“I tried what you suggested and felt overwhelmed…”
A Reader writes:
“I tried the method you told us about last week, when a part was tired of being tired, or angry about being angry, and so on.
You suggested inviting the part to sense what it is not wanting to happen from being so angry, or from being so tired, etc.
I tried that and felt overwhelmed, nearly faint, like I was hyperventilating. Was I not doing it correctly, or what would you suggest?”
Dear Reader,
I knew I left something out of last week’s email!
There is an essential step before you make the invitation I talked about, which was:
“I am sensing what it doesn’t want to have happen to me.”
The essential step is to first be Self-in-Presence. Invitations like that one are a form of deep contact, and they need to come in the context of an inner relationship where you are grounded and strong in your sense of Self. If you aren’t, you can get overwhelmed or “knocked out for the count” by protector parts that don’t want you to get overloaded.
Cultivating Self-in-Presence
You can cultivate Self-in-Presence by:
- Giving yourself experiences of self-care like walking in nature, doing yoga or dancing.
- Remembering being with mentors and models of Self-in-Presence – when you felt supported and fully accepted.
- Bringing attention to sensations of lower body support: what your body is touching and supported by.
- Saying to yourself: “I am the space where all that I feel can be as it is.”
You can bring Self-in-Presence into your Focusing by:
- Saying a gentle Hello to what you are feeling.
- Letting a gentle hand go to the place you are feeling something.
- Just being with it. Letting it know that you are with it.
- Saying Hello to any other part of you that is feeling scared of this feeling.
- Allowing all that you feel to be as it is.
- Letting it know you hear it.
When you can be Self-in-Presence with what you are feeling, that creates the conditions for inner invitations that bring forward movement and change.
