Thoughts on Closeness as We Consider Returning to In-Person Sessions
Many of us are beginning to return, or have returned, to some form of in-person Co-Counseling. Many of us have been reassured (deeply so) to see and feel the connections we’ve built over years. We know that the physical presence of, and contact with, another human intelligence can be uniquely restorative.
Some of us will meet for the first time in person with RCers we’ve known only through Zoom or phone.
Here are some thoughts that may be useful. In the RC Community, we will be thinking afresh, starting with what we know and using discharge to get our thoughts clearer. (What others are figuring out worldwide will be invaluable to hear, given our vastly different situations and experiences.)
We recommend tackling [discharging on] not only more recent feelings about the pandemic, Zoom, and in-person meetings, but also the crucial general topic of physical closeness. Consistent thoughtful contact is difficult for almost everyone; yet it can be an important contradiction to isolation.
COUNSELING AND PHYSICAL CLOSENESS
As we get into physical proximity with other RCers, we can all solidify and deepen what we know about a rational need for closeness. Before considering any specifics for people new to in-person RC (or new to RC, altogether), we can talk about the general situation:
Touch is vital to our well-being. We are born fully human: intelligent, loving, with a capacity for closeness, joy, connection, and curiosity. We want and need substantial and aware human contact. Young children will naturally seek closeness with other intelligent human beings, as well as attention from them when hurting or frightened.
Early separations, along with thoughtless, even abusive, physical contact (or lack of contact) are inflicted so early, that integrating rational “touch” into our lives (as well as into our RC work) requires discharge, decision, theory, and allies.
In other words, our inherent “knowing” when we are young of the importance of touch is often interfered with by adult irrationality. It may often be generally well-intentioned. Sometimes, it’s driven by adults’ hope of quieting their own distresses, sometimes by a decision not to touch out of a fear of harming others. Such adult interference is a nearly universal hurt and can often result in our having feelings of “never-ending” isolation.
Since physical closeness is a key contradiction to any hurt, our recovery from hurts will move faster when we are able to create the conditions for thoughtful aware contact.
In working on our relationship to touch, we want to “get out,” that is, move out [rid ourselves] of our distress recordings. And we will encounter a spot [feeling] where we will be too afraid or too discouraged to move—because when the hurt came in, we tried everything we could think of to stay connected and thinking. None of it worked; so, we made a life that, although diminished, allowed us to go on [survive]. We deserve only praise for that survival. But no pattern—even one that allowed us to survive—is a present-time solution. We’re here to get our whole life [no longer have our lives limited by distress].
Our role as client is to challenge any recording, including in the area of touch, especially the feeling that we are not in charge (as we were not in the past). We can reclaim a life of our own choosing by challenging every piece of powerlessness in session.
Our counselor is our ally to fight alongside us. It is our fight. Our counselor can’t do it for us, but they can be (must be) a bit braver than we can be in the middle of our early struggle. We will want to require our counselors to challenge our timidities and remind us to work on the earliest times when we weren’t in command of our lives or bodies.
After our sessions, we can continue to make our best decisions as to how we choose to be close with others in the present.
In session, we switch roles [of counselor and client]. In assuming the role of counselor, we are now an ally to our client in their own fight.
Insofar [as much] as what we call “early sexual memories” are relevant to our distresses about touch, the pamphlets by Harvey Jackins (A Rational Theory of Sexuality, <www.rc.org/publication/important_articles_harvey/pt29_65_hj> and Joan Karp (Counseling on Early Sexual Memories, <www.rc.org/publication/pamphlets/esm_jk> can give us time-tested theory and a more solid “footing” [support] as we reclaim our human need for rational physical connection.
CLOSENESS IN NEW CONDITIONS
Here are some thoughts for those of us whose only experience of RC has been on Zoom (or for any of us whose religious practices or comfort levels might find some of the following surprising): Holding hands, hugging, meeting in a bedroom for privacy from others in a household—all these and other “common” and useful (but not required) practices that experienced RCers may “take for granted”—may feel strange and restimulating. They may challenge an individual’s decisions about the boundaries they’ve created for themselves (whether in reaction to past hurts or as the result of a rational decision or religious observance).
We leaders need to talk openly to our classes about closeness. We will want to talk about how physical contact can be an important, even crucial, contradiction to isolation.
In the short run [for the near future], we can share thoughts about getting permission before assuming contact: “May I hold your hand?” “Would you like a hug?” Then we can encourage listening and following the client’s decision.
Some people may feel desperate for contact. Then, we will want to slow things down and perhaps put attention on “just” holding hands. We can find ways to look at the grief of being or feeling alone—especially earliest memories that are restimulated. (For those of us who had little physical contact as the pandemic unraveled lives [caused our lives to deteriorate], reminders that we can look at the topic from this now-safer distance can be useful.)
We may want to take a “longer view” [broader perspective] about how to assist a client to challenge any feelings that may be driving their decisions about contact (such as mistrust from early experiences). Our goal is to offer a plausible “road back” to [plan toward] a life of intelligent, joyful, non-exploitive, human contact. Which will probably look different for each of us.
It is vital for us as RC leaders and counselors to understand and convey the fact that many oppressions have left their targets with an inability to say no. Or to even say, “This makes me uncomfortable.” Many oppressions carry the message that in order to stay alive, one must accommodate the distresses of others (especially of others in the oppressor role). Such heavy survival messages operate even if the current situation is nothing like past situations or the recordings from them. We can ask the client directly, and we can pay close attention. We can listen and follow a client’s mind. We can do so, for as long as is needed, to establish the sense that they are going to be listened to regarding touch—whether they have a desperation for touch or a terror of it or follow observances that require thoughtful contact. We will want to show kindness, patience, and respect.
When a sense of trust is well-enough established (whether in two minutes or two years), we can then offer more directed counseling to contradict (with more challenge) any rigid or frozen patterns. We will want to do this in ways that a client can “hear” and is able to discharge with. We can continue to work together and become more “daring” and creative. We can offer our clients steps to take in their lives to try out additional contradictions to any rigid isolating patterns or any rigid urgency for contact.
As counselor, we do not want rigidities and irrationalities to constrain our ability and inventiveness in offering real help to a client. The client always at heart [fundamentally] wishes to seek “the view from the outside” [a perspective outside of their distress]. We all need someone who can think beyond our ability to think, and enable us to reclaim our full ability to have rational closeness in our lives.
RC GUARDS AGAINST PHYSICAL MISTREATMENT
In RC, we have many ways to ensure (as much as is possible, given the current state of humanity) that contact in RC is thoughtful and focused on the re-emergence of one another. Our Guidelines clearly spell out safeguards designed to prevent any unaware and patterned exploitation of a client’s hurts. Beyond guidelines and practice, we offer policy and discharge in oppressor groups to assist us as counselor to think fully and responsibly. We want to have the best thinking possible for one another.
Safeguards in our Guidelines include the following: Requirements as to who can be certified to teach. Zero acceptance of sexual exploitation. No use of alcohol or drugs by certified RC teachers. No alcohol or drugs in any Co-Counseling setting. No expanding of relationships begun in Co-Counseling to anything other than the Co-Counseling relationship. “Referencing” one another (staying in good communication and offering feedback), a process that includes counseling-the-leader, self-estimation, and keeping up to date with RC theory.
Although we have a policy of no tolerance for sexual harassment, we talk about it differently than other groups, because we understand that everyone gets hurt and will likely pass some version of those hurts to others—despite our dearest wishes not to. Or that, as counselor, we may restimulate someone’s early material even if nothing hurtful is actually happening in the present. We know that we all carry a spectrum of oppressor material.
We all are explicitly choosing to be allies when we are anyone’s Co-Counselor.
To understand our approach, please read and use the Resource document about our M.5 Guideline <www.rc.org/publication/guidelines/m5_resource_doc#ShowingAffection>. Leaders, please work with your classes on it. It is the fullest explanation of RC’s intentions regarding M.5.
Also, we would like everyone to read our Guideline M.5. <www.rc.org/page/search?search=M.5.+Guideline> As RCers, we are required to follow this Guideline. But more important, we would want to follow the intentions of this Guideline.
A FOOTNOTE ABOUT "PHYSICAL COUNSELING"
Sometimes “physical counseling” (which can look a little like children playfully roughhousing [playing in close physical contact]) can be an effective contradiction and can “open up” [reveal] occluded feelings and memories for discharge. Though it involves “physical contact,” it’s of a very different nature! It happens at workshops and only with skilled and trained Co-Counselors.
Thank you for reading.
New York, New York, USA
(Present Time 213, October 2023)