exercise · all tools
Doom Circle
A volunteer asks for feedback on their goals, sets the prompt and the level of gentleness they want, and then receives it from everyone in turn — specific, owned, offered rather than demanded — answering each only with eye contact and 'thank you', while a scribe takes notes so they can stay present. Three minutes to respond at the end, and the group thanks them for their courage. The manual recommends it only for well-resourced participants and groups that can be trusted to hold each other compassionately.
Prerequisites
- The manual's own: participants feeling well-resourced, and a group that can be trusted to hold each other compassionately
- A scribe, so the person in the middle does not have to remember anything
- Everything the manual says about running it is a caution: pause for peak emotion, have a support system in place, make time to decompress and integrate afterwards
- 'No further response is allowed' after each share is what makes the feedback receivable and also what makes it hard; the three minutes at the end are not optional
- All feedback is optional to act on, and the manual says so — the person in the middle chooses what to keep
Practical
- Time
- 20-45 min
- Group
- ?–∞ · small-group, large-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Mechanisms
- feedback-mirroring, emotional-processing, ritual-container
- Change scope
- state → skill · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- authrev.org/ar-games-manual — Authentic Relating Games Manual, paid
- Availability
- In the source document — the instructions live inside the material linked, on its terms
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0 (Authentic Relating Games Manual)
Source link checked 31 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 29 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Telind Bench — Authentic Relating (Authentic Relating Games Manual, 2025 edition)
In this directory via Authentic Relating Games Manual
Variation in the manual: Withhold Circle, where the group circles someone on the withholds they carry.
status: checked · added 2026-08-31