It is hard to imagine a more conflictual time than when one is going through a divorce. On an emotional level, during a divorce people experience a range of emotions that they do not often experience on a day-to-day basis- betrayal, anger, sadness, disappointment, fear, mistrust, revenge, and hopelessness to name a few. On a financial level, divorce involves almost every aspect of one’s financial life. A divorce involves a division of marital property including one’s home, pensions, bank accounts, inheritances, and even personal property. Divorce also involves making decisions about health insurance, life insurance and financial security. And finally, and probably most importantly, during a divorce decisions need to be made about the children, their parenting schedules, education, health and support.Unfortunately, most people did not have formal conflict resolution training growing up. As such, for the vast majority of people conflict is handled in two ways- either the conflict is ignored or the reaction is to attack back. This is not just cultural; to a great extent we are hardwired to have the “fight or flight” response. Thus, to address conflict head on in a non-adversarial manner is counter-intuitive. Mediation provides clients with a safe venue to discuss their divorce. Mediation however will not automatically undo years of ingrained behavior. Mediators and therapists can offer clients tools which will help them mentally and emotionally for the divorce process. Below are a few suggestions. At the end of this article, I have included a Conflict Self-Assessment tool as well as an outline of this article which you can give to clients engaged in the divorce mediation process.

1. Conduct a conflict self–assessment:

The purpose of a conflict self–assessment is to help the divorcing client get in touch with his or her own particular attitudes towards conflict. Where does the client fall in the conflict continuum? Does he shy away from conflict? Does she get an adrenalin rush from a fight? Knowing where you are in the continuum and how you feel about conflict is the first step towards being able to handle conflict effectively. Divorcing clients should consider filling out the attached self-assessment before their first mediation. If nothing else, it will help the client focus on the issue of conflict. More than that however, the first step towards handling conflict effectively is to understand how one reacts to conflict. If a person knows that she is conflict-avoidant, this awareness can be very helpful in assessing how the mediation is going. Is she agreeing because she really agrees or because she wants to avoid conflict? As with anything, having self-awareness is extremely valuable to the process. [Read more on Mediate.com]