Focusing Tip: My anxiety won’t let me do Focusing
-Focusing Tip #610 – “My anxiety won’t let me do Focusing” Jackie writes: I sometimes suffer with anxiety that just won’t let me go through the relaxation techniques (like Focusing) that are supposed to help with anxiety! I just want to escape. What’s going on here? Dear Jackie: It actually sounds like a lot is going on! I’m going to give you a…
Focusing Tip: What do I do first with my anxious feeling?
-Focusing Tip #609 – “What do I do first with my anxious feeling?” Eric writes: I’m confused about something in Inner Relationship Focusing. It’s about what to do first. In my own Focusing, say when I’m aware of anxiety happening inside, do I: simply get an accurate description of it? or, say: “there’s something inside that feels anxious…” I’ve tried both, and both seem to work, but I’m wondering what you’d recommend. Dear Eric: I applaud you for sensing for yourself what works, what…
Focusing is too much inner attention
-Focusing Tip #608 – “Focusing is too much inner attention” A Reader writes: When I try to do Focusing I feel a dark, painful area of my body, and I get a very strong feeling that this is too much for me. It seems to not want me to touch it. So it’s like Focusing is too much inner attention for it. I feel my life will not move forward until this changes, but I don’t know how to change it. Dear Reader: Let’s…
What is meant by the term ‘felt shift’ and why is that so special?
-Focusing Tip #607 – “Focusing is a way of being present to the life within us, and how that life wants to live….” Dear Readers: One year ago I was teaching Treasure Maps/Untangling in Greece, when I got the call (on May 1) that Gene Gendlin had died. Today I sit with a soft ache, because I miss him… and at the same time I am so grateful at the way that the gift he gave us – Focusing – has touched and transformed…
Does life-forward energy come from my Self-in-Presence?
-Focusing Tip #606 – “Does life-forward energy come from my Self-in-Presence?” Annie writes: Does Self-in-Presence have/contain life forward energy? If not, where does life forward energy come from…parts? Dear Annie: Life-forward energy is a property of your whole organism. As Gene Gendlin used to say: “Life wants to live!” When we are in touch with our life-forward energy, we are curious, creative, connecting with others, sad about loss, outraged at unfairness, tickled at what is funny… we have the full range of life,…
A part of me feels young, non-verbal, and very stuck
-Focusing Tip #605 – “A part of me feels young, non-verbal, and very stuck” A Reader writes: I heard that in the Untangling process you have a part called the Small One. In my Focusing I keep getting in touch with a part that feels very young, pre-verbal, and it also feels very stuck. Like it hasn’t moved in a long time. Could you say more about it? Dear Reader: The Small One can be experienced as terribly wounded, raw, damaged, like “a baby…
My body sometimes shakes
-Focusing Tip #604 – “Does your body start to shake when you get quiet?” Jacek writes: I have a question related to trauma & Focusing. When I quiet down and let go, my body starts to move in a jerky way. It feels like it’s something ‘annoyed, angry, violent, but not dangerous’ inside that would like to manifest itself. My body sometimes shakes. I know this is my old trauma. I’ve done some work with Somatic Experiencing. How could I use Focusing to work…
Where does violence come from?
-Focusing Tip #603 – Where does violence come from? Dear Readers: Today I am filled with sadness as I think of the great American leader and peacemaker who was assassinated fifty years ago – Dr. Martin Luther King. There have been too many assassinations, all over the world… and too many killings that never make the news because the people who die aren’t “newsworthy” — and those deaths are tragic too. Where does such violence come from, and could the kind of emotional…
A part of me doesn’t want to do Focusing
-Focusing Tip #602 – “Now it’s a struggle between the parts that don’t want to do anything regularly and the parts that want to do Focusing all the time.” Anne writes: I give my parts really deep and compassionate Self-in-Presence – and they love that! But something in me doesn’t want to… and keeps me from being regular in my Focusing. I used to feel my parts receiving “enoughness” and my life opening up. Now it’s a struggle between the parts that don’t…
I find it frightening to try to sense the dissociating part in my body.
-Focusing Tip #601 – “I find it frightening to try to sense the dissociating part in my body.” A Reader writes: I just realized that I dissociate. I can’t control it when it happens. It, whatever in me takes over and I dissociate, seems powerful. It dissociates in a microsecond, and can take hours for me to feel I’ve returned to my body, and then even a day or too for me to return to no longer feel the intense body lock in my…
