Can I Push Myself into Too Much Focusing?
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A reader asks: "This is another question related to Focusing and healing from trauma. Is it possible to push one's self too hard and too fast in working with Focusing? I am now working with a focusing oriented therapist twice a month, and I find that attempting to maintain a separate Focusing partnership, involve myself in the Focusing community, or even keep up an individual Focusing/ journaling practice meets with tremendous internal resistance. The therapy seems to be all I can manage for now."
Dear Reader,
Yes! Absolutely it is possible to push one's self too fast with Focusing!
Focusing is safe when you don't push. "Pushing" means becoming identified with a Partial-Self that feels the need to push.
How do we know that that is happening? One very good sign is when there is what you call "tremendous internal resistance." Something inside is saying NO! That is too much, too fast, it doesn't feel safe. What other people call "resistance," I call "Safety Guardians."
If you do Focusing and you encounter those Safety Guardians, the thing to do is stay with them. Listen to what they are worried about, with no agenda to try to move past them. That's the only non-pushy move at that point.
Ignoring the Safety Guardians can lead to greater feelings of unsafety, which can include a radical decrease in the trust that is needed for Focusing to go well. I wouldn't recommend it.
We Can't Go Faster Than the Slowest Part
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My reader goes on to say, "The way I first created positive movement in my life (over 20 years ago!) was to affirm positives about myself, tune out the negative voices, and just keep on keeping on. The benefit from that was creating a "positive self" with whom I could identify. The negative consequence has been a great deal of mistrust from "somethings" inside me that worked hard to protect me from abuse while I was growing up.
"These mistrustful "somethings" have let me know that if I focus a lot, they are sure I will use it to undermine them and destroy all the mechanisms they have used to protect me. These "parts" are gradually trusting my therapist as someone who will not let the "part" I call "me" push or manipulate them, and they are even more slowly coming to believe that the part I call "me" is willing to relate to them more respectfully and to sit with them in Presence. Meanwhile, all the "somethings" that feel excited and affirmed by Focusing and the Philosophy of the Implicit are disappointed and resentful. Must all the somethings within me simply be extremely patient, or is there something more I can do to deepen the sense of safety in the "parts" that feel threatened by Focusing?"
You must be patient. When you are Self-in-Presence, it isn't a matter of "must be"–you will easily and naturally be patient. From that place, there is no hurry… As Self-in-Presence, we have all the tender patience of a loving friend who needs nothing in return.
It sounds like your therapist is doing a great job in helping you be in Presence for the mistrustful parts. What you might want to do in the times in between your therapy sessions, if anything, is to practice turning toward those "somethings" in you that you describe as "disappointed and resentful." Let them tell you more about what they were hoping would happen… and practice listening from pure Presence where you have no bias one way or the other. It sounds like those are the Partial-Selves that are the easiest for you to get identified with, and no wonder, because they seem like "health" or "freedom from limitation."
One of the trickiest places of inner work is not to get so identified with the urge for health and release that we start treating the parts of us that guard the wounds as if they were the bad guys.
If you're not fairly sure you can find Self-in-Presence in your own Focusing outside therapy, maybe it is a good idea to let it rest for now. How wonderful that you do have a therapist who is holding the space for you to build that inner safety. Going at the pace of the slowest part is never wrong. In fact, it's truly the only thing we can do.
