Building Better Relationships: Short Essays on Learning to Relate (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781466376816)

Julie Roberts grew up in Washington D.C. While parenting her three children, including a disabled son, she was active in the socialist, feminist and anti-war movements. She pursued her interests in early childhood education and psychology, and obtained her elementary school teaching credential at San Francisco State University and her Masters degree in Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Ms. Roberts started a non-profit, counseling center in San Francisco in l990. Her counseling training was supplemented by 10 years of participation in a psychoanalytically oriented study group. She also became certified in the Rosen Method, a bodywork therapy developed by Marion Rosen. Meditation and Yoga have been integral to her own personal development. In collaboration with ARRICA Design, Ms. Roberts has focused her experience as a parent, teacher, social activist, and seasoned therapist on the design and development of an educational project called TruceWorks.com. The purpose of the project is to improve how people relate to each other through providing more information on relationship and offering the experience of a structured, on-line communication process. This publication, Building Better Relationships, is to serve as a handbook for the TruceWorks on-line process. The short essays throw light on the impact of relating and the formation of relationship on human development. They explain and give guidance for using the CLEAR process, a form of structured communication. Education is provided to enable understanding and resolution of persistent and all too common interpersonal conflicts. Ms. Robert's idea that digital technology could be used to improve interpersonal communication grew from interactions in which couples displayed seriously challenged relational skills. She observed that people often did not have the mental/emotional space to listen without reacting. She hypothesized that engaging on-line with another person in a bi-directional communication process utilizing structured feedback would teach, through experience, basic elements of a more relational interaction. This thesis drove the development of TruceWorks.com and its handbook, Building Better Relationships, both of which have emerged as an integration of Ms. Roberts' life and professional interests. Julie lives in San Francisco and Petaluma, California and East Calais, Vermont. She has a private practice in San Francisco.