Mediation: what helps to maintain stable relationships

What is happiness? Typical question with lots of possible answers. Not long ago, at a training session I was doing, the topic was debated. As a common conclusion: happiness resides in relationships with others. If we think about the moments that have made us happiest, in most cases, in some sense there is another person or persons in the picture. In relationships with family, friends or strangers that we meet along the way and who stop being strangers, that is where happiness finds its place and it represents a reason to look after our relationships and try to make them healthy. Conflict mediation can be used for this, to resolve disputes with other people, not only considering the achievement of personal goals, but also looking after the relationship with that person or persons. Sometimes, with neutral or external help from mediation, it is possible to focus on problems from very different perspectives to find solutions.

In a way, what the mediation professional facilitates is the “journey into the shoes of the other person.” In fact, it is easy to find similarities between the work of the mediator and the experience of travelling to remote and different places than what we are used to. Travelling far from our comfort zone makes it possible to learn directly from the experience of those who live a very different reality, but whose emotions -as is always the case with emotions- know the same language. Normally, in order to put our shoes on, we need to sit down somewhere or have some support, otherwise we run the risk of losing our balance. So, what the mediation does is provide that support to put oneself in the shoes of the other person. Here are some of the keys in order to understand a little better the kind of help that is provided by the mediator in order to maintain healthy relationships:

They help to see the problem from the outside and discover what, thus far, could be blind spots or cognitive distortions. This is done in mediation through questions and exercises.

They help to share responsibility in the face of conflict and acknowledge the emotional interdependency with the other. Help to identify emotions, understand them and transform them, generating a new stance in the face of the problem. The lead characters are the participants in the mediation process, the conflicted people. The mediation professional only helps them to undertake their process.

Help to identify the specific less. Identify in order to accept and be grateful. Having done this, the responses, conscious and unconscious, de-escalate the conflict. It is like that moment when the train arrives and you get in after spending a while waiting in the cold, rain and snow at a very ugly station.

Then, there is something that I sometimes have the privilege to witness in my work: seeing someone capable of finally laughing at the problem. Really laughing, with gratitude, without sarcasm. That seems like the most difficult part to me, and however it is great in order to conclude any change and learning process. I think that being capable of doing that is one of the greatest human feats and a guarantee of moments of happiness.