“She wants to feel her wholeness and she doesn’t like it when I talk about parts.”
Victoria writes:
I have a friend who is curious about Focusing because of how much I am getting out of it, but it bothers her when I talk about “parts” of myself. She has expressed a longing to feel the wholeness of herself and that when I talk like that it doesn’t make sense to her. How do you explain the “parts” in Focusing to someone like that who wants to feel wholeness?
Dear Victoria,
I love feeling my wholeness too…and I feel it much more because of Focusing!
When I am feeling vulnerable, for example, and then I say, “I am sensing something in me is feeling vulnerable…” – what happens is that I get bigger. I am more than “vulnerable.”
When I was just feeling vulnerable, that wasn’t really the whole me. Now I am still feeling vulnerable…it didn’t get pushed or chased away…but I am also feeling how much more I am than that. I am the Big Me, Self-in-Presence. And that feels wonderful.
The Power of Keeping Company
As for the “part” of me that is feeling vulnerable, it also is happy. It is grateful that I am here with it. Before, it was alone. Now it has me keeping it company. In the empathic power of that inner contact, change becomes possible.
It may surprise many of my readers to know that I’m not convinced that “parts” really exist. Barbara McGavin and I feel that what looks like a “part” is actually a repetition that happens at the place of a stopped process. When the stopped process resumes, what seemed to be a part flows back into wholeness.
“Parts” don’t really exist but this vulnerable place in me really appreciates the company I am giving it… until there is a shift and what comes forth is pure Presence.
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