys measuring anger, depression, and anxiety, as well as orientation toward forgiveness and more. All the selected men had significantly impaired mental health. After completing the six-month therapy, Yu sent the survey again. The experimental group saw significant improvement while the control group remained the same. The research team then decided to offer the program to the control group. The results again indicated growth.

Yu followed up with both groups six months after they completed the therapy: Both retained growth, indicating the long-term effectiveness of forgiveness therapy.

The letter to Yu from the anonymous participant continued:

I was able to see how the way I was raised had a very negative and profound impact on me. ... I forgave others from my past for the wrongs they inflicted on me. I don’t feel the pain anymore. I have been in many groups, programs, and counseling sessions but was never able to understand why I kept hurting people. This was the only program that ever asked me, ‘“hat happened to you to make you the way you are?”

Breaking cycles of harm

Therapies in prison often focus on correcting behaviors to prevent repeat offenses, rather than aiming for improving mental health overall, says Yu. That approach fails to make a connection between the crimes committed and the personal abuse history of the perpetrator.

Sylvester Jackson’s story is an example. He was sexually abused from age seven to 13. At age 14, he sexually abused another person for the first time. “I didn’t have no outlet for those things. I grew to the point that I wasn’t going to be the one being hurt; I was going to be the one doing the hurt,” he says.

“My first experience with hate started with my father and seeing how he disregarded us, and then I find out he was on the other side of the city taking care of other people’s kids,” Jackson says.

Eventually, Jackson was living on the streets of Chicago and became involved with a gang. At age 27, Jackson served his first prison sentence in Texas for stolen checks. When Jackson got out, he rediscovered his faith and did well for several years but again sank into mental illness after his mother died in 2002. During this time, Jackson sexually assaulted his youngest daughter. “She came into my life unfortunately when I was in a spiral,” he says. “I passed the abuse on that I had, and that led me to prison.”

In 2007, Jackson was imprisoned in Wisconsin, where he remained for 10 years. There he encountered Enright and forgiveness therapy. Jackson prayed for help. “I tried suicide, and I thought, ‘OK [God], if you aren’t going to kill me, then help me live. If you are who you say you are, I need you to show me yourself,’” he says. Jackson asked for God to restore his mind. Forgiveness therapy was part of the answer to that prayer.

Jackson’s story illustrates a prevalent reality: Yu and her colleagues found higher rates of adverse, traumatic experiences in medium- and maximum-security prison populations than in the general public. Yu and her team began exploring whether therapy programs in prison can assist in psychological healing and contribute to lower recidivism rates. The forgiveness therapy study confirmed the connection between the types of abuse individuals experienced and the types of crimes they committed.

The research of Yu and others showed that among 103 men surveyed in the initial phase of the study, 90% reported a childhood abuse—almost all reported more than one abuse—and 82% said the abuse still negatively influenced them. Of the 33 men who reported sexual abuse, 67% of them were convicted for sexual assault. Of the 70 men who reported physical abuse and familial neglect, 80% were incarcerated for violent crimes, such as armed robbery, homicide, or felony murder.

Surprisingly, Yu also found that 46% of the men had never shared their past abuse and trauma with anyone else, and most had never had anyone recognize their hurt or help them heal. “In essence, they were re-traumatized by holding in their pain,” says Yu.

What leads to a changed life?

Aaron Griffith, a Duke Divinity School historian who wrote God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America, says, “Most people who actually go into prison ministry or chaplaincy or work ... realize pretty quickly that those who come in [to prison] come with harms that have been done to them.”

But it can be hard for Christians with a strong “law and order” belief system and a bent toward saving individual souls to understand the cycles of harm many prisoners experience. “There’s a resistance to see [them as caught] in cycles of abuse or harm or violence,” says Griffith. “For evangelical Christians, that resistance comes because they can be narrowly focused on conversion. They are looking for the seamless narrative: ‘I’m a sinner, and now I’m going to be saved.’”

While evangelical Christians shaped prison policy substantially in the mid-20th century, Griffith wrote, many Christians of various traditions have also been strong advocates for restorative justice practices within and alongside the incarceration system. Restorative justice advocates see it as a way to address the root causes of crime, including individuals’ deeper wounds and injustice within the carceral system. Forgiveness therapy is not quite restorative justice, Griffith noted, and perhaps that is an advantage.

A restorative justice approach centers the victim first and works with all involved in the crime to determine what would advance repair for damage caused. Forgiveness therapy, on the other hand, does not require the participation of the victim. Focusing on forgiveness alone, however, may not attend enough to what the offender owes the victim and what repairing the harm might look like. One benefit of restorative justice, therefore, is that it’s careful not to force forgiveness, but to address the needs of all parties, starting with the victim, so that transformation can occur.

In any case, therapeutic approaches that measure emotions or virtues, writes Abilene Christian University associate professor Brad East, can never quite grasp the bigger realities of forgiveness. “Even in the best circumstances—two friends, a wrong done, followed by acknowledgement, repentance, forgiveness, and restoration—the experience is never perfect, never complete. All human forgiveness this side of death is partial, piecemeal, a marathon measured daily in inches lost or won,” he writes in “The Theological Terrain of Forgiveness,” in Comment magazine.

Forgiveness therapy in prison will reach a very small percentage of the nearly 2 million people locked up in the U.S. in 2025—and that is not likely to change. While prison psychologists and chaplains are aware of the enormous need, Griffith says “our criminal justice system is not set up to actually deal with this.”

Theologies of sin and redemption

In 1976, according to Griffith, evangelicals ramped up their promotion of a more punitive carceral system. The National Association of Evangelicals took the position that God does not offer forgiveness of sins without first a penalty being paid, equating crime with sin. From then until now, writes Griffith, “more law and order, not the spiritual redemption of criminals, became the primary evangelical answer to lawlessness.”

Psychologist Blake Riek, a professor at Calvin University, said that there are basically two theologies at play when it comes to crime. One end of the spectrum says all humans are sinful, while the other reminds us of the dignity of all people.

Each theology can cause people to believe different things about themselves and others. “Are prisoners bad people? Or people who have done a bad thing?” Riek asks. “It really makes a difference in the ways people view themselves [and others].”

Shame and guilt are both moral emotions that result when we deviate from our internalized standards. Riek’s own research found that when a person dwells on thoughts that they are inherently bad, it leads to shame, and people get stuck there. Shame does not lead to seeking forgiveness. Feeling guilty, however, increases the likelihood that a person will seek forgiveness. A large study published in 2007 found that feelings of guilt at the beginning of a prison term correlated with lower rates of recidivism, and feelings of shame correlated with higher rates. “Guilt—because it focuses on the action—is, in a sense, fixable,” says Riek.

One benefit to Enright and Yu’s approach is that it doesn’t rely on shame to produce changed behavior and instead offers dignity to incarcerated individuals. The anonymous letter to Yu suggested the need for such interventions to come much earlier in the trauma process. “I truly believe if I would have done the forgiveness program the first time I went to rehab or even prison, I would not be in prison now,” the inmate wrote.

Sylvester Jackson could not keep to himself the transformation he experienced through forgiveness therapy. “I felt that it freed me from such anguish, it can help someone else,” he says. “There are so many people today walking around being controlled by people who are long gone who abused them, and they don’t know how to let them go.”

Jackson launched Believers for Change, a nonprofit run by his wife Lavansa Jackson, to support formerly incarcerated people as they reenter society. The Jacksons offer the same forgiveness program that changed Sylvester’s life, followed by a restorative justice process to heal families that have been torn apart by personal harms and the prison system.

“Hurt people hurt people,” Sylvester Jackson says. “But healed people can also heal people.”

Reprinted with permission from Sojourners, a Christian organization dedicated to social justice, peace, and faith-driven activism: (800) 714-7474. This article was created with the support of a project of the Greater Good Science Center, Putting the Science of Forgiveness into Practice.

But a new study suggests that we could have that backwards. Instead of self-control or willpower leading us toward greater well-being in the future, greater well-being increases our ability to have more self-control for meeting our goals.

“A struggle with self-control may not necessarily indicate a fundamental deficiency in willpower or grit,” says research fellow Shuna Khoo of the National University of Singapore, first author of the study.

“Instead, that struggle could be a sign of a depleted state of well-being, which can stem from many life circumstances.”

Well-being and self-control

In the study, two groups of participants (one of Asian adults, one of Americans) filled out surveys measuring their level of self-control and happiness over time, to see if their self-control at one point led to greater well-being later on (and vice versa). The Asian adults (average age 30) filled out surveys every six months; the American adults (average age 41) were surveyed every three months.

People in both groups reported on how well they employed strategies like inhibition (e.g., the ability to resist temptations), initiation (e.g., not wasting time before getting to a project), and continuation (e.g., being consistent in their actions) to have better self-control.

For well-being measures, researchers asked the Asian participants how much they agreed with statements like, “I am happy”; “I appreciate my own self-worth”; and “I am appreciative of life” (all more culturally-sensitive aspects of well-being), while American participants reported on things like how optimistic, energetic, and happy they were. All participants also provided demographic information: their age, gender, and education level.

The researchers then analyzed the relationship between reported self-control and well-being. In both groups, happiness and self-control measures were correlated, so that people with more self-control at one point in time tended to be happier, too (and vice-versa). This was not a big surprise, as prior research has shown that the two seem to go hand in hand.

However, when looking within individuals over time, the researchers found that a person with greater self-control at one point in time did not report having greater well-being at later points in time. Conversely, people who had greater well-being at one point in time did experience greater self-control later on. This was true no matter the age, gender, or education level of the person involved.

For Lile Jia, another coauthor of the study, this suggests having greater self-control is not necessarily a predictor of later well-being, as many may assume. Jia says:

A prevailing narrative, both in popular culture and some psychological literature, posits that self-control is the primary engine of a good life—that through willpower and discipline, we attain well-being. Our findings, consistent across two distinct cultural samples and different time intervals, point to the reverse. They tell us that psychological well-being and feeling good daily may, in fact, be an essential precursor to better self-control.

Why would feeling good lead to better self-control? Jia points to Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden-and-build” theory of positive emotions, which suggests that having positive feelings increases our psychological resources. This means that when feeling good, we can be more creative, cognitively flexible, and open to new experiences, helping us manage difficulties better—including the “work” of avoiding temptation and stopping ourselves from veering away from our goals.

“In essence, feeling good helps build the psychological capital that supports self-control,” says Jia.

Where does willpower come from?

This is important to know for many reasons, says Khoo. For example, those of us who wish to change our behavior should focus less on increasing our willpower and more on strengthening our overall well-being. We may want to prioritize activities that foster positive feelings, a sense of purpose, and social connection, she says, rather than knuckling our way through.

“These are not indulgent distractions from the ‘real work’ of self-control; our research suggests they may be essential to it, creating fertile ground for self-control and discipline to grow,” says Khoo.

Though this study focused only on adults, it may also have implications for children. Knowing how self-control and well-being are connected can help point parents toward better responses to their children who have trouble resisting temptation, says Jia.

Suppose a child is tempted to sneak a cookie before dinnertime, potentially spoiling their appetite. Rather than a parent feeling frustrated by their child’s “lack of self-control” or punishing them in some way, they may want to see this as an opportunity to get curious about a child’s underlying need—whether it’s simply hunger or, possibly, a reaction to feeling stressed at school or disconnected from peers.

“A tired, stressed, or unhappy child will naturally have fewer psychological resources to control their impulses,” says Khoo “Therefore, creating a safe, supportive, and positive environment is not just good for a child’s happiness. It may also be one of the best ways to help develop their self-regulation skills.”

Though the researchers’ results could use future corroboration through experimental studies, they do suggest we may be going about our New Year’s resolutions with the wrong focus.

Instead of trying to “stop a bad habit,” Jia says, we may want to increase our daily well-being, instead. This could involve finding activities that are more restorative and fulfilling for us—like practicing gratitude, connecting with supportive friends, or aiming for greater meaning or purpose in life. By building up our reserves, we will be helping ourselves to have more energy, fight off temptations better, and stay on course for breaking bad habits.

“When you find yourself struggling to adhere to your goals, I would encourage you to resist the impulse to label yourself as undisciplined or unworthy. Instead, consider it a signal to check in on your own state of being,” says Jia. “Feeling good is not just the destination. It is a critical part of the journey.”

“We are living through a social health crisis, a profound breakdown of the relationships that once protected us,” writes journalist Jennifer Breheny Wallace in her new book, Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. She continues:

We’ve lost track of our most basic human needs for connection and contribution. Now we often feel tempted to fill that void with counterfeit forms of mattering—chasing attention over connection, prestige over purpose, and money over meaning. The rise in loneliness, burnout, and anxiety is the predictable consequence of a society that has forgotten how to make people feel valued.

I spoke with Jennifer about the research on mattering, her book’s conclusions, and tactics for increasing our sense of mattering. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis: Let’s start with the big question: What is mattering, and why is it so crucial right now?

Jennifer Breheny Wallace: Mattering is a universal human need that all of us have to feel valued for who we are deep inside, and to have an opportunity to add value to the world around us, to our families, friends, colleagues, and communities. That is a need that is going unmet today in too many people.

Young people feel a sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness in their lives. Retirees who once felt depended on no longer feel relied on anymore in any meaningful way; they feel adrift.

When people don’t feel like they matter, when they don’t feel valued or know how they add value, they can turn against themselves: become anxious, depressed, turn to substances to try to alleviate the pain, or lash out in anger. We’re seeing that, I think, in a lot of the political discourse today, road rage, and people who go online and attack people.

What is great about mattering is that it’s actionable. There are steps we can take in our everyday lives to build back that sense of mattering and thrive.

As a society, we are confronted with too much input every day, and too much output being demanded of us. In order for us to get through our days, we’re often just going on autopilot.

KRL: In the book, you talk about how some people matter too much, but find it draining rather than sustaining. Can you explain?

JBW: This is caregivers, teachers, and people on the front lines that our society relies on too much. While being relied on in this way can feel meaningful and give purpose to our lives, when we feel like we’re never prioritized, that’s when we burn out. There are a few ways we can start to prioritize ourselves again.

The first step is learning how to matter to ourselves, learning how to prioritize ourselves every day–not when the to-do list is done, not when everybody else’s needs have been met. I’m not saying this is easy, but it is a practice that I have adopted now over the last two years.

When I wake up in the morning and I’m brushing my teeth, I say to myself, what is one small need that I must fill today for myself so that I can show up as my best self? For me, it’s often waking up early before everybody else is up to enjoy my cup of coffee, to think, to read, to do things that are not fitting into other people’s agendas.

All the self-care in the world will not give us the resilience that deep, nourishing relationships will give us. The second step to mattering to yourself and not mattering too much, is to find people in your life–one, two, three people–who know you, who you can rely on and open up to and who will remind you of your mattering.

Especially in those moments when you’re questioning, when you’re going through a rough transition, or life feels hard, it’s leaning on those friendships that will restore your sense of mattering.

Often the burden of mattering too much comes when we don’t feel like we can ask for help. When I don’t ask for help, not only do I deny myself the support I need and deserve, I also deny my friend the chance of being a helper, of knowing I rely on her for her wisdom, letting her know how much she matters to me, how valued she is and how much value she adds. So, instead of thinking about asking for help as a sign of weakness, look at it as a sign of strength. It is an act of generosity to give that sense of mattering to someone else.

In conversation for this book, I heard over and over again from people that they had friends, but their relationships, their friendships, had hollowed out because of so many demands on them through work, through parenting.

There’s research out of the Mayo Clinic that’s since been replicated about how to build these types of nourishing relationships. We don’t need hours of together time. We don’t need mom’s night out four nights a week. What we need is to find people in our life that we can be vulnerable with and who will be vulnerable, so it’s reciprocal, and to prioritize those relationships at least for one hour a week, which is completely doable.

Figure out a way to build that sort of network of support for yourself. One thing that’s been really helpful for me, about a year and a half ago, two women that I was friendly with, but not super close to started a club for very busy professional women aiming to read one article a month. So once a month, we carve out this time, we sit in each other’s kitchens. What’s amazing about it is that I didn’t even know these people. But we created this kind of scaffolding for deeper friendship.

KRL: How would you encourage people, if they’re the one in their social group who wants to do it, to not feel discouraged by the last-minute cancelations, or other folks who are not used to that way of being together?

JBW: Coming out of COVID, we have normalized staying home. We’ve normalized canceling on people at the last minute, so my number-one personal policy is: I don’t cancel plans unless I’m sick. That one simple rule has made me the trusted friend, the one that people know they can depend on.

If you are inviting and people are not coming, invite other people. Don’t be discouraged. Invitations are a bridge between the life you want and the life you’re currently living.

It takes a little bit of social courage. But be that person.

KRL: Can you talk about how to manage through transitions?

JBW: Transitions can really shake our sense of mattering, because the roles that we once relied on to feel valued and add value shift, whether it’s facing an empty nest, or retiring, or relocating.

The first step for anybody going through a life transition is just to know you’re not alone. It’s not personal. We all go through these painful life transitions.

Look for people who’ve done something similar. Look for role models. Invite them to coffee. Let them know their story, their hard-earned experience matters. If you don’t have people in your life that you could turn to, look for podcasts, look for nonfiction books, articles about how other people have navigated hard transitions.

I just want to tell people, if you are going through a hard time, you have agency. Look for those role models, accept or issue invitations, remind other people in your life why they matter.

Our sense of mattering is not like a trophy we collect and put on our bookshelves. It’s something that’s always in transition.

Something I strive to do is to imagine everyone I meet–strangers, friends, family–wearing an invisible sign that says, “Tell me, do I matter?” We can answer that longing, that deep longing, with a smile, with warmth, with recognizing people, with connecting them to the positive impact they’ve had in our life or in the world around them.

KRL: Can you talk about mattering at work?

JBW: You look at the data, and 70% of employees report feeling disengaged at work. Disengagement is not laziness. Disengagement is a protective coping strategy. When you feel like you don’t matter and it’s painful, you disengage to stop that pain.

We could change the framework in our workplaces in small ways: greeting people in the hallway instead of being down on your phone and ignoring them, appreciating a colleague for staying late to help you on a project. Relying on each other, closing the loop, connecting people with their impact.

Many employees feel invisible. With AI now coming, people feel threatened that they are going to be replaced. It doesn’t take much to let employees know they matter, and even the least human-centered companies are financially incentivized to make employees feel like they matter, because that is the driver of engagement. And engagement is the driver of creativity, productivity, and profit.

KRL: I’d also love to hear about the decline of third spaces, why they’re so important, and ways to just have pop-up third spaces, or create them ourselves.

JBW: The first place is the home, the second place is the office, the third place is where you find yourself, where you can get a sense of belonging in your life, where you’re known, but you’re not as deeply known as you are in those other two domains. Third spaces have really dwindled.

One woman for years went to this exercise class where people would congregate before and after, and they would connect. But the owners of this exercise group wanted to make more money, so they said to people, you cannot congregate. You have to walk in and walk out. And so she stopped going, because this place that was a mattering space became very transactional.

When he retired, my dad found it in small ways, like going to the same restaurant once a week for lunch for a burrito. It was a casual restaurant. He got to know the employees so well that when he stopped going for a period of time, because my grandmother was dying, he went back, and they greeted him with a sympathy card, because they missed him. He mattered to that space. So, we can do that for each other. We can get to know the barista. We can get to know the person in the supermarket. We can create these small moments that remind us that we are a significant part of the world around us.

KRL: Can you talk about the tension between needing to see your impact and being valued with just being enough as you are?

JBW: There’s a great Jesuit motto: Not better than others, but better for others. I’m not anti-achievement. I like success. I like to feel like I’m making an impact, but it’s not just for me. It is because I want to impact the world around me. I want to do this research that impacts my life, but also that I can share it with others. If we keep that idea front and center in our minds, that we succeed, we achieve, not to be better than others, but to be better for others, that is how we keep that North Star of mattering in healthy ways.

If somebody is feeling like they don’t matter, I want them to know that they are just one action, one decision away from mattering again. That is reminding the people around them why they matter. And if you don’t have anyone close to you, remind the stranger, the cashier, the barista who always remembers your order. That is the fastest way to feel like you matter again.

Most people picture defiance as dramatic outbursts. In reality, it’s often these small, tense moments where conscience collides with compliance.

I first saw the power of defiance not in the workplace, but closer to home. My mother was the ultimate people-pleaser: timid, polite, eager to accommodate. Barely 4 feet, 10 inches tall, she put everyone else’s needs above her own. But one day, when I was seven, I saw a different side to her.

We were walking home from the grocery store in West Yorkshire, England, when a group of teenage boys blocked our path in a narrow alleyway. They hurled racist insults and told us to “go back home.”

My reaction was instantaneous: Stay quiet, avoid conflict, and get past them as quickly as possible. I grabbed my mother’s arm, urging her to move with me. But she didn’t. My quiet, deferential, never-confrontational mother did something completely different. She stopped, turned, and looked the boys directly in the eyes. Then she asked, calmly but firmly, “What do you mean?”

She wasn’t loud or aggressive. And in that moment, she showed me that defiance doesn’t always roar, and it can come from the people you least expect.

I’ve carried these lessons into my work as a physician-turned-organizational psychologist. For decades, I’ve studied why people comply, staying silent when they don’t want to, and how they can resist wisely. In my book Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes, I offer a framework based on behavioral science research that can help you defy in ways that are intentional, effective, and true to your values.

What defiance really is

When people think of defiance, they often picture teenagers slamming doors, protesters shouting in the streets, or rebels breaking rules just for the thrill of it. But that’s not the kind of defiance I study or the kind that shapes our lives most often.

Defiance is not about being oppositional for its own sake. It’s about choosing to act in line with your values when there is pressure to do otherwise.

That pressure can come from anywhere: a boss urging you to fudge the numbers, a friend nudging you toward something you don’t believe in, a culture telling you to stay in your place. Defiance in those moments might be as small as saying “no,” asking for clarification, or simply pausing instead of rushing along with the group. Other times, it means speaking up, challenging authority, or maybe walking away.

Seen this way, defiance isn’t a fixed trait that some people are born with and others lack. It’s a practice: a skill you can strengthen over time. Some days you might comply, other days you might resist. What matters is that you have the awareness and the tools to make the choice consciously, rather than letting fear or habit decide for you.

Why people comply

If defiance is so important, why do people so often stay silent?

One reason is a psychological process I’ve uncovered in my research: insinuation anxiety. It arises when people worry that not complying with another person’s wishes may be interpreted as a signal of distrust. Turning down a boss’s request to “adjust” the numbers might feel like you’re implying they’re dishonest. To avoid that discomfort, you go along—even when it violates your values.

Behavioral science has long documented this pull toward compliance. In the 1960s, for example, psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that ordinary people would administer what they believed were dangerous electric shocks to strangers simply because an authority figure told them to.

My own research has shown surprisingly high levels of compliance with obviously bad advice, even when given by a stranger with no consequences for disagreeing. People feel immense social pressure to go along with what others suggest. That’s because if you’ve never been trained in how to say no, it feels uncomfortable and awkward.

A framework for action

If compliance is the human default, how can you build the muscle of defiance? In my research, I’ve developed a simple actionable guide that I call the Defiance Compass. Like a navigation aid, it orients you in difficult situations by asking three questions:

1. Who am I? What are the core values that matter most to me?
2. What type of situation is this? Is it safe to resist? Will it have a positive impact?
3. What does a person like me do in a situation like this? How can I take responsibility and act in a way that’s consistent with my identity and values?

                     

Asking these questions shifts defiance from a gut reaction to a conscious practice. And here’s what’s important: That third question (“What does a person like me do?”) circles back to the first (“Who am I?”), because how you act again and again becomes who you are.

Defiance doesn’t always mean open confrontation. Sometimes it means asking a clarifying question, buying time, or quietly refusing. It can mean speaking up or walking away. The key is to start small, practice regularly, and anchor your choices in your values. Like any skill, the more you practice, the more natural it becomes.

Why defiance matters now

Defiance may be risky, but it’s never been more relevant. At work, employees are pressured to meet targets at any cost. In politics, citizens face waves of misinformation and polarization. In everyday life, people struggle to set healthy boundaries. Across all these contexts, the temptation to comply for the sake of comfort is strong.

That’s why learning to defy strategically matters. It protects personal integrity, strengthens institutions, and helps sustain democracy. And it doesn’t require being loud or confrontational.

Of course, not every act of defiance is safe or guaranteed to make a difference. Sometimes it comes at real personal cost and some people still choose to act even when the impact isn’t certain: Think of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat, or Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. In those moments, the act itself becomes the message. Both of those individuals were deeply connected to their values and the assessment is personal: What feels worth the risk to one person might not to another.

Defiance does require practice: noticing when values are at stake, pausing before you nod along, and choosing actions that align with who you want to be. Each act of consent, compliance, or defiance shapes not just your story but the stories of our societies.

If you practice defiance, and teach it and model it, you can imagine a different type of society. You can start to envision a world where, in that same alleyway from my childhood, one of the boys will step forward and tell his friends, “That’s not OK. Let them pass.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Witnessing what experts now call “the polycrisis”—the parallel unfolding of social, digital, and environmental disaster—brings us face to face with our own powerlessness. What we do as individuals, or even as small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens, is not going to turn things around on its own.

In such conditions, standard well-being practices like meditation, journaling, or yoga may not go far enough to restore inner equilibrium. But recent research suggests an alternate approach: taking small, values-driven actions to strengthen your resolve and sense of agency, even if you’re not yet sure exactly what these actions will add up to.

“When life feels chaotic, acting on our values, even in small ways, can restore a sense of direction,” says psychologist and lead researcher Pninit Russo-Netzer, who heads up the Resilience and Optimal Development Lab at Israel’s Achva Academic College. “Not because circumstances improve, but because we remember who we are within them.”

How everyday actions restore agency

Along with the global-scale challenges it presents, this historical moment seems to invite inner limbo. The pull of tradition and settled belief systems will never again be what it once was, and once-revered leaders and institutions seem to betray our trust continually. That makes us vulnerable in ways unique to this unsettled (and unsettling) time: We have cast adrift what injures or no longer serves us, but we may not yet know what to replace it with.

As a resilience specialist, Russo-Netzer wanted to see if deliberate, values-based action could help to fill this meaning vacuum. Though past research showed that people tend to deal better with threats or tough circumstances when they call personal values to mind, Russo-Netzer wondered if this contemplation might be more potent when people acted in ways that backed it up.

So she and her colleague, psychologist Ofer Atad, decided to study whether the rewards of values-based behavior shifts justified the effort they took to make. “We asked, ‘What happens when people move from reflection to intentional action?’”

To map this transition, Russo-Netzer and Atad recruited more than 450 adults on an online survey platform and divided them into three groups. They asked participants in the first group to reflect on their values, choose a concrete action in line with those values, and carry out that action. One participant, for instance, reflected on how important it was to them to nurture their central relationships, resolved to spend more time with their family members, and followed through on that intention. Another reflected on their desire to fulfill their highest goals and opted to spend less time on Instagram and more time pursuing those goals.

Members of the study’s second group reflected on a valued aspect of their life, but did not carry out any action, and members of an inactive control group neither reflected nor acted on their values.

Unsurprisingly, compared to those who did nothing at all, people who took values-driven action reported stronger well-being and fewer anxious and depressive symptoms. Most intriguing, though, was the difference between the affirmation group—those who only reflected on their values—and the action group. 


One week after the values exercise, members of the latter group reported greater increases in well-being and a stronger sense of meaning in life, showing that directed action offered a more powerful psychological boost. Russo-Netzer suspects that’s because acting turns abstract-feeling ideals into lived experience, allowing people to prove to themselves they’re actually becoming who they wish to be.

“Small actions anchored in personal values can restore a sense of agency in the moments when people feel most powerless,” Russo-Netzer says. “They help us stay connected to who we are, what matters to us, and what we can still choose.”

Experimental group members also reported higher levels of what the researchers call “self-insight,” suggesting that not only can values-driven action restore your agency, it helps give you the knowledge and perspective you need to make thoughtful future choices.

Developing an action practice

The well-being advantage that action supplies is crucial in the face of grim global realities, says Boston-based psychologist Janna Koretz, who specializes in decision making under stress.

“In times of disarray, people often feel really out of control,” she says—but when people begin taking daily, problem-solving action, “they’re then learning, ‘Oh, I do control a little bit more. I feel more grounded. Things aren’t just happening to me.’” Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl famously reported a similar inner shift, getting through confinement at Auschwitz by resolving to choose his own way in the midst of any circumstance.

Yet reaping these well-being benefits takes sustained, effortful commitment. Changing your behavior, Russo-Netzer says, requires surmounting what experts call an “activation barrier”—overcoming the natural human impulse to stick to the status quo. To take an action like going to a civic protest or weekend volunteer program, you have to give up the ease of inertia, as well as some of your free time.

To get more comfortable resisting inertia, you can try a version of the exercise Russo-Netzer designed for her study participants.

First, identify what your core values are in key areas of your life. Do you feel strongly about connecting members of your community, working on innovations that benefit people, or creating opportunities for kids and teens at risk?

Next, choose a specific action that lines up with one of the core values you identified. If caring for the vulnerable means a lot to you, you can sign up to stand with a immigrant in court or volunteer to get food and supplies for families under threat. If you value showing up for close loved ones, you can schedule time to call someone you haven’t talked to in a while—and actually follow up on that intention.

Zeno Franco, a psychologist and researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin, has seen the real-world dividends such practices can yield. When leading support groups for veterans, many of whom struggle to resume normal life after serving in war zones, Franco engages group members in discussions of how they can act in ways that express their values. In one-on-one therapy, he takes a similar, more personalized approach. 

In both cases, Franco’s goal is to convince people to take on “a very small task that goes to the core of the value that has been somehow damaged by decisions or just by life,” he says: writing a note of apology to someone they’ve hurt, or engaging in dialogue with someone whose worldview contradicts theirs. Through tasks like this, people arrive at an inner resolve that looks like “flexible steadiness,” Franco says, “being steady day in and day out as the tides of the times rise and fall.”

Values-based actions don’t have to be grand gestures to instill this steadiness and resolve. “The mechanism is not about the magnitude of the action,” Russo-Netzer says. “What matters is that the action serves as a self-signal—a tangible reminder that I am showing up as the person I aspire to be.”

How small daily actions take on momentum

When you approach this practice in an exploratory, iterative way, it can yield surprising results over time that you couldn’t have foreseen at the outset. With each step you take, not only do you get more comfortable with acting, you get valuable feedback that guides your next move.

“With these small steps, they’re really easy,” Koretz says, “and then you have an anchor to make other choices.”

In addition, your actions in specific moments can give rise to new chances for effective intervention. By showing up for a single community meeting or volunteer outing, you may learn about other opportunities you wouldn’t have encountered otherwise, broadening the range of future actions available to you.

As your skill and confidence grows, you can carry out ever more meaningful actions, which in turn build your confidence still more, a virtuous cycle that takes on its own momentum, diminishing deep-rooted feelings of powerlessness.

“It is the combination of awareness, affirmation, and action that creates a positive feedback loop,” Russo-Netzer says. “The more we act in line with our values, the more we feel like our life makes sense—and the more motivated we are to continue.”