Thoughts Archives

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.

Outdoor Therapy

Outdoor therapy offers an opportunity to connect with each other and nature while we work. You can set the pace, and choose from several locations. The goal is to get our bodies moving a little bit in nature, not to work up a sweat. Research has suggested that walking in nature reduces stress, anxiety, and depression, and supports improved cognitive functioning.

Helping Anxious Kids

Covid-19 has created an anxiety stew that even the most relaxed parents can’t avoid. When kids catch on to the fear it becomes an even bigger struggle to keep a semblance of normal life. Here are some tips for helping the entire family work through anxiety.

Caring for kids during Covid-19

This isn’t the time to implement your dream of recreating Little House on the Prairie, unless that comes easily to you and helps all of you feel better. Reassess frequently, and if what you’re doing is creating more power struggles, don’t be afraid to toss it and start over.

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.

Fighting Despair with Connection:

Without connection, it’s easy for our fear to grow as exponentially as the Covid-19 infection rates.

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:

The schedule for our summit written on a white board

Call for Proposals 2019

As our 2019 Relational Summit grows nearer, we are excited to make a call for proposals for Works in Progress for our annual event on September 19-22. Relational-Cultural Theory has long had a practice of sharing “Works in Progress,” or working papers, as a way to facilitate continuous searching and interpretation and to encourage collaboration. We have allocated several time slots for sharing current Works in Progress at our Summit. Each session is 45 minutes […]

A picture of sunflowers in front of the Bloomington Center for Connection, a relational-cultural organization

Save the Date!

Our second annual Relational Summit happens this September, here in Bloomington, Indiana. Preliminary schedule includes a poster session, Thursday evening, some in-depth RCT explorations on Friday and Saturday, and our keynote talk on Saturday evening. Harriet Schwartz is our guest for the weekend. Harriet is the lead scholar for Education as Relational Practice for the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, and is at the forefront of applying RCT to teaching and learning. Her new book, […]

Category: Thoughts