When therapy isn’t working, you may be seeking concrete solutions. Or maybe you’re stuck in ongoing conflicts without a path to resolution. When therapy falls short, mediation can be the answer. Discover how mediation can take you to the next level and provide the resolution you need when therapy isn’t cutting it anymore.
When Therapy Isn’t Working, Mediation Can
If therapy’s not yielding your desired results, mediation can offer a promising alternative. That’s because mediation focuses on facilitating communication and finding practical solutions. This is thanks to training mediators do to be highly effective in resolving conflicts.
Through structured and impartial sessions, mediation empowers individuals to actively participate in finding mutually beneficial resolutions. By shifting the emphasis from introspection to dialogue and collaboration, mediation offers fresh perspectives. Mediators help navigate conflict that therapy doesn’t address. That’s why embracing mediation can open new doors to find the resolution you seek.
Therapy Isn’t Working For You… But How Does It Work?
Therapy offers a secure environment for introspection and self-discovery. Through open conversations about personal experiences, therapy helps individuals understand the origins of their behaviors and thoughts. It’s an ongoing process, not defined by specific objectives, and may span several years. The effectiveness of therapy is evaluated on an individual basis, with success measured uniquely for each person.
Therapy’s Benefits and Drawbacks
Therapy offers numerous benefits for those seeking self-reflection and a deeper understanding of themselves. It helps clients gain clarity on their personal history and how it’s shaped their current life circumstances.
However, it’s important to note that therapy isn’t designed to provide concrete results or resolve conflicts with others. It functions as an ongoing process without specific goals and can sometimes span over several years.
The success of therapy is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Therapists help their clients with questions and reflections on the past. In fact, much of therapy revolves around how an individual got to this point in their life.
Insights from therapy serve many clients well. They may also be limited in application, though. For instance, a therapy client may finally understand that they aren’t getting their needs met in a relationship.
This could be a great kickoff to solving an ongoing conflict for the client. But the problem isn’t solved without improving the communication and understanding in that relationship. That takes work beyond the scope of therapy. This points to a potential reason why sometimes therapy isn’t working for you. Let’s explore a few more.
Reasons Therapy Isn’t Working For You
Therapy may not always provide the desired outcomes when it comes to concrete solutions or conflict resolution. Therapists are skilled in excavating inner truth and self-reflection with their clients. But they’re not specifically trained in resolving conflict or concrete solutions.
Therapy can be expensive and time consuming. It’s an ongoing process without concrete goals, and success is measured on a case-by-case basis. That’s why it may serve clients to consider other methods when seeking immediate results in addressing specific issues. For instance, mediators are trained for these cases and can help clients achieve these results.
Seeking Concrete Solutions
Therapy focuses primarily on exploration, understanding, and personal growth rather than providing concrete solutions. It may be more effective to work with professionals trained to guide you through action steps If you’re seeking tangible results that address your concerns.
Much like therapists, mediators help clients in their personal growth but they’re also trained to facilitate change between them. Conflict resolution is key in mediation with concrete goals as an integral part of the process.
Ongoing Conflicts That Need Resolution
Much like therapists, mediators engage in meaningful conversations and ask thought-provoking questions. They also offer insights to help clients gain a deeper understanding of themselves as well as each other. This can help clients see how their past experiences shape their present thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
There’s an inherent limit in therapy because clients figure this out on an individual basis. Even in couples or family sessions, therapists are trained to seek out individual reflections from each participant.
Mediation facilitates more of an exchange between participants. That means mediation clients work to understand each other thanks to session practices. These include active listening, boundary building, and prioritizing agreed upon issues to work through.
Saving Time and Money
Therapy and mediation cost about the same per session. They also both usually hold sessions for around 45-60 minutes. The difference is that therapy can take years without a conclusion in sight. Mediation works on an opposite trajectory.
From the start, mediation focuses on a specific set of issues and goals to maintain a consistent direction throughout the process. This means there’s usually a short time frame for mediation work.
In therapy, you may not agree with your therapist about when it’s time to end treatment. This can waste session time, sometimes an entire session, while the two of you discuss and decide the end point for your therapy.
With mediation, the duo or group agrees on the time and often decide ahead of time. The mediator guides this discussion but remains impartial about this decision. As a result, mediation tends to work more efficiently toward its conclusion and therefore represents a cost effective choice.
Discovering Mediation when Therapy isn’t Working
Mediation is a method of conflict resolution that ends with setting concrete, agreed upon terms. The process works by fostering understanding through active listening and collaborative goal setting.
Although mediation often comes up in the context of divorce and other legal proceedings, it’s more than that. Mediation brings families together. Through the mediation process participants resolve conflict and break through destructive patterns to create healthy boundaries and understanding.
Conflict is a sign that something needs to change. We often experience this as feeling stuck in a relationship dynamic. Mediation moves you through this conflict in a thoughtful way that helps you get unstuck.
Maintaining Neutrality
Neutrality is a crucial element in the Flo Mediation definition. We work without judgement. That means we don’t take sides, like a lawyer would. Mediators also don’t share opinions about the strengths or weaknesses of either party’s position.
Phase One: Collecting Information
Mediation begins with information gathering and processing. Your mediator will ask questions for clarification and to help reframe the conflict. This sets you up to begin seeing your disputes in a new light.
Phase Two: Organizing the Conversation
The mediator curates and directs communication between parties. They focus on organizing the conversation to keep it genuine and productive. That means holding parties accountable, reality testing, and spotlighting the issues at hand.
Phase Three: Naming and Prioritizing Issues
Each unique mediation raises its own challenges. Agreeing on what the issues are is a critical part of the process. After phases one and two, your mediator plucks these issues out of the conversation to articulate them for the parties. At this point the disputants decide which issue is their top priority.
Potential Results
The Flo Mediation definition works toward a specific goal – concrete results. Depending on the issues at hand, this might mean a written or spoken agreement. It could also mean scheduling another mediation session, a referral to another professional, or maybe a follow-up email to check in.
How Mediation Takes You to the Next Level when Therapy isn’t Working
Mediators remain impartial in their role and that lack of judgement helps the process in sessions because participants know that it’s truly about serving their specific priorities.
Conclusion
If therapy isn’t working to get your desired results, mediation can offer a promising alternative. With its focus on facilitating communication and finding practical solutions, mediation can be highly effective in resolving conflicts where therapy may have fallen short.
Through a structured and impartial process, mediation empowers individuals to actively participate in finding mutually beneficial resolutions. By shifting the emphasis from introspection to dialogue and collaboration, mediation offers fresh perspectives and help navigate conflict therapy hasn’t addressed. Embracing mediation can open new doors to resolving conflicts and finding the resolution you seek.
When therapy isn’t working try facilitative mediation with Flo Mediation. Contact us to schedule your first session.