An exercise for getting same-sided & post-compromise

created 2021-01-27 · edited 2021-01-27 · open in Roam

(published November 23rd, 2025)
(intended for use in relation to some interpersonal conflict, though can also be useful for internal conflict, as well as in general maybe)
- probably practice it with a concrete conflict first, ie something that can be well-described with a physical quantity, before trying it on a conflict about meaning or relationship or identity or "I don't feel heard" or "I feel betrayed"
- probably also easier if it's about a relatively fresh/new situation, although with sufficient skill & capacity it should be helpful for things tangled with resent or regret as well
Step 1: consider what you want, in relation to this situation: your careabouts.
- 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 you, in some sense, know what you're aiming for.
  - The words are not the thing—someone (including you) might bring world into matching some description you made of what you wanted, and that doesn't mean "now you should feel satisfied".
  - It's possible and, with increasing skill at NNTD, common to be profoundly satisfied and profoundly surprised-by-how at the same time.
Step 2: get in touch with how it would feel for you to have all of your relevant careabouts be completely satisfied, and to 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 to feel that satisfaction.
- If some part of you objects, then try to include the objection itself inside what wants to be satisfied!
  - more info:
    - eg 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!")
Step 3: tap into what the other peoples' careabouts might be. Not in that much detail, but a general sense.
Step 4: 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.
- You might find a 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?"
Step 5: 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.
- 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/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 seem as important. But then maybe it feels important again later!
- (I have tons of thoughts about moves people might make in this phase, but dialogue itself is a somewhat separate topic from what this page is about)

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An exercise for getting same-sided & post-compromise

3 linked references

November 21st, 2025

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