Radical Honesty (December 2024)
I just came out of a radical honesty workshop in Copenhagen hosted by Tuulia Syvänen and Pete Jordan. I had never been to a radical honesty workshop before but read Brad Blantons book maybe 10 years ago and remember liking a lot of what he wrote. In the years between then and now I have immersed myself in the practices of Circling (now “Transformational Connection”) and Surrendered Leadership and have been leading tons of workshops around Europe in the last couple of years.
I went into the workshop with quite some professional curiosity on how the space would be held and facilitated and on how it was similar and different to what I know from Circling and Surrendered Leadership. And secondly wanting to just participate in someone else’s workshop for a change. It turned out to be quite different than what I know and practice myself, although we were swimming in the same waters.
The workshop
In some of the first exercises on Friday night (which was also a name round) we used sentence stems like “a thing I don’t want to share with the group is…” after which the facilitators would typically support the participant who had spoken to experience their body sensations and/or coach them into being more precise/true in their expression. After that we went through 8 agreements (the central one being “I agree to tell the truth”) and everyone in the group was asked to affirm that they agreed to follow these during the workshop.
The 8 agreements
* I agree to tell the truth.* I agree to support others in telling the truth.
* I agree to keep confidentiality.
* I agree to be on time and present.
* I agree to ask for what I want.
* I agree to take more than I give.
* I agree to only consensual touch.
* I agree to allow the workshop leaders to lead and coach me.
Coming from Circling & Surrendered Leadership where we often start a workshop from silence and then going straight into sharing our present moment experiences (be that bodily sensations, emotions or thoughts) this was unusually structured for me and I found myself feeling somewhat stuck in the format, having to “wait my turn” (even thought the facilitators encouraged us to bring ourselves in more) and especially feeling left with a lot of impact from the shares of others. In my own work hearing impact from the group is quite a big part of what we practice. The form here was (I think) that you don’t participate (with anything but your presence) unless another participant addresses you or you have a story/withhold to share yourself.
On the weekend itself we would start both days with a check-in with the whole group (13 people in a circle) where we were encouraged to share if we were sitting with something that stood in the way of being present with ourselves and the group. This would either be impact from something that had happened with someone else previously (the facilitators encouraged directing it at the person rather than talking about it in general terms) and (surprising for me) stories about people’s lives. These sessions were both days quite long and people shared intimate details about themselves from the start. For me it was interesting and touching to hear people, but I also missed the more open approach to relationality and interactivity I know from my own work. It felt a bit like being on a separate island getting to see the islands of others, but without visiting each other.
After this “intro” we would be led into various practices in pairs, triads or small groups. The ones I remember now are an “Questions and Answers” practice in a smaller group where one person answers (if they want to) the questions that come up in the group, an “Ask For What You Want” practice in triads where you get to ask the others for what you want and they can give it to you or say “no”, a sharing circle around sexual shame and pride and a pair practice where you share a more or less difficult experience with someone from your life, have it retold by the other and then tell it yourself from the perspective of the person you have difficulties with. We also had a few check-ins in pairs on our experience during the workshop and our wants for the days.
We would end every day with the Gestalt Prayer.
The Gestalt Prayer
I am I.
And you are you.I do my thing.
And you do your thing.I am not in this world to live up to your expectations.
You are not in this world to live up to my expectations.
And nobody is in this world to live up to anybody’s expectations.If we get together, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.
Facilitation
Although I struggled somewhat with the big group format (a participant shares and the facilitators coach them) it definitely seemed powerful. It was interesting to be in a space where the focus is on sharing (and letting go of) stories from the past. My reflection on this is that were we in Circling & Surrendered leadership tend to start from present moment experience in connection with someone else or the group (“what is it like to be you right now” is one of the core questions) which can then sometimes lead to stories coming up and being shared, here we would start from the stories (either “I want to tell you about this part of me, this thing I am struggling with” or “I want to tell this other participant what I think about them”) which would sometimes lead to meetings between participants, but always with an element of coaching from the facilitators, where the Surrendered Leadership space invites everyone to bring their impact or inquire into the experience of the other.
I enjoyed the way Tuulia and Pete facilitated the space. They seemed present and compassionate with everyone while also bringing humor and lightness into the space. They were bringing themselves in quite a lot (the approach seems to be that they don’t want participants to share anything they wouldn’t be willing to share themselves), but were more in the facilitator/coach role that what I am used to from Circling & Surrendered Leadership spaces where the leader role is first and foremost to embody the practice themselves and meet participants from there. They were also very good at holding the structure of the whole workshop (time, breaks and such) tightly which from my perspective looked quite effortless. I felt aligned with them in what I see as a pragmatic approach to relating.
My experience
My biggest personal take away from the workshop was getting quite a lot of feedback from others on how I seem aloof or contained. This was quite painful for me as I want to present as (and think that I am) quite sensitive to what is going on in myself and others and see myself more as shy and private than contained (I must admit that I felt somewhat aloof in the beginning of the workshop). But it is definitely not the first time I get this feedback and I will take the invitation of bringing myself with more rawness to heart.
I also feel quite impacted with the power of telling the difficult stories and can see how my Circling & Surrendered Leadership practice has biased me to see present moment experience as “better” and how this can stand in the way of connection. After one of the pair exercises I found myself in quite a vulnerable place and it was really nice to be coached into speaking to my past self and I found some more self-compassion through that.
It was interesting to find myself in a workshop setting where I am one of the ones who “doesn’t know the rules” and seeing myself trying to understand “the right way” of being in the space, rather than just bringing myself in more. I hear this often from participants in my own workshops and feel inspired to somehow create more clarity around the frame and what we do, than what I have been doing till now.
In this workshop it was a bit of a struggle for me to accept the premise of sharing stories, but looking back now I can see how that was more my interpretation of the invitation than what was actually invited in. I see that it would likely have been a more powerful experience for me if I had brought in the small fears or frustrations with other participants that came up during the workshop, but somehow I felt too stuck in the “one person shares at a time” format to find myself able to.
I leave the workshop feeling inspired to bring more raw truth into my relationships and that feels like a great gift. I would recommend Tuulia and Pete’s work, although some people with a Circling background can expect to be triggered somewhat by the tight format. I certainly found myself struggling at times.
