“Saying ‘I’m sensing something in me that’s pressing’ didn’t work.”
Ina writes: “Today I tried to do Focusing. ‘What’s the point?’ was the sentence. I’m facing my 68th birthday, had a falling out with my 6 year old granddaughter, having the thought that I have virtually no skills with children, not able to access empathy or NVC or anything in the moment – just as I always was, so What’s the point?
“I did get a felt sense of a giant pressing, a pressing down on my airway, or my sternum. Like a hand of enormous strength, superman strength. But saying ‘I’m sensing something in me that’s pressing’…..didn’t work.
“Asking or trying to approach it to ask how it wants to be with me (as my partner suggested), it pretty much was impervious, driven to perform it’s job and sole function. That much it did communicate.
“So I couldn’t do much but be its victim, that is, experience the pressure. Life under this pressing is more an act of endurance. What would you have done? What could I do?”
Dear Ina,
It’s great that you described in such detail what was going on in your Focusing session, because I do have some things to suggest. And I know it can be frustrating and lead to throwing up one’s hands when the Focusing moves we are taught don’t work. Saying “I’m sensing something in me that’s pressing” didn’t work, and trying to sense “how it wants me to be with it” didn’t work. I think I know why.
What helps me in a situation like this is recognizing the type of part-process that is going on. There’s a type of inner part, that Barbara McGavin and I call a “controlling” type. It typically doesn’t care at all how we are with it. It isn’t sentimental, and often thinks it is just doing a job–and from its point of view, an important one.
So what job is it doing? Usually trying to control or suppress some kind of emotion.
So that leads to the other side of it: When a controlling part is present, there is also something it is trying to control. I can only guess that perhaps when you had despairing feelings coming up about your falling out with your granddaughter, something in you didn’t want you to feel that way. So it presses down, literally trying to sup-press the unwanted feelings.
What would I do? First, say “I’m sensing something in me…” about both sides of this struggle. “I’m sensing something in me that’s pressing AND I’m sensing there is another something under there, that it is pressing on. And both are there.”
Controlling-type parts are worried about what would happen if they didn’t control.
Next I would inwardly turn toward the part that is pressing and say something like, “You are probably worried about what would happen if you didn’t press like this.”
It may not seem very worried at first, but if you give it some time you can probably feel, in the very force and urgency of how hard it is pressing, that it doesn’t want something to happen, or for some kind of feeling (or action) to emerge.
If it’s hard to give it empathy for its point of view, then probably the “other side” needs your company for a while — the part of you that is feeling pressed on, like a victim, like enduring is the best it can do. You can turn and be a listener to something in you having to bear that pressure, and let it tell you how it feels and what it doesn’t want. THIS type of part (Barbara and I call it a “defending” type) appreciates being asked what kind of contact it would like from you.
So in general, when what you’re experiencing in your body seems to put you at its mercy, then:
(1) It is a part that is worried about something, usually a feeling coming up
and (2) There is another part of you, oppressed, that also needs to be acknowledged.
