“My mother died.” – “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.”
We’ve been talking in the past few Weekly Tips about how a Companion responds to a
Focuser, not with a neutral blankness, but with some sense of emotional presence – that still does not take over the session.
I used the example of a Focuser saying, “My father died recently,” and how a listener would not just say that back rotely, but would let it land inside, and say it back with a sense of the impact that it probably had. We don’t assume we know how that felt to the Focuser, that his father died, but it meant something.
I had completely forgotten until I got an email this week that something almost the same happened in a session that I did last month. I’ll let this person tell the story:
Dear Ann,
“I had a guided session with you a few weeks ago where I started by saying, ‘My mother passed away.’ At this point we hadn’t really started the session.
“Your response to me was, ‘Oh sweetie, I’m so sorry to hear that.’ My intention for the session was to work on something related to that, but not the passing of my mother as I had a number of years to prepare for her passing. Your response, while natural and conversational as we hadn’t quite started the session, produced a response that I didn’t expect. The session pretty much started then with me in tears and in some ways that helped me stay with what I wanted to work with.
“If a companion or guide is not quite right for me, (but real for them) with their tone or concern with something I’ve said, I will find that my session can continue productively IF they then follow what comes next for me. As you did.
“It is interesting that I have told very few of my friends that my mother has passed away and this is why: when I tell friends something like this I anticipate (based on past experience) they they will respond and continue to respond based on how they feel if they were in my shoes. When I speak either in a Focusing session or to friends who know Focusing, they listen to me based on how I feel in my shoes.”
It’s what comes next that matters.
This is a point that Gene Gendlin often makes as well: It’s not so much what we say that matters, as what we do next.
No matter what I say as a Companion, even if I blurt something out, even if I lose my “cool” and burst into tears, even if I break the rules… if I then go back to empathizing with the Focuser and following how it is for them, things will turn out all right.
Whereas if I stay attached to some kind of opinion about what the Focuser should be feeling or what they should be working on, things will not go well.
As Companion, I am present as myself. I get to have my own feelings; it wouldn’t be right not to have them. But they are not at the forefront. At the forefront is my attention to what the Focuser is saying now and how her process is unfolding. My main job is to accompany that.
I can relax. My presence and my accompaniment are really all that are needed.
