The Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet is the first step in The Work, Byron Katie's inquiry method for examining stressful beliefs. It provides a structured space to write down your uncensored judgments about another person without spiritual filtering or self-censorship. By completing the worksheet honestly—identifying what someone did, what you want from them, what they should or shouldn't do, and what you fear—you surface the specific thoughts driving your suffering. These beliefs are then questioned using The Work's four questions and turnarounds to reveal the actual source of your stress.
What Is the Purpose of the Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet?
The worksheet serves a deceptively simple function: it collects the scattered, fragmented thoughts that accumulate in your mind. As Katie explains in the talk, "the mind it will make up a story and then it'll switch to another topic," jumping from one concern to the next without resolution. The worksheet corrals these thoughts by giving them a single location and direction.
The real power lies in what happens next. Once your judgments are written down, they become visible—no longer vague background noise but concrete statements you can examine. Katie emphasizes that "it's bringing the story forward so we can question what we're believing concept by concept assumption by assumption." The worksheet is not the cure; it's the diagnosis. Without identifying what you actually believe, you cannot question it.
This first step is crucial because most people remain unaware of their core beliefs about others. They feel stress and blame circumstances or the other person's character, never looking inward to examine their own unquestioned assumptions. The worksheet forces that examination by asking you to name them.
How Should You Fill Out the Worksheet Without Filtering?
Katie's most direct instruction is to "allow those judgments to surface—those judgments that you're not supposed to think—in your secret thinking." This is where most people get stuck. They want to be spiritual, mature, or psychologically sophisticated, so they soften their real thoughts. They think, "I shouldn't judge her; I should be compassionate," and then write something watered down.
Katie's antidote is clarity: "Let those judgments surface. Be a child as you fill this in. Take a chance and just let it live on paper." She adds, crucially, "we're not going to collect these"—there's no audience, no judgment. This permission is essential. Your secret thoughts, the petty ones you feel ashamed of, the ruthless assessments your mind makes in private—those are exactly what belongs on the worksheet.
Katie uses the example of someone saying, "I don't even want her to really like me, I just don't want her to hurt me." She then guides the person to isolate the core judgment: "She hurt me." This simplicity is important. The worksheet is not for nuance or hedging. It's for the raw, unfiltered belief that's actually running your life.
What Are the Five Key Sentence Completions?
The worksheet has a structured format designed to draw out the specific thoughts causing your stress. Each sentence completion targets a different layer of your belief system:
- What did she do? Write the action or behavior you're holding against her. Example: "She hurt me."
- What do you want from her? Identify what you wish she would do or be. This reveals your hidden demands on her. Example: "I want her to be like a friend."
- What should she do or not do? This surfaces your "should" thoughts—the rules you believe she must follow. Example: "She shouldn't hurt me anymore."
- What do you need from her? This goes deeper than wants; it captures what you believe you cannot be okay without. Example: "I need her to trust me" or "I need her to convince me she won't hurt me again."
- What are you afraid will happen if...? The final layer reveals your deepest fear about the situation. Example: "I don't ever want to be hurt again" or "I don't ever want to be so hurt that I want to die."
As Katie works through these with an audience member, she notices how the mind tries to escape the specificity. When asked what she should do, the person starts generalizing: "She should understand that I'm vulnerable, she should understand that I'm sensitive." Katie stops her: "Notice that. When you believe those thoughts there's no way to stay with the Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet. It's how your mind moves you away from your work."
The mind naturally tries to broaden judgments into big generalizations because that preserves the escape route. But the worksheet requires staying close to the specific situation, the specific action, the specific belief.
Why Does the Worksheet Focus on Someone Else?
A paradox embedded in The Work is that you don't write about yourself—you write about someone else. Yet Katie says, "it really is all about us." Why? Because the person you judge is showing you your own unexamined beliefs. When you say "she's unpredictable" or "she's selfish," you're not objectively describing her; you're projecting your fear and your values onto her.
By writing about another person, you bypass the defensive self-judgment that blocks introspection. If Katie asked you to write "I am unpredictable," you'd likely argue and defend yourself. But when you write "she is unpredictable," you feel the belief fully. The worksheet uses this psychological side door to access your actual thoughts.
Katie also advises: "Not about my own fears, no. Just fill in the Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet about someone in your life." You can choose a current situation, or "go back to a time when you were five or ten years old that was really hurtful or frustrating." Old wounds often carry the purest beliefs because they've never been questioned.
What Happens After You Complete the Worksheet?
Completing the worksheet is not the end; it's the setup for The Work itself. Katie explains: "Once we've identified the thoughts that are causing the stress—in other words, we've filled in a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet—there they are: what we're believing, identified."
The next phase is to "question these assumptions and these things we're believing and these concepts that are ruling our life. We question them. We do the work with them. We put them up against all four questions and the turnarounds."
The worksheet creates a menu of specific beliefs ready for inquiry. Instead of vaguely thinking "I'm unhappy because of her," you have concrete statements: "She hurt me. She should understand. I need her to trust me. I don't ever want to be hurt again." Each statement can be examined using The Work's method to see if it's actually true, who you'd be without it, and what the opposite might reveal.
Katie describes this as accessing "the missing link—the part of our minds that we don't pay attention to, and we're finally paying attention to it." Most of us live our entire lives without ever questioning the beliefs we've accepted as fact. The worksheet makes questioning possible.
Where to Go From Here
Start by downloading the Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet from thework.com. Choose a situation where you feel genuinely upset or stuck—either current or from your past. Without editing yourself, fill in each sentence completion honestly. Don't aim for spiritual maturity; aim for truth. Once complete, pick one statement that feels most charged, and take it through The Work's four questions: Is it true? Can you absolutely know it's true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without it? Then explore the turnarounds—the opposite statements—to see what else might be true. The worksheet is simply the first step in a practice of radical honesty with yourself about what you actually believe.
