Stay Home & Save Lives. Choose Peace
The team at the Portsmouth Mediation Service works hard to help Portsmouth become a truly “restorative city” and hopes it can help you keep a peaceful community and home during the restrictions due to Covid-19.
During this difficult time we all have a role to play – we need to STAY HOME & SAVE LIVES. But this brings challenges. Everyone feels the tension in some way! Relationships during this time aren’t always easy but it can be an opportunity for communities and families to work together and be strengthened. We are in it together.
Here are three tried and tested tips to help:
RELATIONSHIPS – First, we all need to ensure we have someone to talk to, particularly if you are on your own. During this time, pick up the phone, Facetime, WhatsApp, email or write a letter to a friend or family member. Make the effort. If you don’t have anyone you can call, then phone us on 02392 368089 (leave a message and your number and we will phone you back)
I- MESSAGING – Secondly we all have different thoughts and emotions to COVID-19 and even the simple everyday things at home now look and feel very different. When voicing our thoughts and feelings it’s always best to use I-STATEMENTS as this is more likely to bring a positive outcome. For example, try not to start a sentence with ‘YOU’, but try instead ‘I am feeling …’ or ‘I find it difficult when…. ‘. Avoid using language which accuses, blames or judges people because this tends to make people defensive and they stop hearing what you are saying.
RESTORATIVE – Thirdly if an incident, irritation or conflict does occur, don’t let your emotions drive your response. P A U S E. Sometimes half an hour or even a day later you are able to understand why you are feeling in a certain way and be better able to communicate this. The following restorative questions below are an amazing tool to enable the right positive conversation:
What happened?
What were you thinking?
What were you feeling?
Who’s been hurt / affected?
What needs to happen now?
Sometimes just using one of these questions alone can transform our conversations into a positive ones which bring about meaningful change!
If you have a conflict inside or outside your home you can always use our service and talk it through with one of our team and they can explore with you how to positively deal with it. Your Housing Officer will help you make contact with a Referral.