exercise · all tools
If I Were You…
Tell your partner about an experience — a time you felt scared or endangered, or something stuck in your mind — and let them question you greedily, because they will retell it to the circle in the first person, as their own, and answer the group's questions about 'their' story. Then you are asked how it was to hear it told, and where you felt seen. Its creator says running it felt more like a weekend deep dive than a games night.
Prerequisites
- The creator's own account — 'stories of abuse, near death, childhood trauma' — says what people bring when asked for a time they felt endangered; the group needs to be one that can hear that
- Hearing one's own story of harm told by someone else, in the first person, is the design; the closing questions ('is there anything missing for you?') are the only repair the manual builds in, and they must be asked
- The teller answers questions about a story that is not theirs and may assume freely; the person whose story it is sits and listens to that
Practical
- Time
- 45-60 min
- Group
- 4–∞ · pairs, small-group, large-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Mechanisms
- perspective-taking, narrative-identity, emotional-processing
- 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
David Bollt (Asheville, North Carolina) — Authentic Relating (Authentic Relating Games Manual, 2025 edition)
In this directory via Authentic Relating Games Manual
status: checked · added 2026-08-31