Library
Safe Focusing with (Almost) Any Partner
It always seems like a minor miracle: that I can sit in a class
of beginners, with a new person listening to me for the first
time, and have a fantastic Focusing session. And often in only
ten minutes! Isn't this remarkable? If I tried to convince someone
from another tradition that I do some of my best Focusing in front
of a group of relative strangers, accompanied by a brand-new listener,
in such a short time, they might check me in somewhere for a long
rest. But it's true!
So if I try to explain the process that lets me feel safe enough
to have a great session with a new listener, then this might help
us understand how to feel safe as a focuser with almost any partner.
First, we have an agreement that only listening responses will
be given; no guiding. This means that I am in charge of guiding
my own process. I know that I have a nice open space in front
of me, without interference from the other person. I can take
the time I need to find something, and not have to worry about
being interrupted; as long as I am silent, the listener will be
silent, too.
I know that the listener is just going to follow where I am, not
try to interpret, analyze, anticipate, tie together, or even worry
very much about understanding. The simplicity of our task together
brings me a great inner peace. I am just going to be with myself,
and the listener is just going to be with me.
Second, we have an agreement that my turn is mine and "The focuser
is the boss." This reminds me that it is not up to me as the focuser
to take care of the listener. I don't have to be interesting or
productive for their sake. I can be silent the whole time and
that would be OK. Or I can talk a mile a minute (I probably wouldn't,
but I could) and it would be up to the listener to figure out
a way to keep up. That is our deal.
Third, I know it is my job to check what the listener says with
my inside place, and to either speak up or ignore it if it's not
right. That way, it's really the inside place that is guiding
the session, and it won't let anything happen that isn't safe
for me. Sometimes (very rarely) I have to say, "Please stay closer
to what I'm saying," or "I feel like you're making a suggestion
and I'd just like you to say what I said." So even if the listener
forgets our first agreements, this agreement keeps me safe.
Fourth, we have arranged a hand signal so I can stop the listener
without even having to speak, if they begin to talk while something
important is coming in me. It is part of our agreement that this
is not something they need to feel defensive about, but a natural
possibility in any session, that something may come in the focuser
that needs silence from the listener now, and that's OK.
The result of all these agreements is that I start the session
by carefully taking time to be with myself inwardly and inviting
"something" to come that wants to be known. When I first feel
it, it's usually very faint and hard to describe, so I describe
it in a very approximate way. When the listener says back those
words, I use them to pay closer attention to the sense. Better
words come, and once again I hear them back and check them inside.
Each response from the listener takes me deeper and deeper into
my process.
By the end of the session, when we give feedback to each other,
I often have to say that in a positive sense I hardly noticed
the listener. By following the agreements and really being a mirror
for me, they became transparent: still present as a person, but
not at all clouding the vision.
But there is a dimension of feeling safe with a listener that
doesn't usually arise with a new person in a class. What happens
if I know this person well enough to have some feelings about
them, positive or negative, that might interfere with my experiencing
them as a good clear mirror? Then, the session must start with
some clearing of that. I would ask my inside place how much of
what I am feeling is safe and right to say right now. Then I would
say it, and the other person would reflect as a listener, and
then notice in turn if there's something they need or want to
say to me.
(There is more that could be said about this whole territory of
interpersonal space between the focuser and listener, and I hope
that someone will address it, especially Barbara McGavin and Rob
Foxcroft, whose illuminating conversation inspired me to write
this much.) In most cases, this interpersonal clearing at the
beginning of a session would take only a few minutes, and then
I ask my inside place if it feels safe to continue. When I let
it guide me, and my listener is being guided by it as well, the
session almost always feels both safe and productive to us all.
This article appears in The Radical Acceptance of Everything, by Ann Weiser Cornell, PhD and featuring Barbara McGavin (Calluna Press; 2005). Learn more about this book.