This month is Stress Awareness Month which aims to increase public awareness about stress by highlighting the causes of stress, the negative effects stress can have on how you feel, think, behave, how your body works, and ways you can reduce stress.
Most people will experience stress at some point in their life, causing a surge of hormones including cortisol, ‘the stress hormone’. In the short-term, cortisol helps you to deal with the pressure you are facing with the body quickly self-regulating and the levels of stress hormone falling again. However, when a person experiences chronic stress, high levels of cortisol will cause a wide range of physical health problems as well as psychological issues such as anxiety and depression.
Psychiatrists Holmes and Rahe created a scale of stressful life events in which divorce/separation scored as the second most stressful life event after the death of a spouse/life partner. Stress following family separation can be caused by conflict, grief and loss, uncertainty and change. And it's not just the adults who feel the pressure of family separation. Voices in the Middle report that 1 in 3 children will see their parents split up before they reach their 16th birthday. This can prove to be an intensely stressful experience for a child. Stress can be caused, for example, by uncertainty about future living arrangements, living with prolonged and extreme parental conflict, worrying about whether their parents are ok, and asking themselves whether they were the cause of their parents’ separation. All these stressors can add up to make the process of family separation one that is chronically stressful for both adults and children
Working with a Family Mediator can help to reduce the stress that couples experience during the separation process. Family Mediation is a process where an independent, impartial, professionally trained Mediator works with participants who are in conflict to help them find solutions and reach agreements. The benefits of mediation can be repaired relationships, improved communication and reduced conflict. Mediation tends to cost less and take less time than using more formal processes such as litigation through the Court; this reduces financial pressures. Mediation also helps to reduce uncertainty as participants have complete control over decision making and no decisions are imposed.
There are also significant benefits to children and young people of working with an experienced Family Mediator. There has been lots of research highlighting that children often feel no-one spoke to them during or after their parents’ separation causing them high levels of stress. Child Inclusive Mediation provides an opportunity for children and young people to be seen face-to-face by a Family Mediator and their voices heard during the process of separation.
The key message is that Family Mediators are trained, skilled and experienced in working with families experiencing the stress caused by separation and they will be concerned to limit the impact of stress for you and your children.
If you would like to arrange a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting or find out more about the Family Mediation service we offer, please contact us for an initial telephone consultation on 0113 213 3662 or 077930102740 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
