What if your feelings disappear when you try to describe them? Read on…
Hans-Jörg writes:
For me it is sometimes difficult to stay with a feeling, just to feel without trying to describe it, when I go into describing I often lose contact with the feeling.
Dear Hans-Jörg:
That’s an interesting problem! Typically Focusing begins with inviting a felt sense of an issue or a situation or a decision… etc… and then describing the felt sense.
So typically when someone says that the describing process makes the feeling go away, I suggest that they stay longer at first just feeling the felt sense. I suggest they don’t begin to describe it until it is “ready” to be described.
But in your case, you find it difficult (sometimes) to stay with a feeling without describing it, and yet describing the feeling (often) makes it disappear. Hmm! An interesting dilemma!
Here is what comes to me:
Don’t work hard to find those descriptions. Let the first descriptions that come be very simple and generic. You can call it “this here.” Or say, “I’m feeling something.” And then pause to check if that much is true… you are feeling something. This is here. These are actually descriptions, just very simple ones. When that much feels right, more will come.
If you go slowly and pay attention, the process itself will give you feedback on what it needs. After all, for the feeling to disappear is already feedback! Something happened that was too strong or too abrupt, probably. So let your attention be with your body, and with what “this” needs in order to stay with you.
I remember when I could never get a cat to let me touch it. Then I learned: the cat first needed a respectful hand offered to its nose for a sniff. Then I could touch it, gladly. Like a cat, a felt sense knows—and can show you—what it needs in order to stay and let the next step form.
