I am Louise Phipps Senft.
I’m a conflict transformation skills trainer, an award-winning lawyer and award-winning mediator, a mom, wife and advocate for relational approaches for well-being.
I introduced hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to a Relational Approach to conflict and taught and trained thousands in a revolutionary way to navigate conflict: through self-awareness practices, face to face dialogue, and transformative mediation. My legal and mediation firm, Baltimore Mediation, was the first in the county to provide this approach to dispute resolution. Many lawyers said my approach was soft and counter-intuitive. I said it took strength to be vulnerable and it was highly intuitive. It was just counter-egoic, you know, counter to our egos. I invited them and many other leaders to join me in my nationally recognized training programs on conflict transformation and self-awareness, informed and grounded in relational conflict theory.
I had a best-selling book Being Relational: the 7 Ways to Quality Interaction & Lasting Change which challenged our society’s transactional approaches in our interactions, negotiations, and policy making. I laid out in an elegantly simple, but profound alternative: it took my husband and me over three years to synthesize the approach, which amalgamated others works as well into a way of being. It’s a counter-cultural approach that believes in the capacity of people, that the wisdom is within, and that no one wants to be a victim or a victimizer.
Being Relational gives an easy guide for people from all walks of life for how to make daily choices that increase well-being and that transform simple interactions to meaningful interactions and difficult interactions into digestible interactions. At the heart of this life-changing path to personal growth and conflict transformation is a relational mindset and relational skill set and 7 ways from which to choose to create greater well-being in your life. It is suitable for daily living as well as the most complicated situations including those of life and death and with bullies and enemies. Being Relational has inspired organizational initiatives in the United States and around the world.
In 2015, my family and I suffered a personal trauma when one of my 5 children, Archer, was catastrophically injured in a diving accident, paralyzed from the neck down. Through that life and death experience of many months and the new normalizing journey, I lived the Relational Approach negotiating with medical staff, my husband, an array of insurance, medical, rehabilitation, Medicaid, state assistance programs, house contractors, educators, banks, and even my husband working towards integrating my own life and my children’s lives turned upside down with trauma. I emerged after 5 years and created and produced Blink of an Eye Podcast with a message of hope, trauma healing and that you are never alone. It is chock full of practical relational tips and trauma healing learnings for you. I also challenge the medical industry and invite physician leaders to look deeper into the policies and practices that actually increase trauma suffering rather than promote healing.
Within months of launch, listeners across the globe responded and reported the dire need for emotional and spiritual support in the immediate aftermath of their life changing family traumatic events I heard their cry for relational approaches in healthcare and trauma healing informed practices in Intensive Care Units. I believed the natural next step for relational impact was to create a non-profit. I formed the Integrative Center for Trauma Healing, Advocacy, and Transformation in 2020. The mission of IC THAT is to normalize the experience of trauma, provide integrative support, hope and advocacy resources for families in trauma in the first 30 days of their lives being changed in the blink of an eye, and to raise awareness and advocate change for trauma-healing informed legal, insurance and medical reform.
Being Relational has so many applications because it is a way of being. Won’t you join me? Whether it is daily conflict, disputes, or trauma or a desire to live in alignment with who you are in the midst of conflict, disputes or trauma, I am committed to supporting you beginning with a message of Hope in the midst of Tragedy, methods for Awareness in the Crucible of Conflict, and skills for Advocacy in the Face of Impossibility. Relational Well-being is the Choice for Everyday Living.
Welcome to a Relational Approach to living your life, fully and wholly.
The Relational Way
Sending love