Category: Connection

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Essentially RCT

These essentialist beliefs not only oversimplify gender but create a social ladder where some are seen as ‘more correct’ or ‘normal’ than others, impacting how we connect with each other. RCT thrives in complexity and challenges. It encourages us to explore tough concepts and dismantle social hierarchies, including those born from essentialist viewpoints.

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a picture of a hexagon card with the word Supported Vulnerability at the top, followed by definitions: Supported Vulnerability is the feeling that one's ability to authentically represent themself will be supported and held with caring and compassion. While in a state of stress, personal vulnerability increases, as does the need to enter into a more supportive relationships. Dependability, respect, care, and empathic listening contribute to this sense of security.

Supported Vulnerability

Supported Vulnerability is a foundational concept in RCT. It refers to the conditions that allow emotional risks within a relationship, trusting the other person to respond with empathy and acceptance.

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Therapish

Not everyone needs therapy, but everyone benefits from healthy connection!

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A card reading Mutuality is the experience of affecting one another. This requires emotional availability, an openness to influence and change. Non-mutual relationships abstruct growth of all people, but particularly the development of subordinate or marginalized groups.

Mutual Meltdowns

We are tired. We need healing. It’s likely we’ve lost people, dreams, cherished ways of being, and not been held in our grief because we were all too busy surviving. Slow down. It’s impossible to rush wellness. Lean into each other. Allow ourselves to mourn together, to mutually hold each other. Trust that allowing mutuality leads to healing. We are in collective pain, and the antidote is messy, authentic, mutuality.

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2021-2022 Relational Cadre

We have a few openings for individuals or organizations to join our first ever Relational Cadre! If you join as an organization, you can select representatives to participate and share their explorations with your team. If you’re ready to sign up, click here! If you want more information, continue reading! The Relational Cadre is a series of six small-group discussions focusing on different aspects of a central theme, through the lens of Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT). […]

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Care for each other

Feeling Love From a Distance

One of the tools we’ve been trying to use, is Amy Banks’ idea of Positive Relational Moments. In her book, Wired To Connect, Banks defines PRMs as moments you felt “safe and happy in another person’s presence.” Returning to your PRMs can slow or even reverse a downward spiral of stress and isolation by activating healthy neural pathways. It’s not always easy to pull up a PRM on demand though, sometimes we could use a reminder– a picture, an email, a journal entry, or, now, an Appreciation Effect campaign.

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Contagion

It is difficult, if not impossible, to sustain a contagious calm without filling your own cup. Even as we isolate, we need each other.

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A collection of icons representing the Five Good Things

Five Good Things

A Growth Fostering Relationship is marked by the Five Good Things. Coined by Jean Baker Miller in her transformational book, Toward a New Psychology of Women. These are the qualities of a relationship that creates fulfillment and counters inauthenticity and inequity. They include:

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