Post #65: Emotions: How to Cut to the Chase

I am in the process of remodeling my bathroom, with the help of my good friend, Tom (who is a wonderful contractor). Last week, Tom and I demo'd the bathroom, went on peaceful excursions to The Home Depot, Eames Hardware, and the cultured marble store, and generally enjoyed the hard work and the friendly company.

That was last week.

This week (which is only two days old, so far), I started dealing with the floor people and the cultured marble people. Don't get me wrong, they are lovely, polite, highly skilled guys, but somehow, all of a sudden, my fun remodeling project became exceedingly stressful. The floor covering job went awry (remember the old M.A.S.H. episode where Hawkeye ordered a custom pinstriped suit, and the stripes ended up horizontal?) Then the marble people forgot all about my (strategically-timed) installation. I cried.

I actually cried a lot, so I decided I'd better close my eyes and tune in to what was really going on. My internal guidance told me to run to the bookshelf and grab the Eugene Gendlin book, Focusing (a classic self-help book published in 1978, and still in print today).

"Focusing" is a self-therapy technique whereby we are asked to close our eyes, relax, and tune into the body's intelligence. Gendlin identified that the seat of any emotional upset can be found within the body, and if we direct our attention to the body (and inquire gently), it will reveal what is needed for healing.

Gendlin offers a quick, 6-part process for doing this, which is truly transformative, and which I'd like to share with you. But before I do that, let's talk about the common ways we approach our feelings that usually don't work:

1. Belittling the feeling. We try to convince ourselves that the problem doesn't exist or is too trivial to worry about.
2. Analyzing the feeling. We use our heads to try to figure out why we're upset. This is frustrating and counterintuitive, but even we therapists do it all the time.
3. "Facing down" the feeling.  We apply the stiff upper lip. "Just grit your teeth and don't let it get the better of you."
4. Lecturing ourselves. "Okay, pull yourself together and stop this nonsense! You're acting like a child. There's no reason in the world that this should bother you so much..."
5. Medicating the feeling. We use food, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, or other compulsive behavior to escape from the uncomfortable feelings.
6. Drowning in the feeling. We sink deeply into the emotion and the thoughts surrounding it, hoping that this will help work the feelings through.

Gendlin states, "These approaches cannot work because they don't touch and change the place out of which the discomfort arises. It exists in the body. It is physical. If you want to change it, you must introduce a process of change that is also physical. That process is focusing."

Please join me here next week as I outline Gendlin's process for focusing. And do have a beautiful week.