The Felt Sense is Not the Usual Emotions
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Focusing is a process of being with felt senses, listening to them, getting to know them.
Last week I wrote: "The felt sense is not well understood, even in the Focusing community, because it’s not what you would expect. It’s not just the body feeling that is already there. It’s not just ‘how this feels in my body now.’"
I said: "Sensing in the body doesn’t mean we are Focusing."
Kim wrote: "I found your latest newsletter fascinating. I must admit after reading your explanation that I haven’t understood the felt sense and not sure I understand it well now. Apparently, I’m not alone.
"I’m listening to/being with different parts that come up–body sensations, an image, a voice from outside my body. I listen with Presence. But am I listening for the whole thing? I don’t think so. I considered ‘the whole thing’ listening to all the different parts. I’m not even sure when this happens in the process."
Dear Kim,
What you’re doing is fine, as far as it goes. But if you go a little farther, I think you’ll be amazed at the difference.
Perhaps it will help if I explain that many painful feelings arise from ways we have already "cut ourselves up," to use Gendlin’s words. If we’ve decided that some event is a "disaster" or a "failure," then naturally we will have unpleasant feelings when we think of that event. There is no way, from there, to get beyond the problem, because every way we think is still the same problem again.
Getting a felt sense would be different. To get a felt sense, we would release — for a while — all the thoughts and ideas we have had about the meaning of the situation. We would bring awareness down into the middle of the body, and invite a sense to form freshly, of "that whole thing."
The phrase "that whole thing" is vague enough not to contain any of the concepts that previously had been limiting us to a smaller view.
What comes at first has no words. It is an intricate whole. We can feel it, and we know there is more to it than we can say. Now — amazingly — before we even say a word we are already on the other side of the problem. Actions may still need to be taken, but we are no longer trapped.
How Do We Get There From Here?
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Last week I wrote about a time when I had a spectacular "failure." (See how I was trapping myself in the concept?)
"For about five days I walked around feeling bad, tight stomach like ice, shoulders clenched with shame. Then I went to my regular Focusing partnership. For the first time since it happened, I took time to invite the felt sense, the whole sense of it right now.
"What came then was utterly astonishing. It was a feeling of being relaxed, going at top speed in a new direction. And that turned out to be true."
Selene wrote: "Could you say more about the relationship between 1. bad, tight stomach like ice, shoulders clenched with shame and 2. a feeling of being relaxed, going at top speed in a new direction? Or what the transition was like?"
Dear Selene,
The relationship between them is that the unpleasant feelings were the result of the way I had categorized my experience. (Other methods may say that our thinking causes our feelings, and therefore we should change our thinking. Gendlin says something else: He says that allowing a felt sense to come is something quite different from the usual ways of thinking.)
When I let go of the categories and brought awareness into my body to invite a whole felt sense of "all if it" right now, that’s when something completely different came.
Gendlin writes: "An emotion is less reliable than reason, whereas a felt sense is more reliable than reason. When we act in anger, we often feel sorry later because we reacted only to a part of the situation. … In contrast, a felt sense is more reliable than reason because more factors can be sensed in it than reason can manage."
Some people are lucky. Just bringing awareness into the body is enough for them to get a felt sense. But for many of us, we need to learn to distinguish between emotional body feelings that are not felt senses–usually quite painful–and felt senses themselves.
If you feel stuck, if you feel you are repeating something you have felt often before, if you at a dead end… then that is not a felt sense you are feeling. And you can get a felt sense OF the whole situation that has been called stuck… but only if you let go of all the words for a while, including the word "stuck."