When you say Hello in Focusing, who are you talking to? Read on…
A Reader writes:
You suggest we say Hello to what we feel… but I don’t know who I’m talking to. Is it another entity inside of me? Or am I talking to myself?
Dear Reader:
You are saying Hello to an aspect of yourself.
That’s different from saying Hello to some other entity. And it’s different from saying Hello to yourself.
And I agree, it’s a rather odd thing to do!
But what we can discover is that the act of saying Hello initiates a relationship. We can even say it creates a relationship.
This is a relationship between you and something in you.
Maybe, before now, you hadn’t been thinking of this part of you as something to relate to. You might have thought, for example, “Why am I staying up late at night when I know it’s bad for my sleep and the next day is rough?”
It’s hard to go anywhere from there!
But if you say, “Maybe there is something in me that doesn’t want to go to bed early… and I’m saying Hello to that,” then something new can happen. This can awaken genuine curiosity and empathy for the “something.” You can become the listener to how it feels and what it needs.
In the process, you become more spacious and more empathic. What a lovely result!
