“We are feeling unhappy and discouraged with Focusing”
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Two of my students who are Focusing partners wrote to me to say they feel they are unhappy and discouraged as Focusers. Both of them got into Focusing because of friends who were loving it and getting great results. But both of them are not getting what they had hoped for. “We wonder what is not going right for us? Could it be that it just is taking us both time to catch on to it in a deeper way? Or it could be that there is something important missing in our partnership that we are collectively unable to provide? Or could it be something that we just don’t know yet?
“We both agree that we are not ready to give up on focusing yet. But our discouragement is strong and we are unsure of how to learn what we need.”
Dear P—- and J—-,
Good for you for being in touch with what you need, and knowing that something is missing.
Your question gives me a great opportunity, at the start of the new year, to give a kind of “tune-up check list” to everyone who is doing Focusing or wanting to learn it.
Focusing Tune-Up Check List
· Are you starting each session with an issue that matters to you?
· Are you pausing to get the fresh body sense right now?
· Are you being Self-in-Presence all through the session?
Let’s talk about each of these one by one.
Are you starting each session with an issue that matters to you?
You have a choice when starting a Focusing session. You can start just by sensing whatever your body wants to bring, or you can start by inviting the felt sense of a topic or life area that you want to do Focusing with.
You can go either way, it doesn’t really matter — UNLESS you’re not getting what you want from Focusing. In that case, be sure to start with by inviting the area of life where you most want to see change.
Also, it helps to invite the topic by inviting what’s in the way of what you want. Here’s an example:
You: “I’m dissatisfied because Focusing hasn’t helped me as much as I would like.”
Me: “So what did you want it to help you with?”
You: “I’d like to feel more relaxed and self-accepting as I go through my day.”
Me: “So start your Focusing session by inviting the sense of something in you that DOESN’T feel relaxed and self-accepting as you go through your day.”
This way of phrasing the topic area is most likely to bring up what needs your attention now.
Are you pausing to get the fresh body sense right now?
So you are starting your Focusing session with a topic area that matters to you, and you are phrasing the invitation in terms of what doesn’t feel or do what you (or part of you) would like.
Since this is an area that matters to you, you COULD just talk about it for an hour. Don’t do that! It’s OK to talk about it for two or three minutes, if you want to, to bring the issue freshly in front of you.
But then pause. Drop down into body awareness. Let words float away for a while. Allow the whole feel of it to come, freshly. Let that be what you describe, and stay with… although you’re not forgetting what it is about.
Any time you lose your sense of what you are Focusing with, you can come back to this stage: letting go of the words and sensing freshly.
Are you being Self-in-Presence all through the session?
Since you picked a topic that matters to you, you’ll surely have different parts or sides of you involved. You might have a part of you that calls you “lazy” for not fixing this issue already. You might feel a painful or sad urgency to get some kind of change.
All of these feelings and parts are welcome… but YOU need to be bigger than all of them. Focusing doesn’t go well if you are identified with a part of you that is trying to get something to change.
So be sure you are Self-in-Presence all through the session by acknowledging whatever in you is not accepting, compassionate, interested, and curious about your own process.
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I’m going to check in with my two students to find out whether the Focusing Tune-Up Check List was helpful to them, and I’ll let you know in a future Tips newsletter…
