Emotions Repeat, but the Felt Sense is Always Fresh
I received this question from a Focusing student: “In your experience, how does Focusing help with healing old emotional wounds? By contacting and being with the wound with Presence, does the wound lessen over time? I’ve heard some professionals state that the problem with Focusing is that you just keep meeting the same wound over and over and never heal the wound. I myself seriously doubt that our wounds can fully be healed….but maybe they can lessen.”
Maybe I’m biased (in fact, I’m sure I’m biased!) but I suspect those “professionals” who say that in Focusing you just meet the same wound over and over haven’t encountered the best of Focusing. In the research that led to Focusing, clients who didn’t have felt senses as direct referent would encounter the same wound over and over. But in Focusing, we CAN’T encounter the same wound over and over. Let me tell you why.
When you do Focusing, of course you may encounter inner experiences that feel “old.” At the same time, you allow a fresh sense of “all that” to form. Focusing theory tells us that the felt sense is always new, freshly forming, even if one of its facets is the old material.
It’s important to let go of any labels or names that have fit in the past, and describe the felt sense anew, in the here and now. Even a phrase like “old wound” can get in the way if it is used like a label in the Focusing process. Be open; be willing to be surprised!
A Part of Me Feels the Wound Will Never Heal
When you cut your finger, it heals. There is no mystery to that. So why don’t “old emotional wounds” also heal easily?
I believe they would and do if there is enough Presence around. We hardly notice how often we recover from the bumps and shocks of life when we are able to be with them from a larger space of Presence.
What we call “old emotional wounds” happened a long time ago, at a time when there wasn’t enough Presence in you and in the caregivers around you to hold that hurt in a such a way that it healed. What happened next is that, in the absence of Presence, parts of you bundled up the pain into a sort of sealed time capsule marked with “Don’t go there” stickers.
Today, when we do Focusing, we encounter those old “pain capsules.” Not only the emotional pain but also the feeling of overwhelm and despair, are all packed in there. That’s why Presence is so important, not only to be with the pain itself, but especially to remember not to identify with the despair. It isn’t today’s despair, but the despair of long ago.
Inviting a fresh felt sense of it all, and being with that from Presence, does and will bring change. And you may need to say to some of the parts, “You can be the way you are forever if you need to be.”