Family Therapy vs. Mediation
Families seek our help for lots of different reasons: divorce, conflict over a parent’s care, family business disputes, siblings who are having trouble getting along, sharing the use of vacation homes passed down through generations.We are often asked, especially when doing an intake about an adult sibling conflict, how family mediation differs from family therapy or family counseling.
Family therapy is “a form of talk therapy that focuses on the improvement of interfamilial relationships and behaviors”. Family therapy delves deeply into the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions of how families have arrived at where they are now, carefully examining the relationships and the sources for many of the dynamics, and then working on how to improve or shift.
This process is usually ongoing, and may involve different members of the family at different times. Family therapy can be a useful modality when you aren’t moving towards a specific resolution point, and you are interested in discussing and uncovering family dynamics.
Family mediation is quite a different process. Mediation is a concentrated process and problem-solving oriented; focused on the future and examines the past only as it serves us to begin working on the future. The goal of family mediation is to resolve conflict and disputes such that families can move ahead towards a new reality with new boundaries - often with compromise on all sides.
Mediation is time-limited in a way that most family therapy is not. Therapy is about understanding the roots of the conflict while mediation is about making decisions that will move the parties past their “stuck” places, past old dysfunctional family dynamics that take over even in adulthood. Mediation is useful when families need to make decisions to move forward, or when there are concrete outcomes that families want to emerge.
A family member may reach out to us after a big life event such as the death of a parent, or a wedding of a niece to which some parts of the family were not invited. And often the thought of mediating is more tolerable to adult siblings than entering some kind of family therapy in which they have little hope of changing the long-established psychological landscape of the family. “John always felt left out. He never felt he got his fair share.” “Mary was always bossy and thought she knew what was best for all of us…
Family therapists want to explore the range of assumptions about reality that get internalized early in the family-of-origin, and the defenses each family member employs to cope with whatever dysfunction they perceive or experience. Family therapists want to understand each family member’s part in the family dynamics. “Steven was the trouble maker so I had to be the good child.” Mediators want to creatively address how to define new ways of interacting or co-existing with the least amount of hurt.
Certainly, during a family mediation there is much time spent expressing deeply felt past wrongs, emotional pain, and a wish to be seen by the others in a different way, harkening back to old family dynamics. And similar to family therapists, mediators need to hold the parties’ pain and see the reality from each person’s perspective.
But, as mediators, our goal is to help the parties make decisions that will help release them from the stuck place in which they find themselves. “I can’t be around my brother because every time we get together he starts some old fight and ends up disrespecting me and my husband.” “I can’t share the vacation home with my sister who has a lot more money and keeps making changes and then charging me for half of the costs”
In mediation, we work on finding a psychologically neutral space to meet, with limited expectations about deep changes of the heart. We craft an agreement that will have very clear boundaries for interaction and rules about disrespectful comments. We help the parties make decisions about how they can structure the ownership of the vacation home, make decisions about its usage, improvements… or, how one can buy the other out. We remind them of the alternatives
At first glance this kind of intervention may seem superficial or without real substance. But when logistical agreements can break through years of tension and even estrangement, the effects of creating safe boundaries and rules about respectful future interactions can be profound and can be the start of a new kind of relationship. It is not unusual for a family who enters embroiled in extreme tension to end the session reminiscing about shared, happy family memories. That is the opposite of superficial.
Please do reach out to learn more about TMG’s family mediation practice to learn more about how we can help you navigate your family’s challenges.