Being Raised with RC
Those of us who grew up with RC have had both different and similar experiences. What we’ve experienced can depend on our backgrounds and identities, events in our early childhoods, generational hurts passed down through our families, what our parents or allies were able to figure out or not, and how we were raised with RC.
Those of us raised with RC can sometimes relate to each other’s experiences—and sometimes we can’t. I think that’s fine. It’s great to keep discharging and thinking about this together. I’ve found it useful to spend a lot of time discharging on it.
Re-evaluation Counseling has made a big difference in my life. It has allowed me to heal from hurts, follow my own thinking, and stand up to oppression. Many of my most cherished lifelong relationships are with my Co-Counselors.
I’ve found it useful to discharge on the distresses of adults and on societal oppression. Young people’s oppression sets adults up to tell young people what to do in ways that are sometimes urgent or unthoughtful. We can’t always tell [know] if it is our own decision to do a particular thing.
We can end up attaching big feelings to inherently benign activities, such as learning, eating, sleeping, or discharging. For example, discharge is a natural healing process. It is good and useful for all humans to preserve or reclaim it. But feelings attached to the idea of discharge can make it challenging for us to claim the process for ourselves. This is not the fault of young people, their parents, or the RC Communities.
Sometimes young people will challenge adults’ oppressor distresses by refusing to do things. This can have more to do with fighting against young people’s oppression than with the activities themselves.
Being raised with RC does not mean escaping from oppressions in society or the undischarged distresses of those around us. We all need to discharge on how conditions were unfair for us as young people. There may have been hopes that with the resource of RC, we would fully escape from the hurts of oppressions. We didn’t. And the oppressions included “mental health” oppression, which functions to suppress humans’ natural ability to discharge and can include hurtful messages like “Don’t cry,” “You’re being ‘crazy,’” and “Act ‘normal.’”
Whether or not we were raised with RC, it’s not enough to simply decide not to believe oppressive messages. We need to discharge the hurts. It can take a long time to heal from big early hurts, and we’re not always finished by the time we are adults. The hurts were that bad, and the oppressions have kept us from healing from them.
It’s great to have opportunities to discharge and heal from hurts. It has made a difference to me to have my parents, close Co-Counselors of all ages, allies, and the RC Community do this work together. It wouldn’t have been possible for me, and it wouldn’t be possible for anyone, to do it in isolation. I haven’t found any other community or practice that understands hurts and oppressions like RC does. And healing from our hurts puts less in our way of transforming society.
I’m glad to have made a powerful decision when I was a young person to hold on to the discharge process and claim RC for myself.
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion list for RC Community members
(Present Time 208, July 2022)