Val, you mentioned Sandboxing several times, but only linked to the Computer Science definition. Can you go into more details about how to sandbox as a human?

You seem to be thinking that both NVC and Circling involve not maintaining boundaries against behaviors that we would otherwise notice, categorize as bad and take social action against. I am familiar with NVC and if anything the opposite seems to be the case, in NVC you enforce your boundaries more strongly and effectively than without it. I am not familiar with Circling, but I see nothing in the post above to suggest it would be any different.

Love this post. As I was thinking about your Intelligent Social Web, it occurred to me that all this character-playing is serving an important role, it is adding value or it would have died out ages ago. In a small ancestral tribe, it is easy to see how this kind of web-force is keeping the whole tribe operating smoothly.

I've a question about times when we are called upon to clearly play a limited role, such as small talk. I really find it unsatisfying and dislike it. I'm curious if/how your relation to small talk has changed after you learned to See the social web. I am asking this because through your post I came to suspect maybe my dislike of it is misplaced, since I am not properly valuing its possibly important role.

Can you give more details on termination when the patient and therapist feel there is no longer need for therapy? How does one recognize that situation? What is the end goal of therapy? Do you need to be fully healed, or is it when the therapist can no longer teach you any new skills?