Recognize and Contradict the Passive Quieting Agreeable Distress!

Dramatizing is the term we use for someone acting out their distress. The noise was a dramatization of her fear and when discharge started rolling, it melted away. We can tell that someone who is upset tries to get to discharge from the way they dramatize. We might even be able to tell this about ourselves.

By the way, I would like to suggest that we might have another reason for dramatizing than just (subconsciously) inviting others to give us a good session, attention so that we may discharge our distress – although that is a fine reason all by itself.

Maybe we also try to create more safety for ourselves when we dramatize. So, when our counselors are able to show us that they care about us, the drama should shop, is not needed anymore. When we are loud, we pretend to have power and that we can’t be stopped and then we can begin to discharge powerlessness and un-safety from the past.

Anyhow, I want to say that there might be a type of dramatization that we could overlook too easily. The “I won’t say anything” dramatization. An “I’m fine, don’t have any unmet needs right now.”

You know them. People who are always responsible (towards others but much less towards themselves – which is the essence of a Responsibility Recording). Those who are forever attentive to others, friendly, unassuming, generous.

Someone could be the life of the party or an eye-catching leader but still only because others need that. Forever serving.

Now, at first sight, they may look great. People who are calm quiet shy responsible friendly giving or at least not taking. May I suggest that this could be a dramatization too? Give them sessions too, as you would if they were feeling self-important, demanding attention, “overcome” with feelings, being loud or “bothering” others.

If they are a long time in RC and have done lots of sessions, offering them to dramatize wildly might not work for them anymore. But how about inviting them to be “irresponsible” for a moment or be “self-centered” or asking them, “What would you feel and wish if no one else and nothing needed your attention anymore?” or “How are you doing, deep down?” or “What was an early time in your life when being quiet seemed better than being noisy?” or “I had my turn – how about you?”

Counseling is not a tranquilizer, for making people quiet again. It’s for making us flourish, become more our true selves. All of us.

Don’t abandon the quiet ones! As Harvey said: while we were talking, they were thinking. Focus on them, listen to them. It will make RC safer for the Working Class – and probably everyone. And it will make true our commitment that became our One Point Program in RC: to help each other – not just the loud ones – recover our hidden intelligences.

Please, Stop Playing Therapist! But Counsel Your Leaders!

I truly learned most to be a real counselor from working with survivors of the Mental Health System. They would not buy any of my patterned unaware attempts to “treat”/”help” them. (One doesn’t need to be in RC to understand this: Why I Quit Being a Therapist.)

Just Assist

You can only bother or assist, not “save” the client.

Instead of our judgment of the client, what is needed are our respect and trust in them and trust in the process of healing past hurts. When we run out of patience, we can pretend to be patient. The client won’t mind.

As I mentioned before, us having intelligent thoughts while the client discharges is good. They prevent us from getting bored. But they are not to bother the client. The first rule is to have respect for the client’s work.

If we get to do anything specific (besides the general mode of paying loving warm attention with relaxed high expectations) we will still only have assisted the client slightly. The client must be and is the hero of the session. That’s what Harvey believed and always demonstrated – even while he was not timid and was holding that he was the best counselor in the world.

Harvey defined as a session, two intelligences thinking about the reemergence of one. He taught that counseling works best when the client is the expert. Therefore, anything that smells of the counselor trying to manipulate, being arrogance or knowing-better this is not RC. The client is not “off the deep end.” Even if we see something real that our client seems to miss, the client knows so much more about their position than we.

So, how to supply one’s thinking as counselor? A safe way I found is to ask the client if one can say something (after waiting a bit – and a bit more) and sharing one’s thinking. Much like in a Think and Listen.

Last but not least, some respect for discharging would be good. Tears are not a sign of someone being confused. Sometimes, we as counselors would start crying if we really would give our best loving attention or say our best directions or thoughts to our client. Then don’t stop your own tears. They may even inspire or move your client. Don’t try to cry – that is clienting. But also don’t block your tears – that’s dramatizing – even when it gets unnoticed. Know that your tears are not “about their pain.” Everyone can only cry their own tears. But isn’t it moving when your counselor loves you so much that s/he’s willing to discard their own comfort in order to be there for you the most? In any case, try to cry softer than your client.

The Real RC

Here come some different levels of RC as it developed over the years.
I leave out if the client discharged. You may fill that in yourself.

Basic RC

“It’s cold today. I put on an extra sweater. I hate cold winds.”

“….”

“It reminds me of when I was little. My parents never noticed when I was cold ….”

Old RC

“It’s cold today. I put on an extra sweater. I hate cold winds.”

“Say again: ‘I hate cold winds.'”

“I hate cold winds.”

“Again!”

Advanced Old RC

“It’s cold today. I put on an extra sweater. I hate cold winds.”

“Say: ‘I love cold winds a little bit.'”

“I love cold winds a little bit.”

“Say: ‘I completely love cold winds.'”

“I completely love cold winds.”

“New” RC (For the last 38 years – Benign Reality, Focus Away From Distress)

“It’s cold today. I put on an extra sweater. I hate cold winds.”

“Say: ‘I so enjoy my sweater.'”

“I so enjoy my sweater.”

“Say: ‘I’m glad I brought it.'”

“I’m glad I brought it.”

(Did you notice that patiently listening actually worked best here?)

For if it would help, let me describe a typical session I give today.

I listen to the client and think with the client. Thoughts I have about what to say, I hold back a bit to see where the client goes, what s/he knows already, may do already, so that s/he’ll feel safe and powerful.

I don’t steer or lead nor follow. Rather, I try to walk up together.

I don’t try to influence the session. Rather, I share my thinking and see what the client can do with that. The client stays in change. This is not since my thinking would not be OK but because the client’s thinking is.

After some time, I’ll try to add to the session, my thinking to the client’s thinking. I may add a suggestion. Not to stop the client or to have influence.

When I have an idea for a new (or old) direction, I’d rather share my thinking than my conclusion. This way the client can think about it too. Like: May I say something? I thought that you could use a little bit more self-confidence. What do you say? And then I listen and then some.

If I suggest a direction and the client can say it beautifully without effort or discharge, I didn’t help. I should wait more before talking again, think some more while listening.

Some of my regular counselors say that I “have a unique way of counseling people.” I disagree. It’s just plain RC as Harvey taught.

Counseling Leaders

But the opposite can also rob a session of its potential.

While some counselors have lots of opinions about what others say, others not so much. The latter just follow what someone says and don’t get excited about many things. The calmness is OK but if as a counselor you tend to just follow, try in your sessions to formulate your thoughts out loud and discharge until you become more “opinionated” – but stay as cool as you were. You need an opinion to add to your client’s opinion, but be relaxed about it still.

Harvey taught us that counseling works best when the client is the expert. But he did not say: “When the client is much more experienced in RC, just let them talk or cry. They know so well what they need.”

He also taught that you don’t need to search for chronic patterns – those are the things all over the client. Don’t say: I can’t get close enough to find out what the chronics are because the client won’t let me. That’s the chronic, acting like a cactus. I would say then: I was thinking: hard to trust anyone, no? Or: It seems lonely at the top. Then listen.

They may have gotten a bad habit of silencing the counselor. Let them say it, welcome their words and “bother” their isolation patterns again soon. Even if just saying what they feel: Hard to client when the counselor tries to client in your time, no? Hard for others to understand you, no? If listening is hard for your client, give them a wink to show that you think along and see and hear them.

Don’t let your expert client do all the work. Chip in. Just like with working with expert Directions like set Commitments. While the client is using these snowplows against all distress, the counselor can add to the session. If only with something like: Way to go! Good for you!

So, don’t be over-active, don’t be lazy and think all the time.

To sum it all up: Your role as counselor is not to just sit there and listen and not to just sit there and come up with brilliant Directions from brilliant insight. Rather, your role is to share your thinking with the client in such a way that the expert (the client) can come up with the best synthesis between what the two of you think so that s/he can connect with the most of the Benign Reality and can discharge the most.

Regaining Humbleness, What Took us so Long?

We’ve worked a lot on Pride. It’s crucial. But Arrogance is very different from Pride and we must do away with any pattern of superiority ASAP.

In the last presidential elections in the US, according to the polls, Clinton was as much hated as Trump (just by different people), by half of the electorate, which no doubt cost her the victory. I can see easily why. To me, she comes across as way too full of herself. No doubt, it’s hard to be a woman in national politics, but arrogance is not the solution. (This is not to blame her. Being a millionaire probably is also not very helpful.)

Since so many RCers live in the US and understand the importance of Wide World Change, two years before the next national elections, learning, teaching and spreading genuine humbleness is most urgent.

Pretense

Harvey created this beautiful commitment against pretense:

“I’m obviously completely inadequate and completely incapable to handle the challenges reality places before me. Fortunately or unfortunately, I happen to be the best person available.”

Memorize the text. Never leave home without it.

(The word “me” should be shrieked and be followed by a big sigh. Jews may add: Oy way. This first part should give most of the discharge. The tone should be as if one is the town’s fool. Don’t forget to take time to discharge on how that makes you feel.)

Let me add a text and some ideas. Nothing written in stone.

“I give up on all prestige and self-respect, which would ….”

Arrogance

(Not my text – just an illustration.)

Having been viciously humiliated by oppression is no excuse to hold on to arrogance. All arrogant people were.

“Better angry than depressed” might be good as a short-term solution in emergencies but not more than that.

Arrogance is camouflaged insecurity, fake self-importance. Someone who really feels secure will not act superior to anyone, will not try to make anyone else feel inferior. Arrogance is isolation. Arrogance is just a pattern.

Don’t attack people who carry arrogance patterns. Get close to them. Show them that you like them. Don’t flatter them which would strengthen their superiority recordings. Rather, just share that you like them. They may not immediately hold you in high esteem but they will never forget you.

Being Humble

A fear of humbleness is of course a fear that we’ll be seen as insignificant as we feel and would stay crushed. But one needs to have a notion of self-worth to feel humble. If we were really inferior, we could never be humble. We would just be worthless. Only those who’re humble show their worthiness and look impressive (though they may be overlooked by the haughty).

Hang out with humble people. Learn from them. Also why they are right to be humble. And how it makes a deep connection with most people.

See their greatness. See their pride. See their power. Power is with the meek masses, not with the puffed-up theorist.

Being Friendly

One more thing that surprisingly seems a non-issue in RC: friendliness. Most people outside of RC seem uninterested in if not outright wary of unfriendly people. With applying RC, people get more jolly, flexible and able to cooperate but friendliness doesn’t seem on the list.

Harvey supposed that bitchiness was just a passing phase between being beginning counselors who can’t speak up well for themselves yet and being not overwhelmed anymore with one’s own distresses. That’s a nice idea but not what I found. Generally, it starts but doesn’t pass.

I dislike in unfriendly people whom I meet their self-centeredness, their arrogance, their lack of generosity, their aggressiveness.

I understand a lack of interest in RC in politeness, which is often just a Classist excuse for not being frank. But that’s different from friendliness, no? Is being friendly not: I see you as not much different from me? That you’re approachable, interested in others, eager to be close, easy to talk to, open to negotiation. To me, that sounds a lot like humbleness.

And then there is friendly condescendingly talking down to people, which is not really friendly but rather fake. Friendly not taking someone seriously is being arrogant too.

We have collectively such important and urgent work to do, have so far been so insecure and disconnected despite all resources consumed, that we’d better shape up quickly and humble down as much as we can!

I’m not more important than anyone else

We can Save the Planet – I Promise

We must make sure that some huge problem doesn’t wipe us all out while we take care of minor problems like war, murder and oppression.

Decades ago such a colossal crisis seemed an imminent nuclear war. We counseled on it while the threat went away. No such luck in sight with global climate change.

Most of the actions that are needed to limit and turn around the disastrous destruction of the environment, imbalance of nature and annihilation of species need to be at national and international levels. (That one of the richest countries, the US, bolted the Paris Accords is a scandal that the American electorate needs to address in its upcoming presidential elections, two years from now.)

Meanwhile, international efforts to reign in pending disaster while implemented new goals turn out too little too late already and all rich countries need to step up the endeavor to set and reach even more stringent targets all the time. Well, being on our toes prevents boredom. And we need to increase public protest and pressure on especially the rich countries to make an even greater attempt for the survival of all. Never before has it been so clear that we’re all in the same boat.

(Not my text – just an illustration)

However, may I suggest that just public protest and pressure are not enough. We need to start at home. We are setting bad examples as long as we just continue eating whatever seems tasty (meat, milk, eggs and transported foods mess op the ecology enormously) in un-thoughtful amounts, commuting for work without looking for an alternative, frequently traveling long-distance to vacation destinations, etc.

It is true that many industries pollute more than most individuals, but how can we teach our children, our friends, our communities, ourselves (!) to stand up for saving the planet while in our own lives we are careless in our choices?

Let us do our next prolonged sessions on ecological health about how to change our private lives. When we start progressing there, our impatience with politicians not moving swiftly enough will follow automatically.

Not just charity starts at home. Sustaining the milieu does too.

I once heard from someone who visited Harvey’s living quarters that he cut open used milk cartons to give them some further use instead of just throwing them out. So, if we start at home, we’ll be in good company.

Is Rational Sex a Human Need? Without Distress Patterns, Would we Still be Sexual?

Harvey worked a lot on his Early Sexual Memories and you could tell. You can tell someone who systematically cliented and counseled others on any distress connected to sexuality in any way at all. It’s often easy discharge and plentiful. But persistence and diligence are crucial.

Read his writings about sexuality – they are pure gold. (Read the original English if you can as it’s very hard to translate this well unless one has done much work in this area.)

I would like to add something to Harvey’s work on sexuality. It will not deal with morality (good or evil), only with choice (intelligent or ridged).

Harvey did not live to answer the question: When we’re completely Rational, would we still have sex? Is there a real need for sex after we discharge and abandon all ridged sex or is sex only to have children and for the rest, Frozen Needs and addictions that should be discharged about, and not acted upon?

My words will not contradict or replace anything Harvey every showed, said, wrote or discovered about sexuality. They are merely a small addition.

It seems that sexuality has the unique ability to deeply cement our connection to other human beings and that that alone is our best way to combat existential loneliness. (Many people, after one deep connection, even if that ends, seem to have had their loneliness broken for good.)

In other words: Without a steady sexual relationship, most people must feel unbearably lonely. Just like the solution to thirst is drinking and to hunger is eating (or when these are frozen needs, the solution is discharging), the solution to loneliness is a proper sexual relationship.

By “proper” I mean a steady friendship. It must be emotionally close. And physically close (massage, cuddling) too. While trying to give each other sexual feelings and climaxing is a cherry on the cake.

Only eating cherries and no cake just will make you nauseous – just like eating from loneliness instead of for nutrition. Sex with strangers-who-leave-us-immediately doesn’t solve our loneliness. Sex-on-our-own connects us to nothing and increases our loneliness and sex obsession.

Most people seem to be able to connect so deeply only with men or with women. Early in life, this preference is neuro-biologically engraved in the brain and not up for choice or change later. Only some people are truly bisexual in that either biological sex of their partner would suffice.

Most people can have pleasant sex with both sexes but not bond deeply with both.

Rational humans then, should not be interested in engaging in sex on their own, in recreational sex or in sex outside their preference, even when consensual.

Our description of a rational position on sex does not imply that we think that society should outlaw or oppress people who use consensual sex differently.

Frozen needs and fears around sex (ready for discharge) should not have the final word if we have sex or not. But just as patterns around food should not make us stop eating, patterns around sex do not need us to cut out sexuality. Just use it in a good relationship that is steady, already close emotionally and physically, to bond and unite.

My suggestion: sex is a rational need. All grownups need a sexual relationship to dissolve loneliness. It’s worth it to discharge thoroughly on all distress connected to sex in any way at all to have the real thing.

PS: As a bonus, this clarifies that there is more to sexual orientation than what people are feeling, wanting or doing. Sexual orientation says with which biological sex you can have deep sexual feelings and bonding.

If we are right, we also answered another question Harvey worked hard to solve: is it Rational to be heterosexual/homosexual? Sexual orientation seems as fixed as gender identity. And most people need either a man or a woman to break isolation. That sounds rational, no?

And that’s why a monogamous contra-orientational (the opposite from in accordance with your orientation) sexual relationship will almost never hold. It does not resolve your existential loneliness.

How did Human Beings Start out?

When you listen to peoples’ life stories, it’s hard to believe that we didn’t all commit suicide at the age of five. What has kept most people going, in the face of seemingly endless powerlessness, hopelessness and negativity? What powers most of us despite it all? Maybe I found an answer through counseling on extremely early memories.

I’ve found that the brain stores memories from before we were born the same way as after we were born. And the earlier I worked, the quicker I found even earlier memories to clean up. Until what age?

In the recent times, I have started discharging on memories from when I was only a few months in the womb. But these memories have a few special points:

No loneliness. I wasn’t aware of other people around but I didn’t feel lonely.
No sense of time. I was not hurried or bored. I played until I was tired and slept.
No pain. Everything was great. I discovered light and darkness, different colors, different shapes, moving around, my surroundings moving around – playground paradise.

Many people assume that life before birth was paradise; until they recover memories from in the womb. It wasn’t much fun to be confined to a small space, inside a mother who was sometimes sick, terrified, shocked, exhausted, with all kinds of distressing stories been told around you.

But, that was later in the pregnancy.

Maybe, just maybe, we all started out feeling great. That would explain where most of us find the courage not to give up, never to get used to distress and always try to discharge it all. Misery is not part of life. It became part of life and we want it out again.

Would the RCers who have worked early please continue to do so and see if you find the same?

Bonus: Telling this early story has all the contradiction to later distress that I’ll ever need. This is not a hopeful “One day, it will all be OK” or a reaching “All is well.” Rather, these are real memories of reality that “Once upon a time, it really was all OK.” I know nothing more powerful to help recreate that situation.

The only difficulty for working with these memories is to return to them. There is no drama there, no upsets, no hurt. So when we search our brain for what we need to talk about, this won’t come up. But it’s the best contradiction not connected to any distress at all. Let’s use it.

Introvert RC Leaders?

RC has always been very good at encouraging timid counselors to lead but persuading people eager to lead to step back and first investigate why that seems so appealing to them. This way leading is a challenge that’ll lead to discharge and personal growth, while for the other group to first withdraw and feel would promote their re-emergence too.

This has turned RC into a machine churning out leaders. The RC worldview does not divide people into leaders and followers. We are all (potential) leaders and there is plenty of leadership that needs to be covered. RC found that groups work better with than without a leader, and when a group works well without a leader, someone is probably leading it without the title. RC prefers designated leaders so that they can be encouraged, supported and helped to improve.

But let me tell you a personal story that didn’t go like this. No, this is not a session. I’m giving a first-person account of an oppression, of how introverts may be treated. Here it comes.

I must say that I was attacked, ignored and not supported by many RC leaders, both internationally as nationally as locally for decades. Harvey was a big exception. Whenever I asked for his support, he generously tried (and succeeded) to stand with me. (He also always trusted me, which was nice. And he liked my thinking.) However, I didn’t want to bother him too much as he had enough work on his hands, so I tried to work with his deputies and local leaders to make progress in my clienting and leadership.

Yet, constantly, the lack of support for me contrasted with how much effort and time I put into supporting their leadership, from counseling them exceptionally well for a long time to undercutting attacks on their leadership. Still, I found that many times these people whom I supported unconditionally had no trouble blocking my leadership and clienting at me, even in my session time – including refusing to look at their distresses about me to become better counselors for me, and attacking me behind my back. This was so much a violation of the RC One Point Program that implies reciprocity, that I had to cut myself loose from being exploited by these RCers on a daily basis.

However, I must say that there once were a few RC leaders, both one ARP and one international leader (both working class) and a couple of counselors, who did have (and still have) an eye for me, liked me and try to support and counsel me well. They still go to local, regional and international workshops and I’m not always pleased with what low level of lazy RC they return with.

In any case, what happened when I would lead, was always that the people whom I led came out fine and I felt worse than before and no number of sessions could keep up with my feeling more and more awful. As a result, leading for me just meant feeling worse and worse until I couldn’t lift a finger anymore. I could not understand it nor could any of my counselors (on their own or sitting together).

But I just had a thought about one of the reasons why I was not properly supported in my leadership. I was always seen (also by myself) as someone who too easily takes leadership. He can take care of himself. Obviously, I couldn’t. Suddenly I realized: I feel as awkward when leading as introverts feel in public.

I can handle a two-way contact but even a mini session with two others becomes a disaster. (The other two almost always ask each other as counselors, dramatize away their client time while I just sit there purely decoratively – after which no one wants to make an effort to counsel me well.) Leading a real group makes me feel so bad – I can’t describe it.

Now don’t think for a second that I look timid or shy. I’m an introvert with a lot of courage. But the courage doesn’t mean that it’s easy for me to lead.

Also, don’t think that I need or like isolation. All the years that I didn’t have a life-partner, I suffered deeply. Nothing made me feel better than finally being connected in a deep way. I also love to strike up a conversation with a total stranger (if they’re nice). Someone on the bus. I always try to get personally close to my teachers because I can more easily learn from someone whom I feel close to, who’s not towering over me. Still, I couldn’t live without being on my own every day for a couple of hours, exploring my thoughts and trying to learn from or teach through written text. Without a partner, life for me is not worth living. Without being on my own daily, to daydream, ponder, learn or write, I cannot survive. An introvert charges her batteries from the inside.

This story has long roots. As a small child, I was a loner, shy of people, terrified of other kids. Discovering that I was transgender at the age of 6 did not help things. I had no friends (besides a crush on a guy when I was 16 but he clearly was straight) until I was 18 and the one friendship I had was lukewarm only. My father was a loner too who reluctantly married.

However, I was a leader long before I discovered RC. I was chosen as class representative for many years in a row from the age of 14. I needed to talk to the teachers when we had problems with them. I needed to butter them up and convey what the class wanted. That was one-on-one and I was good at it. I also was not scared to say my opinion and was the head of a one-person’s fraction in my class. I wrote in the student paper and stand-up – for others to perform. I became an activist but without a romantic partner ever. I wanted one but did not know how because I was so shy and afraid of rejection. (I’ve now had an excellent sexual relationship for years and so know that there is nothing so terribly wrong with me. Most people are just too oppressive to me.)

(I’m sure that there were other “reasons” why leaders would abuse me in RC. Many of them learned how to say exactly the right words to find favor with more senior leaders. Of course, they couldn’t stand the look of me because I’m not dishonest to any degree and to meet someone with integrity is then no pleasure. They knew that I saw their dishonesty and they didn’t want to give up their power in RC. I don’t blame them.)

But the main reason why I write this piece is that I cannot remember ever seeing an introvert RC leader. Somehow, these people do not stay in counseling and even less so come to leadership. This should change. Introverts must have a lot to contribute. RC will be richer when it nurtures introverted people to lead. We can see, understand and contradict “private” upsets that others would not notice. We are experts in contradicting loneliness and isolation.

In any case, there exist some really famous brave introverts.

Meanwhile, I enjoy being close to my computer screen and pc keyboard, and connecting to you in a way that makes me come out in better shape than I was before I started writing to you.

I’m looking forward to an RC campaign to recruit and maintain introverts and to promote that they would openly lead.

PS: Every single one of my regular counselors responded to this piece with that they’re also brave introverts. None of them has an official leadership title in RC despite being in the community for decades. Hmm. Food for thought.

Is it Rational to be Transgender?

This is of course a personal piece. It’s not speaking for anyone else. Pieces by other Trans co-counselors would add to the picture and make it more representative of Trans lives and awareness in general. In particular, this text lacks female-to-male-Trans and gynophile input.

In any case, improved understanding of gender identity should give a boost to liberation from internalized sexism in women and to contradicting sexist patterns in men that keep institutionalized sexism in place. It could also help undermine other biases that relate to gender, the sexes or sexuality, like LGBQI oppressions. In other words: such clarity could be useful for much more than integration of some Trans-people in RC. I have included information for people who are new to all of this.

A few first points on terms:

The biological sexes are what we see on the outside, the term gender should be reserved for how we identify “on the inside.” For example: someone’s sex or body might be male, while her gender identity can be female: a male-to-female Trans-person.

Gender refers to what gender identity we have ourselves; sexual orientation (also “on the inside”) refers to which biological sex we need our sexual partner to be. Issues from these two classifications overlap but basically they are independent of each other, just like being Italian and a chef. So can a person who looks like a man, feel a women and have a sexual preference for women. It might not work for her to “just be a heterosexual man,” disrespecting her gender.

More details on terms to follow.

A Gay Life

My life story about Gay in a nutshell. When I was six years old, most guys (of any age) walked hand in hand with girls only, while as a young lad I was romantically attracted to guys. When I was ten, I heard the word homo for the first time, surprised that there must be so many that there even was a word for them/us. After that, I presumed to be Gay. It has been and continues to be a useful assumption.

Thanks to Harvey Jackins, working on ESM became a priority and I have only profited from that. It removed quite some sexual compulsion about men (and other addictions) and quite some fear of closeness with women. Working so early for so long also improved awareness about young people. All of life greatly picked up. As it turned out, sex with a woman was possible too, but that never became something particularly fancied. Working very early, revealed what made me choose to be Gay and what made me Trans (though even with this knowledge I still can’t reverse either).

Transgender Awareness

Yet, a few years ago, a brilliant long-term counselor of mine, who also loves me very much, suggested in my session that I could have something with Transgender. It was a big shock. But on hindsight he was right. This narrative is a bit different from the sometimes stereotypical Trans stories popular in the media.

I am male-to-female Trans-person but still fond of my male body. My Trans part could be illustrated with examples that are certainly not exclusive to or defining of women (or men), but nevertheless together still might be unusual as awareness and feelings in men:

Outlook on the world – why do people always fight?
Outlook on women – I want to say “us” when I’m with them.
Outlook on men – strange how immature men often relate
Effects from sexism – after swallowing a lot of sexism (first of all by identifying with my mother) it became second nature to serve and please others and be intimidated by unfriendly others. (There was not much encouragement against this timidity inside or outside RC for someone supposedly not a girl.)
Even before entering RC, listening and being supportive was easy, just like for my mother. And even in RC, taking leadership and coming across a deeply listening ear were hard.
Too bad I couldn’t get pregnant and bear children.
Outlook on sex – climaxing is important but without relationship, friendship and much cuddling it’s just stale pastime.

Yet:

Multi-tasking is a challenge – supposedly a women’s talent.
Nurturing is my gift but it drains more than it energizes.
In school, I was trained to reason like a guy (only later, women in RC showed me that one can explain by giving examples) and I’m often hyperaware of principles, much like my father.
Often, it is hard to find what’s just right in front of my nose.

In any case, I identify now as partly Trans, intergender or bigender, though largely still in the closet about any of this.

What could be a general direction or commitment for Trans-people? “Standing guard” seems to help me. Maybe that’s understandable giving how unsafe many Trans-people appear to feel.

Must Discharging Boredom be Difficult?

Let me first reassure you that, terrible as boredom feels, reading this piece won’t ask of you to be bored or would make you feel terrible.

The different forms of discharge don’t all start the same way. Yes, we may cry when we are feeling sad or (better) when we act so happy that we just have to leave the old sadness behind (by crying).

But to find the proper contradiction against heavy fear took more time. It is lightness, foolishness, scorning the fear. I’m ready to die – hahahaha.

Boredom is one more form of discharge. Possibly, Harvey didn’t get to work that out completely. I stood on his shoulders and lived longer and I think that I got further.

We always assumed that boredom happens when our brain doesn’t get enough information (that makes sense) or gets too much information to make sense of.

An example of avoiding boredom: When we are alert counselors, we may get many thoughts on how to “help” our clients. However, being a counselor is not about being heard or having an impact or feeling good about ourselves. Rather, we need to let the client be the hero and add (only) to what the client already does (by agreeing) or supply something the client is overlooking. We should be humble and slow in presenting “helpful” ideas because often, after a few minutes, the client herself comes up with the idea and that works better than us interfering. But then, if we don’t say most of what we are thinking as counselor, why do we think all that and isn’t that a waste? No, it is not, because it keeps us from being bored.

Another possible example of evading being bored could be dreaming. Why do we dream and why are dreams more-or-less coherent stories? Why is the brain “at rest” not just flipping through memory flashes, a random stack of mental pictures or sound bites? Why does it need to be a movie? Well, if we don’t get a story that can be understood in some way, we would get bored during sleep hours and not wake up refreshed but rather bored stiff.

Old Boredom

My breakthrough in thinking about boredom came one night when I woke up “from being bored.” I realized that that cannot be a sound idea. After all, before we go to sleep, we do everything to get as little new sensory information as possible, in order to work out what we have so far. We seek darkness, silence or only repetitive sounds, soft sheets and no draft. We’re supposed to get no new information. Then, how could one wake up from being too bored?

My solution was: This had to be Old Recorded Boredom.

Then I realized that my boredom was chronic. That the invisible enemy that often has kept me from being responsible was chronic boredom. That I tried to not feel the boredom by not going to sleep, not taking a rest when needed, by lying awake and not doing routine jobs. (No wonder I became an artist.)

To discharge boredom is not complicated. The only downer is that it feels absolutely terrible. Harvey called it the most painful feeling ever.

An easy way to discharge early boredom (my guess is that most boredom of grownups is early) happens when describing how bored we were once. When the discharge stops, taking a direction works wonders. For me, it is: I have a very interesting life. This is also the sentence that allows me to discharge and fall asleep when I couldn’t before. (Harvey gave the memoires that he never got to write the working title “A Very Interesting Life.” He really had.)

Yawning

Harvey discovered that yawning is a discharge that speeds up physical healing. I saw that when an eye doc put poison into peoples’ eyes to paralyze the muscle that would block his view onto the retinas, the people who yawned the most, were the fastest in clearing up the paralysis.

I knew a young adult counselor who was always yawning. He died from cancer at a young age, no doubt caused by his alternative diet which was lots of “healthy” vegetable from his own garden but sadly, he never had the soil tested and it turned out heavily contaminated with industrial waste.

Harvey also taught us that yawning was the last stage of completely cleaning up one painful incident.

Harvey also noticed that big yawns may show up when we start thinking about now territory or when we start thinking about new ideas.

Julian Weisglass once calmed his students that as a teacher he is only at ease when he sees some listeners yawning and even asleep. Then the content of his lecture is apparently reassuring and true enough that it makes people relaxed.

Harvey also told us that, in his later years, at night, he needed to alternate sleeping a couple of hours with yawning for hours.

Harvey insisted that people did not yawn out of boredom. At the end of a workday, people yawn because they’re done, start to relax and then begin yawning off their physical strain.

However, I found that also (old) boredom discharges with big yawns. It was suggested once in Present Time that that could be because of physical hurts connected to the boredom. But I would suggest that maybe all old boredom is connected to physical hurts of our brain. Otherwise, if our brains would have been doing fine, wouldn’t they have focused on more interesting things in our surroundings or in our mind not to get bored?

Harvey never did demonstrations of discharging boredom. He said that it would bore us terribly. I can tell you that my counselors are very happy to counsel me on boredom. It takes a brave client but for the counselor, it’s not so hard. My guess is that what was so terrible was a client who would hardly discharge, which I explained above as unnecessary from now on.

Get Started

Harvey did not get a chance to discharge all this physical hurt. But we now have a chance. How could we take a direction of never dying but leave all our most painful emotions undischarged?

Now we know how to easily discharge boredom (talk about how it feels or take a direction claiming that your life is interesting), why not get to it immediately? It takes longer when you don’t get started.

Crying and trembling does not signal suffering but that you’re getting over distress. Yawning is cleaning up physical stress and boredom.

You are too much in a hurry, too impatient or too panicky to yawn? Tell yourself: Yawning is so healthy that every yawn may add a day to my life. When I yawn enough, I only win time. (I don’t know if that is true but reading that, gives me fine yawns. Harvey was once asked: What is true? He answered – which should come as no surprise – Whatever gives discharge.)

Speeding up Liberation? The Next Step After Splitting up Into Oppressed Groups is What?

Maybe we can speed up general Liberation, so central to RC, by shifting the main focus from our own Liberations, from having been targeted by Oppressions, to becoming excellent Allies to all of the Oppressed?

I’m proposing a “paradigm shift” for RC. A paradigm shift is the opposite of a slow development. It is a sudden leap forward whereby a former set of ideas is either replaced or taken to a higher level. Well, in this case, I’m not proposing to ax anything that we learned, but rather to accelerate what we are doing by shifting our focus.

In the beginning, and for beginning RCers often still, it’s been difficult to split up in oppressed groups. Shouldn’t we unite rather than divide?

But we found that everyone sitting together was less powerful and more fake (at the expense of the oppressed) than first splitting up. When separated, we could practice combating our internalized victimhood, learning to like our fellow oppressed and supporting our own leaders and not in-flight. The goal never was to stay separate. Rather, we split up in order to eventually come together again from a better place.

It has been such an important phase in which we all looked at our own internalized oppressions to go against it and liberate ourselves and each other from it, and at times, with some Allies on the side.

But this has also colluded with ego-centrism. Everything always reminding us of how “little us” needed attention. Ready for a bold idea?

Maybe we can now begin focusing on being Allies to everyone. Surely, understanding how we were oppressed must teach us what people targeted by other Oppressions go through and how important Liberation is. But to a limit.

Maybe this resembles being a counselor. To be a good counselor, we must client. But the goal is not just to spread clienting around the globe. Rather, it would be good if everyone learned to counsel, to listen.

(Yes, sometimes, when we client successfully, others might be impressed, but nothing will teach them better the benefit of good clienting than them getting a go at it.)

I imagine that if we were going to do a lot of Allies work, we’ll counsel a lot about having been oppressed ourselves; that at “Allies to” meetings, most participants would like to be in a support group of their own Liberation group(s).

This idea of focusing on being Allies to everyone should result in us working more on our own internalized oppression. Being Allies to so many groups (and nature and the environment) should speed up and intensify us working on our own Liberations. But now not in a self-centered frame of mind but rather from seeking everyone else’s liberation with us.

Instead of ever-growing amounts of sessions, classes, support groups and workshops on Weigelias’ Liberation, let’s begin to prioritize sessions, classes, support groups and workshops on being Allies to Weigelias’ Liberation. (Weigelia is Harvey’s generic term for any oppressed group.)

Allies to Women, Allies to Jews, Allies to the Working Class, Allies to GLBTQIs, Allies to Weigelias, Allies to Nature.

Harvey compared the oppressive society to people of every oppressed group standing in a circle, each with a long piece of wood, everyone hitting all the others over their heads. Maybe liberation then can be that they each hold a flashlight, shedding light on everyone else’s struggle.

Maybe this could fuel internalized oppression for people that are conditioned to look after the interests of everyone else but themselves (women, Jews, GLBTQ, young people)? Yet, there is no danger of exploitation in this if truly everyone looks out for all the others, as then those groups also would be taken care of by many Allies.

But also, (more importantly,) we are not being Allies to look after others but rather to liberate ourselves from oppressive recordings – which might be worse for our physical and emotional well-being and functioning than our “own” internalized oppressions! We will be regaining all the clarities that the oppressive society has left with every oppressed group (and become as playful as young people, good at closeness as World Majority People, cooperative as Working Class people, quick as the Jews, etc.).

Maybe we see an (unsuccessful) attempt to this in the Wide World with the recent emergence of “Intersectionality.” This is a new student idea highlighting that everyone’s liberation struggles are interconnected with those of every other oppressed group. As a White Straight feminist, you must oppose Racism, Homophobia, etc.

Yet, at the moment (but it is early), this idea seems doomed to fail in that it tries to replace Class analysis. (That might be a major reason why anti-Semitism is not included – it sets Jews away as over-privileged, as the oppressor, perhaps also because, as we found out in RC, anti-Semitism (as every oppression) is deeply rooted in Classism.) This is understandable from a student movement in the Trump era, but it’s faulty nevertheless. However, most recently, the Women’s March organizers have gotten the message and begun to embrace Jews too.

In any case, I don’t propose to replace anything – only to focus most of our attention on being Allies.

In a way, this is nothing new. I did a lot of this when I was new to RC, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. But it would make a difference if this were a community effort.

Harvey thought that RC had helped popularize the idea of Support Groups. They’re everywhere now, for every group thinkable. Just imagine RC popularizing Allies With … Support Groups to the same extent.

What do you think? Are we ready to try this (with discharge)?