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Is
psychotherapy effective in dealing with troubling issues and helping us
grow? If so, how so? Back in the 1960's psychologist Eugene Gendlin
sought to answer these questions through extensive research at the
University of Chicago. His colleague, Carl Rogers, had already received
accolades for his work on what happens between therapist and client
that's helpful--namely, unconditional positive regard,
empathy, and congruence. Gendlin wondered what happens within clients
who are growing in psychotherapy.
Gendlin and his colleagues pored over thousands of tapes of therapy
sessions with therapists of varying orientations. After examining the
tapes, researchers could determine fairly easily whether therapy would
succeed or fail. This research earned Gendlin the Distinguished
Psychologist of the Year Award issued by the Clinical Division of the
American Psychological Association in 1968.
What Eugene Gendlin discovered was that success was determined not by
what the therapist did, nor by what the clients talked about, but
rather by how they talked. Successful clients were not highly verbal or
analytical. Instead, they allowed themselves to experience and tolerate
feelings that were vague, blurry, and unclear--and they
allowed these feelings to unfold in their own time and way. They
attended to their inward, bodily-felt world, rather than spinning their
mental wheels. These naturally gifted clients could sense inwardly and
contact the ever-changing flow of their experience without being
overwhelmed by their emotions. They slowed down, took time to sense
their feelings, and listened to whatever message these feelings were
trying to convey. This enabled them to take small steps forward in
their lives.
Gendlin called this natural process Focusing and developed teachable
steps so that others could learn how to attend to their inner world in
a friendly way. The key to Focusing is allowing ourselves to be
inwardly drawn toward our "bodily felt sense" of personal concerns. By
resting attention within our body (where feelings and intuitions
reside), we release our futile attempts to analyze, control, or seek
quick fixes to complex issues. Feelings live in our bodies. Resolving
tricky or difficult issues must involve contacting, working with, and
speaking from our subtle, underlying felt sense of life concerns. By
inviting a more creative part of ourselves to reveal what it knows
about our lives, we can take our next step forward. Although the issue
may not change, the way we hold the issue (gently, caringly) allows a
deeper sense of peace and well-being. Rather than seeking solutions
with our mind, we find resolutions in the way our body holds feelings
and issues.
Gendlin referred to this process as "trusting the wisdom of the body."
In his book Focusing, published in 1981, he expressed the value of
going with troubling emotions: "Every bad feeling is potential energy
toward a more right way of being if you give it space to move toward
its rightness." This sentiment is reminiscent of the advice given by
Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki in the book Zen Mind Beginner's Mind: "To
give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control
him."
Giving our feelings space gives them room to breathe and move, rather
than staying stuck. Oftentimes, we're not gentle toward our feelings.
We may think something is wrong with us for having feelings such as
fear, sadness, or shame. We may try to push these parts of ourselves
away in a misguided attempt to feel better or look good.
Building on Gendlin's work, others have applied this approach to other
areas, such as healing, creative writing, dance, decision making, and
conflict resolution. In 1986, I coauthored, Being Intimate,
which applies Focusing to relationships. Peter Campbell and Edwin
McMahon, Catholic priests with Ph.D.'s in psychology, have recognized
that befriending feelings is a key to healthy spirituality. A genuine
spiritual life must include the life of the body. Many spiritually
inclined people bypass their feelings in an attempt to be spiritual or
promote a self-image of being spiritual. This "process skipping," as
Campbell and McMahon call it, leads to inauthentic spirituality. Our
emotions merely go underground, fueling a "shadow" that inevitably
sabotages our lives and relationships. Focusing allows experience to
unfold from within. We allow our attention to drop inside our bodies,
then be receptive, cultivating an attitude similar to meditation. We
trust that whatever feelings, perceptions, or understandings need to
emerge will gradually unfold, without pushing the river.
Campbell and McMahon express a tender attitude they call "caring,
feeling presence" in their book, Bio-Spirituality:
Focusing
As a Way to
Grow. In this insightful book the authors state: "Most of us
only feel
our uncomfortableness with a problem or our need to control it. Rarely,
however, do we experience what it is like deliberately and consciously
to be in the body's sense of negative issues without immediately being
pressured either to control or eliminate whatever hurting, scary, or
other feelings are there. This openness to bodily knowing within the
Focusing process sets the stage for real and sometimes dramatic change
as hurting places are allowed to unfold."
It may be surprising to discover that it can actually feel good to be
with what's real inside us--even painful, scary places.
Strength and confidence grow by knowing we can be with whatever comes
up in our process. This is true empowerment. As a result, we become
less defended, less shame-bound, and more open to ourselves and thus
more open to intimacy. We become more available to love and be loved.
We become more whole and learn to affirm ourselves as we are, echoing
the words of Trappist monk Thomas Merton: "For me to be a saint means
to be myself."
Improved communication can also come from Focusing because we're
closely connected to what's really going on inside us. We're more aware
of our authentic feelings and have a clearer sense of what they're
about. Relationship problems often boil down to self-awareness
problems. There can be no communication without self-awareness. Without
knowing the deeper layers of our experience, we may only communicate
what's on the surface, such as anger or blame, and never get to the
more vulnerable hurt, fear, or shame that underlie them.
Being intimate with our outer world will always rest on the quality of
self-connection. Focusing offers a pathway toward our authentic
heart--a tender place within us where we simultaneously
resonate with the life outside ourselves.
John Amodeo,
Ph.D., MFT, is author of The Authentic Heart and Love
& Betrayal and coauthor of Being Intimate. He has a
private psychotherapy practice with offices in San Francisco, San
Rafael, and Graton, California. He was a writer and contributing editor
for Yoga Journal for ten years and has appeared on CNN, CNBC,
and NPR stations. John is a certified Focusing Trainer, and an adjunct
faculty member of The Institute of Imaginal Studies. For more
information, please visit www.johnamodeo.com.
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