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Teddy Bear Tech Support is about creating options -- creating options for bringing other people into your process (into how you're going about things or thinking about things) in small ways that can make big differences. It is about how this creates possibilities for connection as well as possibilities for better outcomes (for the things we're thinking through with our "teddy bears").

Teddy Bear Tech Support is about support that requires a minimal amount of "doing" on the part of the people that are providing the support.

Here’s just how minimal it can be:

There’s a story about a computer technical support office that had a teddy bear on the front counter. It goes like this. Before you could talk to an actual person, you had to first explain the problem you were having with your computer to the teddy bear. If talking to the teddy bear solved your problem, then you'd be on your way and you wouldn't have taken up any of the real people's time. Many problems fell in this category, and so the people who worked at this tech support office were able to save a lot of time this way.

Having another mind to think through things with is very valuable. There are plenty of cases where all that the other mind needs to provide is a forum for having you say things out loud to someone. You automatically bring yourself to the situation in a different way if there's someone else holding the space with you.

Teddy Bear Tech Support (TBTS) is about exploring different ways of setting things up so that "talkers" can benefit from how having a teddy bear shifts the environment for them in supportive ways. For example, you can ask a "human teddy bear" to:

• serve as a silent witness
• do some paraphrasing of parts of what you've said
• offer some questions in writing
• make guesses at the core of what's important

At the heart of what TBTS is about is giving talkers an environment

• where the focus is on bringing their own resources to bear to the matters at hand
• where the processing that the talkers are doing is to be supported with highest priority (so that the thoughts and impulses of the teddy bears don't threaten to encroach on the talker's processing)

So, with TBTS setups, the key is to keep what the teddy bears are "doing" to a minimum.

This page is under construction.

What follows is a work in progress. I could take this website in many different directions. Because not much is being asked of the teddy bear, you can plug pretty much anyone you want to into the role of teddy bear. This creates all kinds of opportunities for connecting in different ways with people who are new to you as well as with people you already know. So, I'm excited about where these possibilities could go and how I might help with facilitating them. Providing a writeup for letting people know about what TBTS is, what some TBTS setups could look like, and what makes it capable of being profoundly helpful has been my main focus thus far with this website. I've only just begun to think about possible other things such as facilitating scheduling TBTS time slots that people could sign up for, or asking people to send me stories/examples of how they are using TBTS to share with others, etc.

Before we go further, please note that TBTS setups don't have to involve real live people in real time. They can involve merely the idea of a person, be it just an average person or someone specific. Or they can involve an actual person that you're interacting with asynchronously. For example, you can be communicating with your teddy bear in writing or by talking to a recording device. Or, of course, as we saw with the opening story, they can involve talking to an inanimate object, like a stuffed animal, a Lego figure, or a rubber duck, as if it were a person.

Let's take a look at the most minimal case involving a real live person in real time, with a human teddy bear serving as a silent witness. Just like if you were talking to a stuffed animal teddy bear who can't understand what you're talking about anyway, you can talk about anything you might want to think out loud about with your human teddy bear. (Not just tech support issues!) It's fine if they can't follow what you're saying that closely. They can still hold the space for you in ways that are supportive. For example, we use TBTS in a "can't follow closely" way during my weekly meetings to work with a writing partner where we each are working on our own writing projects. My writing partner and I take breaks from writing every 20 minutes and take 3-minute turns serving as teddy bears for each other. We are often smack dab in the middle of something and just start talking as if the other person had a much better idea of what we were talking about than they do.

What changes now that someone else is paying attention? One big difference with having someone to talk to is that, to some extent, you're imagining what the other person is paying attention to, what are they expecting to hear you say, what parts are likely to stand out for them, etc. These things are factoring in to what you're saying to the teddy bear.

So, then, you might automatically start explaining things you don’t think you need to explain to yourself. You might end up listing off some key things or key points that can shed light on the situation. You might start to see things from a third party perspective. Such things can often lead to big shifts or profound insights.

You may have experienced this already in normal conversations. I have. Sometimes, but not necessarily, it's happened to be that the other person hadn't said very much in the conversation. Sometimes it's because they were trying to find something to say but couldn't come up with anything. When I've ended up with great insights and heartily thanked the person, "But, I didn't do anything!" has sometimes been the response.

But they are doing something for me. When “human teddy bears” serve as silent witnesses, they bring with them their facial expressions, the nodding of their heads, the puzzled looks they get on their faces, and the regard for me that they are holding me with. Just with things like that, the space is held differently for me. I hear myself differently. Someone is paying attention. As a result, some things can become immediately obvious. What I focus on changes. What to say or do next can become clear. The teddy bear's very presence changes things for me.

Note that it can be because the other person didn’t "do anything" beyond give me their presence and attention that something was facilitated for me. They held the space and gave me plenty of room to take things where I needed to go. I was able to benefit from the power of listening. I was "heard to speech" as Parker Palmer likes to describe it. Because they were there with me, I got to say different things (and experience different things).

What situations might you talk about?

Anything you might want to think out loud about. (Not just tech support issues!) Maybe it’s a situation where it’s not immediately obvious where to start or how to get some traction. Maybe it’s something you’ve been working on, an email, a presentation, a piece of writing, etc., and it’d be helpful to get clearer on what the gist of it is. Maybe it’s something you want to get a piece of hammered out or untangled. Or maybe it’s something you want to reflect on.

For example, you might be working on an elevator pitch for being able to quickly tell someone about a project. You have already succinctly written out the "What?" and the "How?" for your project. Now, you're working on saying more about the "Why?" and seeing if you can get that in as close to the beginning of your elevator pitch as you can.

Or, you might be needing to initiate a difficult conversation with someone and be wanting to figure out what requests you might want to make of the person.

Or it could be something really quick and simple, like wanting to come up with a sentence or two to make a transition from one paragraph to the next in something you're writing.

Why minimal?

One reason to constrain what teddy bears do to be minimal is because it can give the power of listening more of a chance to work its magic. One way to do this is to have it so your teddy bear only mirrors back to you parts of what you’ve said at times when the teddy bear thinks it’d be helpful, i.e., either repeats verbatim what you said or reflects back in the teddy bear’s own words what you’ve said.

Another way to make more room for the power of listening is a process called the Clearness Committee. It’s a process that involves multiple teddy bears supporting one focus person where the teddy bears can only respond to what the focus person is saying by asking questions.

The following excerpts from Parker Palmer’s description of the Clearness Committee give a sense for what this teddy bear setup is about:

Many of us face a dilemma when trying to deal with a personal problem, question, or decision. On the one hand, we know that the issue is ours alone to resolve and that we have the inner resources to resolve it, but access to our own resources is often blocked by layers of inner "stuff"—confusion, habitual thinking, fear, despair. On the other hand, we know that friends might help us uncover our inner resources and find our way, but by exposing our problem to others, we run the risk of being invaded and overwhelmed by their assumptions, judgments, and advice—a common and alienating experience.

…

Behind the Clearness Committee is a simple but crucial conviction: each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems. But that inner voice is often garbled by various kinds of inward and outward interference. The function of the Clearness Committee is not to give advice or “fix” people from the outside in but rather to help people remove the interference so that they can discover their own wisdom from the inside out. Nothing is allowed except real questions, honest and open questions, questions that will help the focus person remove the blocks to his or her inner truth without becoming burdened by the personal agendas of committee members.

Here's a script for running a short version of a Clearness Committee that you take turns being talkers and teddy bears with: http://meaningfulaction.org/ScriptForHoldingTheSpaceSessions.pdf

Other reasons for constraining what teddy bears do to be minimal are:

• so we're less in performance mode
• so we're more in more freely talking just see how things unfold mode
• so we're in there's only one person's agenda at a time mode
• so there's less need to handle social dynamics
• so there's more hearing and being with
• so we can talk without needing the teddy bear to follow that closely with what we're saying, so we can even start in the middle of the story of whatever we're thinking about
• so we can connect more often in more different ways, because you can have teddy bears support you for short lengths of time with more different content
• so we can spend less time feeling isolated and less able to see how to realize possibilities because we can connect more often in more different ways
• so talkers and teddy bears can benefit from having structure, clear expectations, and predictability
• so we can connect with more different teddy bears, because you can plug anyone into the role of teddy bear

TBTS is about exploring different modes of support for different situations. We can be briefly flipping into and out of teddy bear mode or be talking more at length with teddy bears. We can have an ongoing teddy bear setup to help us with achieving a goal or establishing a habit. The possibilities and the benefits are many, and we'll see that the "teddy bears" are benefiting as well as the "talkers." The benefits include connecting more, connecting differently, holding more space with more room for the talker, and holding the space differently. It is about benefiting from having different windows into each other's worlds.

By being included in these "minimal" but significant ways in the talker's process, we are getting to take part in each other's journeys.

How does the magic work?

The magic of Teddy Bear Tech Support has many components to it. To read about one key component, click here to go to the Variation and selection wikipage.

Exploring content and processes that you tend not to include others in

It might be easy for you to imagine including someone in your process for the following situations: getting help with wording something, asking someone which of two choices they like better, and getting feedback on something that's almost done and that you're almost ready to share with the world.

But, one thing that Teddy Bear Tech Support is about is including someone in your process for things you normally wouldn't include them in, and it's about how both the talker and the teddy bear can benefit from doing this more often.

Solitary work

Getting to connect with other people while working on what's typically done all by yourself, and having the support of others help you be more effective with doing this work.

Including others before you're ready (before the material is anywhere near shareable)

From: https://www.bmartin.cc/classes/writing.html

...write before you're ready. Write what you know about the topic, write about how you plan to cover the topic, write about things you need to know - anything to get you going.

Why does it save time to write before you're ready? Because you find out what you need to know. If you do lots of reading before you write, you end up reading lots of stuff that isn't relevant. If, instead, you write first, then you know what information you need for your argument, and you're much more efficient in finding it and reading it. Writing regularly ends up saving you time.

And you'll be more creative. Boice in another experiment found that daily writers produced five times as many new ideas per week as academics who were not writing but who were instructed to note down new ideas when they thought of them.

Experienced, highly productive writers don't wait to be inspired to write - instead, they write to be inspired.

For me, it's often about talking about things that I am far from having worked out and need to do some casting about for a while without worrying about being all that coherent. I often don't know what I think until I've heard what I've had to say. So, I like being able to say, "Hey, let's flip into 'Teddy Bear' mode" when these things arise. Teddy Bear mode needn't last more than a couple minutes. So, I put together this Teddy Bear Tech Support website to explain Teddy Bear mode, so that more people could at least benefit from these brief Teddy Bear interactions if not from the other kinds that I've described on this page.

Nowhere near shareable thoughts include:

• exploratory
• not sure what you might say
• quarter-baked ideas (even less baked than half-baked ideas)

Operating in different modes than usual

For some, being a talker in a TBTS setup will seem very natural, and you can just start talking. For others, finding out what comes out of your mouth as you go along might not sound like such a comfortable idea to you. TBTS is about benefiting from operating in different modes than usual, often because the environment easily and automatically gets you into a different mode. Being told "Just open your mouth and see what happens" with a real live person in front of you might not be such an environment for you. So, what might such an environment look like for you? Using a recording device as a teddy bear, writing to a teddy bear, asking the teddy bear to do some talking while having the focus be on you getting to react to what they're saying, there's all kinds of ways to include a teddy bear in your process.

Common frustrations

Here's a sentiment that often rings true for me: I don't know what I think until I've heard what I've had to say. I get to find out what comes out of my mouth when I shift into think out loud mode. So, I benefit a lot from getting to talk through things with people. As I talk, if I've found that I've said something particularly helpful or insightful, it helps if I can immediately take the ball and run with it. But, I don't always get to. Often, I find myself feeling like I'm chasing the other person around. They've got their own ideas and their own agendas, and I'm trying to work within the rules of normal social dynamics to steer them back to a place that I want to explore.

What TBTS is not about: Having the teddy bear expound on "If I were the talker, here's how I would go about things.

It's not to have the teddy bear do our work for us or live our lives for us. In fact, when there's a tendency for these things, it's possible that setting up a clear TB setup could allow us to interact with the TB in a way that is more connecting when we have TBs who tend to try to connect by making lots of suggestions and who tend to have agendas for us.

[With this in mind, this might be a place to flesh out the idea of sag wagon support ("taking regular pitstops along the way with you" support). You're the one running the race or running the entire Appalachian Trail, and you want help with driving the sag wagon and getting supplies. Your support person can't run the race for you. This might help people see that you want them to help with different tasks. So, perhaps that can help people see that the kind of support you're looking for with TBTS is to be with you on your journey in a different way than backseat driving. Still need to give examples of teddy bear setups of this category. Like ones for someone working on a dissertation or writing a book or working on a term paper.]

Getting something down vs thinking something up mode

Here is a Julia Cameron quote from her book The Right to Write

One of the simplest and smartest things I ever learned about writing is the importance of a sense of direction. Writing is about getting something down, not thinking something up. Whenever I strive to ‘think something up,’ writing becomes something I must stretch to achieve. It becomes loftier than I am, perhaps even something so lofty, it is beyond my grasp. When I am trying to think something up, I am straining. When, on the other hand, I am focused about just getting something down, I have a sense of attention but not a sense of strain.

Improvising as if playing jazz music is a good analogy for one way of getting something down, or out into the world, as the case may be. But, this is just one example of the many different ways of getting something down.

The "minimal doing" requirement of TBTS makes it more likely that the talker and the teddy bear will be on the same page enough so that the talker can riff. Meaning, improvise as if playing jazz music where you are inventing as you go along, discovering new thoughts or new ways of saying things or new ways of putting them together as they come out of your mouth.

From NPR story: Study: Jazz Improv Cranks Up Brain's Creativity

When jazz pianists are improvising riffs, their brains act much more like the dreaming brain, with inhibition turned down and creativity cranked way up, a new study finds.

Riffing = a version of getting something down

Wanting things to spring perfect from your head (and often holding back because they won't) = a version of thinking something up

The gift of getting to witness/accompany and experience the journey

Serving in the teddy bear role can provide us with the opportunity to hold the space for people in a way that develops our capacities to deeply listen. Here is a piece that speaks to that by David Castro on Learning to Listen. It is called Empathy in 8 Minutes, and it is about how he experienced doing an exercise where you listen quietly for 8 minutes as someone tells you his or her life story.

When my partner started to tell his story, I wanted to ask a truckload of questions directing the conversation. I wanted to follow up on particular details, ask about things he hadn't mentioned, shortcut certain areas and learn more about others that interested me, like someone fast forwarding through a TV show.

After about three minutes, however, something remarkable happened. That incessant voice in my head began to quiet, and for the first time I began to listen at a deeper level. I observed my partner’s body language, soaked in his selected words and stopped trying to control the conversation flow. In the remaining five minutes, I learned something profound about the person speaking. I began to see and understand him for the first time. I was actually listening to him instead of focusing on my bundle of projections about him.

TBTS makes it easier for the experience to be about only one person's agenda at a time. Notice how natural it is to have the both surprising and not so surprising number of agendas that David Castro had as a listener in the first 3 minutes of this exercise.

Teddy bears as well as talkers are likely to get a 3rd party perspective on issues in their own lives

Cite Ethan Kross on 3rd party perspectives

How things get shifted for us

Because of mere presence of a teddy bear

Left to our own devices, we will tend to go down certain paths. The mere presence of a teddy bear can be all it takes for us to be finding ourselves going down different sets of paths. I might be able to stay more focused on what's important or what needs the most attention, or have better self talk, or think more big picture, etc.

Many easy ways to recruit Teddy Bears

Teddy Bear mode needn't last more than a couple minutes. In general with TBTS, there are a lot of ways to have it so that you're not asking very much of the teddy bear, including it not needing to take up much time.

For me, I’ve had a teddy bear that I’ve sent emails to. What I asked of the teddy bear was to simply respond to the emails with “I read your email." Simply having someone I was sending emails to was a game changer for me.

Whatever the case may be, whether the situation is thinking through a minor or a major life decision, talking through where you’re stuck with something you’re trying to write, or wondering how you might be able to handle a delicate situation gracefully, there are many ways to harness the power of including someone else in your process. Here are some examples of support you could request from teddy bears:

• whatever is on my mind support
• as if talking to an expert support (can help you prepare to talk to an actual expert)
• sag wagon support (taking regular pitstops along the way with you support)
• don't feel like it support (including before you're ready to start support)
• to get even more support that complements the support you get from a partner or an advisor/mentor

When to recruit a teddy bear

You might consider the following situations and triggers that alert you.

• becoming aware that you're procrastinating
• spending more than 5 minutes on one sentence (both if you're reading or writing)

Teddy Bear Tech Support from the Teddy Bear's perspective

Teddy Bears recruiting Talkers

I've talked about TBTS in terms of talkers recruiting teddy bears. But, teddy bears can also recruit talkers. For example, teddy bears that have retired from their careers can be of service to young talkers. One thing this could help with is with finding talkers that they can be normal mentors to or normal friends with.

Doing job shadowing is another reason teddy bears might have for recruiting talkers. If someone is wondering about what it would be like to be in a certain career field, sometimes they arrange to shadow/follow a person around on the job to experience what the job is like. One way to do job shadowing is to have times where you serve as a teddy bear for the person you are shadowing.

Meaningful Action

We can all use more meaningful action in our lives. TBTS gives teddy bears a way to have more meaningful action, and to connect with more people, and with more different people. Teddy bears get to develop listening skills by getting to witness the power of listening as they make choices (in the teddy bear setups that have choices to be made) about when to do things like mirror back what they've heard and when to offer questions, and as they learn to ask questions that are more of a listening nature.

Windows into Talkers' Worlds and into Teddy Bears' Own Worlds

Teddy Bears get to have windows into talkers' world and windows into their own worlds. They can get 3rd party perspectives on issues of their own when they are witnessing similar issues for others. They get to see people's insides and hear people's self talk.

For me, I've found it empowering to see how effective it is when we are better able to explore our own ideas for ourselves. I've found it reassuring to watch people say things to themselves that I would've wanted to say to them (if I weren't being a silent witness). It reminds me that what I want to do is hold the space with compassion and trust for the talker, knowing how empowering giving that kind of support can be for both me to witness and the talker to receive, and knowing that getting it is all too rare.