The Power of Acknowledging the Obvious
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When you’re spending time with something you’re feeling, and it’s obvious to you why you’re feeling it, why acknowledge it? If you’re feeling nervous, for example, because you’re giving a presentation and being observed by a teacher, why acknowledge the nervousness? Why do Focusing with it? “Don’t I already know why it’s there?” said one of my students.
Ah. Yes, well, there are two assumptions here, and we can challenge both of them.
First, don’t be so sure you know what’s causing your feelings. “I know why I’m feeling this” can close down a process faster than anything. You might be right… but you might not… and even if you are right about one reason for your feelings, there are sure to be nuances that remain to be discovered.
Second, and perhaps more important, what you know isn’t as important as the relationship you have with yourself. You might know the joke that your 6-year-old child or grandchild is telling you. But don’t you love the process of hearing it as if you’d never heard it before? The relationship is more important than the information, right? And that’s how it is with Focusing.
IR Focusing is not a process of insight, it’s a process of relationship. It’s through relationship that change happens in the direction of fuller life.
So if you sense a feeling or an emotion and you think you know already why it’s there, acknowledge it anyway. Let it know you sense it’s there. And be open to what might be there that’s possibly even more than you were already aware of. The door to that won’t open until you acknowledge what IS there.
“I’m letting it know I really hear how tired it is.”
My favorite story along these lines was told to me by my friend Larry, when his oldest child was a toddler. He and his wife and 2-year-old were on vacation, and Joy woke up impossibly early. Larry hadn’t had much sleep, but he decided to take Joy out of the hotel room to give his wife a chance to get some more rest.
He found a cafe that was open that early and sat Joy down with some toast. That occupied her enough that he felt he could do a little Focusing. There was a lot that needed his attention, so keeping one eye on his daughter, he brought awareness inside.
But all he found was “tired.”
No matter how often he invited the complexity of a felt sense, of all that he was going through, all he could sense in his body was “tired.” So he acknowledged it. And sensed again. Again: “tired.” He acknowledged it again.
For a good ten minutes all Larry did was acknowledge “tired”… and at that point his daughter needed another change of scene. Larry got up from the cafe table wondering if his attempt at Focusing had been fruitless. But then he sensed how much better he felt, how much more sane and put together. Still tired… but much more able to face his day.
I love that story because it reminds us to trust the process. The body process offers what needs to be heard, and what needs to be acknowledged. When we do that, something shifts… just not always in the way we expected!
