Comprehensive Glossary of RC Terms
Including basic terms for new Co-Counselors and the terms defined in the Glossary to the Guidelines for the RC Community (April 2022)
Access means the physical and practical arrangements that enable those with impairments or limitations to participate in an event in the most inclusive way reasonably possible, given all of the circumstances.
Addictive behavior is the continued giving in to the restimulated feelings of a distress recording and re-enacting the distress recording’s content.
The Alternate Area Reference Person (AARP) is the person responsible for immediately assuming the functions of the Area Reference Person (ARP) if the ARP is unable to function for any reason. The Alternate may undertake other activities in relationship to the ARP and the Area, but these are optional.
The Alternate International Reference Person (AIRP) is the person who will immediately assume all the functions of the International Reference Person (IRP) if the IRP is unable to function for any reason.
Anonymously means without being named or otherwise identified.
Anti-Semitism refers to the specific oppression directed against the Jewish people. Although Arabs and other groups are also Semitic peoples, our use of the term anti-Semitism has always been used specifically to refer to the oppression of Jewish people.
An Area is a formal grouping of Co-Counselors, with a designated leader called the Area Reference Person (ARP). Areas are formed by the decision of the Co-Counselors in the local Community, with approval from the IRP.
Area Maintenance Funds support the functioning of a local Area and are used for expenses, such as printing and mailing; and purchasing items for Community use, such as mats, assistive hearing devices, and RC CDs and videos. Maintenance Funds are typically raised from donations or by taking a percentage of local class fees. Maintenance Funds are optional and are handled by the Area Reference Person (ARP) and/or other Area leaders.
Area Outreach Funds are kept in many individual Area accounts. They are used to help individuals pay for workshop fees, transportation expenses, or both. They come from fees paid for classes, workshops, and other Area events as well as from voluntary donations (not tax-deductible). The use of Area Outreach Funds must be authorized by the Area Reference Person (ARP), or a designated account signer for a Developing Community account. Area Outreach Funds are either held and managed by Re-evaluation Counseling Community Resources, Inc. (RCCR) or kept locally by Areas outside of the United States, with the agreement of the International Reference Person (IRP).
An Area Reference Person (ARP) is an RC leader who thinks about and oversees an Area as a whole. The ARP develops and supports leadership within the Area and exercises judgment on which activities are consistent with RC theory and policy.
An attack may be either an organized attempt to disrupt the functioning of the Community or a smearing of an individual. Trying to get others to support one’s upset with a Co-Counselor or the Community is an attack. Thinking that an error has been made, being upset with someone, questioning someone about their thinking, or arguing for a different point of view is not an attack. It is a mistake to criticize a Co-Counselor and try to force them to be one’s counselor on an issue or upset, but that is not what is meant by an attack.
The break-even fee is the estimated cost of a workshop per person. It can be calculated by dividing the total expected costs of the workshop (including the 10% of total income to be paid to the Community Service Fund) by the number of expected participants.
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) is 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.
Community Service Funds are funds that support the ongoing work of the RC Community by helping to pay for workshop fees, travel to workshops, and RC literature. They also support the administrative work of the RC Community done at Re-evaluation Counseling Community Resources, Inc. (RCCR). They come from fees paid for workshops, classes, and other events as well as from donations (not tax-deductible). Community Service Funds are held by RCCR, and their use is authorized by the International Reference Person (IRP).
Confidentiality means that nothing that the client reveals in a session, or in their turn as client in a class, a support group, or a workshop, is to be repeated to anyone without their permission. This also means not repeating it to the client at another time.
Consensus means agreement by the group as a whole. A working consensus means a tentative agreement that allows the group to move forward.
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 occluded intelligence and assist others to do the same.
Constituency — a group in RC with some common identity, often a liberation issue.
Cooperative workshops are workshops in which one teacher is in charge of the workshop as a whole and other Co-Counselors lead parts of the workshop or assist (as a team) the overall leader.
Coordinator: See “Local and Regional Coordinators.”
“Counsel the leader” is a procedure that brings out the thinking of a group and uses their attention to counsel the leader of the group.
Culturally enforced distress patterns are distress patterns enforced by a group’s culture.
Data Personal data includes name, e-mail address, phone number, social media ids. Sensitive data includes physical location, constituency data, special needs and diet data, language data, financial data, and similar information.
A Developing Community (previously called an “unorganized Area”) is a group of Co-Counselors in a geographic location who are working together to build an RC Community.
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.
A draft liberation policy is a statement representing a group’s best thinking so far about its liberation from oppression, including suggestions for achieving its liberation. A draft liberation policy statement is not binding on anyone or meant to tell people what they should think or do. It a tool to promote discussion and discharge. All RC liberation policy statements are considered drafts, to be updated as people become able to think more clearly about the liberation of their group.
An each-one-teach-one event is an introduction to RC in which each Co-Counselor brings someone who is not a Co-Counselor.
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.
Family work is a range of ways in which we use RC to support young people, parents, and families. It uses play to build strong connections between young people and their parents and other adults, and supports young people to use the discharge process. It includes creating situations where young people lead adults in play and other activities to challenge the oppression of young people in our society.
A skilled family worker is an RC leader who has been trained to lead family work and is approved to lead it by the International Commonality Reference Person (ICRP) for Family Work.
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.
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life intended to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing actions or policies intended to prevent births within the group; or removing children of the group from their families and communities.
Global Majority People--the peoples of Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and those descended from them, and Indigenous people, are over eighty percent of the global population. These people also occupy most of the global land mass.
Using the term “Global Majority and Indigenous (GMI)” for these people acknowledges their majority status in the world and interrupts how the dominant (U.S. and European) culture assigns them a minority status.
Many Global Majority and Indigenous people living in dominant-culture countries have been assimilated into the dominant culture—by force, in order to survive, in seeking a better life for themselves and their families, or in pursuing the economic, political, or other inclusion of their communities. Calling these people “Global Majority and Indigenous” contradicts the assimilation.
A Co-Counselor in good standing is a Co-Counselor who actively participates in RC and supports its development.
Gossip is casual or thoughtless reports on or conversations about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as true.
The Guidelines are a set of agreements among all members of the RC Community.
Guidelines having the force of a requirement are those that require the agreement of the International Reference Person (IRP) for any deviation. These are Guideline A. 5., Guideline D.1., Certification of RC Teachers; Guideline H.3., Regional and Area Classes, Support Groups, and Playdays, and Area Gather-ins; Guideline H.4., Class and Area Workshops and Daylong Playdays; Guideline H.5., Regional and International Workshops and Gather-ins; Guideline H.7., Outreach Finances: Communities Outside the United States; Guideline J.2., Duplicating and Electronically Distributing RC Publications and Other Materials; Guideline J.4., Publications Royalties; Chapter M., Relationships—the No-Socializing Policy; and Guideline O.2., Handling Attacks.
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 invalidation about oneself or one’s group; these attitudes were originally imposed by oppression from the outside, but the targeted person has “taken them to heart” and believes them (until these attitudes can be healed).
An International Commonality Reference Person (ICRP) represents a group of individuals who are involved with a particular issue and represents their interests in the International RC Community. The ICRP is the International Reference Person’s (IRP’s) deputy leader of that constituency. The ICRP proposes and develops policies and publications, and leads workshops and conferences on the constituency’s particular interests.
An International Liberation Reference Person (ILRP) represents a constituency’s interests in the International RC Community and is the International Reference Person’s deputy leader of that constituency. The ILRP proposes and develops liberation policies and publications, and leads workshops and conferences on the constituency’s particular interests
The International Reference Person (IRP) exercises judgment about and coordinates International actions and policies.
In Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) interpreting means orally translating.
Language oppression is the oppression of a people because of their language. An example is the oppression of those who speak a language other than the dominant language of their community and whose language is considered by the dominant language speakers to be less important than or inferior to the dominant language. English has become the dominant language globally to the extent that native speakers of all other languages experience language oppression in relation to it.
A Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) leader is a Co-Counselor who assumes responsibility for everything going well in the RC Community—by teaching RC classes, leading support groups and/or workshops, and/or serving as a Reference Person or in other special roles.
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.
A Local or Regional Coordinator of a particular constituency is an RC leader who coordinates activities that encourage the growth and re-emergence of the constituency within the locality or Region.
A medication is a substance that treats, prevents, or alleviates the symptoms or causes of a disease or other medical condition.
A member of the RC Community is a Co-Counselor who assumes responsibility for helping the Community to function, by participating in and contributing to RC activities, supporting leadership, and assisting in the work of the Community.
Mind-altering drugs are drugs that affect the central nervous system and interfere with the thought process and/or with discharge and re-evaluation.
A mistake is an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong, including acting on a misunderstanding of a situation.
An online class includes any person or people regularly participating in it over the Internet.
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.
Outreach/Outreach Funds is/are financial assistance for people whose circumstances make it difficult for them to have access to RC. Outreach Funds can include Area Outreach Funds and Community Service Funds (both held by Re-evaluation Counseling Community Resources [RCCR]), and International Outreach Funds (held by the Re-evaluation Foundation).
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
A playday or family class is an RC family-work event at which skilled adults and cooperating parents play with young people in the ways that the young people choose, and under the young people’s direction, all under the leadership of a skilled family worker. The playday or family class should include mini-sessions and/or support groups for the adults and may include introductions, a theory presentation, special time, and a closing circle. The play often creates opportunities for the young people to discharge, and these “sessions” are supported by the adults.
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.
Policy consists of (1) proposals for the application of RC theory, (2) recommendations based on our past experiences, and (3) structures for implementing these proposals and recommendations.
There are two different kinds of policies in the RC Community: (1) the Community’s policies, including those endorsed by a World Conference or an Area meeting, and (2) policies that represent the best thinking of a particular group (draft liberation policy statements).
The use of pornography is defined as the seeking out of written, audio, or visual materials that are intended to restimulate sexual feelings. Pornography is a form of sexual exploitation, mainly of women and young people as objects and of men as consumers. It exists within a context of sexism, male domination, young people’s oppression, and classism. Racism and LGBQT oppression play key roles in the ways that everyone is exploited and oppressed by it. Although pornography has been primarily promoted to men as consumers, the highly profitable pornography industry is increasingly targeting women as consumers as well.
Psychiatric drugs are substances prescribed by psychiatrists or health care providers to “treat” what they call “mental illness”; difficulties such as sleeplessness, tension, stress, or “disruptive behavior”; or feelings of discouragement, passivity, anxiety, grief, or others. They include substances such as Ritalin that are widely prescribed to young people and others to enforce compliance and passivity.
The Publications Fund of Rational Island Publishers (RIP) provides resource for RIP to produce the publications of the Re-evaluation Counseling Community.
RCer — another term for Co-Counselor.
Re-emergence — 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.
Re-evaluation Counseling Community Resources, Inc. (RCCR) is the international office for Re-evaluation Counseling and is located in Shoreline, Washington, USA.
A Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) teacher is an RC leader who is currently certified to teach RC.
The Re-evaluation Foundation provides financial resources to help disseminate RC ideas, skills, and leadership training to people whose circumstances limit their access to RC. Established in 1972, it is a completely separate entity from the RC Community. It is registered in the United States as a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation under the jurisdiction of its board of directors.
A Reference Person is an RC leader who has agreed to play the role of exercising judgment about a Community, Region, constituency, or group, in ways that are consistent with RC theory and the Guidelines. Members of a Reference Person’s Community, Region, constituency, or group can consult with the Reference Person about RC theory and practice.
A Region can be a geographic, ethnic, or language entity. Regions of various sizes in different locations around the world are initially created by the International Reference Person (IRP). As the RC Community has grown, many Regions have divided into two or more Regions. Regions may or may not contain organized Areas.
A Regional Reference Person (RRP) is appointed by and responsible to the International Reference Person (IRP). The RRP acts as the IRP’s deputy in developing and supporting leadership. An RRP holds this position at the discretion of the IRP, in consultation with the leaders of the Region. The primary responsibility of the RRP is the continued re-emergence of both existing and new leaders in the Region.
Release initiative means create the conditions in which more Co-Counselors initiate activities and move forward with their leadership.
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.
The sex industries are global multi-billion-dollar industries that profit from commercial sexual exploitation. The sex industries include but are not limited to pornography, prostitution, Internet sex, escort services, strip clubs, erotic massage parlors, sex tourism, and sex trafficking
Sexual harassment is sexually oriented conduct, whether verbal, physical, visual, or digital, that is unwelcome and repeated, or of a serious nature, or creates an environment that is hostile or offensive. Sexual misconduct can also include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.
A sliding scale offers a range of fees so participants can select the amount to pay, usually based on income. The sliding scale for a class is set by the teacher of the class. The sliding scale for a workshop is set by the workshop organizer, in consultation with the appropriate Regional Reference Person (RRP).
Social media websites and apps are intended for communicating with, sharing, and uploading social or other content to a group of people not restricted to Co-Counselors. (This is different from electronic communication, such as email or text messaging, which has a primary purpose of one-to-one contact or contact intended for a specific group of people.)
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.
Groups targeted by oppression are groups of people often referred to as “oppressed groups.”
A teaching credential grants an applicant permission to teach RC. It requires the approval of the Area Reference Person (ARP), International Reference Person (IRP), and Regional Reference Person (RRP) (where one has been designated).
RC theory is a summary of information gained from the experiences of Co-Counselors that guides the practice of RC. It allows us to relate our individual experiences to what has already been experienced. We also build on our theory as we try and learn new things. As we reveal contradictions in our practice, our knowledge grows and our theory continues to develop.
Translations are documents written in a language different from the language they were written in originally.
Trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, and selling of people of all ages for the purpose of gaining control over and exploiting them. It is carried out by threat, force, abuse of power, and coercion. Many people become involved in prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation by means of trafficking.
A validation is a contradiction to a client’s distress that affirms the reality of the client’s goodness.
Volatile means rapidly or unexpectedly changing, mostly for the worst.
An RC webinar is an online class sponsored by RCCR, usually offered internationally. Webinars are generally offered twice in a 24-hour period in order to be accessible globally.
A working consensus is a tentative agreement that allows the group to move forward.
A working group is a group of Co-Counselors doing something more than Co-Counseling or learning Co-Counseling together—for example, building an RC Community together, or participating in a women’s leadership group.
Wygelian is an RC-invented term for any of the many constituencies—women, Gay people, young people, elders, people with disabilities, Global Majority and Indigenous people, and so on.
Young adults are people who are between the ages of twenty-two (22) and thirty (30).
Young people are people who are twenty-one (21) years of age or younger.