An Intensive as a Project for Men’s Liberation
The preceding article in Dutch was translated into this English version by Goof Buijs, with editing by Larry Gardiner:
We are three male Co-Counselors from the Netherlands with Co-Counseling relationships that go back for many years. Some years ago, we decided to do a one-week counseling Intensive in Seattle, with the three of us being there at the same time. [An Intensive is a number of hours of one-way Re-evaluation Counseling in a week, for a fee, from Re-evaluation Counseling Community Resources in Seattle, Washington, USA.] Because one of us, Kees, is blind, we gave a lot of attention to the preparation for the journey. Each of us experienced our Intensive as a project for men’s liberation. This article describes what we did and learned.
The preparation for the trip took us five years. After Goof’s Intensive in 2014, he made a plan for his next Intensive—to travel to Seattle with a small team of close Co-Counselors. Around the same time, Tim Jackins encouraged Kees to do an Intensive, and Roel decided to come as well. For Kees and Roel, it would be their first Intensive; for Goof, his third.
We decided it would work only if we could turn it into an inclusive and liberating project for each of us. Our plan gradually took shape by doing many three-way sessions to discharge and think together. We could have easily arranged a plan very quickly, but the contradiction to men’s oppression came from taking lots of time to prepare for the trip together. Some examples of this are how we thought about a suitable period of time, arranging the journey so it worked well for Kees, and about how to spend the time together well alongside our Intensives. When each of us wrote our own client letter to Seattle some weeks before the Intensive, we gave feedback to each other on what we wrote. This helped us contradict our feelings of men’s isolation and having to do things on our own [alone].
What helped in preparing for the project were our long-standing Co-Counseling relationships, including our work together on men’s liberation. Before, during, and after our journey and our stay in Seattle, we did many sessions and rounds of thinking and listening. We worked on inclusion in a meaningful way.
After Kees made the decision to have his Intensive, lots of fear came up for him. He felt that he would have to give up all security because he was going to be doing unknown things in an unknown environment. A person who is blind depends on support in many situations. This had an impact on each of us. A person needing support can experience feeling worthless and find it difficult to maintain the lead. We decided to find a way to make decisions together, keep track of benign reality, and keep thinking rationally. Allies may get restimulated because in almost every activity the blind person is needing support. What do you do when the blind person himself does not know what to do? In a practical sense, he is depending on others and sometimes may feel that he cannot make a good decision. Allies may get feelings of being superior. What is the best decision under these circumstances?
We decided that the three of us would make all our decisions together. The process consisted of doing sessions about our own distress with a focus on the benign reality. For example, when we were in Seattle, we made a visit to the famous Pike Place Fish Market. Kees never would have been able to get there alone. The three of us managed, because on our walk Kees always had a shoulder he could hold on to. During the walk downtown we had a lot of fun with things that we came across [encountered]. Kees asked his two allies not to describe everything they saw on the way but only those things that they found inspiring, so as not to overwhelm him with information about things he could not see. We constantly put the emphasis on inclusion by making every decision together. We had fun together enjoying the music in the market and watching the workers throw the fish there. It provided a huge contradiction to our patterns that say that a man should always do things on his own.
When three men are doing something together, inevitably patterns of sexism and male domination come up. After many sessions together, we thought of a plan to have each of us take the lead for the day or a part of the day. We decided that the main job of the person taking the lead was to collect the best thinking from each person at the start of the day (or part of the day). Then the leader would propose a schedule for the day. We discussed the schedule, taking turns to think and listen. We shared new thinking and discharged on the distresses until we reached an agreement together. Also, during the day (since unexpected things can always happen), the person taking the lead would offer time for everyone to do a mini-session, a think-and-listen round, and then make a more suitable decision. This approach helped us spend the day together in an enriching and meaningful way and against the effects of oppression. Sometimes one of us stayed behind to rest or do something different. However, most of the time we made a special effort to do things together as a group.
The Intensive itself turned out to be very useful for each of us and for supporting each other’s re-emergence. In between the Intensive sessions we did practical things together, but we also continued doing counseling sessions on “unbearable” stuff [distress].
Before, during, and after the Intensive we had free time to spend together. Prior to the Intensive we spent the weekend acclimatizing, adjusting to the nine-hour time difference, and recovering from our jet lag. A staff counselor at RCCR arranged for some bicycles, including a tandem, for a cycle run along Lake Washington. This enabled Kees to be part of the trip on the backseat of the tandem.
During our stay in Seattle, we ate together and took walks to explore the city. We shopped for our own groceries and cooked our own food in the apartment.
We used the weekend after our Intensives for exploring some of the Pacific coast near Mount Olympus with a rented car. Our highlight was visiting the rainforest in the Olympic National Park. We spent a whole afternoon there. We all felt very connected with each other and with the natural environment of this ancient forest. We decided to make inclusivity the main goal of relaxing together. We discovered that we all had impairments. One of us could not see. Two of us had no sense of smell. One of us had damage to his back. All our impairments together changed the way we experienced the trees, the birds, the plants, and the forest environment. We read information boards and told each other what we found fascinating about this natural coherence of centuries-old forest giants.
After a week of intensive discharge with loads of attention out, we noticed that we had become very visible and accessible as a group of three men. Making contact with the staff in a roadside cafe was easy and meaningful. When we met a police officer in the Kurt Cobain Memorial Park in Aberdeen (Washington, USA), he spontaneously started telling his life story.
During the weekend we were constantly able to use our model of leadership. Whenever feelings of male domination came up, we tried to stop so the situation could be dealt with in a more rational way. This made relaxation during the weekend an unexpected part of our re-emergence project. It also gave us a glimpse of how the world could look if men stepped out of their restimulation and their patterns of sexism and male domination.
After our Intensives, the three of us have kept meeting and having sessions. Together we have written this article. Our alliance during the week of Intensive sessions and the weekend after has become a hopeful new example of how it is possible to be connected as men and work together in an inclusive way. Together we think about our next steps in making male domination more visible for ourselves and other men, discharging about it, and clearing it up.
Broek in Waterland, the Netherlands
Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
(Present Time 202, January 2021)