Insight mediation
Insight Mediation
Insight Mediation was pioneered by Dr. Cheryl Picard and is the practice that brought Lonergan’s critical realism to the conflict field. It is a third party intervention that focuses on helping parties generate insights that expand what they understand about themselves, the situation and those they are in conflict with, and reduce the sense of threat that is driving the need to defend and animating often debilitating conflict dynamics.
Insights are generated from curious, non-judgmental listening and questioning focused on: 1) what parties think they know about each other’s intents 2) how they are protecting what matters to them and 3) what led them to decide to interact in the way they have. Questions are structured to foster new interpretations, new meanings, and new connections that make space for parties to seek new ways of interacting. Learning more about oneself in relation to others releases conflicting parties from the necessity of threat and the recurrent patterns of interaction that block their ability to craft non or at least less conflictual ways of interacting. Helping parties gain insights that transform conflicts through a framework for understanding how to break through closed-minds and move toward less threatening possibilities offers hope for changing a conflict riddled world.
writing by cheryl picard
Cheryl Picard has written a series of short papers outlining the foundational aspects of Insight Mediation. These papers are not published anywhere else, so stay tuned on our website and in our email campaigns, where we will share these documents for your reference.
Insight Mediation: Four Distinguishing Features
Cheryl Picard and Ken Melchin
July 8, 2022
Insight Mediation for Elder Mediators
“Insight Mediation provides Elder Mediators with the skills to assist family members to think differently about the reasons for their conflict; to learn how to communicate differently; to choose to interact differently with family members. The key to these new patterns of interaction is the deep “learning” acquired through insight. Insight Mediation is the perfect approach to Elder Mediation as it helps family members to make, what are at times, extremely difficult decisions for the family. Insight Mediation offers the potential to nurture family relations in challenging times.” Elizabeth Sterritt M.Ed., OCT, AccFM., AccEM, Chair, Elder Mediation Committee OAFM