Tim Jackins, at a workshop in Gothenburg, Sweden, July 2016
F—: I wonder how you begin if you want to start a new Community.
Tim Jackins: In a place where there are no Co-Counselors?
F—: There are, but they are not organized.
Tim: Many people have done that, in many different ways. The ones that have been most successful have built a core of people who decide that they want to have a Community.
You don’t need a lot of people quickly. You need two, three, four people who decide it is going to be an important part of their life, who have sessions with each other consistently, and who go off to a workshop together in some established Community where they all get to move forward together using that resource. All of the consistently successful Communities have had a core like that.
Discharge works. And you have to all keep discharging with each other to go forward together. You don’t have to teach big fundamentals classes. In some places each person simply teaches one other person, and a core of people is built one by one.
Sometimes I’ve suggested that one Co-Counselor invite a friend to be taught one to one and that another experienced Co-Counselor become a part of that. The new person is then in a three-way with two experienced people and gets to see someone who knows how to be client and someone who knows how to be counselor. Sometimes the new person has sessions not with the person who brought him or her in but with the third person. That can be useful, because we all understand Co-Counseling a little differently and seeing two different perspectives can be helpful.
So, those are the best ways I’ve seen. Don’t be in a hurry, and don’t wait. Just do it.
(Present Time 187, April 2017)