Harriet Lerner is an author and psychologist, currently in private practice in Lawrence.

Psychologist and author Harriet Lerner spoke Friday at the Kansas Union as part of the Kansas University School of Social Welfare’s Social Work Day 2014.

Lerner was a staff psychologist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka for more than 30 years and a faculty member in the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry. She has authored 11 books, including the New York Times bestseller “The Dance of Anger.” Currently she is in private practice in Lawrence.

On Friday Lerner spoke about confronting difficult issues in relationships. Offering an example from her own life, she mentioned speaking with her mother more than 20 years ago about some of her father’s “less reputable behaviors.”

“If you think this is easy, you just haven’t done it,” Lerner said.

Lerner offered audience members eight “steps to courageous acts of change” people can make themselves to affect important relationships.

Each came with nuance and caveats. For instance, one of Lerner’s steps called on listeners to “say what you think and feel about things that matter.”

At the same time, she noted, “In the name of truth or the name of authenticity, people bludgeon each other.” Hence the subsequent step: Refrain from sharing thoughts when appropriate.