Samesidedness refers to that lovely experience when you’re navigating some sort of interpersonal problem and instead of fighting/arguing etc, the experience is one of being on the same team trying to figure out what to do about the problem. There are various things that can get in the way of samesidedness, one of which is being too close, ie tolerating being involved with someone to a degree that is unworkable. But a different one is that you have a mistaken assumption that it won’t be possible to come to an outcome where both/all parties can be deeply satisfied at the same time. This exercise is intended to help with that. You can do it solo, prior to having a difficult conversation, or you could have a group do it together if there’s buy-in for that.
Consider what you want in relation to this situation: your careabouts.
You might just mentally enumerate them, or if you have a journal handy you might write them down.
Note that your concept of your careabouts is not the actual careabouts. You in some sense don’t actually know the full shape of your careabouts in advance, but on some level you know what you’re aiming for. The words are not the thing—someone might do something that theoretically matches some description you made of what you wanted, and that doesn’t mean “now you should feel satisfied.” It’s possible to be profoundly satisfied and profoundly surprised-by-how-that-happened at the same time. With sufficient skill at non-naive trust-dancing, it can even be common.
Get in touch with how it would feel for you to have all of your relevant careabouts be completely satisfied, and ground in the sense of how much you truly want that for yourself. Spend only the minimum attention needed imagining the details of how the careabouts get satisfied that you need to feel that satisfaction.
If some part of you objects, then try to include the objection itself inside what wants to be satisfied! For example, if the objection is “that would be naive,” then you could say “okay, maybe there are some versions of that would be naive. How would it feel to have these careabouts satisfied in a way that was not naive?” Or if the objection is “if I were completely satisfied, that would necessarily mean someone else were suffering as a result,” then you might include that with “clearly also one of my careabouts here is that other people not suffer in order for me to be satisfied. So suppose that somehow I achieve that—all my careabouts are satisfied, and other people aren’t burdened by that at all.” (Anyway, handling such objections is a huge topic on its own, but for now I’ll just say “do your best” and “it’s a learning process; it’s okay if you’re having difficulty!”)
Tap into what the other peoples’ careabouts might be. Not in that much detail, but a general sense.
What would have come up for them in step 1?
Imagine how the other people involved might feel if they also had their careabouts completely satisfied. Even more so here, don’t pay too much attention to how, yet.
While doing so, maintain the sense that you could also be completely satisfied.
You might find more objections here, particularly ones about an apparent impossibility of satisfying their careabouts while also satisfying your own. To those, you can say, “Yes, it may be impossible, given the available resources or even in some absolute sense, but suppose it were possible for me to be deeply satisfied and for the other person to be deeply satisfied. How would that feel?”
Orient to the actual situation and start trying to understand together what the collective set of careabouts are and how you might go about satisfying all of them.
Unless you’re in a leadership position or otherwise empowered to just call the shots in this situation, then ultimately you’d need to do this phase together, but you can also simulate it if you’re journalling before a conversation. If you’re doing that, I’d encourage you to question your assumptions about what the other person wants. “What is this really about for them?” Consider that you might really not know. This humility may also help you realize that even if you can act autonomously here, you might want to learn more first.
The important thing is that each person pays attention to their sense of what would actually deeply satisfy their own careabouts, and being willing to be surprised and update their concept of what they want or what the other person or people want. For instance, you might think you want to do a particular thing, only to realize that much more salient is a need to be heard and understood by someone about that thing not having happened at some time in the past, and that once you feel heard, you discover that in fact your original careabout doesn’t need any further addressing.
Tips for use: This practice is intended for use in relation to interpersonal conflict, though it can also be useful for internal conflict, as well as in general. It’s probably best to practice it with a concrete conflict first—something that can be well-described with a physical quantity—before trying it on a conflict about meaning, relationship, identity, or situations involving feelings like “I don’t feel heard” or “I feel betrayed.” The practice is also probably easier if it’s about a relatively fresh or new situation, although with sufficient skill and capacity it should be helpful for things tangled with resentment or regret as well.
This exercise maps onto the 3SED (3 Steps for Empowered Dialogue) technique, which is essentially the same process but for “what you know and understand” rather than “what you care about“. It’s for frame battles rather than object-level fights.
Constantly consciously expanding the boundaries of thoughtspace and actionspace. Creator of Intend, a system for improvisationally & creatively staying in touch with what's most important to you, and taking action towards it.
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