January 23 2007 – #95

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"How Can I Give My Daughter Some Focusing Insights?"
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Jan writes: "Thank you for the invitation to ask questions, 
here is one I'm sitting with as a parent. Observing my 
daughter grow up into adolescence I see she becomes so 
easily identified with new and large feelings and sensations. I
really wish I could provide my daughter with some of the 
Focusing insights, but am not clear how to introduce this, 
wishing to avoid the intellectual and abstract concepts we can 
talk about as adults. Do you have any tips on introducing 
Focusing to younger people?"

Dear Jan

First let me pass on to you something my daughter taught me. 
She was sixteen years old, weeping and raging at the same 
time at some awful (to her) thing that had happened. So I 
offered her an idea about what she could do.

Exactly what I hated when my own mother did it to me!

"Can't you just LISTEN!" she raged back at me. I was so 
grateful to her for being able to tell me so clearly exactly what 
she needed. Luckily, I do know how to listen, and I could do it 
when I was asked.

Of all the people in the world, why is SHE the hardest one to 
remember to
listen to? Perhaps because I have all those voices in my own 
head, the ones that say I "should" be a good mom, I should be 
able to help her, and most of all: she shouldn't have to suffer.

But why not? Would I take her suffering away? Would I take 
away her chance to find her way to deal with it? Maybe this is 
the best chance she'll ever have, with me there listening, to 
learn how to find her own balance, her own center, in all the 
feelings.

(She is 19 now and doing really well...)

So the first thing I'd like to say to your question is how much 
our kids' emotions are first an opportunity for our OWN 
Focusing. We have a big job here, to work on staying in 
Presence and finding our trust in him or her as a person who 
can work things through. We know how to listen, let's listen. The 
listening space is very powerful. Let's give the 
space of listening until they ASK us for more.

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Wait Until She Asks...
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OK. So assuming your daughter or son has seen you using 
Focusing, or has heard you talk about your own experience with 
it, and they ask you to show them something. Or they ask your 
advice: What can I do when these big feelings come, Mom? Did 
you ever have such big feelings when you were my age?

Then, when they ask you for it, is the time to offer Focusing.

I would suggest an offer that is low-key, very casual, like this 
is no big deal. As soon as it seems like a big deal, it becomes 
something they might fail at, and they don't want to.

"Sweetie, one thing to do when feelings are so big like that, is 
to put a friendly arm around them."

"Maybe you could give 
that sadness a hug, like you would if it was your little sister."

"The funny thing is, I've found that big feelings like that can 
talk back to us. I wonder what yours might want to say to you."

"And maybe you can let it know you hear it."

A man I know kept offering to talk to his son about Focusing. 
Every offer was refused. A year passed by. Recently, he says, 
the 20-year-old picked up the book and started reading it, and 
likes it a lot. Enough time had passed that the young man could 
"find it for himself."