“Wouldn’t a silent Focusing partner be the ultimate in radical acceptance?”
Joe writes: “I know you focus on ‘radical acceptance’. Letting whatever be there, be there, with no polluting it so that whatever needs to be heard and to emerge can be heard and can emerge.
“And so I wonder. Have you ever played with the Focusing partner sitting there completely silent the entire time? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate ‘radical acceptance’?”
Dear Joe,
The way that Focusing partnership works, the Focuser can certainly ask for silence from the partner if that is what is wanted. But my own view is that a silent Focusing partner wastes a great opportunity.
A Focusing partner (also called a “Focusing Companion”) is trained to be present with no agenda. This is not someone who is going to intrude on your process and push you one way or another. When the partner speaks, it will be to calmly repeat the essence of your own words.
Why? So you can carry them back inside and check if they fit what you are feeling. It really does make a difference to hear your own words in the voice of another person. The presence of another person has a great power. When we use that power wisely, the results are transformational!
Why I would rather my partner would speak than be silent the whole time
When I started doing Focusing I was so identified with shame, that a silent partner would have shut me down. Instead, I would say something, and the partner would say it back in a neutral friendly voice. THEY had no attachment to it. It was unbelievable to me! A person with no attachment to my stuff! In the family where I grew up, every conversation was charged with interpretations and obligations. If my Focusing partner had said nothing, that all would have been there, all my family stuff, projected onto the silence.
Only the person speaking allowed me to have a space. I would say something that a part of me found shameful and terrible, cringing with near-certainty that I would be rejected by the other, and I would hear what I said, spoken back to me in a calm, neutral-friendly voice. Whew! After that I could go forward. Dark places came to the light, and began to release and change. What a gift!
Others may make other choices, but for me, I need to hear that other person’s voice. It means so much.
