‘Nothing seems to be happening’

Rosy asks, can you please help. I am feeling stuck in my Focusing and I don’t know how to get unstuck. You said Focusing brings movement and change, but nothing seems to be happening.

A. You have also told me about some things that you are doing that are helpful. You are keeping a Focusing journal, and as you read back through the journal, you can see small changes over time and that is helping you to recognise an overall development. You have been able to listen enough to hear that it wants you to take care of the whole thing, and it wants you to sense for the overall quality of it. These are very helpful steps you are already taking.

You might also acknowledge the part of you that really wants movement and change. It might be causing some pressure which can be counterproductive when Focusing. Focusing needs a relaxed, yet alert awareness, and it needs you to be very allowing, neither forcing nor pushing to try and create change. I say over and over, that Focusing brings change. The trouble is, if you interpret that to mean you have to do something to make it change, it won’t happen. It’s a paradox.

Can you locate the feeling about the problem in your chest, stomach or belly? Get to know it a bit. Keep describing it, then check with the body to see if the description fits. You may discover that new things emerge. Or you may find that the whole thing changes as you bring your attention to it. That is the nature of Focusing: you can’t predict what will happen. It’s helpful to be patient and wait, simply staying with it, sensing into the body and describing as you go, and checking to see if the description fits. Something is likely to happen right there. Something new and surprising.

As another Focuser has recently discovered, when she simply stayed with something and sensed for how it felt in the body. She discovered that she experienced a moment of expansion, release, freedom, refreshment and aliveness. It had been a stationary sensation, whereas she had been looking for movement. The movement happened afterwards, she realized. She managed to stay with what was not moving forward. The feeling was of stationary, stopped, not moving.

When that happens in my sessions, I will repeat the descriptive word, over and over. For instance I might say it is ‘stationary, stopped,’ over and over. That helps me to stay with it and not let my mind wander off. I can feel how that feels in the body, and I have the descriptive word or image. After sometimes several minutes, something new comes spontaneously; a shift or a release. As the Focuser said, the movement happened afterwards. She felt free, refreshed and alive. She really felt the benefits of Focusing.