The No Blame Game is a game board played with a deck of cards - cards with feelings and needs vocabulary written on them. The goal of the No-Fault Zone is to create a safe place where everyone can be listened to, everyone can express how they felt and what they need, and conflicts can be resolved. No punishments, no consequences because no one really did anything wrong. We are all simply choosing strategies to get our needs met and sometimes, those strategies don't work for others. With this attitude, we aren't cutting ourselves off from others by our judgements about right and wrong. This makes real healing, through understanding and compassion, possible. The No- Blame Game is adapted from the No-Fault Zone, a game developped by Sura Hart and Victoria Kindle-Hodson (see useful links).



Leonard's parents had a hard time getting along so they separated and Leonard now sees his Dad one week a year. Last year, his visit with his dad was cut short because his dad and his mom got into an argument. After using the No-Fault Zone to express his sadness about his family's situation, he decided it might be a good idea to make his own No-Blame Game, with feelings and needs cards to go with it, to take with him on his next visit to see his dad. His friend Darren offered to help him.

Jeremy had been denying what he had said to Vanessa and Maude. Up until the time I invited him to come to the No-Fault Zone. The girls expressed how they felt after he had said that their art project was ugly. They said they would have enjoyed his help to make it better instead of his criticism. They also said they needed respect for what they had created in order to protect their self-esteem. Jeremy 's face softened when he heard this. I asked him if he wanted to change anything in the story. (I wanted to know if he agreed with their version or wanted to make some amendments with his version of the story.) But Jeremy said, yes, I wouldn't do that again. That's when we understood that Jeremy was feeling genuine regret and that's what he said with his cards. I asked him, "What made you want to tell the truth this time?" He agreed that it was the reassurance that he would be safe in the No-Fault Zone, that he would not get into trouble nor be punished. In the end, the girls didn't even have a request really. They were just satisfied that they had been genuinely heard.