It's been a week and a half since the stress-release workshop in NYC. My friend Joe says he can tell a difference – that I seem "more engaged". My boss says I've been looking angry the last few days. A co-worker from another department told me I seemed too subdued at a meeting recently and asked if I were sick. And my daughter told me, "things will get better" while she and I sat down to watch the Oscars together (850 miles apart but attached by cell phones). Funny... I think they're each right.

At the end of the workshop, each participant chose a phone partner to practice the release techniques for 2 weeks. Even though I thought it was a good idea, I was a bit resistant. But the experience has been very pleasant. As diverse as the 21 participants were, my phone partner and I have a lot in common. For one thing, she's a communications and marketing manager for a non-profit. The first day we had lunch, she was ecstatic to learn that I'd seen one of her org's outreach efforts: The Meatrix. (My friend Chance had emailed the link to me. Chance renamed herself long after we'd first met, and, from all my friends in the '70s who'd renamed themselves, hers is the only one I can remember because it fits her so much better than her given name. Always makes me wonder if I could come up with something more appropriate for myself than Renice – maybe a name that would alter some of the responses from others that I find burdensome.)

My phone partner and I haven't used the method's technique patterns much during our calls, but we've still done a lot of releasing: sharing with someone who reciprocates is so much more therapeutic than one-sided sharing with a therapist.