inside role, outside role
- the idea that solving some interpersonal trust-related psychological tangles, when working with a friend/coach/therapist/etc...
- you're both trying to solve a kind of lock box puzzle, but one of you is inside the box and the other of you is on the outside
- so neither of you has the full information, and you've got to find a way to put that information together
- unfortunately, this is kind of like being lost, separate from each other
- and you can easily naively find yourself thinking that the things you're referring to as shared landmarks are actually different things
- I have a blog post about this:
- that blog post only tracks half of the issue though, which is the part about the external referents
- there's also an issue for clarifying psychological referents, and that one is way way trickier
- general tips for these roles in a strict-roles context like therapy
- (not necessarily static roles—could still be friends or partners—just that the roles are clear within a container)
- (more advanced techniques needed to deploy these in relation to a situation where one person is actively trying to give the other feedback, as opposed to just supporting their internal process)
- inside role:
- say more stuff, including the obvious:
- the main bottleneck your outside-role companion likely has is that they're actually working with very little data about what's going on for you
- stand up for quiet voices:
- only you can hear these directly, and they have some of the juiciest keys
- outside role:
- reveal your assumptions/guesses, lightly: you're pattern-matching, and, as mentioned above, you don't have enough data. the sooner you share your model with the inside-role person, the sooner they can see where you're confused and point it out
- don't take it personally when they point it out: of course, if you're tempted to take it personally, that probably needs to get investigated :)