Focusing Stories

 

It’s always nice when discovering a new method that we might want to learn, to be able to read about how it has helped other people.  Here is a small collection of stories of how I and others have been helped by Focusing.

Ovulation Pain Vanishes

This is an account I wrote up of an amazing Focusing session that I did on my own, the morning after I had my first Focusing session with Suzanne:

I went back to bed after getting up to go the toilet this morning, and started to feel the now familiar warning signs of a painful ovulation. It doesn't happen every month, and I'm fortunate never to have it bad enough to be hospitalised as some women are, but when it hits, it can have me doubled-up in pain for a good while and really quite distressed. My mother, an amazing woman who trained as a homeopath at least in part motivated by her desire to help me heal when I was younger, gave me a remedy to have on hand long ago that helps, but it takes a while to kick in and that while can be very painful. I've been using EFT and TAT to try to get to the bottom of it for months, with little success.

So this morning, fresh after doing my first focusing session with my Focusing coach Suzanne yesterday, I decided to try focusing. Using a method Suzanne had taught me (placing my hand on where the feeling was in my body), I sat with the pain, said hello to it, acknowledged it and gently asked what got it so tight. Slow to respond at first, once I remembered to ask myself if I could extend compassion to the hurting part of me, it opened up and all sorts of writing on the wall tumbled out. Beliefs about being a woman and having children that I consciously reject, but I guess are in there deep down, based on generations of social conditioning.

The details of what came up were very important to me in understanding why I had the pain, but are less important than what arose as I just sat with them, acknowledged them, and had compassion for that part of me. Instead of ending up crying and doubled-up in pain like usual during one of these episodes, the pain never got much more intense than the beginning warnings, and the more I listened, the more it released. It didn't go on to develop into what it usually does, and didn't leave me wiped out at all (usually I'm wiped out for the day after the intensity of the pain and my anguish about not being able to do anything to change it.)

I thought I was pretty good at getting answers from inside me, having used Reiki and EFT and TAT to do emotional healing with great success over the years. But what I learnt this morning, following on from my experience yesterday during the session with Suzanne, is that my approach until today had lacked an incredibly important ingredient – compassion for the part of me that was in pain. Instead my approach had unwittingly been "I'm going to do what I have to to make this go away". What we resist persists, and when we can bring compassion to it, we are no longer resisting it, and it has the possibility of simply melting away, as the pain did for me this morning.

Major Limiting Belief Discovered through Focusing

One of my acquaintances recently shared this great example of how Focusing can help us to uncover unconscious limiting beliefs:

A few months back I turned 60.  I have never had a problem with birthdays and the concept of 'getting older' so I was puzzled by my reaction to this one.  I woke up in the middle of the night on my 60th sobbing and desperately wanting the phone to ring and my Dad's voice to be on the other end (we used to call each other at midnight to wish each other a Happy Birthday).  Since then I have walked around in a strange 'not my cheery self' state.  Yesterday I found myself saying to my acupuncturist "A part of me feels like...", and realized that this phrase fragment is a wonderful tool which can be used as a way into things that I need to Focus on.  I applied it to this issue of the feeling since my birthday and found a very interesting belief.  Since I turned 60 a part of me feels like my life is over.  Just like that, overnight, I went from being a vibrant participant in Life to being left by the wayside. 

I decided to Focus this issue and what came up was amazing.  I had two grandmothers (like everyone else).  They were strong women who were a little quirky in their own ways (having come through the Depression).  When I was in my teens/twenties I made a decision (like we do when we are young) that I didn't want to live past 60 because I didn't like the way our societies treated elder citizens.  My grandmothers were probably in this age range somewhere and I didn't like what was happening to them.  One became very ill and ended up in an institution for the rest of her life.  The other became even more 'quirky'.  I realized through focusing that I identified with these two women and that now that I was 60 I was becoming them and that I believed that as their lives were basically 'over' at that time so was mine.  It was a great insight.

The Power of using Gestures with Focusing

In a Focusing session that I did with my Focusing coach Suzanne recently, I learnt the tremendous power of body gestures, a brilliant part of Domain Focusing. 

I started the session by clearing a space (a simple practice to help you to put aside all your concerns in order to allow your body to show you the priority issue to work on), and then just sat with my body and waited for a felt sense to form to guide me as to what I needed to work on.  Immediately I became aware of what I instinctively described as a scrunched fist feeling in my stomach – the feeling of a fist holding tight and not wanting to uncurl the fingers and let go.  I then became aware that I was actually holding my right hand in a tight fist, and that there was no way that the fingers wanted to uncurl, just as I had had the sense in my stomach.

When I asked what got this part so tight, I became aware of a part of me that wasn’t happy about an area where I’d been making a lot of changes in my life.  I had been aware that there had been real inner resistance for sometime, it particularly showed up in the form of the brakes going on during a TAT or EFT session I’d be doing on my own, and outside of those sessions was just a vague feeling that something wasn’t right.  As I just sat with the scrunched fist feeling in my stomach, and paid attention to the same in my hand, an image appeared in my mind that at first glance seem hilarious and made me laugh, but that soon revealed an important lesson.  The image was that of the means used by some people to catch monkeys.  They put a piece of fruit or something inside a small trap, which the monkey is able to get it’s hand into while it is not holding anything, but as soon as the monkey grasps hold of the fruit, it’s hand is too big to withdraw from the trap.  As I remembered it during the Focusing session, the monkey often gets caught because of it’s refusal to let go of the fruit, despite the fact that it could remain free by just opening it’s hand.

The connection was at this stage vague at best, so I sat with it and decided to see if I could bring empathy to that part of me that didn’t want to let go of something, and all of a sudden I saw an image from the film I had watched the previous day – an image of The Queen and how she had made the decisions she had after Princess Diana’s death because based on her upbringing, it was the only appropriate response – she simply couldn’t see that others could see it another way.  Somehow with seeing the image of how it was in the movie, I was able to transfer the compassion I felt for the character who was stuck in out outmoded belief system to that part of me that was struggling with the rapid changes that have been taking place in my belief system.

As I brought empathy to that part, my hand naturally uncurled, and the scrunched feeling in my stomach magically dissipated.  That part of me felt heard, probably for the first time ever!  And then it suddenly occurred to me that anything that I was holding onto as a way of being in the world was likely to be as insignificant as a piece of fruit compared to my true freedom, just as it was for the monkeys.  While the shift that resulted from this isn’t something anyone could see, or something I could describe, it just felt like something huge had opened up, like a damn inside of me that had been frantically trying to hold back the flow of change had let go, opening the way for forward movement without the constant resistance I’d been feeling.  Characteristic of Focusing, I’d touched something deep inside of me that cannot be contained in words, but that my body had been holding for me.

Integrating Internal Parts with Focusing

This story from one of my acquaintances gives an excellent example of how Focusing can help us to hold and integrate the different points of view we at times hold inside of us, and the energy that can be released by working with them:

Some years ago I promised my Father that I would look after my Mother if he died first.  One of the women I am having some legal difficulties with now, was physically in closest proximity as Mom was failing and had Mom sign a change in her Healthcare Proxy.  This left me without any input into her care in the last months of her life.  One day, while I was present the attendant that was hired did deep tissue massage on Mom's legs while my Mom thrashed about.  The attendant kept saying "See, she's dancing with her honey."  I asked her to stop because Mom had peripheral neuropathy in her legs and even the lightest touch caused her extreme pain.  I explained this to the attendant but since I was no longer a Healthcare Proxy she refused my request.  I just had to sit there powerless while she was torturing Mom.

Since that time the torturous pain Mom had to endure at the hands of these women caused me a great deal of personal pain and today, with a friend's help I Focused it.  I found there were 3 parts of me that were holding 3 different points of view.  As I listened to them and allowed them the space to 'be,' they integrated and I had a wonderful and insightful healing.  I think I yawned for at least 10 minutes (which is my sign of deep energy shifts).  Since then I find I am more my old self.  I think it took a lot of my energy to hold those 3 parts at a distance and when they integrated I recovered all that energy. 

Focusing Session with Pain from Severe Physical Damage

This story on Ann Weiser Cornell’s website shows how powerful Focusing can be, even with severe physical damage.  You can read the story here.

Empowerment in Mutual Vulnerability:  A Couple Become Focusing Companions

This long article from The Focusing Institute is well worth reading as inspiration for how much Focusing can do in your life.  The authors detail their years of Focusing together as marriage partners and teaching their children Focusing.  They discuss many issues that are common to most of us, including the need to relinquish control over others.  You can read the article here.