Is a ‘part’ the same as a ‘felt sense’? Read on…
Kate writes:
I have a question for you… I have noticed in your Focusing Tips that you often use the word “parts” rather than “felt sense” to refer to inner sensations, feelings, thoughts, etc. I am assuming that “parts” is coming from IFS work rather than Gendlin’s Focusing work?
My question: Do you make a distinction in your own mind between the concept of a “part” vs. a “felt sense?” Or are you using both of these terms as more or less synonymous?
Dear Kate:
Actually, IFS didn’t invent parts work. They just made it more famous.
Barbara McGavin and I were working with parts long before we heard anything about IFS.
And in fact, Gendlin, the one who developed Focusing as a method, does talk about parts sometimes.
Barbara and I did bring parts work more to the forefront in our style of Focusing, and elaborated it more fully than Gendlin had, because parts work is needed to work with difficult areas of life, that we call “Tangles.”
We tend to use the word “part” when we’re talking about an aspect of self that takes sides, has opinions, or takes action — and yet isn’t the whole self.
Felt senses don’t do those things. A felt sense is a whole bodily sense of something… but it doesn’t take action or have opinions.
Parts and felt senses are not the same… but they do overlap, in that you could get a felt sense of a part.
And if you don’t know — and we often don’t — whether what you feel is a felt sense or a part, I suggest calling it “something.”
