"Trusting your environment. Trusting the process of making sense. Trusting your body. Trusting your relevant others. Trusting your community. Trusting other human beings in general. Trusting international organizations. Trusting your nation. "
In the exercise above, I have placed in decreasing order my "objects of trust", and I have erased "my nation" as an object of trust. Recognizing a very small portion of the environment as trustworthy has been a big part of my process of healing after the pandemic outburst, when I felt powerless, shaky and needy. The very small portion of the symbiotic environment I started to build for me during the pandemic has the dimensions of 25 x 70 x 70 cm. It sits on my terrace and contains earthworms. Home composting with worms has become a form of therapy for me, and if you are a cat or dog owner you can understand how affectionate human beings can become towards their trustworthy animal allies.
At the same time, it has been the first new term I have introduced in my Mini-theory of evolution by a process called "abduction", where the "derived" term follows more-than-logically from the other two. You can see a little bit of the process in the video where I present the course "Miniatures of Evolution", here
And now, third, in the remarkable research paper,
Gehlen, D., & Zimmer, H. (2024). Development and Rasch evaluation of the Focusing Skills Inventory (FSI): if you adopt an attitude of Body Listening, Trusting precedes Felt Sensing. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2024.2373155,
Danny Gehlen, Focusing Trainer, Psychologist and Psychometrician, together with his colleague H. Zimmer, have acknowledged "trusting" as a Focusing attitude associated with Action and the sixth step "Receiving" in Gendlian Focusing.
Now that the stars have aligned from three different directions, time has come for me to reconsider what happened between me and Gendlin on October 1st, 2015 when I asked him to explain 1) why he had not introduced a 7th step leading to action in a Focusing process, and 2) what he thought of me having introduced "taking responsibility" as such a 7th step.
In fact, I know now from what Lynn Preston says about "a little incident" with Gendlin at 25:00 of the above referenced video, that our interaction during the telephone conference with Ann Weiser Cornell made a lasting impression on Gendlin.
I also know that there and then Ann Weiser Cornell thought that Gendlin had a Focusing process during the conversation, and that the process was a very good example of the "here and now".
However, I must confess that for years it was not clear to me why Gendlin experienced such a big relief during the process. Here is the relevant passage from the transcript of the time:
Gene: Oh, I am certain that you are right and yet I do not get there... very easily. I have to tell myself that it is going to come or something. And what will come is this step … oh wait … wait a minute. There is something that is developing here between you and me. .. Ah! (pause)
Why do I not say it back … I know that you did not say that … Ah!
I feel that you are trying to get beyond a stopping place for me and I want to be sure that I support it and I am trying to feel what it would be like if the action step came the way you say but it came for a person like me. But when I say “Oh, now I know what is wrong with me. I am hungry and I forgot to eat again!” - which I often do - then I would feel better because I know … because the Focusing led me carry forward what I was stuck on. And then the action step, going to the kitchen would come right there but it would not be based on my doing it since I was not able to. It would be based on … Oh, it is a good spot! I have not got the answer yet. I have not got the step of Focusing yet. But I can see that going to the kitchen would come, the way that the “Oh I am hungry! I forgot to eat again” came. They both need to come for me. So then the question would be “What can I say here at that spot?” It is a good spot. It is a good spot.
And now I ask you: what would you say if you had me …. carry forward my steplessness and feel better. I need you to say something like “Now ask...” or “Now focus on …” No, it would not work to say “now focus on”. It would work to say “Now...”
M: Now … (hesitates)
G: … Now something further will come. Ya, that is right. Ahhh! It gives me a breath! I made it up myself but it gives me a breath to say “Now something further will come”, something further meaning “like what came”. It needs to come.
While we all pause musing about Gendlin's language, I am in need of more feeling eyes to watch the scene and tell me what do you see happening there. Please write to me personally or comment on the Focusing list, if you want to join me in the adventure of giving Focusing a 7th step of action.
I will tell you the rest of my side of the story in a second post in a few days.
(The whole original transcript is to be found in this blog at
https://naturalmentesocialmentefocusing.blogspot.com/2015/12/now-that-something-further-will-come.html)
From Rosa Z. in the Focusing discussion list (Single passage from a longer text):
ReplyDeletesomething from my own experience...
I do not have any trouble with getting to action steps, from
a very inspired and aligned place... where I feel connected to
something "more than me".
And the action steps come with the definite energy of a "felt shift"...
HOWEVER, once I am embarked on a project, it can be very easy for me to
"stop listening inside" at some point... and instead, some part of me can take over,
a part that believes that if I "push harder", I will accomplish more..
MY ANSWER (single passage of a longer text)
Dear Rosa, You are "spoiling" one of the end points of my narrative: the 7th step, the action step, does not belong to any Focusing process whatsoever, but only to those that culminate in a felt shift.
But what is a "felt shift"? In my course, "Miniatures of evolution" I dare to put the big word "truth" into it, and replace the Gendlian phenomenological variable "felt shift" with the phrase "truth recognition". So, a "felt shift" becomes "a moment of truth".
This move alone (together with replacing "carrying forward" with "evolution") has made my somatic markers for truth recognition - !excitement! - consistently strong and consistently durable, leading to new existential discoveries, possibly leading to new scientific hypotheses, possibly leading to more "progress" in this troubled world of ours.
From Charity SJ in the Focusing list (single passage of a longer text)
ReplyDeletewhat I first thought of with your email and post, about how feeling safe to act must be part of the process of social change and taking steps through Focusing, through security in things we can trust. But then, reading further into the transcript conversation and also looking at the paper by Gehlen and Zimmer, it seems to me the word trust is used in a different way to what I was thinking of. There it’s about trusting what comes through Focusing to be true and believable, without so much that importance of safety and feeling safe enough to trust. But I do wonder if this safety aspect is relevant to trust and there is something in it so I wanted to share this and put it out there. I noticed in the paper that setting a distance when clearing a space seemed to have something to do with safety but that these were separated from trust…
MY ANSWER (single passage of a longer text)
Dear Charity,
Thank you very much for your very meaningful contrasting "safety" and "trusting".
When you say feeling safe enough to trust, you go to the heart of the problem, which is a chicken and egg problem.
What comes first, feeling safe enough to trust (your body) or feeling that you can trust your body enough to not put yourself into unsafe situations?
The painful impact of the polycrisis (metacrisis) in our lives has uncovered this well known chicken and egg problem in its societal dimension. We experience a block to action because in order to act we have to trust the future, but the future has become so scary and the planet such an unsafe place to be that we retreat in comfort zones where - in the best scenario - we can reassure each other by saying "I am ok, you are ok", all that we need is trusting the process we share (Focusing). In the worst scenario, of course, the comfort zone has to do with not wanting to go into a degrowth of our levels of consumption even if starting voluntarily such a process is the only empowering path that we have at hand.
From Charity SJ in the Focusing list (second comment)
ReplyDeleteDear MEG,
Oh yes, very good point about the chicken and egg problem with safety and trust.
Do I understand this correctly as what you have found - that with trust of our felt senses in place, the compulsion to take action arises naturally out of the focusing process when there is a felt shift; thus, because it arises naturally, taking action does not need to be deliberately forced as a process step (and it may be harmful to impose it); however, because action does not always arise from the focusing process, you have developed a method which you hope will make taking action more likely to arise?
MY ANSWER (single passage of a longer text)
Thank you so much for adding clarity to my thoughts. I would put things in this way: not all Focusing processes deliver a felt-shift, not all felt-shifts are suitable to bring someone to an action step, which is a step OUTSIDE the Focusing process, in a real life situation (Gendlin has good examples for this: making a phone call, deciding to confront your boss at work.etc). Most of the felt-shifts one gets in a Focusing process refer to the "unfolding" of the felt-sense and reinforce the process itself, not stepping out of it. These felt-shifts have to do with our words having adequate symbolizing power to express what we mean in a very accurate way.
The other felt-shifts, better yet "moments of truth", come with the power of an inference and the conclusion "I can" in a situation that was before "stuck" and "stepless". The relief is very strong and normally you step out of the process because you know that you can take a step that was previously missing, and now you feel empowered to take it. But of course, this does not mean that you will actually take the step...