How to empower yourself and others using Co-Counselling

Co-Counselling also known as Re-evaluation Counselling [CoCo or RC] is a powerful tool for personal development, self empowerment, emotional competence and reciprocal support.

Re-evaluation Counseling theory provides a model of what a human being can be like in the area of his/her interaction with other human beings and his/her environment. The theory assumes that "everyone is born with tremendous intellectual potential, natural zest, and lovingness, but that these qualities have become blocked and obscured in adults as the result of accumulated distress experiences (fear, hurt, loss, pain, anger, embarrassment, etc.) which begin early in our lives. "

I've been trained in RC, and as one who suffers from clinical depression, I've found that this is an excellent way to clear up all that blurry,or intense emotional baggage - the kind of thing that going to see a psychologist doesn't always help you with.

I've acquired great new skills and techniques, as well as appreciating better some I've have been using all your life (that I didn't recognise I'd been blessed with).

In this therapy, you do co-counselling in a pair, sharing the time equally with a partner. You act as 'counsellor' to help your partner, then they act as counsellor and you are the 'client'. Thus there is no outside expert. Once you have learned to co-counsel you will probably find yourself applying certain of the ideas and techniques, and the style of caring relationship, throughout your life (with family, friends,coworkers and, if you are a 'helper' by vocation or avocation, with your clients, or pupils, or patients).

I believe it is also an excellent personal support system for counsellors, psychotherapists, and professional groups who have to deal with people.

Who can [and cannot] co-counsel? Most people can! People who want to be more effective, people with stress and life challenges; young people and elders; those who haven't finished school; the list can go on.

However, if you fall into one of the following categories then co-counselling is probably not for you:
- if there is nothing you want to change about yourself or your life.
- if you are a compulsive helper of others and can't or won't take time to work on yourself.
- if you are deeply distressed in a way which means you cannot pay attention to someone else for any length of time.
- if you are taking psychoactive drugs to help you cope with life and cannot leave them off.

Since co-counselling is used in a reciprocal relationship, a crucial ability is to be able to give delighted and loving attention to someone else--to take your turn as counsellor. If you have your attention trapped by depression, or anxiety, or aggression, and cannot climb out, then it will be difficult to give the necessary attention. These issues can still be worked on using co-counselling techniques, as long as a skilled one-way counsellor is available.

The basic idea (shared by many humanistic approaches) is that if I am given time and delighted, loving attention (rather than questions and advice) I will be able to explore whatever is blocking me or hurts me or prevents me from realising my potential.

RC has trained me to give that sort of attention to others and to use it to work on myself, so I spend equal time in each role.

In the sessions we work on whatever is "hot off the press" - irritations from the working day, problems in relationships with friends, colleagues, family or whatever. Often we discover that we have old, set patterns or ways of responding to events which have become part of us over the years but which aren't appropriate any longer.

Old hurts and patterns can distort our perception of our world and things in it, and they are very real. They can be dangerous and destructive, and limit our achievements if they are unacknowledged and suppressed. We can discharge the hurts and let go of our rigid patterns in a way which enhances our range of options: we become more 'choiceful'.

Often we rant, rave, exhale and release with (or on) our friends, partners, family or colleagues and sometimes this is fine and sometimes is helps. With RC we can add to that support in a more focused way, in a reciprocal encounter with other similarly trained people in the network.

No money is involved his practice: we exchange our time in an equal relationship. There are also no hierarchies of power or authority or responsibility for anyone else's work: we are all counsellors and clients in a peer network, committed to our own growth and to supporting others in theirs. There are however, some specific working techniques we use which are very similar to those you would find in humanistic, person-centred styles of one-way counselling.

One of the important features of RC is the idea of self-direction: I don't give someone else the responsibility for my work, and when clienting in shared time with another person, I (rather than my counsellor) am in charge of the direction, rate and depth of my process.

There is a powerful effect which comes from having someone there just for you, supportively accepting and giving you "free attention", a skill which you learn on the training course.It's a different way of working with other people: not a social or dependent connection, but a consistent, supportive "being there" for another person without expectations or external obligations.

Trying out something completely new is a bit risky. But it's absolutely necessary for growth. You can't learn this sort of things from books - it's experiential! Most people don't try anything different until they are at a point in life when it's right for them. Each person will probably know when he/she is ready to make some (often profound) changes, and when she/he is willing to open up to new possibilities, take some risks and make some (sometimes difficult) choices.

P.S.
RC and CoCo are worldwide non profit organisations and they don't really advertise much, so it can be hard to find out about it. But here are some websites:
www.co-counselling.org/
www.cci-usa.org/
http://www.rc.org/
www.co-counselling.org.uk

Patterns develop from experiences in which an individual suffers Distress because of some kind of threat and does not succeed in removing the threat through some personal action. This means they do not end up in a positive emotional state--the experience ends with a problem being stored with all it's features (accompanying sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures etc.), rather than solved. In such circumstances the individual remembers the features or characteristics of the situation as a threat and associated with them will be the memories of Distress. When any of those characteristics are encountered in the future the individual's memory will supply the label 'threat' and the person will then react with the same negative feelings as before. The particular feature(s), characteristic(s) or sensations triggers an instant replay of the stored problem. This is called RESTIMULATION.

The feelings aroused will push the person in the direction which minimizes the Distress. The only available responses for this are those of the initial situation and, since the threat was not mastered then, the responses will be inadequate now. The responses are likely to be those the individual produced at the time--usually dis-empowering or negative ones. Negative feelings activate responses quickly, without aware thought, so the Restimulated feelings will push the person to make the response which minimizes the immediately perceived threat. The conditioned responses reduce the Distress, but does not remove it, and the person's attention will be preoccupied by this. Thus they will not be able to make a rational judgement of the situation or think of alternative ways of acting.

The individual has become Patterned; they can only pay attention to the distressing characteristics and they are locked into the previous inadequate response even though the new situation may not be threatening in reality.

The instantaneous response and the Distress still being present means that it is difficult, if not impossible, for the person to recognise that the present situation does not contain the threat that the original occurrence had.

In the aftermath, the person may now have the skills to change it, but has no means of finding that out and no access to their skills when the Pattern is running. Also, the triggering of the negative feelings and the Patterned responses will act to further strengthen the Pattern.

Our Patterns arise in childhood when knowledge of distress and their causes will be inadequate. There may be many repetitions of some situations. This can produce generalizations which result in some Distresses always being Restimulated and thus becoming CHRONIC, and often equated with one's personality.

Discharging turns off distress, turning them into positive experiences in two ways:

1. - the individual discovers how to master the situation by actions which change it so that it's no longer threatening and unpleasant.

2. - the individual DISCHARGES the negative feelings.

Discharge refers to active processes which start with the individual in an aroused negative-feeling state and end with them in a positive mind and body state. All humans are capable of Discharging and children do it spontaneously unless stopped by adults. Crying, shaking, raging, yawning, laughing can all be Discharge processes. The particular ones which take place will be those which go along with the experienced feeling, e.g. crying when the feeling is grief, raging when the feeling is anger.

It is the natural way our bodies deal with negative feelings which persist after the situation that activated them is over. It is possible to discharge Distress after two minutes or after 20 years. The end result of Discharge is a positive feeling state, in which it is possible to think about, evaluate, and find solutions to previously distressing situations.

Co-Counsellors experience this happening spontaneously after Discharge and call it RE-EVALUATION. The Person is freed from the Pattern.

View my page on The Spiritual Entrepreneur Community

Feed Shark