Don’t Let Negative Inner Dialogue Destroy Your Law Case

When involved in any kind of conflict, our minds often create “mock dialogue”, either looking back at the past (“oh, I wish I would have said . . .”), the future (“next time I’m going to say . . .”).

Especially when we are upset, the dialogue can take the form of argument, disrespect, or belittling others. Repeating this kind of dialogue can lead to anger, rage, judgment, blame, criticism, defensiveness or victimhood leak into and damage your case.

If you engage in negative inner dialogue, it is likely to leak
into your case and create more conflict, more stress,
more anger, and higher legal costs.

So when you enter into mediation, arbitration or court, and you’ve been in a months or years-long battle, you may walk in with hours or days of these harsh inner dialogues running through your head.

Here’s the thing – I’ve done this and I’ve seen clients do it – we say to ourselves, “these are just thoughts, I’m just blowing off steam, I’ll be relaxed and friendly and nice in court to impress the judge, arbitrator or mediator.”

Then, in the stress of the moment, especially if you become upset by something the other person says, the negative words start to leak out. Then your most reactive self is on display.

Judges don’t like it, juries don’t like it, mediators don’t like it – pretty much no one is impressed or persuaded by that. And you’re unlikely to get away with pretending to be nice.

People know when others are not being genuine – when they say one thing but their tone of voice, look on their face or body language says something else. You don’t want that!

Being untrue creates distrust. When a judge, jury or arbitrator distrusts you, it is probably going to go badly for you.

Let me give you an example of the destructiveness that can occur. I was acting as a mediator for a young couple that wanted to pursue a low-cost, cooperative divorce. For mediation to work well (and not take months and thousands of dollars of attorney and mediator time), the parties need to be cooperative, flexible, open-minded and respectful toward each other.

I have an unusual Mediation Agreement that the parties have to sign, saying that they are committed to being respectful, flexible and fair, and that they will not interrupt, talk over, or bring negative history into the mediation. It also speaks of higher principles, and how they want to be a good example to their family, friends and community.

So in the first session, it went pretty well and we worked through several issues. At the end when we were about to schedule the next session, one party said that they had something they wanted to say.

I said “ok.” They then launched into a negative, hurtful diatribe.

The energy in the room sank, and the sense of goodwill, respect and cooperation disappeared. The mediation failed, and they went back to hiring individual lawyers and spending many thousands of dollars to complete their divorce.

The person who did this probably felt that they were being honest about their emotions. However, blasting the other person in mediation is not helpful.

I always suggest that people do their emotional clearing outside of mediation, with a spiritual practice or working with a healing-oriented friend or counselor, so they can at least get to a respectful place where they will not be in attack mode.

We can all work to clear and calm reactive emotions, and as much as we can, invoke qualities of empathy, tolerance, flexibility, fairness, and compassion. These not only will help you succeed in your case, but will greatly reduce your stress.

If you are able to rest more in peace and in a universal unconditional love, even in the midst of conflict, how wonderful would that be?