Pádraig Ó Tuama writes in On Being’s The Pause Newsletter about the difference between person-to-person mediation and group mediation.
Ó Tuama writes (excerpt):
What you’re trained to do, in group mediation, is to help people continue to practice the art of staying in the room with each other: in listening, in understanding, in going deeper. Broadly, it’s called containment: a word that some misunderstand, thinking it means stifling, or shutting down, or controlling; but the clue is in the word contain. If someone in a mediation says something that I found difficult, a response of shock would not help; it’d imply that I couldn’t contain their experience. The process of a group engaging in deep conversation is one that requires courageous hospitality: hospitality to the hope that can support insight, change, and moral reckoning, as well as hospitality to the demanding ways of conversations which invite learning.