Emotional Healing

The key to emotional healing through Focusing is to sit with your emotions, like you would a friend.

Dr. Eugene Gendlin, who developed Focusing, says, 'What is split off, not felt, remains the same. When it is felt, it changes. Most people don’t know this! They think that by not permitting the feeling of their negative ways they make themselves good. On the contrary, that keeps these negatives static, the same from year to year. A few moments of feeling it in your body allows it to change. If there is in you something bad, sick, or unsound, let it inwardly be and breathe. That’s the only way it can evolve and change into the form it needs.'

If you are hurting in some way, try saying 'something in me is feeling…' instead of I am feeling. See if you can notice the difference that it makes when you say that. Try keeping it company, with interested curiosity. Maybe it has something it wants to tell you, about how it is feeling.

Notice where you feel it in your body. You could put a hand there, in a gentle caring way. How often do we really pay attention, and really listen to ourselves? Emotional healing can really be as simple as putting a gentle hand on a hurting place inside, and telling that place, 'I know you're there.'

This is very different from the usual way we are with ourselves. We usually try to push and pull, and force ourselves into being different. We don't like being angry, afraid or sad. We want to get rid of feelings like anxiety, frustration or resentment. These emotions churn us up and make us feel very uncomfortable. Anything you do to yourself to try and get rid of them end up making things worse, or perhaps you feel better for a time, until they come back again.

With the Focusing approach to emotional healing, you build an inner relationship with whatever is there. You learn how to cultivate an attitude of acceptance, tolerance and even friendliness towards your difficult feelings. When you do this, it brings an easing of the difficult feeling. There's more space around it. It feels lighter somehow. It's not crushing in on you so much, and you don't feel so overwhelmed by it.

You can then move on to the next stage of emotional healing. Staying with the feeling, see if you can describe it to yourself. Notice where it is in your body, and how it is feeling there. See if you can describe it to yourself. Does it feel tight, heavy, like a black cloud, or what? What words, phrases or images come to mind when you bring awareness to that place? If a word, phrase or image comes to mind, check back with that place, to see if it fits. Does that describe it well? Does it somehow capture the quality of 'all of that'?

Paying attention to your feelings in this way is the essence of emotional healing through Focusing.] It begins to stir, to awaken, and it becomes more alive, as if it has a life of its own. Dr. Gendlin's great discovery is that every part of us has life at its centre, and it knows what it needs for its own emotional healing.

Holistic Healing