Sometimes the hardest part isn't letting go but rather learning to start over.

Nicole Sobon

If you believe that the other person is a high-conflict person, it used to be thought that you had to go to court to have them managed.

But now some Family Dispute Resolution Practitioners have learned new methods of managing many high-conflict cases in Family Dispute Resolution.

A big part of this change is having a structure that doesn't allow for a lot of blaming, and instead focuses people on gathering information and problem-solving and slowing things down.

The time that you are in front of the judge during court hearings is very fast followed by long periods between hearings. If a high conflict co-parent does not comply with an interim order, for example to have a drug test or a psychological evaluation then hearings may be adjourned or be held with little progress in your case as the judge again orders them to comply.

In Family Dispute Resolution and collaborative divorce you can take as long as necessary to reach agreements and work on your own time scale.

People with high-conflict personalities tend to take two to three times as long to reach agreements and solve problems because they first emotionally overreact, then need time to calm down, and then they can problem solve.

Ordinarily, reasonable people can mostly just deal with a problem, without emotionally overreacting, having to calm down and then dealing with the problem.

So let's look at Dawn and Skip and how upset emotions can be handled in mediation more easily than in other settings like court or just your own conversations.

Skip got upset and really could not manage his own emotions for a couple minutes there, but the structure of mediation and the intervention of the mediator shifted him back to a listening position, so that Dawn could finish her turn. At this point in the mediation, the mediator, asked them: “Who wants to go first to share your thoughts and questions about the big decisions that need to be made?”

Skip had agreed that Dawn could go first, and then he interrupted in the middle as you saw, but was able to be redirected to being calm, without being criticized or judged or harshly treated.

He was able to stay open to hearing what Dawn had to say. If someone has a high-conflict personality, this is very important for them, redirecting them, interrupting them, and not allowing them to become that emotionally upset, but focusing them back so that they can still listen.