As a mediation trainer for fifteen years, I must have had these words come out of my mouth thousands of times: Don’t try to fix it for them. As anyone that trains mediators knows, problem solving is such a hard habit to break when you are first starting out. You listen intently to what the parties have to say and the predicament that they find themselves in and when you finally get a chance to speak, the first thing you think to say is the “solution” to their problem. (as if!)

And wouldn’t you know it, they don’t like your solution. But it is such a great solution to their problem if they could just see the brilliance in it! But no. Damn parties just don’t get it. So you struggle in vain to the end trying to convince them of what would be a fair and equitable way to go, but alas everyone leaves deflated and unhappy. For most of us, that is how we started out mediating before we could really take in that we can’t do it for them. We can only help them do it for themselves.

Lately, I have been watching my trainees do this and thinking to myself: why? Why do we try to problem solve? It has started to occur to me that there is a crisis going on for a beginning mediator: They are afraid of conflict, as people who want to be mediators tend to be! And that fear is triggering their ‘flight or fight’ response. But as the mediator, fighting with the parties, or running out the door, isn’t what we are supposed to do. Or, at least that is what they teach us in the basic training. So they try to fix it.

But perhaps the impulse to learn to mediate is an indicator of the evolution of our species. Maybe the cultural shift toward resolving conflict outside the court system is also a sign of how far we have come. Perhaps we can tilt our hat to Darwin as we watch our sympathetic nervous system take a left turn – and a new adapted skill takes hold. Try to fix it.

The Fight/Flight/Fix reflex is a response to one question: Am I safe? If the answer is no (this conflict is triggering me) then the response of “fix it” is (evolutionary speaking) for the mediator’s benefit – a way that they are trying to feel safe themselves. With this, however, comes a lack of focus on the parties’ self-determination.

So what does it take to get a mediator to stop trying to fix it for the parties? It takes the mediator overcoming their internal fear of conflict, which begins with acknowledging the fear is there in the first place.

–e