Focusing Tip #827 – “Is Focusing self-centered and self-absorbed?”

Are you self-centered and self-absorbed if you spend time listening to your feelings? Read on…

A Reader writes:

I told some of my relatives over the holidays that I am interested in Focusing. One person told me they think things like Focusing are “self-centered and self-absorbed.”

I don’t feel that’s true but I can’t articulate why very well. Maybe you can?

Dear Reader:

I’m happy to give it a try. I know that by doing Focusing, I’ve become kinder, warmer, more empathic, more generous, more available to others… really a better person in every way. And these are the effects I see in others who do Focusing as well.

Why? Because doing Focusing with stressful feelings and conflictual parts enables us to have more access to the natural state of the self: calm, present, curious, and open to who and what is around us.

That one point would be enough. But there’s another, perhaps even more important point: that when I do Focusing, I am not only sensing me, myself.

If I pause, get quiet, and invite a felt sense of the whole of a situation, I am sensing something bigger than just me.

Barbara McGavin and I are writing a book together. Sometimes we disagree on how to say something. Here’s what we have learned: if we don’t take sides and hold tight to our positions, but instead get a sense of what is right for the book, we always get some third way to say it, something that both of us recognize and agree on.

A whole situation has a “right way forward,” something that works for everyone and everything involved. We can pause and allow that “right way forward” to emerge.

So Focusing isn’t self-centered and self-absorbed — because it’s a way to pay attention to what is larger than each of us alone, and it also give a way to clear up the old hurts that are in the way of being open to the larger picture.

And it feels wonderful!