<aside> 🐦 This is an old process, and needs to be updated based on our new needs for ‣ / ‣.

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The Guardian Process is a way we can be aware of and helpful for one another’s growth. It involves sharing how we're growing in a document.

What it's not

1. Not a personal growth process. It's not a method for personal growth, but rather a way to be clear with others about your preferred growth method and direction, whatever it happens to be. For some people, it may also be a way to crowdsource growth methods that they haven't thought of. In particular, we try not to use our HS terminology too much when talking about how someone could grow, or what will help them—we aren’t experts at how personal growth happens, and we are open for many kinds of growth paths.
2. Not for everyone. The psych process is best when you are in a phase of life where you are ready to be challenged, when you have already developed a lot of self awareness, and are surrounded by trustworthy friends and community, with which you can be vulnerable, and when this community includes people you've known for a long time. Only when these three conditions are met, will the psych process work for you.
3. Not an open invitation to analyze or criticize one another. While in several places below other people are consulted, no one should tell anyone else what their problem is or how they need to grow; rather, it’s up to the person who wants to grow to find and characterize their growth edges for themselves.
4. Not always active. It's inhumane to demand that a person always be growing and facing their traumas and fears and so on. For this reason, no one should be pressured into the psych process, and everyone should declare times when they are up for growing versus "offtime" (see below) when no one is telling them they should change or grow.

Why

Being aware of other’s growth areas helps you be compassionate and supportive and helps keep the overall level of drama low. There are three goals here: (1) to help each other grow; (2) to be compassionate and avoid amplifying others’ drama; (3) for those who are interested in being HS diplomats, reaching a very Low Drama, High Tone state, so you can do well in difficult rooms dealing with complex or stressful configurations of people.

The Process

There are four steps. You build a team, write an incident list, find underlying patterns and causes, and share a plan.

<aside> ⚠️ Reminder: • Do not pressure people into the psych process! • Do not let yourself be pressured!

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Build a Team

Your team should be people who have known you for years, who have seen you at your worst, who you trust with the most embarrassing and intimate facts about yourself. If you do not have such people at hand, the psych process will not work for you. Definitely don't use people you met recently, or who are part of some cult you just joined. 🙃

<aside> 😇 Angel Teams. There may be cases where someone's personal growth is wrapped up in their fitness for a particular demanding workplace or setting. In this case we recommend giving them a team of "guardian angels" who can figure out with them whether they need to grow to meet the grade of the setting and how that could happen. This team will decide when they are ready for the setting, and should include at least one member who has known the person for years, and one person who knows the workplace or setting very well.

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Write an Incident List

Make an incident list together with people who know you well and have seen you at your worst. These can be situations where: you created drama or confusion, you hurt people or caused interpersonal trouble you didn’t want to, you avoided or ignored something, or any other situation where you couldn’t in the moment live the way you like to live and treat people the way you like to treat people, and it seems like part of a pattern.

Try to focus mostly on situations where you wish you had acted differently, not for someone else’s sake but for your own, and where if you had been more present or more awake to the situation or in a better mindset you would have acted differently.

Things to ask yourself: