Focusing Tip #636 – “I need to find out the meaning of my felt sense.”

Focusing Tip #636 – “I need to find out the meaning of my felt sense.”
December 12, 2018 Ann Weiser Cornell
Does it bother you when you have a feeling and you don't know what it means? Read on...

Focusing Tip #636 – “I need to find out the meaning of my felt sense.”

Does it bother you when you have a feeling and you don’t know what it means? Read on…


Jael writes:

Sometimes I have a body feeling, maybe a felt sense, and I have another part of me that wants to understand where it comes from. This one is pretty insistent, it needs to find a meaning. And then I hear still another part saying, “OK, but might Focusing allow me to discover where this comes from and why?” What do I do with all this?

Dear Jael:

Do you know the story about the little kid who planted her first carrot plant? And every day she went out to the yard and pulled the plant out of the ground to see if it was a carrot yet?

When there is a process going on, there are ways of being that facilitate that process. Like leaving the carrot plant in the ground until it matures… and like not trying to understand what a felt sense “means” until it has been allowed some time to develop.

I’m glad you recognize that the one who wants to understand and find a meaning — and is pretty insistent about it — is a part of you. Of course you are curious! But being “insistent” doesn’t sound merely curious… and that’s what let’s us know that this “need to find a meaning” is something that has an agenda that is not obvious on the surface.

You can turn toward “something in you” that has an insistent need to find the meaning, and explore what it is so worried about if you don’t find the meaning. For example, it might be connected to a feeling that if you don’t “get it right,” there is something wrong with you. And under that, there might be a longing to know that you are OK as you are.

Yes, Focusing does allow us to discover meaning… especially what I call “emotional meaning” — and the heart of that journey is the inner relationship where you take time to give your gentle presence to what you feel, just as it is.

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