Session I was about what recovery is for. This one is about engagement, the part of a life where you lose yourself in something and come back larger. An eating disorder counterfeits that. It absorbs you completely and leaves you alone. Tonight is the other kind, the absorption that happens between people.
Mostly we just ask each other real questions and try to answer them honestly. There is no right answer to any of these. Take the one that pulls at you and leave the rest.
Confidentiality
What's shared here stays here. Names, stories, details, all of it is protected. The only exception is safety.
You can pass at any point. No explanation needed. Eye contact is never required, and nothing here has to be answered out loud.
Arriving
10 minLanding in the room
What's it like to be you, right now, in this room?
Who have you been in the hours before you got here?
What part of you got left at the door?
Let the silence after a question sit. It is doing the work. Resist the urge to fill it or move on.
Absorption
10 minWhere you go
The disorder is a kind of absorption too. These ask after the others.
Where do you go when you disappear?
When were you last so absorbed in something that you forgot to be afraid?
What do you do when no one is watching that feels most like you?
Where in your life does time stop feeling like something to get through?
Longing
8 minWhat you want
What are you hungry for that has nothing to do with food?
What have you stopped letting yourself want?
What's alive in you that you haven't found the words for yet?
Wanting, in this population, is often the most defended thing in the room. A long pause here is a good sign, not a stall.
Contact
10 minBeing with
Where do you end and the watching begin?
What would it be like to be met, right now, exactly as you are?
When you let someone all the way in, what happens to you?
What's the most alive you've ever felt next to another person?
Hold the harder games for later weeks. Care and curiosity first. The group earns the closer questions over time.
Here, now
10 minIn the room
These are about us, tonight, not about the week.
Who here feels far away, and what would it take to close some of that distance?
What are you protecting, and what would it cost to set it down?
What's the thing in you that's been waiting to be noticed?
Closing
5 minBefore you go
When did you last feel completely here?
What would you reach for if you trusted it would hold you?
What would you say if you knew it wouldn't change how we see you?
If an answer stays abstract, ask for one concrete image. Never push past a pass.