“My issue stays solid, it’s a lump of pain inside me.”
Gabriele writes:
I have had a one to one guided Focusing session, use your CD nearly daily, and read your book. But my issue stays solid: a huge lump of pain inside me which is always present, a little less prominent when I am occupied, but it won’t shift and acts like a glass wall against any feelings of happiness, hope, etc.
I am 62 and have decided that this pain and the trigger have to be dealt with. Any suggestions regarding questions I should ask myself when Focusing?
Dear Gabriele,
I appreciate your dedication to your own healing. You have a sense that now is the time.
And I also want to appreciate that you are getting a lot of information from this felt experience. It is huge…it feels like a lump of pain…and you sense it acts like a glass wall against any feelings of happiness and hope. That’s a lot.
I suspect however that it is not questions that it needs.
I sense that it needs you to connect with it, to form a relationship with it, a relationship of empathy and warm gentle curiosity. This starts with a “Hello” and with putting a gentle hand there, where you feel it.
For this contact, YOU are Self-in-Presence, that spacious larger YOU that has no agenda. If the one saying Hello and moving the hand has an agenda, the process doesn’t work.
You said, “I won’t shift,” and that made me wonder, if you might be identified with a part of you that wants it to shift. Of course, since it’s painful, you want it to shift! But let that be another part of you…
“I am sensing something in me like a huge painful lump, and I am sensing something in me that wants it to shift.”
Then check if the words “huge,” “painful,” and “lump,” really describe it well.
Inner walls are trying to protect something important.
You’ve already sensed that it’s like a glass wall, protecting against feelings of happiness and hope. Interesting!
Next time you are in a gentle contact with it, you might sense what it is worried might happen, if it allows you to feel happiness and hope.
In my experience, inner walls always have a good reason for what they are protecting us from. We can’t guess what that is…but if we take time to establish contact and build trust, they will let us know. And if we simply hear them…something will shift.
