“What do I do if I get distracted when I’m Focusing?”
A question people often ask:
What do I do if I get distracted when I’m Focusing?
I was recently re-reading my answer to this question in my book The Radical Acceptance of Everything.
I had forgotten that there is a magical story that I told in that book. I’d love to share it with you today, hoping that today brings you magic as well:
Recently I was doing a first session in a workshop setting. Her felt sense was of a pressure on her abdomen, but it kept disappearing when she tried to stay with it. Finally she opened her eyes and looked at me.
“It isn’t working,” she said. “I keep getting distracted.”
“Maybe the distraction is relevant somehow,” I suggested.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “A black cat walked in and sat down.”
“OK,” I said. “Let’s let the black cat be here. Is it still here?”
She closed her eyes, checked, and nodded.
“So see if you can sense what mood it’s in.”
She sensed, then said, “It’s scared.”
“Oh, so let it know you hear that it’s scared. And then see if it might want to let you know what it’s scared about.”
“I get an image of my mother, and a choking in my throat. Guilt. I wish I could take care of my mother better.”
That was the key to the session, and when she acknowledged it, she felt relief and release.
After the session was over, the Focuser told us that the black cat had been the same one she’d had when she was a child, which had been killed.
That is already pretty cool, and a good message about turning toward what is called “distraction,” with inclusion and acceptance.
Now here comes the magic:
An hour later, as we were about to end the session for lunch, a black cat walked into the workshop room as if it owned the place. We gasped – how did that happen? It was the final touch to an amazing Focusing process.
