The Day I Realized Neutrality Wasn’t Enough: A Mediator’s Journey to Trauma-Informed Practice
She simply disappeared.
Not physically — she was still sitting across from me at the kitchen table. But when I asked a clarifying question about her deceased mother’s wishes, her eyes went distant, her breathing turned shallow, and when I gently repeated myself, she stared past me as though I’d stopped speaking English.
I’d been mediating for only a few months, but I’d been studying communication for 30 years. I was a health communication professor. A board-certified patient advocate. I knew how to navigate difficult conversations. I understood conflict dynamics. I’d helped countless families through medical crises and end-of-life decisions.
None of it mattered in that moment.
Because what I was witnessing wasn’t a communication problem. It was a nervous system shutdown. And all my facilitation skills couldn’t reach someone whose brain had just activated its most primitive survival response.
What My Patient Advocacy Work Should Have Taught Me Sooner
Looking back, I should have seen this coming. In my years as a patient advocate, I’d watched families trying to make impossible medical decisions while terrified and traumatized. I’d seen how fear hijacked people’s ability to think clearly, how stress made brilliant people unable to remember basic information, how overwhelm shut down dialogue completely.
I’d learned that families couldn’t make good decisions when they didn’t feel safe. That pushing harder when someone was shutting down made everything worse. The most important thing I could do was help people regulate their nervous systems before we tried to solve problems.
But somehow, I’d compartmentalized. Patient advocacy was one thing. Mediation was another. In mediation, I was supposed to be neutral, to trust the process, to let parties work it out themselves.
What I didn’t understand yet: You can’t work anything out when your amygdala has hijacked your prefrontal cortex.
The Gap Between Neutral and Effective
After that family mediation, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had gone wrong. The traditional mediation response would have been to caucus, to give her space, to let her collect herself. And those things might have helped eventually.
But I’d missed all the signs leading up to the shutdown. Her increasing tension. The way her responses had gotten shorter. How she’d started avoiding eye contact with her sibling. By the time I noticed something was seriously wrong, her nervous system had already decided to protect her by shutting down.
I realized that being a good neutral facilitator wasn’t enough if I couldn’t recognize when someone’s biology was preventing them from engaging in the process I was facilitating.
So I went back to what I knew how to do: research. I immersed myself in the neuroscience of trauma, polyvagal theory, the body’s stress response systems. I returned to my trauma-informed care training and frameworks. I talked with trauma therapists and somatic practitioners. And slowly, I began to understand that these tools could and should be used, even in my role as a mediator.
The Three Things That Changed Everything
1. Understanding that regulation comes before resolution
In my faculty grievance mediations — where I work with professors and university administrators — I now recognize that before we can solve the substantive problem, we need to create the neurobiological conditions that make problem-solving possible.
This means I spend way more time on what looks like “just process” than I used to—creating safety. Building psychological safety and monitoring nervous system states. It feels slow. But regulated parties can solve problems that dysregulated parties will fight about forever.
2. Recognizing that neutrality requires attending to nervous system states
Here’s the paradox I wrestled with: If one party is dysregulated and the other isn’t, am I being neutral if I ignore that? Or am I actually privileging the person who happens to be better regulated in this moment?
True neutrality, I’ve come to believe, means ensuring both parties can meaningfully participate. Sometimes that requires me to help someone regulate enough to access their own capacity for dialogue and decision-making.
When I notice someone shutting down in a civil mediation, calling a break isn’t taking sides. It’s maintaining the integrity of the process by ensuring both parties can engage.
3. Courage, curiosity, and compassion aren’t optional — they’re the framework
These three qualities drive everything in my practice now:
Courage to name what I’m seeing: “I notice your breathing has changed. Let’s pause.” Even when it feels awkward. Even when it might seem like I’m overstepping.
Curiosity about what’s happening beneath the surface: Not “Why are you being difficult?” but “What might be triggering this response? What does safety look like for this person right now?”
Compassion for the reality that we all have healing we need to attend to. The person across from me isn’t choosing to shut down or explode or withdraw. Their nervous system is doing what it does to protect them.
What Trauma-Informed Mediation Actually Looks Like
Let me be clear about what this isn’t: I’m not doing therapy. I’m not diagnosing trauma. I’m not healing people.
What I am doing is structuring the mediation process to work with rather than against how human nervous systems actually function.
In pre-mediation calls, I’m explicit about what will happen, when, and why. Trauma survivors are hypervigilant for ambush. I offer choices — small ones, like whether they want to arrive first or where they’d prefer to sit. These micro-moments of agency help nervous systems recognize: “I have some control here.”
I ask directly: “What are you worried about?” “What would help you feel safer?” One client told me that raised voices were triggering due to childhood experiences. We established a ground rule about volume before we ever started. That’s not therapy — that’s smart process design.
In opening sessions, I’m no longer brief and efficient. I take time. I establish explicit safety norms: “We won’t interrupt. We won’t raise voices. If anyone needs a break, I’ll call it immediately — no questions asked.”
I name the difficulty: “This is hard. You’re here because something significant happened that you couldn’t resolve on your own. Strong feelings are normal. My job is to create conditions where you can both think clearly.”
And then I demonstrate responsiveness before we even start: “Questions? What do you need?” And I actually wait. That early responsiveness builds trust that I’m genuinely paying attention.
During mediation, I’m continuously monitoring both parties’ nervous system states alongside the content of the conversation. I watch for shallow breathing, glazed looks, sudden rigidity in thinking, memory gaps, disproportionate reactions.
When I see these signs, I intervene before complete dysregulation happens:
I slow my pace
I introduce pauses
I offer breaks proactively (not “Do you need a break?” but “Let’s take ten minutes”)
I provide specific grounding: “Feel your feet on the floor. Notice three things you can see.”
In a recent faculty grievance, I watched a professor become increasingly rigid in her thinking — a sign I’ve learned to recognize as early dysregulation. I called a break before things escalated. After ten minutes and some grounding, she could engage with nuance again.
The language I use has changed too. Instead of “Why did you do that?” I ask “Help me understand what happened from your perspective.” Instead of “You seem angry” I observe “I notice some tension in the room right now.”
These aren’t just gentler words — they’re communication patterns that reduce threat and keep people in their window of tolerance.
The Question I Get Most Often
“Isn’t this just being a good mediator? Haven’t good mediators always been doing this?”
Yes and no.
Good mediators have always been attentive to emotion and responsive to party needs. But most of us were doing it intuitively, without understanding the neurobiological mechanisms at play. We didn’t have language for what we were seeing. We didn’t have a framework for when to intervene and how.
Trauma-informed practice gives us that framework. It helps us recognize dysregulation earlier. It provides specific interventions. It explains why some techniques work and others backfire.
And critically, it challenges some of our traditional assumptions — like the idea that the best response to emotion is always to let it fully express, or that taking a break means the party “isn’t ready” for mediation.
The Personal Cost of This Work (And Why It’s Worth It)
Let me be honest: This approach is harder. It requires more of me.
I have to manage my own nervous system state constantly. An anxious mediator creates anxious parties. If I’m dysregulated, I can’t help anyone else regulate.
Before mediations, I arrive early to ground myself. During sessions, I monitor my own activation — Am I holding my breath? Is my jaw tight? Am I trying too hard to “fix” things?
After difficult sessions, I debrief with my peer consultation group. I move my body. I process what happened. This isn’t self-indulgence — it’s professional practice. I can’t create safety for others if I’m not safe in myself.
And sometimes, this approach means acknowledging limits. Sometimes I have to say: “I don’t think we can do our best work today. Let’s reschedule.” That’s not failure. That’s recognizing that pushing forward when someone is severely dysregulated serves no one.
But here’s what makes it worth it: It works.
Parties who seemed impossibly stuck suddenly find movement when they feel safe enough to access their own creativity. Conflicts that looked intractable turn out to be dysregulated nervous systems, not incompatible interests. Agreements reached by regulated parties are more thoughtful, more detailed, more sustainable.
The Integration: Where Everything Comes Together
What I’m practicing now isn’t just mediation with trauma-informed techniques added on. It’s a fundamental integration of everything I’ve learned across 30 years in communication, my patient advocacy work, my mediation training, and trauma-informed frameworks.
My decades of teaching interpersonal and conflict communication have taught me how people communicate under stress, how cultural factors shape conflict, and how power dynamics influence dialogue.
My patient advocacy work showed me how a crisis impacts people’s capacity to process information and make decisions.
My mediation training gave me a facilitative structure and commitment to neutrality.
The trauma-informed framework provided the missing piece — understanding how to work with nervous system responses.
The result is a practice where:
Courage means showing up fully and being willing to name what I see
Curiosity means constantly asking “What’s happening beneath the surface?”
Compassion means recognizing the humanity and struggle in everyone who walks through my door
What This Means for You
If you’re a mediator reading this, you might be thinking: “I don’t have 30 years of communication research. I’m not a patient advocate. Can I do this?”
Absolutely.
You don’t need my background. You need curiosity about how trauma shows up, willingness to learn about nervous system regulation, and commitment to creating safety as essential infrastructure rather than a nice-to-have.
Start small:
Add one grounding technique to your practice this week.
Notice your own nervous system state during your next mediation
Read one book on polyvagal theory or trauma-informed care
Find one colleague to discuss these ideas with
This isn’t about perfection. I’m still learning with every mediation. I make mistakes. I miss cues. I sometimes push when I should pause. But I’m learning, and my practice is evolving.
The Larger Invitation
I believe mediation is at an inflection point. We know so much more now about how human beings actually function under stress, how trauma affects our capacity for dialogue, and how nervous systems regulate and dysregulate.
We can ignore this knowledge and keep practicing the way we were trained. Or we can integrate it and deepen our practice.
Trauma-informed mediation isn’t about abandoning facilitative principles. It’s about honoring them more fully. It’s recognizing that party self-determination requires parties that can access self-determination , which means nervous systems regulated enough to think clearly, communicate effectively, and make good decisions.
It’s understanding that neutrality doesn’t mean treating all emotional states as equivalent. It means ensuring both parties can meaningfully participate.
It’s creating safety not as politeness but as essential infrastructure for resolution.
Coming Full Circle
I think about that family mediation often — the woman who disappeared while still sitting in front of me. At the time, I felt like I’d failed. Now I see it differently.
That moment taught me that everything I knew about communication was incomplete without understanding trauma and nervous system regulation. It sent me on a journey that has fundamentally transformed my practice. It showed me that being a good mediator requires more than process skills — it requires understanding the biology of stress, the neuroscience of safety, and the courage to work at the edge of my competence.
Would I handle that situation differently now? Absolutely. I’d recognize the signs earlier. I’d build more safety upfront. I’d slow down. I’d offer more grounding. I’d possibly suggest we pause and reconvene.
But I’d also have compassion for myself as a new mediator doing the best I could with the tools I had. Just as I have compassion for every party who walks into mediation carrying more than just the immediate dispute — carrying histories and hurts and hopes that shape everything they say or withhold.
The Real Work
The conflicts that come to mediation are hard. The people in them are struggling. We can’t fix that — it’s not our role.
But we can create conditions where their own wisdom and capacity for resolution can emerge. We can structure processes that work with human biology rather than against it. We can build enough safety that courage becomes possible, enough openness that curiosity can thrive, enough humanity that compassion can flow.
That’s always been our work as mediators.
Now we just understand more about what makes it possible.
Malynnda Stewart is a health communication expert, board-certified patient advocate, and certified conflict mediator through the Michigan Supreme Court. With 20 years of teaching interpersonal and conflict communication, she specializes in trauma-informed facilitative mediation for families, civil disputes, and faculty grievances. Her practice is grounded in the principles of courage, curiosity, and compassion. She provides training and consultation for mediators seeking to integrate trauma-informed approaches into their practice.
Connect with Malynnda on LinkedIn or reach out to explore how trauma-informed principles might enhance your mediation practice.
Further Reading
If this resonates with you and you want to go deeper, here are resources that shaped my thinking:
On Trauma & Neuroscience:
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
The Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges
In an Unspoken Voice by Peter Levine
On Psychological Safety:
The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson
Any of Amy Edmondson’s research articles on psychological safety
On Trauma-Informed Practice:
SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach
Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services (TIP 57)
On Communication & Conflict:
Difficult Conversations by Stone, Patton & Heen
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
Start where you are. Learn what calls to you. Trust your curiosity. The field grows stronger as we each bring our own insights and experiences to this evolving practice.
What’s your experience with dysregulation in mediation? What helps you recognize when parties have moved out of their window of tolerance? I’d love to hear from other mediators navigating this integration.
#Mediation #TraumaInformed #ConflictResolution #PsychologicalSafety #Communication #MediatorTraining
