Insight Mediation Workshop – reflections on the training

Humans have a lot of emotions, that’s one of the biggest things that makes us humans.

In a divorce you can just imagine how heightened the couple’s emotions are?

Emotions can also really affect the agreements that people come up with. In mediation the divorce agreement is a document that consists of everything that the couple has agreed on during mediation and each decision is fueled by an emotion.

Emotions are definitely something that mediators need to be good at handling. I think that the most effective way to deal with a couple’s emotions is making sure that everyone is listening to each other and making sure that your clients’ feelings are being heard.

Insight Mediation theory focuses on the emotions and allowing people to feel heard in order to move beyond their fears and barriers. When people feel safe and feel like their concerns are being heard during mediation they start to open up. When people open up, that makes the mediation process a lot easier and makes it better for everyone involved.

Individual meetings are important for Insight Mediation. With individual meetings parties can tell you their perspective and what they want out of it without pressure of saying that in front of their soon to be ex. I didn’t realize how helpful individual meetings could be. I think that they are super important and a great tool to use because you can really understand both sides if you meet with both people separately.

I really enjoyed this training and it was super informative. It made me realize just how important your people skills are when you want to become a mediator. You have to make sure that you can stay neutral and be able to help people control their emotions and behavior. I think that if anyone wants to become a mediator this was a really good training to show just how much work and effort goes into being a mediator.

Maddie Herdlein, Mediation Intern