“My Focusing partner isn’t Focusing…”
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Debbie writes: “I have a partner who I focus with. She has a tendency to talk a lot during Focusing sessions and not really sense into her body at all. Often she will talk and talk and I won’t even be able to reflect back what she is saying. I find myself getting irritated by it and wanting to say that she needs to sense into her body as to what she is feeling in the moment. I haven’t done this – I have just let her talk – but I have noticed that I do get irritated. Do I simply stay present to the part of me that is irritated? Or is there anything that I can say to her? I understand that as a Focusing partner it is not for me to direct her process.”
Dear Debbie,
I have a guess about your feelings of irritation. I’m guessing those feelings come from what you know – that actually doing Focusing brings real change, and you long for your partner to be able to experience that change. You long to be a supportive witness to the deep and transformative process that Focusing can be, if the person will simply pause and take time to feel.
What a pity! To sit across from someone who is talking and talking instead of pausing and sensing. Talking so much they don’t even allow the reflections from you that might help them pause and allow a felt sense to form. I do feel for you.
I’m wondering how much Focusing training your partner has had. Recently I taught a Path to Lasting Change, Part Two course, and one woman realized that in her practice until now she has been just talking, not pausing and really doing Focusing. Sometimes it takes a long time for people to “get” what Focusing is, that it’s not just talking.
The pausing and sensing that are at the heart of Focusing are rather odd! Not what we are used to doing at all.
So, Debbie… when you are taking your Focusing turn, you are pausing and sensing, right? You are taking in your partner’s reflections, and using them to check inside with the felt sense, to go deeper into precisely sensing what is there for you now? One way to influence a Focusing partner is through our own Focusing process. They will see what we do, and want to do it, too.
If you’re doing that, and there’s no change in your partner’s talking, I’d suggest you talk to her about it. Not during the session, but before or after. Ask if she feels satisfied with what she is getting from Focusing. Share with her that you had thought Focusing included more times of pausing and checking inside. See if you can say this non-judgmentally! Ask her if she would like you to remind her sometimes to slow down and sense what she is feeling right now.
Some people need to talk for a while in order to get into the issue that they are Focusing about. I needed that, when I first did Focusing. I couldn’t get a felt sense without first talking about the issue for a while.
But then, after no more than about ten minutes, the person needs to be self-aware and disciplined enough to pause in the taking… to stop and sense in the body… to allow the unclear, hard-to-describe felt sense to emerge.
That can be hard, because it’s an odd thing to do, not what we are accustomed to. We are accustomed to talking about, thinking about, guessing, supposing, “it must be this,” “it’s probably that…”
But that gets us nowhere. That isn’t the road to fresh, creative, transformative change. So talk for a while if you must, but then pause, let awareness come down into your body, and let all words float away. Let your body give you the feel of what you’ve been talking about. Let it come freshly now, never mind how it has felt in the past.
And then let one word come back: the word “something.” “I feel something.”
It all opens from there.
