Co-Counselling International - Culture

Culture

CCI has no rules to cover anything outside of co-counselling sessions, so the manner in which co-counsellors relate to one another is up to them. New co-counsellors are usually alerted to the possibility that they may develop strong feelings about people they counsel with and are advised to stick to co-counselling with them until they have a clearer idea about what is going on. Gatherings of co-counsellors are somewhat like temporary intentional communities and co-counsellors generally seem to be able to relate and organise very effectively in a no rules environment.

In principle, i.e. according to the principles of CCI, any CCI co-counsellor may teach it. In practice local organisations tend to exercise oversight over people teaching in their area and people offering to teach are expected to have some training. In addition, people putting themselves forward to teach CCI co-counselling are generally publicly known (a number are listed on CCI websites) and are open to be challenged by anyone who has concerns about what they are doing.

Supervision of activities in the network occurs along panocratic lines (see panocracy), in other words it is the responsibility of all CCI co-counsellors. An important way that this takes place is through local, national and international gatherings of co-counsellors. In general these gatherings are open to all members of CCI so that even local events may be attended by co-counsellors from other parts of the country or the world. Any differences are usually highlighted at these events and resolved through creative problem solving.