“Could a person ever Focus too much…even become addicted to Focusing?”
Connie writes:
Here’s a question: Could a person ever do Focus too much? Maybe even become addicted to it? And does one ever come to the point in Focusing where there is less and maybe even ‘no stuff’ to have to process and more of just the loveliness and gratitude of being? I suppose that just being human, one will always have ‘stuff’ to process, so maybe I already can answer part of the question!
Hi Connie:
I’ve been Focusing now for 43 years and I still have ‘stuff’ to focus with. Being human, indeed! However, there have been big changes in how calm and inwardly peaceful I am, especially during rough times.
I had a rough time recently. Someone I thought was a friend seemingly turned against me. I didn’t understand what was happening and, for a while, couldn’t find out. It was painful…but when I really paused, I could feel that underneath the pain, I was deeply OK. That comes from years of Focusing. And it’s so great. It means that my deep sense of being OK doesn’t depend on what’s happening to me.
As for whether one could be addicted to Focusing…yes, I guess so. As a person who has had many addictions, I can say that really anything could be an addiction! It depends on whether you are using it to avoid what really needs your attention. So if you wonder, “Am I Focusing too much?” you might ask, “Is there something I’m avoiding? Something I don’t want to feel or to face?”
And then, of course, if you do Focusing with THAT, you’re no longer using Focusing addictively — you are now using Focusing to recover!
When people ask me whether with enough Focusing we will ever have no more problems, I love to tell a story about how Gene Gendlin answered that question.
“If I do enough Focusing,” Gene was asked, “will I become so healthy that I have no more problems?”
“Ah!” said Gene with a twinkle in his eye. “Healthy is not having NO problems. Healthy is having NEW problems.”
That’s really what we want, isn’t it? Not to be stuck in the rut of the same problems, but moving forward, alive, curious, encountering new aspects of life and relationships and ourselves…and thus having new problems.
