National Family Mediation Week
Why is mediation so positively powerful, challenging and extremely worthwhile?
There are many reasons but one which immediately springs to my mind is that mediation requires the willingness and ability to talk to each other at a core human level, something which many divorcing and separating couples find extremely difficult.
This is not of course surprising given the context of their circumstances and all the emotions needing be self-managed and regulate, if mediation is to be successful.
This is why it can be so challenging but also so worthwhile.
What do I mean by talking at a core human level?
Well, if you are separating and wish to use mediation you will need to be willing, committed and capable of curiously exploring with each other how you each see and are experiencing the situation, your thoughts and feelings connected with what you may each fear about the future, your concerns and priorities for the future so that you are able make important decisions and construct important agreements together.
Why, well, because without both of you feeling that these things are sufficiently understood by each other, without ‘connecting with’ these things of intense importance to both you, you are unlikely to feel able to manage the discomfort that these conversation may make you feel and stay focused on working together, discussing ways and future solutions around your respective priorities, overcoming these fears, worries and concerns for both of you, along the way.
A willingness and ability (Intent and commitment) to talk together in this way creates an empathic connection, focusing on each of you understanding and responding positively to the other person’s individual and often very different experiences, giving them a validity and reality as things which must be addressed by both of you if you are to be able to work together in mediation, making decisions together and creating value based outcomes and solutions, which ultimately feel good enough to both of you.
The mediator will help and support you in a variety of ways helping you both, for example, to see things differently, to broaden perspectives and keep things solution and outcome focused but the courage, commitment and good intent has to come from you.
Remember that most concerns are expressions of a desire for something, a need that is needing to be met, an opportunity to have a very different kind of conversation, at a core human level, around these things of value to both of you.
The mediation process is as far removed from the often binary, competitive and adversarial world of litigation and court-based outcomes in which the ultimate purpose is for others to advise and judge what is best for you and your family, where the individual often feels powerless in the strong arms of the Justice system and where the focus is often on winning as much as you can at the expense of the other.
Surely, in so many cases, mediation should be the ‘first port of call and not the last option’ !