How to Have the Vaccine Conversation

When I mentioned to my mother that I was going to be offering a workshop on how to approach “the vaccine conversation” nonviolently, she laughingly empathized with, “Oh my, you’ve just put yourself in the middle of a hornet’s nest.”

It certainly feels that way.

When issues of safety, survival, and personal liberty arise, so much of our own unhealed inner work can get triggered, and it’s incredibly tempting to try to fix what is “in here” by changing what is “out there.”

People get so focused on fighting, judging, controlling, coercing, dismissing, and devaluing each other that each side unwittingly sabotages their efforts to influence one another, to build understanding, or to find a way forward, together.

Arguments don’t change people’s minds.

Self-righteousness doesn’t inspire people to reconsider their deeply held beliefs.

Judgmental, critical, and forceful strategies don’t lead to high-quality, sustainable solutions. At most, they lead to temporary submission coupled with simmering resentment.

And, as author and activist Justin Lee points out, “Echo chambers don’t just nurture conformity; they also nurture extremism.”

So, what might we do instead?

1. Own our inner work: We cannot be in true dialogue with one another until each of us takes responsibility for our fears, our vulnerabilities, our limited knowledge, our emerging understandings, our personal triggers, and our deep values. What deep values is this conversation surfacing for you? What values are you deprioritizing in favor of others? What deep longing and vision are you wanting to serve for the future?
2. Be willing to be influenced: Everyone thinks they are right. When we come into a conversation certain that we are the only one with the right answer, the right strategy, the correct path forward, and we want to impose that upon all those other (dumb) people, we are unlikely to build any real understanding with others.
3. Be willing to share ourselves vulnerably: Lies are simple and truth is complex. Instead of getting caught up in sound bites and ideology that oversimplifies and obscures conversations, keep it personal and relational. We can focus on sharing our (ever-evolving) beliefs, our feelings, our fears, our desires and values, and importantly, also our not-knowings.

Even though we live in polarized, divisive times, we have the power to offer a relational, curious, engaged spirit in our conversations with others.

• We can focus on both the inner transformation, healing, and growing-up work that we are each able to do individually.
• We can skill-up our capacity to engage in the critically important dialogue and cultural change work needed for a healthy, sustainable, peaceful, compassionate global community.
• We can learn new moves, new skills, and new scripts for having relationally and emotionally intelligent conversations that bridge the divides.

And you can get the practical tools, strategies, and scripts you need to do just that through my next live, online workshop.

Join me on Tuesday, August 24 from 6 to 8pm for How to Have Difficult Conversations: Vaccine Edition, and learn how to communicate with the people you disagree with on the vaccine issue.

I’ll walk you through the five main barriers to having a successful conversation and how to dismantle each one of them in nonviolent, relational ways.

Our intention for this workshop:
To ground ourselves in a new process for having these conversations with compassion, clarity, confidence and choicefulness.

What we WILL cover:

• How to Prepare for a Successful Dialogue: Emotional Readiness and Self-Trust
• The 5 Main Barriers to “getting through” to one another, combined with practical interventions and new moves to overcome each of them.
• Locating the Conversation — what are we “really” talking about?
• The Magic Question you can ask to redirect any disagreement

What we will NOT cover:

• We will not be addressing the pros or cons of various ideological positions, the “facts and figures” or “research” or “data.”
• We will not be arguing positions about vaccines.
• We will not be debating or discussing “(mis)information.” (But you will get some tips and scripts to help you address falsehoods and misinformation that you encounter.)

If you’d like to join us and get the early-bird rate on the cost of registration, register by Sunday, August 22 at midnight. LEARN MORE

Looking for a supportive, empathic, and growth-oriented community for learning and practice? Consider joining my free Q&A calls, Conversations from the Heart. We meet every Wednesday at 10am CT via Zoom. Click here to learn more.

Dr. Yvette Erasmus is a psychologist, teacher, and consultant who specializes in transformative education for human healing and growth. Synthesizing mind-body medicine, somatic experiencing, diversity and inclusiveness, nonviolent communication, and integral-relational-cultural psychology, Dr. Erasmus integrates core insights from multiple wisdom traditions and offers various programs for community learning as well as one-on-one consulting. To learn more, visit yvetteerasmus.com.