More mediation and counseling

In our long mediation session we played another listening game. It was called something along the lines of Questions in Aid of the Questioned. In this instance, each of us talked for about two minutes about a current dilemma, after which the other participants asked questions. The speaker did not answer these questions; instead, they were transcribed by another participant and when the questioning was done, the speaker would discuss the questions - not by answering them, but by suggesting which ones were helpful and which catalyzed positive or negative emotional reactions. The goal of the exercise was to ask questions that neither sought information nor implied advice, but which instead "opened doors" for the questioned by reframing things in ways that might allow her to reconsider her dilemma from a new light.

This, incidentally, is extremely hard. For most people in my clinic, the difficulty was in asking a question that didn't imply either a judgment or a suggestion. Even when questions seem neutral, simple phrasing can suggest that you have a particular answer in mind. For me, again, the tentativeness was my biggest problem: who am I to say that somebody hasn't considered X-Y-Z and how do I know if it's a relevant question unless I have more information? This was similarly true in my interviewing exercise earlier in the day (we do video-taped mock client consults for my Interviewing Class) - unlike most people, I am grrrreat at asking open questions and having the patience to let people get to the information. I find that most people are so uncomfortable with potential silences or not having control of the conversation that they will often exert more effort than strictly necessary attempting to control the direction of a conversation. I think my ability to let go of the conversational reigns a bit even when I am ultimately directing them is a genuine asset. I'm also very good at explaining things - after our interview my mock client expressed her utter delight to finally understand how IOLTA accounts worked. And I'm pretty good at keeping a composed poker face, which can be awfully useful. On the other hand, I often don't push things as far as I need to and miss details.

But back to mediation: My turn as the speaker was disconcerting, possibly because I'm ultimately just out of dilemmas after these past couple of weeks of mediation trainings. There are only so many things I can feel conflicted over at one time, and since I prefer to think things through by myself, I find that it's very difficult to disentangle the morass of considerations, nuances and counter-nuances (yep, I decree this to be a word from now on) in order to present anything resembling a comprehensive two minute narrative instead of a dilemma hairball. So, of course, what I presented was a rumpled and highly simplifed version of something I was perhaps slightly ambivalent over, but more or less comfortable with in my personal director's-cut version. Unfortunately, the simplification didn't convey the whole story and once again I felt the immediate "oh there's a simple solution to this problem!" reaction from my two questioners.

Some of the questions were well-phrased, but I felt personally responsible for the lapse in usefulness of the exercise for me - I simply hadn't given enough clarity for people to wade through the myriad directions my brain had already gone on this issue. At the end, they both exclaimed how hard it had been not to give advice and after a few moment's of commisserating, they launched into said advice-giving with my wary permission. Since we were in a hurry, I thanked them for their input, but it really got under my skin and I spent the rest of class in a funk. It was fairly benign on their part - superficial similarities to their personal situations sparked charge emotional connotations, they projected their situations into mine and worked from there off into the sunset (and, yes, it's easy to consider oneself the sole exception to any and all common experience, which is why I always force myself listen to well-meaning advice and mull over it even when I feel that "this is completely different" but in this case, there genuinely were significant differences between our respective situations). I felt irrationally upset, both because I felt that I'd somehow had failed the exercise by not giving a better story and with them for offering premature advice that held an unwarranted air of judgment. The whole incident really fascinates me, though, because it really was fairly minor and benign. I suppose it serves as personal reinforcement that the repore that we build with people is very delicate in situations when people are sharing emotionally difficult and complicated situations. Or I'm touchy. One of those.