How can you prepare your State of Mind for Mediation with your Ex
“The power of Beliefs and Expectation”- We are human predictive machines
- You get what you expect
- What you perceive and believe (expect) you can achieve
- You can if you think you can
These are all phrases bandied about but what do they mean for you, as you think about and prepare your state of mind for mediation.
The challenge
You are about to go into a difficult meeting, with a mediator and with your ex to try and find a solution to something that have been the cause of so much friction for so long.
You have got absolutely nowhere with them yourself. You cannot talk together for 5 minutes without it breaking into an argument.
They have changed so much. You have changed so much, since you first met. You now seem so different. You hardly recognise them any more.
Your experiences over the last two years have been horrible. Your Ex have proved themselves to be manipulative, controlling etc and you can no longer trust what they say. They seem to lie, at will.
With all this in your mind, you are now very worried and anxious that this will all play out in the mediation.
You are worried that you will embarrass yourself if you cannot keep your cool.
You are worried that you Ex will try to bully you in to agreeing something you don’t want to agree.
You are very anxious and not really thinking straight but want to do your best.
However, the challenge is that your experience of living with your Ex, over the past few years, have influenced and shaped your attitude towards them, how you listen to them, how you treat them, how you communicate with them (which is as little as possible), if you can help it.
Your choice
Your mediator has spoken to you at some length and you know, as you approach the first joint meeting that, although it does not feel like it, you do have a choice about how you think about this challenge ahead of you.
You can keep an open, optimistic and hopeful mind about how mediation will go, asking the best from yourself and your Ex, that you will both be able to hold it together and come out of it with an agreement you can both live with, after all you have never been in mediation before and it could work
OR
You can base your prediction about how it will all go on your past experience of communicating with your Ex and belief that he will simply live up to your expectations (all your negative beliefs about him), bringing the worst out of you and the process will fail
OR
You can hope and expect that the mediator will help you and your Ex do something that you have not been able to do on your own so far and pull something out of the bag.
You can expect the best from yourself, your Ex and the mediation process, if you choose to.
The shift in thinking (Preparing to communicate in mediation)
As you think about these options, asking yourself these questions, you increasingly understand that you have a choice about how you prepare yourself for mediation, how you prepare you thinking, how you frame the mediation opportunity for yourself and your Ex, whether you want to be optimistic or pessimistic for example and whether you choose to expect the worst or expect the best.
Are the current beliefs you are holding about yourself and abilities, the mediation process and how your Ex will behave, helping you to prepare yourself or are they a hindering you, holding your back from being your ‘best self’ (lowering or increasing the anxiety you feel, lowering or increasing the confidence you are feeling, lowering or increasing your self belief).
After all there is little you can do about how your Ex behaves in mediation (or is there?- see below) but there is certainly lots of things you can do for yourself.
The outcome
What is more empowering for you:
to feel anxious, helpless, judging and blaming your Ex, before you even start mediation, assuming that how they will behave before you even get there
OR
to feel that you have some influence over how you think (frame it for yourself) about this and even perhaps, some influence over how your Ex behaves, if you do your best and they experience you doing your best to behave in a respectful and dignified way towards them. How accountable might this make them feel? Just a thought.
This will,, whatever the positive impact on your Ex, leave you with a sense of pride and dignity in yourself and may even perhaps have a positive influence on your Ex.
You might be feeling an internal struggle between two parts, one wanting to hold you back, saying or even screaming at you,” Don’t believe this” and the other urging you to ” just wonder whether this new opportunity might just be the answer”.
Which part is going to win out?
You decide that you have nothing to lose by hoping for and expecting the best, even if, at the moment, until you have seen it work, you have reservations, concluding that there is nothing to be gained from expecting the worst and possibly quite a lot to be gained from going into this process expecting the best from yourself, the process and your Ex.
Some questions to ask yourself and answer honestly to yourself.
“We, humans, are predictive machines”
Our expectations are based on our beliefs (limiting or helping)
Ask yourselves these questions:
IF YOU KNEW for certain that mediation will be successful how does this influence and change how you think and feel about it?
How does this change your sense of expectation?
How does this change how you think about and prepare for the mediation?
How is this influencing how you feel about yourself ?
How is this influencing how you feel towards and behave towards your Ex?
What kind of person will your Ex experience in you, as you communicate with them in mediation, doing your best?
AND, very importantly
How might this influence them to improve how they behave towards you? Will it bring out the best in them or the worst, do you think?
YOUR CHOICE
As you read this article, if you are finding it hard to imagine yourself, in your situation, as the person I am writing about, but really want to believe that you can resolve and solve things with your Ex in mediation, speak to a Family Mediator and Divorce Coach
Good luck
Mediator, Divorce Consultant, Trainer
Author- The Divorce Manual
Director and Founder of Compass Resolution Ltd- The Family Mediation Team