“ You cannot consider making changes to the way you communicate unless you are aware of what might need changing”
The Divorce Manual offers various guidance and sources of information to help you communicate better with your former partner, dedicating the whole of chapter 4 to the subject ofpreparing to communicate with your former partner in mediation.
Chapter 12 of the Divorce Manual also offers strategies, skills and techniques to help you and the other parent ‘work together’ in creating a co-parenting plan
Your Coach can provide you with essential additional support with this, helping you to present your ‘best selves’ in the relationship, preparing for and overcoming challenging conversations and situations, so that you can make important joint decisions and reach successful outcomes together.
Your Divorce Coach can help and support you to
- Build your self-awareness, develop new insights and broaden your perspectives from which to develop a better understanding of yourself, your situation and others with whom you may be in conflict, empowering you to work in more constructive outcome-solution focused ways.
- Identify and clarify your priorities aligned with your values and needs so that you are able to articulate these for each other and reach outcomes built upon these priority values and needs.
- Identify and clarify beliefs which you may have about yourself, your situation and others with whom you may be in conflict, so that you can decide whether and how these might be positively serving you, or not (critical self-reflection) and what to do about them. This process can be crucial to your ability to manage the emotions arising from these beliefs.
- Develop and maintain a flexible mindset and approach to communicating with your former partner so that, for example, you develop the habit of being able to consider a broad range of options and perspectives and not just the option you first had in mind, on your way to reaching successful outcomes together in mediation.
- Develop and maintain a humble, empathic, curious state of mind and approach to decision making with your former partner, humble in your acceptance that you may not have all the answers and empathically curious about their views and experiences which may be very different to your own and influencing the decision-making process.
- Develop your resilience and capacity to cope with challenging emotions you may be experiencing in your current situation which are affecting your mental and physical well-being as well as supporting your former partner to manage their emotional states.
- Develop a capacity to self-manage any tendencies you have towards defensive behaviours including controlling and avoiding behaviours and the emotions arising from these.
- Develop strategies and skills to carefully and safely manage how you respond to your former partner’s behaviour which you are finding challenging including behaviours of a controlling and abusive nature ensuring that you feel heard and understood.
- Develop your sense of self-worth, self-belief and confidence necessary to be able to express and articulate your views to each other so that they are heard and taken account of.
This list is not of course exhaustive but hopefully gives you a good sense of how useful a Divorce Coach can be at helping you to build your confidence, commitment and capacity to manage the challenges facing you.
Essentially, your Coach is there to help you and your former partner improve the quality of your communication in order to maximise your chances of being able to make decisions together and reach successful outcomes in and outside mediation, whether this relates to reaching financial outcomes or creating parenting plans together.
Our experience tells us that when separated couples work effectively with a Coach, they are far more likely to be successful in mediation and in their relationships.