The following three talks are by Tim Jackins, International Reference Person of the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities, at a Jewish Leaders' workshop, Maryland, USA, in April 2025
I want to find a way for us to end this strange isolation we operate in. We are trying to do bigger and bigger things for more and more people while staying isolated in a particular way. This has probably happened to every human being that has ever existed. No one had good enough conditions to avoid it. You’re not unique in this, but you each have a unique version of it.
When you get restimulated, the painful feelings jump in front of everything else. You forget all the good things that have happened and that you’ve done in your life, and all the successes your ancestors had in struggling against things they faced. Of course, we are all here because we had marvelous people back there. They overcame tremendous odds. In important ways, they did it for you; they did it for their families. They had to do wonderful things or you wouldn’t be here. That’s the unfortunate part of restimulation, that you lose track of what has been positive. You are set up to have to be perfect above reproach [without criticism], or else everything in your life is “canceled” [has failed].
The job of Gentiles is to end antisemitism. Your job as Jews is to be invulnerable to it—to discharge the distresses that leave you vulnerable. Neither group gets to wait for the other to complete its job. They both have to go forward. As near as I can tell [see], you haven’t completed your job yet. You are still stepping on each other [showing distress] in unintended ways. In an experienced group like this, that’s actually useful. The roads to the places we want to go are not always smooth. We get to run into things [encounter difficulties], feel things we wish we never had to feel again, understand them, discharge on the struggles, and come back. We can move closer to each other with each bit of struggle. I want us to continue forward.
BRING SOMEONE “BACKSTAGE”
The goal is to not leave anyone isolated. We’ve all figured out how to function rather effectively. This is what we show the world, and we try to make it the only thing we show the world. But backstage [in your mind] there’s this gigantic patched-up [fragile] structure holding it together. It creaks and leans. We’ve all constructed our individual version of it, but because of the ways we’ve been hurt, we keep it a secret. We hide it from everyone else.
I want us to look backstage [look at hidden struggles]. Everyone seems to have some version of a feeling like, “Nobody has any idea how much effort it takes to be what I am out here.” It’s as though the other half of your personality was back there. It’s a very dear part of yourself. You have made decisions to push yourselves in places that are hard, and you need someone else to have a little picture of that. I don’t want to leave anybody alone back there.
I want each of you to have someone who has an idea of the work that goes on for you to be yourself. You don’t need them to take care of you. You don’t need them always to offer you a mini-session. Sometimes you just need them to smile and nod in recognition. It’s important not to be alone in these struggles. The point is to hold an accurate picture of current reality in your minds. The goal of this particular piece of work is not discharging; it’s you pushing your mind in a place where you probably haven’t gone, and discharging may well be necessary.
Let me do a quick reminder, because this is slippery [difficult to remember]: I want you to make the effort to show yourself. I want you to show the struggles that you take on [undertake] to be the successful human that you are, so that others can have a picture of what you fight against. So that they can become a knowledgeable resource in your life. So that somebody else will understand.
I don’t know if this will work, but I know we have to try things in this direction. There are benefits to failure. We get to learn by our efforts, no matter what happens.