Welcoming New People to RC
We seem to have a lot more people interested in possibly joining RC than we have had in the past. Also, many more of the people who are interested are contacts from our Sustaining All Life events, from which they may not have received (or understood) a very full picture of RC and what we do. Then we add to this picture the COVID factor—that their first contact is online, without the more personal human interaction that is possible when in person.
We need to think about and interact with these people differently than we think about and interact with people who have been taught some RC one-to-one and who have someone they can check with if they have questions or concerns about RC. And we need to handle the initial contact differently than we do when we’re screening for a fundamentals class. Very few of these contacts know what a fundamentals class is or have decided that they want to make that kind of commitment. (For people who know enough about RC to know that they want to take a fundamentals class, we can use our screening process as described in The New Kind of Communicator.)
Someone recently contacted Re-evaluation Counseling Community Resources (RCCR) expressing interest in connecting with RC in their locality. We sent them the contact information for the teacher listed in the back of Present Time, and later we received the following e-mail from them:
I did meet with someone from ______. We had a conversation in which she explained to me the philosophy behind Co-Counseling. Then she interviewed me a bit about my life and experiences, and finally she proposed doing an actual ten-minute “session” together.
It wasn’t what I had expected. She went first and didn’t really say anything. She yawned repeatedly and laughed a lot, almost uncontrollably, and would occasionally say “Hi!” but then laugh again. I think she once said she was shy, but otherwise she really didn’t use any language. Then when it was my turn, she repeatedly interrupted me with questions and suggestions for different perspectives. I had no idea how to go about it [do it] and was kind of disoriented and confused.
Several friends whom I respect recommended Co-Counseling to me, and I trust their judgment. My question is, is this what it’s really supposed to be like? I thought it was supposed to be self-directed, that the other person was supposed to be a supportive listener and that it was about “release” or “discharge.”
Perhaps you can give me some more perspective. Thank you.
I’d like to hear how you are handling initial contacts with people whom you don’t know who are interested in RC but who don’t know a lot about us. It would also be useful to hear about mistakes you have made with new people and how you were able to correct the mistakes, if you were able to.
I try to use my sessions in a way that is understandable to a new person. It’s fine (good, in fact) to discharge some (not profusely), but I try to talk about what is going through my mind and show them how I am using the process. I explain a little bit about the form of discharge I am experiencing (“My crying helps me release my grief about _____,” “When I feel scared and can tremble like this in my listening exchanges, I’m not so fearful after”—something like that).
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experience. We put a lot of work into making RC tools widely accessible to people, and I think we could do better at this part of it.
Shoreline, Washington, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion list for Area Reference Persons
(Present Time 204, July 2021)