Daily Sessions on Skype
I have been doing early-morning twenty-minute sessions on Skype1 with the same Co-Counselor almost every weekday for the past five years. It started out during a difficult time in my life as a single session once a week between other sessions. Over time we both realized that something important was happening and decided to do it more often even though there was no overwhelming crisis in either of our lives. Eventually it became a daily early-morning check-in.
We both have come to realize how useful a regular and enduring exchange of time has been for our mutual re-emergence. We have built up a huge degree of trust in each other, as well as enough perspective on each other’s chronic patterns that we can readily recognize and interrupt them. Daily discharge with the same person has helped me think more deeply and discharge more often about RC theory. It’s empowering.
She’s a raised-middle-class Jewish woman, and I am a raised-poor-and-working-class ex-Catholic. She totally spots and solidly contradicts the internalized oppression of feeling powerless, stupid, and afraid of visibility that tends to stop me from going all out2 or thinking big. It’s made a big change in the kinds of projects I take on3 in the wide world, my art, and my Community.
She says that knowing she will have a session in the morning allows her to notice when she is being restimulated and that therefore she thinks more objectively about whatever the restimulation is. She thinks, “Huh, that’s interesting. I’ll have to tell my counselor about how that thing got to me.”4 Then she consciously chooses not to react until she has taken time to discharge on it. She says it has made a huge difference in her marriage and her other family relationships.
Suvan Geer
Santa Ana, California, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion
list for RC Community members
1 Skype is a way of communicating with another person by voice or video over the Internet.
2 “Going all out” means acting with full determination or enthusiasm.
3 “Take on” means undertake.
4 “Got to me” means upset me.