Co-Counseling
I utilize many of the tools and techniques of co-counseling in my work, and am available to train you in private lessons if you are interested. The largest organization around the practice of co-counseling is the Re-evaluation Counseling, or RC, community, and it is international. (see www.rc.org.) I was at one time certified as an instructor in RC, but have since left that organization, feeling better about being independent in my work. So the following is a brief description of the practice; please contact me with any inquiries.
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Co-Counseling is a practice of “active listening” and self-exploration: non-judgmental, stress-reducing, and a profoundly effective tool for improving all your communications. Learning to identify, understand and discharge our emotional baggage can free up our intelligence, bringing clarity and insight into our lives. Co-Counseling is a specific, well-established system of personal growth, facilitating us towards greater mental and emotional health, as well as enhancing social and business relationships.
The underlying theory starts with the belief that we are all loving, co-operative, zestful, trusting and generous beings, and that when we don’t behave that way, it is because distress is blocking our true natures. This distress comes mostly from our experiences in early life, as well as societal norms and cultural patterns that we may not even be clearly aware of. The classes help you to become aware of these influences and their effects.
The training involves twenty-five to thirty hours, usually in group classes meeting once a week for ten weeks. The practice consists of appointing a time and place to meet with another co-counselor, and then sharing that time equally between taking the role of counselor and the role of client with each other. The training gives you guidance about how to best maximize your effectiveness in these roles.
Once trained, the co-counselor has access to a global network of thousands of co-counselors, workshops, ongoing classes and local support groups. In Corvallis, for example, there are men’s and women’s support groups of many years’ standing, and the co-counseling communities in Eugene and Portland number their members in the hundreds.