“Is Focusing enough?”
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Debbie writes: “Is Focusing enough? I am struggling with pretty much all areas of my life – job, relationship, spirituality – and I am trusting from reading the Focusing material that if I can stay present with these parts of myself that I will experience a carrying forward…. I am taking that on faith at the moment as I am really struggling with finding Presence and part of me is really pushing me to DO something one way or the other.
“A friend said to me that he didn’t think that Focusing was enough. He had been reading a book about how to heal from trauma and was suggesting I might use some of those ideas as well. I’m not sure if I want to go down that road with more intellectual constructs. The question is: is Focusing enough? He was suggesting for example that Focusing encourages me to be present to all the parts of myself without preferring one or the other but it in his view sometimes something stronger is needed – in the sense that a part of me may just be plain wrong, and another part may be right. In fact as I am writing to you I do think Focusing is enough…. but what this friend said about him not thinking it ‘goes far enough’ has kind of thrown me a bit.”
Dear Debbie,
Focusing is a way of listening deeply to yourself, a way of holding a non-judgmental open awareness so that what has been missing can form itself and your life can move forward.
But that doesn’t mean, if you do Focusing, you don’t do anything else. Doing Focusing doesn’t put a fence around you and say, “All other methods keep out!”
On the contrary… Focusing combines so well with other methods, that it’s natural to do Focusing and other things that feel right to do. But here’s the thing: if you put Focusing at the heart and center of your healing work, then you will have an inner sense of rightness about what other methods would be right, and how far to take them. With Focusing, you always have an inner touchstone, a place to check what works for you.
Eugene Gendlin always says, “Do everything that might help–but make sure you combine it with Focusing!” What does it mean to combine another method with Focusing? It means always coming back to your body, always checking what difference it made. Somatic Experiencing is a well-known method these days for working with resolution of trauma. I think SE has some wonderful methods for working with trauma. But Focusing is missing from their work. (They say they use the felt sense, but they actually just use body sensation.) So SE combined with Focusing can be even more powerful than SE alone – or than Focusing alone.
“A part may be wrong and another part may be right.”
Your friend sounds concerned about you but surely doesn’t know all that Focusing includes, or what is really meant by the accepting quality of Self-in-Presence.
I find this often, as I am explaining Focusing – that people connect “acceptance” with “doing whatever it says.” I remember a woman who said to me: “I can’t accept the part of me that doesn’t want to do my schoolwork – I would have to drop out of school.” Or the guy who said, “If I accept my anger I’m going to break all the windows at work.”
These people haven’t learned yet that turning toward a part of us with acceptance does NOT mean letting that part take over or have control. Rather, saying “Hello, I know you’re there” to an angry part or a part that doesn’t want to do schoolwork is the first step in a longer conversation, in which we will listen deeply to what is there.
Listening deeply means allowing a felt sense to form that is more than emotions and more than the ideas and concepts we have already had. It means sensing the “unclear edge” where something is not easy to put into words, but has the potential to take us to a really new place. That’s what makes Focusing so exciting and so transformational.
