“Sometimes I cry so much in a Focusing session, I wonder…”
A Reader writes:
“Sometimes I cry so much in a Focusing session I wonder if I was really in Presence. Gendlin said Focusing should feel like fresh air, but today I felt like a wreck after my Focusing. I started off stressed and bothered my several situations in my life, and feel I discovered new territories of pain and distress.
“I’m wondering what I’m doing wrong or how I could do Focusing better? Even as I write this I feel the residue of these tears still swimming around in me. I feel sort of washed out, like a shipwreck after a storm. During today’s session I noticed something in me that wanted to go home, it had just had enough of the intensity, and something in me that just wanted to be in mountains and get away from people or something like that.
“Throughout most of the session I had a sensation at my throat, it changed, moved about, but I never really understood from its point of view what it was about. I’d really like some help with this.”
Dear Reader,
You are so right that Focusing should not leave you feeling like a shipwreck after a storm!
As Barbara McGavin and I have worked with many people over the years, one thing we have noticed is that emotion itself can be problematic — painfully intense, perhaps — from the point of view of something in us. Usually this traces back to early years, to times when the person was very young and had no resources for handling the intensity of an emotion, which would have been a problem in itself. (Think of trying to eat or drink something with too strong a flavor, especially as a child…)
And then on top of that, expression of emotion can bring trouble from our relationships as well. Imagine a child is crying, and a parent threatens, “Shut up or I’ll give you something to really cry about!” Now crying — and the emotion underneath it — is doubly scary.
When you say there is a part of you that is tired of the intensity, and another part that wants to get away from people, it makes me wonder if some of this might be going on, that feelings themselves are burdensome and dangerous in relationship to other people.
I suspect that what is coming up in these sessions is something in you that needs your attention, but it doesn’t know how to express itself except through crying. It also sounds as if, perhaps, it is not feeling very safe. I say that because the pattern of feeling a sensation that changes and moves about but never allows us to move into a deep enough contact to sense its emotion, sounds to me like something that is not feeling safe.
It can feel the way it feels as long as it needs to…
What we often find in patterns like this is that what was missing, and is still missing, is someone offering radical acceptance for the emotions themselves. This calls for being Self-in-Presence!
You might try saying to the one in you who is feeling so much that she is allowed to feel that way, she can feel that way as long as she wants — and you are with her. “I am with you,” you can say. Sometimes it helps to let a gentle hand go to your heart or your belly, as you say this.
Then sense if she can feel that you are with her. This might take a while. Another way to do this is to sense what kind of contact she would like from you right now.
Contact is first in Focusing, and contact takes time and patience, especially if safety is an issue. And the time spent making contact pays off, because you increasingly become the safe place where your feelings know they can come, and be accepted. Then they naturally find their own completion.