a workbook · riadms.com
the room test
six things that do not look like abuse, and the one question that checks all of them. for when nothing has happened that you could describe to anyone, and something is happening anyway.
this is a page to be honest on, not just read. the whole reason this is hard is that every piece of it is too small to say out loud, so say it here instead, where it does not have to survive being repeated. nobody sees this but you. and it is a lens, not a verdict: if none of it fits, that is genuinely the best answer.
- 01
the small no
say no to something that does not matter. a tuesday, a plan you are tired for, a thing you would rather skip. a small no costs the other person nothing, which is exactly why it works as a test: there is no reasonable case for being upset about a tuesday, so whatever happens next is not about the tuesday.
from me if you had to manage a no, it was never a no. it was a request.
what was the last small no you said, and what did the next hour feel like? write it exactly.
- 02
the rehearsal
notice whether you draft sentences in your head before you say them out loud. not at work, where everybody does. at home, in the room you are supposed to be able to relax in. rehearsing is what you do when a sentence has a cost and you are trying to bring the cost down.
from me nobody rehearses in a safe room.
write down the last sentence you rehearsed. the actual words, and the version you eventually said.
- 03
the weather check
in the morning, whose mood do you read first? there is a version of this that is just love, where you notice somebody is off and you care. and there is a version where their mood decides what kind of day you are allowed to have, and you find that out before you find out what you wanted.
from me this one goes automatic so early that almost nobody can remember starting.
today, whose mood did you check first, and what did you change because of the answer?
- 04
the shrinking calendar
look for who you have stopped mentioning, not who you have stopped seeing. the mentioning goes first, and it goes long before anybody tells you not to see someone, because it starts as you deciding it is easier not to bring them up. isolation almost never arrives as a rule. it arrives as a series of small efficiencies.
from me mentioning goes first, which makes it the earliest thing you can catch.
name the person you have stopped bringing up, and roughly when that started.
- 05
the reversal
think about your last five difficult conversations and ask who ended up being comforted. deny, attack, reverse victim and offender is a named three-step sequence with thirty years of research behind it, and the end of it is that the person who was hurt is the one apologising. it is not a fact about your character.
from me you did not go in wrong. the conversation was turned around.
take one specific argument. write who started it hurt, and who was being comforted by the end.
- 06
the missing word
try to describe the worst of it out loud and see whether it sounds bad. if every sentence needs "i know this sounds like nothing, but", that is not proof you are exaggerating. it is the sound of harm that was built too small to report, which is the method rather than an accident.
from me the disclaimer is evidence, not a confession.
write one of them down without the prefix. just the thing, on its own.
what is the smallest thing you have stopped doing, without ever deciding to stop?