THE BEAUTY OF MEDIATION or why we need a witness in the room

We all have filters for each other. Every day we hear people from the place that we are listening from. And then we get wrapped up in our stories and we often stop listing completely because we are planning our response. 

It would be lovely if, once we're aware of this, we can keep this concept in the foreground of our minds as we engage with our spouse. When we speak with our children. When we have a dialog with a friend or colleague. But it's not that easy.

Here is where mediation comes in. 

​Think about a difficult conversation you just had. Or a painful dialog. Or an emotional interaction. And think about how great it would have been if someone, outside of the emotional sphere that you were engaging in, could slow the process down, point out the triggers and reactions, help rephrase the sweeping statements and angry accusations.  Imagine being in dialog and having someone outside of the emotional sphere you are engaging in, offer up new ways to share your emotions, create new structures to speak your experiences, suggest new ways to listen.

This is what happens in mediation.

A lot of how we hear each other, especially when we are in stressful situations, comes from a place of fear, of abandonment, of the need to survive, of not being taken advantage of, not being appreciate, or being mistrusted, disrespected or dismissed.

In mediation, my role is to slow the process down and give you each the opportunity to see how the communication is unfolding so that you can begin to break the patterns that are preventing you from truly having an honest dialog with each other.  This is a bit of a hybrid method.  The mediator in me helps to facilitate the conversation, while the communication coach helps you create more successful ways to interact with each other.

In every session, I ask that you think about where you are hearing from. And in turn, think about where the other person is coming from, too. Once we are aware of where we are listening from, we are able to change the filter from the one we have on. And the more we practice this, the more we escape from our old ways of handling issues, discussing problems, sharing feelings and experiences. Instead, we become self-aware. We become self-regulating. We start to see our patterns and our triggers. We start to slow down our process and refrain from reacting. We start to really hear the other person rather than listen to our own story about what they are saying. And we allow ourselves to open up to authentic relationships filled with honesty and understanding.
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​​Couples Mediation

​​Couples Mediation is a process for couples who are looking for an alternative to traditional therapy. In mediation, the goal is to move you forward by creating a foundation for communication that will allow you to engage in a more authentic and vulnerable way with each other. 

While we work together was as a couple, your individual work is essential. Your individual work—understanding your triggers, recognizing your unhealthy and sabotaging patterns, seeing how you enable each other to stay in unhealthy dynamics with each other, delving into past relationships and family of origin patterns to begin to understand how your coping skills and survival patterns originated—discovering all of these elements within yourself will allow you both to come together with personal understanding and work together to build a solid foundation for your relationship to live on.

I invite you to visit my Individual Coaching page to learn more about how I can support you separately, while we continue to engage together in Couples Mediation work.  

Family Mediation

In Family Mediation we look at patterns in the family dynamic that sabotage relationships, that create triangulation and prevent direct communication, and that enable family members to avoid authentic relationship with each other.  Once we have unveiled the unproductive family dynamics, we work within the family structure to create new ways for you to interact with each other that allows for and nurtures honest communication between all members of the family.

The Family Mediation container includes work with the complete family unit, work with parents and their kids, and individual work that supports the family group sessions.  

I am very mindful and skilled at keeping confidence in any individual work, while being able to navigate the important conversations when we all meet up together as a family.  In this way, each member of the family feels comfortable sharing the challenging, and often painful, information with me that they are not yet ready to share with their family members.  

And, because I have this information, I am able to structure a family dialog that begins to create the Emotional Safety necessary for true vulnerability and authentic communication to unfold.

Structure and Fees

I offer my Couples and Family Mediation Services at $290 per hour for in-person, video-conferencing or phone sessions. I do not charge for email correspondence or phone calls under ten minutes. I am available nights and weekends as well as during the work week.

I hope I am able to help you. 

~Testimonials~

We found Liz Rose through friends who had used her as a mediator for their divorce. They had shared that the communication work they were offered during the divorce process helped them so much in being great parents to their kids after their divorce. They did not steer us wrong. Liz is excellent at pointing out our habits in how we relate to each other and helped us come up with better ways to communicate and, most importantly, to listen.  We are still pretty new at doing things this new way, but already we are feeling much more respected in our communication and much more connected in our relationship. I would recommend Liz to any couple looking for support. Amanda R.

​After our divorce, both my wife and I were having a lot of trouble with communication with our kids, especially with our daughter. We began to work with Liz, first my daughter and I and then a number of sessions with my ex-wife and I. We learned the concept of triangulation and started to see how we were taking away the opportunity for authentic conversations with our kids by talking to them thru each other.  This also created a lot of animosity between us when, really, our children were certainly capable of relating to us directly.  What the work with Liz did was to reshape how our entire family communicates with each other. We are all better at taking responsibility for what we say. Thank you, Liz, for your guidance and expertise. Daniel T.

Liz once mentioned to us that we could pretend she was there even when we were not in a mediation session with her. At first I thought that would be strange to do, but it's really not!  When my partner and I become too bogged down in the mess of the situation we sometimes find ourselves in, either of us will often say "what would Liz say?"  It makes us laugh (most of the time) because it is this great mirror for us to see where we are at. Which breaks the tension and allows us to start again from a much better place.  I would recommend working with Liz even if most of your communication is great. I guarantee that you will learn something new about how to interact with your partner!  Grace M.