Glossary of Terms for People New to RC
Client — in a Co-Counseling session, the person who is being listened to, and is encouraged to talk without holding back emotions.
Co-Counseling or Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) — a practice in which people exchange aware listening with each other to free themselves from the damage caused by past hurtful experiences. It involves a natural process of emotional healing (“discharge”)—crying, trembling, raging, laughing, yawning, talking, which leads to re-evaluation of the old painful experiences. After discharge and re-evaluation, people are freed from the feelings and rigid perspectives and patterns of behavior left by the hurt. They have more access to their flexible intelligence and are more likely to come up with creative and accurate responses to new situations.. In Co-Counseling, we take turns listening to each other, with one person acting as counselor and the other as client for half of the time, and then the two people trade roles for the second half of the time.
Counselor — in a Co-Counseling session, the person who is listening and encouraging release of painful emotions by the client.
Co-Counselors — people who use the process of Re-evaluation Counseling to seek recovery of our full intelligence and assist others to do the same.
Constituency — a group in RC with some common identity, often a liberation issue.
Discharge — see emotional discharge.
Distress pattern or pattern of behavior (also called a distress recording) — a rigid set of “thoughts,” behaviors, and feelings left by an unhealed hurtful experience or experiences.
Emotional discharge — a process inherent to human beings that heals the emotional damage from distressful incidents. Outward signs of this process include animated talking, crying, trembling, expressions of anger, and laughter.
A “frozen need” results from the hurt of a real need not having been met in the past. When this hurt is restimulated, we often feel it as a present need.
A fundamentals class is one that introduces the theory and practice of RC.
A gather-in is an RC meeting of a half-day or less on a specific topic. It includes an RC theory presentation or report-back from an RC workshop or conference and time for discharge. It may also include an opening and closing circle, discussion, and/or small groups.
The Guidelines are a set of agreements among all members of the RC Community.
Humanness — what our theory and practice find to be true of humans when not under the effects of distress recordings. This includes use of our flexible intelligence, sense of connection and caring, cooperativeness, and zest for life.
Intelligence — as used here, the ability to create a new, creative response to fit each new, present situation. Unhealed distress experiences slow down and reduce this ability.
Internalized oppression — the false and hurtful attitudes of the oppression about oneself or one’s group, originally imposed by oppression from the outside. The messages are so harsh, pervasive, and damaging that the targeted person turns the invalidations on themselves, “takes them to heart,” and believes them (until these attitudes can be healed).
Liberation movement — the program and process of freeing one’s self and one’s group from oppression. The liberation process includes developing allies—for example, Africans and African descendants build alliances with Indigenous people, white people build alliances with people targeted by racism, and so on.
Oppression — the systematic mistreatment of a group of people by the society or by another group of people who serve as agents of the society, with the mistreatment encouraged or enforced by the society and culture.
Oppressor group — the group of people that is conditioned to act out oppressive behaviors toward groups the society targets with the oppression.
Oppressor role — the role of individually enacting some piece of the society’s oppression.
Pattern or pattern of behavior (also called a distress recording) — a rigid set of “thoughts,” behaviors, and feelings left by an unhealed hurtful experience or experiences.
Policies — guides and agreements for assisting a group of people to act together in a cooperative, supportive way. Our policies can promote discharge and help clarify thinking. Policies represent our best thinking to date and are thus always considered to be in draft form.
RCer — another term for Co-Counselor.
Re-emergence—should be added-- the process of clearing the rigid distress patterns from the thinking of the client by discharge, allowing the resumption of fully rational behavior.
Re-evaluation — As we allow the discharge process to take place and release painful emotions from past experiences, our mind spontaneously sorts out the differences between the past and present experiences. This inherent ability makes it easier to think flexibly and more effectively about present situations, rather than reactively respond to painful emotions that might have been triggered.
Re-evaluation Counseling — a well-defined practice of listening, taking turns listening, and allowing and assisting emotional release, which enables participants to remove the effects of past hurts and to think clearly where they had previously been confused.
The Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) Community — a network of people who use RC to regain their humanness. It is secondarily a network of local RC Communities, groups, and classes. It is also a group of people who wish to offer the tools of RC to all people everywhere and welcome them in a common effort to regain their intelligence, their humanness, and the use of their full potential.
Restimulation — The experience of a painful incident from the past being "triggered" (recalled) because something in the present situation reminds us of that experience. When we're unaware that a painful memory is being triggered, we are often unable to judge the differences between the present situation (which might be benign) and the past, painful experience.
Session — the arrangement in which Co-Counseling takes place—two people divide time equally to listen to one another without interruption and encourage emotional release.
Support of a leader means thinking about the leader and helping with the leader’s work.
Support group — a group of three to eight people taking equal turns listening to one another and encouraging emotional healing. The group can be based on specific constituencies (African descendants, women, young people, and so on), or issues (educational change, care of the environment, and so on), or it can be a diverse gathering.