Tag: Focusing Oriented Therapy

  • Focusing Oriented Therapy Q & A: How is Focusing an evidence based process of change? 

    Focusing Oriented Therapy Q & A: How is Focusing an evidence based process of change? 

    Focusing evolved from research that has influenced much of the somatically-oriented, mindfulness-based work being done today. It has been linked to over 50 studies* with positive therapeutic outcomes and continues to develop new applications in psychotherapy and related fields. Continue reading to learn about how Focusing was discovered through research conducted by Carl Rogers, Eugene Gendlin and others at the University of Chicago.

    The research:

    Eugene Gendlin was a philosophy student at the University of Chicago in 1952. Influenced by existential phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the early pragmatists, he was curious about human experience, idea formation, and expression. Gendlin was specifically curious about “…how an experience that comes before words becomes an idea framed in words.” (Cornell, 2013, loc. 84). Gendlin held his own felt-belief that people have a kind of experience inside, which more than being spoken about, is spoken directly from. In such a manner of experiential-speaking, Gendlin firmly believed that meaning preceded concepts and the language to describe the experience. But how does one study the phenomenon of a person articulating their experience?

    For Gendlin, it meant stepping outside his philosophical roots and making a visit to the psychology department. At that time, Carl Rogers was the head of the University of Chicago Counseling Center and was continually engaged in research on client-centered therapy, or as it was later known, person-centered therapy. Desirous of better helping both others and himself, Gendlin joined Roger’s team of therapists and researchers. By being a student of the therapy process and at the same time also a client in it, he was able to more deeply explore the question that gnawed at him. Notably, while remaining a philosopher at heart, Gendlin became a well-reputed psychotherapist receiving numerous awards and honors including: the American Psychological Association’s first ever Distinguished Professional Psychologist of the Year award, a Viktor Frankl award for outstanding achievement in meaning-oriented psychotherapy, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Body Psychotherapy also known as The Hub of Somatic Psychology.

    During his training with Rogers, Gendlin and his teacher began researching the question: Why is it that some people get better in psychotherapy and others do not? Cornell (2013) tells us, they identified two key interdependent variables: first off, the therapist’s quality of being with the client and second, the client’s quality of being with their own present experiencing. Hendricks (2001) further explains that Gendlin and a colleague developed an “Experiencing Level Variable” (n.p.) along with a scale to measure it.

    Next, Rogers and Gendlin along with their research team, recorded hundreds of therapy sessions by many different therapists from many different orientations. From those tapes, they were able to predict very accurately which clients would get better after a year of psychotherapy as determined by certain outcome measures including the client’s self-report and the therapist’s report. Strikingly, this prediction, based on their experiencing scale, could be made after listening to the very first session. Gendlin and his colleagues found that improvements in therapy had very little to do with a therapist’s orientation, specific techniques, or with the type of problems being addressed. Instead, the important element of positive change had to do with how clients processed their experience internally and was evidenced by the quality of their expression.

    The clients who got better did so because they could speak from their present/emerging experiencing process: as they spoke they slowed down, became less articulate, and checked their words with how the whole of a situation felt inside their body. This back and forth process of going between noticing the whole way something is felt in the body and searching for how to express that through symbols (words, images, gestures, and memories) produces change! Focusing is the formalization of what the successful clients did in therapy, and the product of its development into a teachable process that everyone can learn and benefit from. Subsequent studies* have shown that people who learn to Focus (learn to speak from their experiencing in this profoundly changing way) have better outcomes in psychotherapy than those who do not.

    It is key to note that when the successful clients slowed down, they checked for the words that best fit their inner experience. What is this “experience” they were they checking in with? They were sensing the whole way a situation felt in their body. In Focusing we call that a felt sense. In the August newsletter I will discuss what a felt sense is and why Focusing is referred to as the essence of change.

    References:

    Cornell, A. W. (2013). Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change. New York: W. W. Norton & Company and Kindle Edition.

    Hendricks, M.N. (2001). Focusing-Oriented/Experiential Psychotherapy. In Cain, D.J. and Seeman, J. (Eds.), Humanistic Psychotherapy: Handbook of Research and Practice. Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Retrieved from http://previous.focusing.org/research_basis.html


    *For a list of research studies on Focusing visit:

    www.focusing.org/research.html
    www.focusing.org/research_basis.html

  • Focusing-Oriented Therapy Q and A: What are the two most common therapeutic dead ends and how do we avoid them?

    Focusing-Oriented Therapy Q and A: What are the two most common therapeutic dead ends and how do we avoid them?

    Two kinds of dead ends can happen in psychotherapy: The first occurs when the therapy consists only of interpretation and inference without an experiential process. The second dead end happens when there are [clearly felt] emotions, but they are repeated over and over. (Gendlin, p. 7, 1996)

    Therapy often becomes an attempt to understand a situation like, “why am I so anxious?” Therapists and clients engage in detective work about causes, beliefs and behaviors that lead to anxiety. This investigation can be interesting but seldom leads to change unless there is time spent touching into the bodily felt experience of being anxious.

    This first dead end could be called staying in your head or as Gendlin (1996), whose research led to the discovery of Focusing, referred to it,  “dead-end discussion” (p. 7). We are taught both to know the answer to things (we assume one already exists) and to use our intellect to figure things out. We say things like, “It must be because I am so hard on myself. You would think by now I would have grown up and made these changes.” Notice the word must. “It must be” is an inference about something without ever sensing into it. This intellectually jumped to conclusion doesn’t lead to anything new.

    The way out of this mental ping-pong match is to slow down and notice what effect anything that is said or done has on how the problem is directly experienced. In the example above the client says, “It must be because I’m so hard on myself.” What would you say in response? I might say, “You’re sensing something about the way you treat yourself that feels hard. Can you sense in here (hand on my chest) how it feels when you’re hard on yourself?” I am directing the client to sense their experience directly, bodily, in the moment. From there, little steps of change can arise because the client has the issue as a living something to be explored further. Without directly experiencing it, an issue remains static and conceptual, waiting for some outside pressure to make it better.

    The second dead end is one of unchanging feelings. Clients often have strong emotions, but rather than resolving the feelings repeat and nothing changes. Dead end feelings remain the same because they seem rather clear and final. While emotions include a somatic awareness, most clients don’t know how to stay with it and explore the unclear murky edge of their experience. Moreover, most schools of therapy do not provide training in how to help clients with this process.

    The way out of this dead end is by helping the client sense into and below the emotion that seems clear to a place of something felt, yet unclear. Focusing emerged from research, which showed that clients who made changes in therapy did so because they were already able to sense and explore the unclear edge of their experience. A client may say, “I’m so frustrated with him… (groping for words and hesitates) …well it’s more like a feeling of deep disappointment. I was hoping it would be different this time.” You can see in this example how the content of the experience begins to change as the client explores the vague edge in her relationship. This occurs because the client is in touch with the felt living process of their experience.

    Every experience and event contains implicit further movement. To find it one must sense its unclear edge. Every experience can be carried forward. Given a little help one can sense an “edge” in the experience more intricate than one’s words or concepts can convey. One must attend to such sensed edges because steps of change come at those edges. (Gendlin, p. 15 1996)

    Reference:

    Gendlin, E. (1996). Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method.New York: The Guilford Press.

  • FOT Q&A: What makes my training program unique?

    FOT Q&A: What makes my training program unique?

    Focusing, the process of being experientially present with one’s own unique felt quality of life, is at the heart of most somatic and mindfulness approaches being taught in the psychotherapy field today. Focusing is psychological, philosophical, and touches spiritual edges as it takes a person deep into their own experiencing. It facilitates relational presence in the therapeutic encounter as it helps clients regulate emotional states, enter into their felt sense awareness of stuck patterns, and bring about bodily felt steps of change. Students of my Focusing training series come to profoundly know and practice this naturally occurring, innately powerful, self-healing process, which allows you to be with both your clients and yourself in a completely new way. They have described my training as “deeply satisfying,” both personally and professionally.

    The healing of trauma is a sacred journey. The word sacredhere speaks to the gravity of what clients bring into the room when they entrust us with helping them. To lead another on a journey, you must know the landscape. Therefore, a core value of my Focusing training program is your development as a healing professional. As a student, you learn to be a good listener to your inner process as you develop the skills to bring Focusing into your work with others. This self-cultivation not only helps you learn and apply a strong foundation of skill; it also bolsters your own sense of presence and solid ground while guiding your clients on the journey of healing from trauma.

    The program begins by creating a safe space where participants can grow and explore securely. I use a small group, cohort model to maximize a sense of trust and community. We practice all Focusing skills during the workshops so that you learn experientially. Throughout the learning series, you’ll experience a widening sense of your own authenticity. Within partner exchanges and supervised sessions, you further develop a strong inner relationship with your biggestself and build confidence in facilitating that growth with your clients.

    As therapists, we all need a variety of ways to care for ourselves and our “stuff.” Focusing partnerships are a great way to support ourselves and each other in the work we do. Partnerships are not only a good way to learn Focusing, but become for many the best self-care and professional-care practice they have ever experienced.

    Please come and join me for what students describe as “retreat-like” weekends, in the natural setting of my workshop space on Vashon Island, the safety of community, and the emphasis we place on personal care and growth.

     

     

    See: Jeffrey Morrison Focusing Oriented Therapy Training Program

     

  • How I navigate these days of darkness  

    How I navigate these days of darkness  

    These are the days of darkness. A time of year when it is wet, cold and dark. These are times of darkness in our world, something felt in our bodies that creeps into our consciousness regardless of intention. While culture shakes and climate rattles we can find ourselves checking out or becoming overwhelmed. For those of us in the healing professions it is a double dose, facing our own vulnerability while being open to and available for those we care for. What’s a person to do?

    Sometimes we can escape to another environment for some fun in the sun or perhaps a freshly powdered ski slope. Last year, I escaped first to a radiant beach on the coast of Chile in January and then to a sun soaked shore in Mexico come March. I felt fortunate for these experiences. We can’t always do such things. Everyday life brings many demands. This year it’s double college tuitions, projects, saving for future adventures, repairs to house and car: oh my! In the midst of these dark days and demands, how do we maintain perspective, keep hope alive, and carry on a positive attitude for those around us? Here is my suggestion:

    It starts with a Pause.

    It is so simple and yet revolutionary. When I pause, I stop the ongoing flow of thoughts, feelings and actions that sweep through my day. I make this one very simple intentional turn toward myself and ask inside, “How am I?” Then I wait for a moment, and listen. I could just fill in the empty space with what I already know or the list of to-do’s I am currently working on, but no, I stop and listen being curious, “How am I in there? What am I needing or wanting right now?” Then I wait, as if in meditation, and allow space to form from which something new will emerge. Even if you think nothing will show up, wait, it will: that’s just how it works.

    From this pregnant space, we have options. New possibilities present themselves. I can linger there inside myself and sense more deeply into my felt sense. I can just notice thoughts going by or I can say, “Hello” to something wanting my attention and listen to it.

    To pause, is to mindfully turn toward our present moment implicit knowing, the place where the new and creative originate. It is where we find new doorways to experience that lead us out of the dark, out of old ways.

    “Is this it?” you might ask. No, but it is a doorway to something more, fresh and new. Is that not the path we seek oh fellow traveler, to shift our perspective from the gloom and dread to finding the light inside the darkness? Pausing is a practice and takes time to make a habit of. It takes practicing! Are we not ever seeking practices for change and personal renewal? Start here, with a pause, and open the door to the little moments that bring real and lasting change.

    Below you will find some resources to help you on your way.

    The Pause Movement shows how teaching people to Pause brings real change in the world.

    In The Revolutionary Pause Mary Hendricks-Gendlin shares how pausing shifts us towards peace.

    If you’d like to deepen your experience of pausing and learn how it can nourish your healing practice, consider signing up for one of my upcoming Focusing courses.

  • Personal Reflections of this Year and Looking Ahead

    Personal Reflections of this Year and Looking Ahead

    I had reconstructive surgery on my right ankle at the beginning of April. My mindset was one of ending and beginning. I think Spring is the perfect time for such a journey. In my recovery, I spent two weeks resting on my couch at home watching spring unfold outside my windows. Sometimes we need an event in our lives to facilitate change. Surgery, for me, was an event marked with endings, shedding commitments, and beginnings, making room to break new ground. Ahead is a year of recovery – physical healing infused with spiritual renewal. I am shifting my work more to Vashon, away from commuting, reducing the number of clients I see in order to dedicate more time to my teaching and training. I am reminded of Kierkegaard’s works, as I sense into “fear and trembling,” in tandem with growing opportunities: I notice that it all feels just right!

    My three-plus years of planning and facilitating The Advanced and Certification Weeklong through The International Focusing Institute, came to completion on the coast of Chile in January. It was a remarkable experience of people from around the world coming together with mutual respect and common passion, a cantata of English and Spanish smoothly playing back and forth. The depth of connection people can make in such a short time, when our needs are met and we listen openly to each other, continues to amaze me.

    The 29thInternational Focusing Conference in Mérida, Mexico in March was incredible in its own unique yet similar ways. I presented on “Ten Key Aspects of Working with Trauma.” (Click here to email me and request a copy.) Thirty people from around the globe attended my presentation, which was simultaneously translated into Spanish. During this presentation, I had the opportunity to reconnect with a woman who I’d had the chance to work with for one session at the Weeklong conference in 2017, where we processed a trauma she had experienced as a child. I invited her to come to the front of the room, where she courageously spoke about the session we’d had and how her life had changed since then. It was a gift for both me and the group to hear her story and witness the kind of change a Focusing-Oriented approach can facilitate in working with unwinding stuck patterns and frozen remnants of trauma. Such a vivid first-person account of healing was an inspiration to all present.

    With the International Focusing Conference and three-year Weeklong Planning Committee completed, I have a reprieve from commitments to travel and present for the near future and look forward to dedicating my time to training, teaching, and mentoring. I am blessed to have a wonderful group of first-year students and am looking forward to beginning my second-year program again this fall. Additionally, I have begun work on a new website that is designed to support Focusing training and building a community of Focusing-Oriented therapists, healing professionals, and spiritual seekers. I look forward to walking with you all on the journey (and on two feet again!)

  • Q & A: What did Brené Brown discover is the key ingredient for overcoming failure and why is it so important in the process of change?

    Q & A: What did Brené Brown discover is the key ingredient for overcoming failure and why is it so important in the process of change?

    “He or she who is the most capable of being uncomfortable rises the fastest. There is a huge correlation between a capacity for discomfort and wholeheartedness. If you cannot manage discomfort, that sends you barreling into perfectionism, blame, rationalizing–without taking away key learnings.”
         (Brené Brown to Time Magazine, September 2015)

    The notion of being with what’s uncomfortable feels oxymoronic to most clients. Naturally, people think, “I don’t like this feeling; I need to make it go away by doing or thinking something else!” This avoidant reaction, however, leads to irrational processes that circumvent the actual learning that’s available in the pain and adjourns its resolution. I lead clients into sitting next to what’s uncomfortable while remaining emotionally regulated. Maintaining emotional regulation is key or our clients will miss the value of being with the experience by immediately trying to fix the discomfort.

    Key phrases you will hear a client say are, “I feel angry and frustrated…” or “I don’t like this part of me…” In these moments we want to guide our clients by saying, “You are sensing something in you that is really angry, let’s pause here for a moment.”  We want to encourage them to take a moment to be with what is making them upset. From there we want to encourage them to realize their mood does not define them. They can keep company with their negative feeling/sense, and just be. This regulated way of staying with uncomfortable feelings, Brené Brown says, is the beginning of the true ability to overcome failure and pain, and to heal.

    Being with and not defined by pain, distress, fear, etc. is also a key aspect in change itself. Being able to turn toward discomfort without drowning in it or fleeing from it is the first big step in the change process. Clients are not able to do this very well unless they have someone who knows how to bring them up to the edge of discomfort and safely guide them into their bodily experience. Here is where clients can begin to tap into and learn to trust what they bodily know but have turned away from in the past. This process is not a kind of pushing through the discomfort. It is a way of being with the discomfort, so the body can proceed with its natural healing process.

    Would you like to be able to do this smoothly and confidently with clients?
    Check out my training page for upcoming FOT-1 workshops.

     

     

  • Q & A: Why isn’t Focusing more well-known?

    Q & A: Why isn’t Focusing more well-known?

    My three favorite reasons why Focusing is not better known.

    1. Focusing was discovered through research, not invented! It is a natural human process. Gene Gendlin developed steps in order to help people find this innate process in their own experiencing. Gendlin was an anti-guru who had little interest in selling Focusing to the world, instead he gave it away.

    Gendlin intentionally avoided trademarking Focusing or standardizing its curriculum so that it could be kept open and used in any domain one could imagine. He thought that such an amazing and transformational process should be available to everyone and this motivated him to publish the book Focusing in 1978 –a notably simple and accessible writing from a brilliant Philosopher, Psychotherapist and Researcher.

    Gendlin wanted a better world not a bigger bank account. Others picked up on his research and Focusing steps finding it a valuable contribution to their own processes and methodologies. This blending and borrowing is why it is often said that Focusing has inspired much of the mindfulness and somatic work being done today.

    1. Focusing is uniquely broad in its application. It makes everything better! As an experiencing-process Focusing brings fresh meaning, richness and depth to everything you use it with. It is not just a method of therapy, but rather what makes therapy work. It goes beyond mindfulness to Relational Presence. Combined with spirituality it becomes bio-spirituality and a doorway to transcendent experience opens.

    When someone asks what Focusing is good for, the answer is something like holding up a little brown jug of liquid and saying, “this makes everything better.” How can a single process do so much? Focusing is already involved in the way each of us allows new information to come into awareness. We are always on some level Focusing (bringing unclear felt knowing into focus and explicit awareness). It is part of our natural process!

    1. Focusing goes to the very essence of change, which is a fundamentally different approach from the usual popular themes of simply problem solving in our culture. Western philosophy meets Eastern philosophy as we understand the nature of being. Focusing comes from this philosophical ground, which sees change as a process of stepping back from your experience, observing it (mindfulness) and then being with it and relating to it bodily (emerging right hemisphere experience meeting language in the left). All experience is there to be related to, not fixed, manipulated, medicated or labeled. This is a radical perspective that goes against our “just do it” culture.

     

     

  • Why I’m Going to the Felt Sense Conference

    Why I’m Going to the Felt Sense Conference

    by Kara Hill, MA, LMHC, FOT

    The Felt Sense Conference was established a year ago as a commemoration of Gene Gendlin’s life and a furthering of his work. It is a celebration especially of his philosophy. While I appreciate the mindful and somatic aspects of Focusing, what makes it truly unique in the work of psychotherapy is the rich philosophy underpinning it. Focusing-Oriented therapy is not a simple technique to apply, but a whole way of understanding being human and in relationship.

    In his philosophical work, Gendlin rejects the common notions of categorical thinking and fixed patterns. He demonstrates that we are primordially whole beings in interaction with everything (one another and the world), and that we are not objects but processes. Being human is never static. It is an ever growing, changing, emerging experience. Everything I experience is both a part of my unique process and actively in interaction with every -thing and -one else. This inherently intersubjective thinking reaches beyond “parts work” and self-regulation to emphasize a non-verbal whole “feel” of things within which even the tightest knots have the space to unfurl, naturally and in their own right way. This non-verbal, sensed whole, or “felt sense” of things is what makes Focusing truly effective for me and my clients. While we can all experience a felt sense without fully understanding it, the felt sense is best explained within the context of the philosophy underpinning it.

    In addition to my passion for his philosophy, I had the opportunity to speak with Gene on three occasions. Once he told me I was right-on, once he informed me I was dead wrong, and once we merely confused each other. I have deep gratitude to Ann Weiser Cornell for the gift of having had these encounters and am struck by how even such small contacts forged a real sense of connection to the man.

    Photo courtesy José Ignacio Salazar for The International Focusing Institute

    Connection to Gendlin and his philosophy were not the only draws, in my deciding to attend the Felt Sense Conference this year. It bears saying that I will also have the opportunity to further a friendship that was established in Chile at the Weeklong this past January. The Weeklong produced a friendship so deep and dear to me that I am, in some ways against logic, traveling to New York City to both support her teaching and to simply spend time with her again. I am grateful for the depth of community that learning Focusing and becoming certified as a Focusing-Oriented Therapist have brought me. I encourage you to consider joining me in this community by further exploring Focusing for yourself through this conference and/or through training in Focusing to enhance your therapeutic healing practice, life, or other passions.

    Kara Hill was Certified as a Focusing-Oriented Therapist by Jeffrey Morrison and is a graduate of his training program.