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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FOR CLIENTS DEALING WITH EMOTIONAL
DISTRESS:

CRITICAL THEORY DISCUSSION CLASS

One workshop includes articles based on critical theory. Critical theory is defined as a process of examination
that allows one to unveil the structure of fundamental social practices and thus the potential distortions of society
that are within these customs. The critical theory workshop seeks to enliven one’s consciousness of the existing
perceptions that structure social institutions. This theory understands objective knowledge as illusory and
focuses on subjective knowledge which recognizes all data as historical and biased. This workshop
incorporates and raises discussion on articles that explore sexism, racism, homophobia, internal sexism,
internal racism, and internal homophobia. A reader that includes articles by Bell Hooks, Michel Foucault, Judith
Butler, and Chandra Mohanty is provided.

RE-EVALUATION CO-COUNSELING

According to Re-evaluation Counseling website (www.rc.org), re-evaluation counseling is a process in which
people of all ages and backgrounds free themselves from the effects of past distresses by learning how to
exchange effective help with one another. This theory provides a model of how one can behave when in the area
of a distressful interaction. The re-evaluation counseling 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 distressful experiences (fear, hurt, loss, pain, anger, embarrassment,
etc.), which begin early in our lives. In recovering and using the natural discharge process, two people take turns
counseling and being counseled. The one acting as the counselor listens, draws the other out and permits,
encourages, and assists emotional discharge. The one acting as client talks and discharges and re-evaluates.
With experience and increased confidence and trust in each other, the process works increasginly better.
Any young person would recover from such distress spontaneously by use of the natural process of emotional
discharge (crying, trembling, raging, laughing, etc.). However, this natural process is usually interfered with by
well-meaning people ("Don't cry," "Be a big boy," etc.) who erroneously equate the emotional discharge (the
healing of the hurt) with the hurt itself. When adequate emotional discharge can take place, the person is freed
from the rigid pattern of behavior and feeling left by the hurt. The basic loving, cooperative, intelligent, and zestful
nature is then free to operate. Such a person will tend to be more effective in looking out for his or her own
interests and the interests of others, and will be more capable of acting successfully against injustice.

THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED WORKSHOP

According to Douglas Paterson (http://www.wwcd.org/action/Boal.html), the Theatre of the Oppressed workshop
consists of physical interactions that are designed to challenge people to truly listen to what they hear, listen to
whar they touch, and see what they look for. These activities serve to heighten one’s senses, demechanize the
body, and get one out of habitual behavior in order to move beyong habitual thinking and interacting. This
workshop utilizes the human body as a tool of representing feelings, ideas, and relationships. Through
sculpting others or using one’s own body to demonstrate a body position, clients are able to create anything
from one-person to large-group videos that reflect their impressions of a situation or form of oppression. These
videos can be virtual one-act plays or more often short scenes. In either case, a full presentation is offered to the
audience. The joker (difficultator) then says to the audience we will do this again, and if you would do something
different than what the protagonist (not the antagonists) is doing, stand up and yell stop. The protagonist will
then sit down and the audience member is invited forward to show their solution of the moment. Once the
intervention is performed, the audience invariably applauds, and the joker invites the audience to discuss the
proposed solution, and to offer even more solutions. At the conclusions of these exercises, the original scenes
are replayed with the intention that the protagonists will have learned more about how to handle their distressful
interaction.

WRITING WORKSHOPS

This workshop is facilitated by Jen Cross (writingourselveswhole.org), who holds a Revelation Writers class for
clients. According to Ms. Cross, the aim of this workshop is to change the world through writing. By opening our
hearts to ourselves and each other, we seek to live in a community of deep expressiveness and self-love and
where each individual reaches his and her most complete self. We also envision a community that is aware of
its full breadth and power and as a result risks speaking the truth to power since it has been heard and received
by its peers. We intend to create an empowered community that is able to effect change. We exist in the service
of transforming trauma and/or struggles around sexuality into art and thus creating spaces in which individuals
may come to recognize the artist/writer within.

THE REVELATION LAW
FIRM

2560 Ninth St., Suite 212M
Berkeley, CA 94710
1-510-665-4195
1-510-665-4197(fax)
1-510-295-2507(efax -- for larger documents)
office@revelationlaw.com