How a Focuser kept company with a vulnerable part of them.

Kerry writes, thanks so much for taking your time on my question for the last Focusing Tips and providing such helpful comments and suggestions. You’re right I often talk about ‘I’ but it’s so important to think in terms of parts otherwise focusing doesn’t seem to be so effective. I did try to focus on something inside suppressing my feelings. I had a really amazingly insightful experience. I had an image of a Kuala bear in a tree that just wanted to be safe and because it felt vulnerable it seemed to be clenching on out of fear and creating my pain. When I empathised with the Kuala and gave it permission to carry on doing what made it happy, the pain that I had been experiencing over the past week eased off almost completely. I’m amazed how it works!

Dear Kerry, thank you for writing and sharing your experience of Focusing with a part of you that felt like a Kuala bear, clenching onto a tree because it felt vulnerable and it just wanted to feel safe. No wonder it was clinging on! What a lovely image, and see how it resolved when you listened to that part of you, rather than beating yourself up for being ‘resistant’, or ignoring it and hoping it will go away. These reactions are very common and normal, but as you see, is not very helpful. What really worked was when you empathised with that part of you, and you gave it permission to carry on doing what made it happy. That was a big step you took, and I will say a bit more about it.

The first thing that you did was to dis-identify from the part of you that suppresses your feelings. Instead of saying ‘I am suppressing my feelings,’ you said ‘something in me is suppressing my feelings’. And then you were alert and you waited for what came next. This can be tricky, because often you may think that nothing can happen here, especially when it’s about suppressing feelings. That can create a sense of a ‘block’ or a blank space. So it can be helpful here to assume there is something blocking or suppressing feelings, even if you don’t yet know what it is.

You were open and patient enough for something to come, in the form of a Kuala bear. It needed you to be in touch with some qualities of Presence, such as curiosity, openness or friendliness. As you later found out, it was scared and felt vulnerable, so it needed to feel safe enough to show itself. If you had been identified with a part of you that was judgemental, critical or impatient, it would not have felt safe enough to come out and reveal itself. It would then be helpful to dis-identify from that, and to see that as a part of you also.

And when you had the body sensation and the image of the Kuala bear clutching onto a tree you kept it company and began to sense for how it felt from its point of view. You heard more about how it was feeling and it told you it was feeling scared and vulnerable. Because you were in Presence with this part of you, you empathised with it. Empathy arises naturally when you are in Presence. You can feel compassion for that part. You might say to it ‘of course you are feeling like you do. No wonder.’

I love it that you gave it permission to carry on doing what made it happy. That was totally free, generous and without agenda. It came from you-in-Presence. Nothing needs to happen here, you were saying to it. You can be like this for as long as you want to be. And paradoxically, that is the deep permission and acceptance that brings real change. Thank you for sharing this wonderful Focusing experience with us.