When It All Just Seems Like Too Much
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Sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the morning. Life just feels like a burden… at least, that's how it feels to something in you. Everything feels too hard to do–so basically, everything is blocked.
That was the case for Pamela (name changed), who just couldn't get herself to do any of the chores and projects that were waiting for her attention. She felt a heavy weight in her chest whenever she thought of all that she needed to do. She distracted herself by playing computer games instead of working on any of the piles of papers that needed organizing. At least while playing Freecell she didn't feel so bad–though she had to keep pushing away the nagging critical voice that told her she was wasting her life.
Pamela wasn't blocked on doing some particular action–she was blocked on just about everything. And that was the clue to what was in the way.
When Something Needs Your Attention, Its Last Resort is to Block You
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When Pamela sat with me to do some Inner Relationship Focusing, I invited her to start by feeling her whole body, her body supported by the chair, her feet on the floor, and to be aware of the spaciousness that she could feel inside with her breathing. This sense of lower body support and inner spaciousness is a way to start a Focusing session as Self-in-Presence as much as possible.
Then I invited her to sense in the inner area of her body… and right away she told be about the heavy weight she'd been feeling in her chest.
"Maybe you could sense if that's there right now," I suggested.
It was… but it didn't feel exactly like a weight, when she paid close attention. It was more like something folded over… something hiding… something that said, "Go away," when she got close to it.
"It wants me to go away," she reported to me.
"Ah, how wonderful that it's communicating so much. Maybe you could sense from it, what kind of contact it would like with you."
After a minute of silence, Pamela said softly, "It doesn't want me to go too far away."
In the rest of the session she was able to make a deep connection with this place in her chest that she had previously been pushing away. Eventually it let her know that it was full of unshed tears… about the loss of her father two years before. She had never taken the time to acknowledge how much his loss had meant to her. Now, tears were rolling down her face.
"I thought I couldn't allow those feelings," she said. "I thought I had to hurry up and get back to my life. But my life just got harder and harder."
And that's what can happen. When something in your present life feels blocked–especially when everything feels blocked–it could be that there is something in you that has been waiting to get your attention. I call it the Pattern of Unfinished Business. And the good news is, what needs attention is waiting patiently, not very far away, to finally be heard and connected with again.