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Now I Know How It Feels
Colleen Byers • Aug 01, 2021

Empathy is commonly defined as the ability to understand and feel what someone else is feeling.

“Now I know how it feels,” said our six-year-old daughter. Despite the fact that she had just been stung by a yellow jacket for the first time, in the middle of a parking lot, on a humid August morning, as she nervously walked toward the door on her first day of camp, my heart swelled. It was one of my proudest parenting moments. Through her tears, she connected with the shared pain and suffering of her cousin, who she recalled had been stung by a bee earlier in the summer. 


Empathy is commonly defined as the ability to understand and feel what someone else is feeling.


Sympathy ≠ Empathy

I’m not talking about sympathy, which is commonly defined as feeling pity or sorrow for someone else’s situation. Rather, I’m talking about empathy, which requires me to connect with something inside myself and my own experience that knows the feeling you are currently experiencing. Research Professor Dr. Brené Brown shows us the difference between sympathy and empathy in this short video.

Empathy is quite possibly the single most important trait of an effective mediator because it creates a space where the parties in conflict can feel heard and understood. Nursing scholar Theresa Wiseman has adeptly identified the following four qualities of empathy:



  1. Perspective taking;
  2. Staying out of judgment;
  3. Recognizing emotion in other people; and
  4. Communicating back the emotion you see.


Once the parties in conflict feel understood, there is an opening for problem solving because the parties can take a break from the metaphorical jumping up and down that accompanies a desperate desire for their experience and perspective to be acknowledged in a way that shows the mediator really understands their feelings and experience.

Managing Emotional Clients

By Colleen Byers • 06 Feb, 2024
Managing Emotional Clients Colleen L. Byers collaborated with fellow neuroscience geek and mediator, Chris Osborn, to deliver this month’s Expert Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Series sponsored by the North Carolina Bar Association. Colleen co-presented about the impact of trauma on clients in the legal system and shared some practical tools for managing difficult emotions within ourselves (as lawyers or as mediators) as well as with our clients. View the CLE, which includes 1 hour of Mental Health/Substance Abuse credit in North Carolina here .

How to Negotiate Around Impasse Through Brainstorming Options

By Colleen Byers • 31 Jan, 2024
You have been mediating and negotiating all day long. You are fully invested and can sometimes glimpse the fragile light at the end of the tunnel. Suddenly, all the momentum that has been slowly building all day seems to come to a screeching halt. How do you avoid crashing into an unbreakable impasse? First things first. Pause and take a deep breath. Then take another deep breath for good measure. Then get a sheet of paper and a pen. Along the left side of the paper, write the numbers 1 through 5. Now, with pen in hand, ask yourself these questions and write the responses next to numbers 1 through 5. What is the craziest idea I can think of to solve this problem? What is the second craziest idea I can think of to solve this problem? What is a variation of the other side’s idea that would work for me with an adjustment? What is another idea? What else might work? You have now generated five new possible ways to solve this problem that you can share with the other side to keep the negotiation moving forward and avoid running straight into an impasse. Let me give you a real-life example. My daughters were fighting over the most coveted seat on the couch. The older child asserted, “This is my spot. I always sit here.” The younger child claimed, “But I was here first today!” Unsurprisingly, their attempts to persuade the other to acquiesce were unsuccessful. They are not old enough to engage lawyers to determine who had the stronger legal claim to the coveted seat on the couch but they both came running to me pleading their respective cases in hopes that I would serve as the arbitrator. I declined to serve as an arbitrator but did put my mediator hat on. We all sat at the kitchen table with paper and pen to brainstorm possible solutions that would work for both of them. You may be wondering how I got my young children to do this. I told them that they could not watch any television until they found a solution to which they could both say yes. So down they sat with pen in hand. Using questions 1 through 5 above, as prompts, they generated the following ideas: Take turns – alternate days; Take turns – set a timer and then switch; Sit on top of each other; Build a fort on the couch for both of us. Then we went back through the list one by one, and I asked each child if they were a “yes” or a “no” for that particular idea. Here is what that looked like:
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