“Can the drive to seek felt shifts be the source of one’s problems?”
Ralph writes:
I have been practicing Focusing for nearly two years. In the beginning it was exciting, and I felt a definite felt shift. Now it is more difficult to get any felt shift, although I feel a strong need to search for such an experience, to overcome a feeling of being emotionally stuck. Of late, I have been wondering if the need itself is the problem, given that the need itself feels insatiable.
Can the drive to seek felt shifts be the source of one’s problems or does one have to accept there will always be a need to seek felt shifts? What drives the need to continually search for forward movements?
Dear Ralph,
It’s so good that you wrote! I find this a really fascinating question.
Let’s first define the term “felt shift” for those who may not know it.
A felt shift is an experience of bodily relief or release as something occurs that was needed by the body process. This often happens in Focusing when we are able to sensitively describe what the felt sense feels like, or when we are able to really hear what it wants to tell us. A felt shift can be as subtle as a deeper breath, or as dramatic as feeling completely clear and light in a place that had been feeling oppressed and heavy. It is the way that the body says “yes” to what just happened.
Having felt shifts is as natural as being hungry and then eating and then feeling satisfied. So how could the wish to have a felt shift be problematic? Only if it doesn’t seem to be happening…and you start getting identified with trying to make it happen.
When something — anything— that we want doesn’t happen, there is often a part of us that wants to say that it is the wish itself that is unwise.
Actually, it all depends on how you are going about it!
Developing a relationship with the part that feels emotionally stuck.
You say that you are feeling “emotionally stuck.” You have a longing for that to change, to shift— of course! — but lately Focusing hasn’t been helping.
This is exactly the kind of situation that led Barbara McGavin and me to develop our work on “inner relationship” Focusing.
The problem, we discovered, is that when we become identified with the need for change, then change is harder to come by.
Felt senses — and felt shifts — occur in a certain environment. That is the environment of allowing, accepting, open, interested, curious — what we call “Self-in-Presence.”
But if we are identified with the urgency of change and the despair about the stuckness, we are not providing that open, allowing environment.
What to do? I would say start by feeling your body’s contact and support on what you are sitting on, and then feel the inner area of your body…and then invite the part of you that is feeling emotionally stuck.
Wait, and sense what happens.
You might start to feel something in your body. Let it be there…and describe it. Check the description with it. Sit with it further. When IT feels you in contact with it, getting how things are for IT, there will be a felt shift.
But instead you might start to feel impatience, or worry. “Will this work today? Will I do this right?” In which case, say Hello to that. Let THAT be what you spend time with. It might not be bodily felt at first, but you can say Hello to it anyway. The part of you that is impatient or worried is a key player. Being with that, understanding that, will bring the shifts you are looking for.
Recommended reading: The Radical Acceptance of Everything
