Are you depressed because it seems as if you just CAN'T do what you need to do? That is pretty depressing! Read on…
"I'm so depressed – I'll never be good at this – I just can't do it."
I
am SO in love with the Focusing process! It is a love affair that has
been going on for 37 years now, and gets deeper with every year.
Nothing thrills me more than being able to be present with someone who
is moving forward into fuller life. I am truly the luckiest person in
the world that I get to be present for sessions like the one David had
this morning.
David has been feeling totally blocked about
creating his new website. He started his session by telling me how
awful he was feeling, how depressed… and how every time he even
thought about getting to work on the website, he started having
defeating thoughts, like, "I'll never be good at this."
I invited him to bring awareness into his body and to sense how all that was feeling right now.
The
first thing that came was, "Wow, it already feels different when I slow
down and feel it in my body. I haven't been doing this."
Then he said, "It's a deflated feeling. Something just feels so lost."
I invited him to keep company with something in him that was feeling deflated, and lost. To let it know he heard it.
David said, "I'm really letting it know that I hear it… that it feels so overwhelmed."
Then he paused and added, "For some reason 'overwhelmed' is not the word."
"It's not the tasks that are overwhelming…"
"Oh!"
said David. His voice held excitement. "It's not the tasks that are
overwhelming. It's more like… like figuring out the order to do them.
I get an image of a vast jigsaw puzzle. That's what it's like."
Now
David is quite energized. His whole demeanor has shifted. Words like
"deflated" or "depressed" are the farthest away from him right now.
He's been in contact with this for a total of about fifteen minutes.
In
the rest of the session, he has a number of insights about how he can
approach his tasks, what kind of help he can get, how this connects
with other times and other situations. But never does any sense of
being deflated or depressed return. He is now in a new place, not only
about his website, but about any series of tasks in his life.
What's the secret of such a dramatic shift? That place has just been waiting
inside him to show him how it really felt! Until he started Focusing,
he hadn't asked! The secret is the contact, the interested curiosity…
Most
of the time, let's face it, we walk around at the mercy of our
emotional reactions, thinking we already know what they're about.
But
when you've seen this process unfold as often as I have, I can tell
you, we don't have a clue! And all we have to do is pause, get in
contact, and ask–and what the body process knows about what it needs
comes bubbling up.
I love it!