Setting boundaries isn't just about what you want to keep out. It's about seeing a situation clearly and learning to decide what's truly nourishing for you in a particular context and being able to negotiate with others about that. This workshop is for anyone who would like to like to learn to use the skills of compassionate communication to set boundaries.
You want to be generous and kind, yet find that you are giving yourself away. Or perhaps you want to be closer to others and find yourself feeling distant and disconnected regardless of your hope to be close.
Learning to set boundaries with yourself and others helps you create a life that is balanced and nourishing. From the framework and consciousness of Compassionate Communication, a life giving boundary means having clarity about what meets needs and what doesn’t relative to incoming contact and expression – physical, verbal, emotional, mental, & energetic. In sum, it means discerning the level of connectedness you would like in any given interaction. Such clarity allows you to consciously welcome more contact and/or expression or consciously shift the level of contact and/or expression.
In this series, you will engage in structured exercises in pairs and small groups working with examples from your own life to integrate concepts and practice skills. You will receive a comprehensive handout with information and worksheets. Below is a list of topics for the course.
Introduction to Boundaries
An essential part of setting boundaries is being aware of and honoring your own needs. The series will begin with exercises to teach you how to stay grounded in yourself in difficult interactions.
You will also learn about six different types of boundaries and work with examples for each. In structured exercises you will have an opportunity to study how you set boundaries with yourself. Specifically you will have an opportunity to notice how you may have systematically excluded certain needs from being met while others are tended to regularly.
Boundaries and Family of Origin
You will identify boundaries that you learned as a reaction to difficulties in your past and what it looks like to create boundaries that really meet your needs today. This will mean taking some time to reflect on patterns in your family of origin and patterns in your past relationships. You will have the opportunity to study and practice compassion for how old patterns of boundary setting met needs when you first learned them and how they are costing needs now.
Evaluating Boundaries
You will learn tools to evaluate the boundary that will best meet your needs and the needs of others in a variety of relationships such as with yourself, work, school, family, friends, and intimate partnership. You will then practice ways to set the boundaries you want in those relationships.
Boundaries and Power
You will spend some time studying power dynamics in experiential exercises. You will have the opportunity to study how you engage in power over or power under and make distinctions about how to maintain equitable power in hiearchies at work and in community. You will also have the opportunity to study the distinction between receiving from others while maintaining power versus receiving in a power under position.
Repairing Boundary Violations
Repairing boundary violations can happen in a variety of ways. You will practice offering and asking for repair in relationships in which you want to maintain healthy intimacy and those in which you want to maintain healthy distance. You have a chance to practice staying in NVC consciousness while sharing at a level and in a way that is in alignment with boundary you want to maintain.
Boundaries and Life Decisions
Boundaries isn't just about specific interactions, it's also about creating structures that support you and your loved ones in living from your deepest values. You will have a chance to study the structures in your life and how they are meeting and not meeting your needs. You will have a chance see how core beliefs and reactive habbits create influence your decisions and how you can ground in a sense of agency in your life.
Online courses can be attended live or via receiving the recordings & materials. An eight week course is offered once every quarter. Class size is limited to 14 live participants. Please indicate your preference on registration in the "hopes for the course" section.
Video Conferencing Sessions are conducted using Zoom (you can download the app for free or simply click the meeting invite and it will download for you).
Zoom minimum speed requirements are: 600kbps/1.2Mbps (up/down) for HQ video. For gallery view: 1.5Mbps/1.5Mbps (up/down). You can find free sites on the internet that will measure your speeds. It is recommended that you don't use your internet provider for this measurement. Router settings may impact speeds and can often be adjusted to increase speed.
LaShelle Lowe-Chardé is passionate about helping people express their deepest values in their relationships and creating clarity and connection with self and others.
She began her professional career with a master’s degree in school psychology. In addition to nine years in public schools, she spent several years facilitating group healing work for adolescent youth labeled “at-risk”. During that same time she led leadership and teamwork trainings for businesses and organizations around Portland, Oregon.
Along the way she found Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and began training with Marshall Rosenberg and other internationally known NVC trainers. She immediately knew that Compassionate Communication was the missing piece. It offers a deep and broad yet simple understanding of human nature along with a concrete set of tools to help us act and live from a place of clarity and compassion. For LaShelle, Compassionate Communication is the hands and feet of spirituality. In 2006, she was certified as a NVC trainer.
In addition to certification in Nonviolent Communication, she has completed a three year training in Hakomi - Body Centered Therapy and introductory trainings in Emotionally Focused Therapy and with the Gottman Institute.
In 2004, she founded her business, Wise Heart (www.wiseheartpdx.org). Since that time she has served as a trainer, private coach, and mentor for the learning and practice of Compassionate Communication and mindfulness. LaShelle teaches locally as well as through video conferencing online. She has offerings for couples, women, and the general public in addition to trainings for local nonprofit organizations. Her offerings focus on combining NVC with mindfulness and a subtle understanding of reactivity and relationship skills.