‘I welcome Kevin Flanagan's new book. It includes one of the best personal descriptions of the Focusing process that I have ever read.’
Professor Eugene Gendlin, University of Chicago
LISTENING TO YOUR ANGEL
The science of Focusing on your intuitive intelligence
BY
KEVIN FLANAGAN
THE NO.1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR
Published by BeCreative Media Group
At Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Kevin Flanagan
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kevin Flanagan is a writer of two bestselling books. He is also the editor of several publications for INM (Independent News & Media) in Ireland, including the LoveFood magazine where he has interviewed celebrities such as Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White.
He runs the BeCreativeMediaGroup (BCMG) in Dublin with his son Ciaran. BCMG publishes traditional and online content for some of the biggest newspapers and brands in the world.
Kevin is currently completing the first novel in the ‘Age of Angels’ series. For more information visit www.ageofangels.net
Kevin trained in the therapeutic process called Focusing with Professor Eugene Gendlin at the Focusing Institute in Chicago in 1995 and was later invited by Professor Gendlin to become a coordinator of the Focusing Institute in New York. When this book first appeared under the title Everyday Genius in 1998 it was both a critical and commercial success. It is here republished in an updated and revised version under the new title, Listening to your Angel.
PROLOGUE: CAN YOU REALLY “LISTEN TO YOUR ANGEL”?
PART 1 THE DISCOVERY OF FOCUSING - LISTENING TO YOUR ANGEL
4 USING THE BODY'S SECOND BRAIN
5 CARL ROGERS AND EMPATHETHIC LISTENING
7 MY OWN EXPERIENCE OF FOCUSING
PART 2 LEARNING TO FOCUS
8 HOW CAN I EXPERIENCE FOCUSING?
9 FOCUSING EXERCISE 1: GETTING OUT OF MY 'HEAD THINKING'
10 FOCUSING EXERCISE 2: BRINGING AWARENESS INTO THE BODY
11 FOCUSING EXERCISE 3: HOW THE BODY FEELS
12 FOCUSING EXERCISE 4: WHAT ARE THE 'ISSUES IN MY TISSUES'?
13 FOCUSING EXERCISE 5: FOCUSING ON ONE PROBLEM
PART 3: LEARNING TO LISTEN
14 LISTENING EXERCISE 1 – SEEING HOW OTHERS DON’T LISTEN
15 LISTENING EXERCISE 2 - CAN YOU HEAR ME?
16 LISTENING EXERCISE 3: LISTENING IN SILENCE
17 LISTENING EXERCISE 4: REFLECTING
18 LISTENING EXERCISE 5: LISTENING PARTNERSHIPS
EPILOGUE: LISTENING TO YOUR ANGEL
A FINAL WORD ON “SPEAK TO YOUR ANGEL”
FURTHER INFORMATION ON KEVIN FLANAGAN & AGE OFANGELS
‘I welcome Kevin Flanagan's new book. It includes one of the best personal descriptions of the Focusing process that I have ever read. It makes clear how to get beyond the first level of feelings that most people know, and beyond the murky zone beneath those. He shows how different it is to attend to what comes in the centre of the body. The book will help many people to discover Focusing and to improve many other activities by doing them - to use the author's own words -with 'the sense of being talked to by something down there that is not infected by our own fears and conditioning'.
Professor Eugene Gendlin PhD
PROLOGUE: CAN YOU REALLY “LISTEN TO YOUR ANGEL”?
ANGEL n. [From Greek: messenger.]
A spiritual messenger sent by God to commune with man.
Angels appear in just about every culture and religion that has ever existed, including the “big three” religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. They are the messengers sent by the divine to communicate to the human through intuitive insights, whispered words and dreams.
The Romans believed that at birth we are each given a guiding spirit that helps us through life, moulding our character and enlightening our understanding. This spirit stays with us till our death, when it guides us into the next world. The idea of a guiding spirit recurs in Christianity with the concept of the guardian angel, in this case the bearer of a message of guidance. The word 'angel' is derived from the Greek word for messenger. It seems to me that modern behavioural science is beginning to show us just how this inner ‘angel’ works and how this 'guiding spirit' may be understood to talk to human beings. This book is designed to outline their discoveries and help you “listen to your angel” and hear its own, unique message.
How can we listen to this angelic, quantum voice? I believe we can do it by first understanding how the transcendent, quantum world communicates with our own material world – the world of our own flesh and blood, the world of conflict and disappointment, happiness and inspiration. The world we live in 24/7. Our world.
Throwing light on this area is the groundbreaking research carried out at the University of Chicago among other places by Dr Carl Rogers and his colleague Professor Eugene Gendlin; work that I believe may open the door to our understanding of transcendent communication. Both these men are giants in the area of behavioural science and have changed the way in which people think about themselves and stay psychologically active and emotionally well.
Carl Rogers, in a survey of The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century was ranked second only to Sigmund Freud for his contributions. Rogers spent his life looking at how people attain and maintain their psychological health.
Professor Eugene Gendlin began his work by examining the ways in which traditional “therapy” did not work. He came up with some extraordinary findings including how the human psyche finds answers to pressing problems. (It is also interesting to note that the word psyche comes from the Greek word ψυχή meaning "spirit" or "soul").
Professor Eugene Gendlin also identified the steps that “worked” in successful therapy which he called Focusing. He describes a particular internal process that takes place when humans successfully solve their own emotional problems. What's more, Gendlin discovered that this process can be taught. It is now possible to click into the problem-solving mechanism and start this internal process of emotional resolution at will. Research shows that Focusing solves not only our emotional dilemmas but our creative ones, be they in work or in relationships. Focusing, as Gendlin defines it, works. And it will add enormously to your life. The fact that it may also connect you to the transcendent is a bonus. When we “focus” I believe we may actually be listening to the message sent from the quantum world – the message of our angels.
But lets us first go back to basics and look at what exactly both men discovered.
THINKING VERSUS FEELING - THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS
When making important decisions in life we do so on the basis of our emotions and not intellectually or rationally as was previously supposed. Research shows that when we are confronted with an important decision, say leaving a love partner, we will first consult how we feel about that person and then make up our minds based on that feeling. It will be a complex, holistic and emotional decision based on a gut feeling that will determine our course of action. Immediately the decision is made - say to leave the partner - we will rationalise it and come up with all the intellectual and cognitive reasons why we should leave our partner. We will then use them when we are talking to him or her. That is why it is impossible for departing lovers ever to explain adequately to their 'ex' the reasons why they are leaving. It is probable that they do not fully understand them themselves. What's more, they will never really be able to sum up the deep-seated emotional feeling that has led to the decision, which is by its very nature non-verbal. The fact is that reason will have had little to do with their coming to that decision; emotion and gut feeling were what mattered.
THE SOUL OF MODERN MAN AND THE NEW PHYSICS
Until quite recently it was not possible for science to talk about such things as a man's soul - that was left to religion. But this was not always the case: the great divide began during the Age of Reason, when the dominance of religion was questioned and the empirical scientific approach gradually took over as a way of proving how things worked. Previous to that, all creation was explained by divine revelation. It was in the Age of Reason that the divide between mind and spirit and body and soul had its origins. There was a tacit agreement between science and religion that the Church would look after men's souls while science would look after their minds and their material needs. One of the first and most notable victims of this schism was medicine, which began to become purely mechanistic in its approach to disease, whereas previously it had taken into account the emotional and spiritual state of the person. Medical opinion today tends to view illness exclusively in mechanical or genetic terms. Until recently, emotional issues were not acknowledged as having any serious bearing on disease. (One of the reasons for this was that emotional states were considered impossible to measure until the development of behavioural science.)
It is only in the last few years that the emotional element of sickness has been acknowledged. Being emotionally well (which comes also from being emotionally intelligent and aware) is a fundamental requirement for good health and one that we will be examining in this book. Research shows that acquiring skills such as Focusing and empathetic listening dramatically improves your emotional well-being and physical health! In this book you will learn:
How to focus
How to listen empathetically
Extensive research has shown that these skills will:
Improve your emotional intelligence
Maintain and improve your physical health
PART 1 THE DISCOVERY OF FOCUSING - LISTENING TO YOUR ANGEL’S VOICE
One of the discoveries of behavioural science is the inner voice, the voice of knowing, that tells us exactly what we should do. It is a quiet, gentle voice that suggests a course of action that is remarkable for its appropriateness. This voice counsels us to take steps that promote resolution and development in life. The voice seems to come from a separate entity. It is not so much 'me' (the person who is currently overwhelmed by life's problems) but another who speaks to me, the 'ever watchful witness' who is heard in the space between my thoughts or in the moments of quiet reflection when I sit in silence with myself. Then I sense it, behind all the chatter, a presence that seems always to have been there. A presence that has a message just for you – a message that may well come from your angel.
HOW TO LISTEN TO THIS INNER VOICE
'Focusing' was first defined by Professor Eugene Gendlin, who has spent a lifetime studying people's inner processes. It means taking complex and unclear emotional feelings and giving them a special sort of attention until they become clear to us. Gendlin developed the concept of Focusing as a result of over thirty years' research into therapy in general and psychotherapy in particular. The aim of his research was to show exactly how 'successful' therapy worked. His was an extraordinary discovery, because up until then therapy had had an alarming failure rate. Far more people failed in therapy than succeeded. It seemed that very few people were able to listen to their inner guiding voice. In the end Gendlin was able to identify what successful people actually did in therapy and he called this process 'Focusing'.
So what is Focusing? On one level Focusing is a bodily felt way of knowing and assessing a situation or a problem, one that is ruled not by the intellect or reason but by intuition or gut feeling. This visceral (gut) feeling is almost unconscious; it knows something, but that something may be unclear to the conscious mind, like a vague or uneasy feeling in the body. That is until you focus on it. Then everything starts to become clear. Here is an example of the most basic form of Focusing.
SOMETHING'S WRONG BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT
Imagine you leave the house in the morning and are in the car going to work. You are ten minutes into your journey and well into the morning traffic. Suddenly you get an uncomfortable feeling that you have forgotten to do something important in the house but you cannot remember what it is. As you wait at the traffic lights your whole body fills with tension. You feel butterflies in your tummy and a tightness in your chest as you rack your mind in search of the missing item. 'What was it?' you say to yourself, as you go over a list in your mind. 'Did I switch off the gas? Yes. Lock the door? Yes. Turn off the immersion heater? Yes.' You cannot recall what it is and think about turning back but you're stuck in traffic and it means you will be late for work so you try to dismiss the nagging worry from your mind. 'I'm probably only imagining it!' you say, and continue to drive on, hoping the nagging feeling will go away. But the feeling that something important has been left undone continues to trouble you. You try to be positive and whistle a tune but it does not go away.
You turn on the radio and try to listen to the morning show but it does not go away. You reach over and light a cigarette and for a few minutes feel good as the nicotine produces a temporary flood of relief, but after five minutes this too wears off and the tense feeling starts to creep back into your stomach again, putting you on edge. If anything the feeling is worse than before. Eventually you begin pleading with the queasy feeling that is gnawing at your insides. 'Look!' you say to it. 'I'm almost at work now. If I turn back I'm going to be hours late and get into trouble with the boss. Surely it can wait!' But the feeling does not go away; it is growing stronger the further away from home you get. Finally you can stand it no more and you pull in, stop the car and begin to attend seriously to the tense feeling inside.
Unbeknown to yourself, you have begun to perform a type of Focusing - focusing on the uneasy feeling inside. You take a deep breath and bring your attention to the tension churning in your stomach. 'Now what is it?' you ask as you close your eyes and begin to focus on the queasy feeling, going over all the possible items that you could have left undone. Was it the back door? Did I lock it? You check this possibility against the churning feeling in your stomach. It's still churning so it can't have been that. Was it the bedroom window? You have left that open before. No, the feeling is still there, making you anxious and on edge. Your mind goes on and on, deeper and deeper, till suddenly it makes contact with the unconscious knowing that something is wrong. And then you strike gold! You can now see what your body knew all along but somehow could not quite tell you. It is the family cat that you forgot to put out. Your partner usually feeds it and puts it out but this morning she got up and left early, shouting up to you as you were still half-asleep not to forget to put the cat out. (Last time it was locked in it ruined an expensive rug and wrecked the front room trying to get out.) Great physical relief accompanies this discovery. Suddenly the terrible tension in your body melts away. The sick feeling in your gut disappears, as does the tightness in your throat. You smile and begin to laugh with relief, banging the steering wheel with your hand at your stupidity but happy that you have finally tracked the missing item down.
The warning feelings would not give up. The unconscious bodily feeling knew you had to do something and it would not give up until you had recognised it, however hard you tried to dismiss it. Its main means of achieving this was to subject your body to almost unbearable tension until you stopped and took the time to track down the issue - until your mind discovered what your body already knew. Now that your body has alerted you to the danger of the cat, you are in a position to do something to remedy the problem. You can take action - phone a neighbour or return to the house yourself. You can even decide to take no action and live with the consequences - but that's all right. The body has done what it had to do and warned you. It can rest now - and it does.
DISTRUST OF THE BODY
On this occasion, the way you got to hear this unconscious message was by focusing on strong bodily feelings. Unfortunately, because our education system does not honour (or even acknowledge) this form of bodily intelligence, we do not get the opportunity to use it. Developments such as Focusing, which enhance our emotional or intuitive intelligence, are not as widely known or used as they should be, because our conditioned reflex is to rely on our intellect. The reason for this is complex and has deep roots in history. It is partly due to the early Fathers of the Church and their suspicion of the human body. Philosophers like St Augustine taught that the human body was essentially 'sinful' and not to be trusted. Some of the early churchmen believed that the human body - far from being a miracle of creation - was the home of the devil! As a result of this attitude, a pathological distrust of the human body, sometimes bordering on hatred, developed.
We see this harsh attitude exemplified in the brutal practices of mortifying the flesh, which included flagellation, starving the body of foods and liquids and exposing it to extremes of heat or cold or to long periods without sleep. All this despite the fact that the body is said to be 'the temple of the Holy Spirit' and made 'in the image of God'! The effect of this attitude to the body has been to make people distrust the very home in which they live their earthly life. It is an extraordinary attitude given what we now know about the miracle of the human body. It has led also to an almost pathological attitude towards sexuality and a denial of our deepest evolutionary sexual instincts - instincts that were given specifically to ensure the survival of the human race. The legacy of this hatred of the body remains with us today and is seen in our distrust of our bodily intelligence - the body's ability to know things - and our over-reliance on reason and the cognitive functions of the brain to solve our problems. Now behavioural science is unlocking the amazing secrets of the body and showing us exactly how intricate and sophisticated it is.
The discoveries of behavioural science show that the human body is more sophisticated than we have ever imagined. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly clear that the body houses many different forms of intelligence or ways of knowing. And this whole body cognition or way of knowing can be very powerful and useful. Already scientists have found neuropeptides in the stomach lining similar to those found in the brain, giving a possible explanation as to why we experience so many strong emotions as gut feelings and not thoughts in the head. It seems as if the centre of the body acts almost like a second brain, providing the human organism with a whole additional range of information. Take a moment to notice and list all the different ways in which you receive, sense or feel information - especially emotional information. Do these experiences come to you as thoughts in your head or feelings in your body? Check your own experience of where you feel the following emotions in your body:
love
anger
a feeling that something is going to happen
a sudden dread or fear that all is not well
an uplifting feeling that all will be well despite the evidence of your reason
a deep conviction that you should take particular steps or actions
a sense that you are fulfilling your destiny
a deep sense that you have met a person who is going to play an important role in your life
INTUITIVE INTELLIGENCE
What characterises all the above forms of intelligence or knowing is: how they are physically felt in the body (and not just thought of as ideas in the head), how they largely bypass reason and go straight to the core of a person's knowing, where they are apprehended directly. The word for this form of intelligence is intuitive. Take a moment to list your experience of your own intuitive intelligence: occasions when you receive and act on information without having to resort to analysis, cognition, logical appraisal or intellectual reasoning. For example, you might say that you rely largely on your intuitive intelligence when you decide to embark on a relationship with someone, change jobs or even move house. Creative acts like writing, sculpting, painting, acting and playing music could not be successful without the use of intuitive intelligence. When we really examine our lives we find that most of our major decisions are taken on the basis of the “gut feeling”. Jot down how you came to make your own decisions on the following things. Which did you rely on most - pure reason or intuitive insight?
marrying or setting up with my life partner
choosing my current career
starting a major relationship
ending a major relationship
leaving one job for another
starting or ending a friendship
deciding to emigrate
buying a house
Many will find that intuitive and gut feelings played a large part in their decision-making process. But what exactly is this intuitive intelligence and how can we readily find it?
THE HEAD DOES NOT KNOW EVERYTHING!
First let us examine the example given in the previous chapter, of having forgotten to put out the cat; for, simple as it may seem, it shows us many aspects of this newly researched bodily sensed intelligence. The person intuitively knew that he had somehow forgotten to do something. But while his body knew this and kept issuing warning distress signals, his mind did not readily accept them. The example shows how we automatically turn to our head to solve our problems, even when it was our bodily felt intuitive intelligence - our “gut feeling” - that alerted us to the problem in the first place! We rely first and foremost on our intellect to figure out what is bothering our body, and not on the body itself. We do this as a reflex action because we have been programmed to solve most of our problems with our left-brained, cognitive and rational thinking processes.
We have been educated to put this form of thinking above all others, at the expense of focused intelligence, which is based on intuitive and bodily felt knowing. But the head does not know everything. Often the body knows things more clearly and more accurately. In that example it took a long time for the person to get in contact with his bodily felt knowing. This is typical behaviour for almost all of us. First we use our head to attempt to figure out what is wrong. It tries but fails, for it is really much better at performing sequential, rational and cognitive tasks. Because we have not been educated to know about focused bodily felt intelligence, however, we have to continue to use our intellectual facilities to decipher a physical signal that something is wrong. As the mind cannot come up with an answer it naturally tries another tack. First it tries to dismiss the body: 'You're wrong!' it tells it. 'You're only imagining it.' But the intuitive bodily knowing won't go away and keeps on sending out the distress signal.
Secondly, the mind tries to distract the person, in this case prompting him to turn on the car radio. But this does not work either; the intuitive bodily knowing that something is wrong will not be distracted! Next, the mind tries numbing the body with chemicals, in this case nicotine. This is a highly effective solution in the short term as it chemically removes the stress feeling, flooding the brain with 'happiness hormones' while the needs of the addiction are temporarily met. But the effects of the cigarette last no more than a few minutes and soon the stress chemicals come flooding back, warning the body that something is amiss. It will not give up. Intuitive knowing produces an actual chemical response that is physically felt in the body.
The reasoning capacities of the left brain admit partial defeat and it begins to bargain with the bodily felt intuitive feelings. 'OK!' it says. 'We know something's up, but we can't do anything about it right now. Look, we'll be late and get into terrible trouble if we turn around and go home now. Please forget about it just this time!' But the body will not let go until the problem is solved. The mind has to deal with it directly, engaging it in the process of Focusing. Then together, like deep sea divers, the body and the head delve the depths of the bodily felt knowing until the mind discovers what it has been looking for (and what the body, through its intuitive intelligence, has known all along).
Eugene Gendlin seems to have discovered the mechanism that decodes intuitive bodily felt intelligence. Focusing is the missing link between our reason and our unconscious. It is Focusing that allows our minds to see what our body already knows. As such it is a phenomenally useful process. The fact that it can be learnt makes it even more exciting. Learning Focusing is almost like getting the use of another form of intelligence, having the use of a second brain. In Gendlin's research on those who had a successful outcome from therapy, he discovered that these people processed their problems in a very particular way, characterised by:
1 first recognising that the problem actually exists
2 then getting a physically felt sense of the problem, how the body actually carries the burden of the problem, like a 'knot in the tummy' or 'weight on the shoulders'
3 allowing this bodily felt sense to symbolise itself and spontaneously produce an image of itself, for example, 'I now see the feeling inside as a black cloud overhead blotting out the light'
4 conversing with the feeling symbolised by the 'black cloud overhead blotting out the light' and asking it questions
The first question concerns the past history of the problem and how it has concretely affected the client's life. The second question concerns the future, and what needs to happen for the problem to be solved. While Focusing on the problem in this specific way and asking these particular questions of the problem (as it is felt in the body and not thought of in the brain), the client awaits the answers. Finally comes the Focusing insight. From somewhere deep inside the body, from the actual place where the pain of the problem is felt, comes the answer. It is felt not as an idea that has come as the result of logical calculation but as a sudden insight, a flash of inspiration that illuminates the confusion inside in such a way that the road ahead is suddenly clear. For this lightning flash of insight has also illuminated the obstacles that stand in the way of progress, so that the client can see the way ahead and choose action steps that will take him to the solution.
This is the miracle that is at the core of Focusing: an answer to the problem materialises spontaneously into consciousness. And the answer comes primarily not from rational analysis but from intuitive insight. One has an answer where before there was confusion and that answer is:
fresh
surprising
uniquely appropriate and helpful
and complete with an action step
WHAT HAPPENS INSIDE THE HUMAN BODY WHEN A FOCUSING INSIGHT OCCURS?
Current research shows that several physiological events take place inside the body and brain of the person who is experiencing a Focusing insight. The left and right hemispheres of the brain produce unique and congruent brainwave patterns as the resolution arises. There is a shift in several physiological indicators including: heartbeat, blood pressure, "immune system response" and muscular tension. This is followed by a flood of physically felt relief that is chemically transmitted as a sense of profound wellbeing permeates the body. It seems that Focusing opens up the physiological and psychological problem-solving mechanism inherent in the human body. And whether the problem is physical or emotional, it seems that Focusing is the process that helps provide the answer. It is the core of the body's problem-solving mechanism. Some would maintain that Focusing is the inherent 'problem-solving process' - the process that decodes the intuitive, bodily felt feelings in the human body and makes them accessible to the human mind.
THE FOCUSING INSIGHT - NATURE'S ANSWER TO MANKIND'S PROBLEMS
But why should there be an internal mechanism that helps solve the complex problems of mankind? The answer to this is that nature designed it that way. It does not want any organism to get stuck in the mud - this does not serve evolution, which is always striving to help every organism reach its full potential. One can see this helpful mechanism at work on many levels - from nature working to help simple one-cell organisms evolve, to a way of knowing, like Focusing, which helps highly complex human beings overcome their problems. Many commentators believe that Focusing and other tools for inner exploring - like 'client centred' work and Gestalt - are actually spiritual pathways to understanding the divine elements within us. Many 'enlightened' religious people are now studying such disciplines and using them to find their own way to the source of their being. Even Carl Rogers, who spent his whole life keeping the word 'God' out of his research and teaching, was forced to admit at the end of his life that the process of inner healing seemed to involve something profoundly spiritual and transcendent.
SCIENCE AND THE 'GOD' WORD
In our efforts to be scientific we sometimes react violently against the old belief systems and consequently throw the baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps the reason many people find Focusing so spiritual is the fact that it echoes the ancient ideas of a personal genius or guiding spirit. It also echoes the Christian idea of a guardian angel or messenger, otherwise known as conscience. Is it possible to suppose that Focusing is part of the process by which our guiding spirit talks to us? The parallels between the intuitive Focusing voice and the traditional and spiritual voice of our conscience are remarkable. In both cases a quiet inner voice whispers solutions to us directly, bypassing reason. Both seem to be separate from our ego, to stand outside desires and emotions and observe our actions dispassionately. And most importantly, both seem to offer solutions not from the head, with its old and often outworn ideas, but from somewhere much freer. Somewhere that is not preoccupied with self-aggrandisement or score settling. Somewhere where wisdom and sanity reign. It may well be that Gendlin has helped identify the inner voice of conscience as it resides in the human psyche. We can certainly conclude that he has discovered a tool that helps us profoundly in dealing with emotional and creative problems of every sort. There is little doubt that learning Focusing (and its sister, empathetic listening) will add greatly to your life.
4 USING THE BODY'S SECOND BRAIN
Extensive research shows that Focusing is like plugging into a second brain - the body's brain. This helps you to:
find intuitive answers to your emotional problems directly and efficiently, revealing why you are often stuck for years with the same old gripes and weaknesses
listen effectively to the stressful feelings that so often assail our bodies, leaving them prone to every kind of stress-related illness, from heart disease to cancer
solve creative problems, from writing business reports to penning novels
understand why we suffer from certain emotional problems, such as low self-esteem, anxiety attacks and anger outbursts
FOCUSING - RESEARCHED AND CLINICALLY PROVEN
As Focusing came out of the scientific study of therapy, it is uniquely well placed to solve our personal problems. Professor Gendlin was keen from the outset to see if it could be taught to ordinary people who did not have an understanding of the esoteric language of therapy. He found that Focusing could be taught and learnt by virtually anyone. As a result, people now have a researched and clinically proven tool or process with which to tackle life's problems. Focusing has been the subject of thirty years of research and experimental work, both at the University of Chicago and at university behavioural science departments worldwide. Now Gendlin's Focusing work and research are used in therapy all over the world and their influence is increasing.
CURRENT FOCUSING RESEARCH
The research is growing apace and evolving into different areas, from successful clinical trials showing how Focusing ameliorates pain in chronic migraine sufferers, to dozens of studies showing how Focusing helps different forms of therapy work more effectively by allowing the client to feel the body's intelligence.
FOCUSING AS 'SELF-THERAPY'
In this respect Gendlin has made a profound contribution to the area of safe self-therapy. Therapy has always been kept in the hands of the 'Men in White' - the assorted collection of psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists and doctors who have traditionally tended to the mentally and emotionally ill. But there has always been a problem with this.
DISEMPOWERING
For one thing, this attitude is disempowering, presuming as it does that an expert is able to solve our problems when we cannot. As both Jung and Rogers pointed out, it is well-nigh impossible for one human being fully to understand the predicament of another, let alone prescribe specific behavioural help. Often the very sickness itself is found in our willingness to hand over our personal responsibility to others, be they therapists or counsellors, just as smokers hand over responsibility for their health to doctors, hoping they will remedy an illness that is one hundred per cent avoidable.
WHAT HAPPENS IN THERAPY?
Research at the University of Chicago shows that a lot of therapy simply does not work. In fact it was the poor performance of therapy that prompted Gendlin to initiate his research in the first place. A key reason for therapy going wrong was that clients stayed in their heads and tried to solve their problems cognitively and rationally rather than referring to the way in which their bodies held the problems. Gendlin's research also showed what went right in the therapeutic process. What characterised successful clients was their ability to address problems in their bodies and allow the visceral feeling of the problems to open up and offer solutions.
WHY FOCUSING WORKS
It seems that feeling the problem as it is held in the body allows a solution to arise spontaneously from the unconscious. This solution works far better than any worked out in the head or prescribed by a so-called 'expert'. Some people who know Focusing believe it is the process by which we communicate with the divine, now analysed by behavioural science for the first time. While I was studying Focusing with Professor Gendlin in Chicago, I had the opportunity to ask him about this particular point and I found his response illuminating. He felt it did not matter what words you used to describe things - the truth was that the Focusing process worked. Many replicated studies have shown over the years that Focusing is not a New Age fad or the next Californian psychobabble fashion - it is science.
I would invite you to read the research that has been done on Focusing, starting with Professor Gendlin's own impressive work and his book, Focusing. But perhaps the most important thing about Focusing is that it is your own unique process by which you get to the bottom of your own truth. You do not need a guru or a leader, just someone who knows the process and can explain it to you - as in this book. Then you can take the Focusing process away and start to work with it yourself, sharing it with a loved one or friend. You will be getting valuable insights from yourself - to yourself. Now we can go on and begin to learn more about this inner process that Carl Rogers called 'an invaluable tool'.
5 CARL ROGERS AND EMPATHETHIC LISTENING
Traditionally we have accessed the guiding awareness within by consulting special members of the tribe or community who are held to be in touch with this spirit. Originally it was the shaman or priest; now it is more likely to be the psychotherapist, psychiatrist, counsellor or healer. We also use prayer and dreams to elicit this guidance when we are faced with a major problem or dilemma in life. Then we have direct experience of the guiding spirit, in such forms as conscience, intuition and inspiration (which means 'breathing in the spirit').
BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE - THE PATH TO SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT
Today in many ways behavioural science is doing the job that religion and philosophy once did. It is actually studying 'what makes people tick' and examining that profoundly mysterious place - the seat of the emotions or the soul.
Carl Jung was one of the first philosopher-psychologists to pursue this path openly. He was quite clear that modern man was lost and desperately looking for his soul. Jung believed that until he found it, mankind was in grave danger of self-annihilation. Carl Rogers and Eugene Gendlin came from a different culture and indeed a different era, even though their lifetimes overlapped with Jung's. Jung spoke in the traditional, richly cultural voice of Europe, while Rogers and Gendlin spoke through the newer, fresher voice of America. Essentially, though, they were all seeking to understand what made man tick and why he behaved in the way he did. In the end, Rogers and Gendlin built on the foundations laid by Jung as they got closer to uncovering the truth.
LISTENING FOR THE ANSWER WITHIN
Carl Rogers is one of the great unsung heroes of the twentieth century. I say 'unsung', because he is still largely unknown to the general population, even though he changed the way therapy is conducted. Anyone who undergoes therapy nowadays, of whatever kind, will be reaping some of the benefits of Rogers's work. Rogers was one of the first people to bring proper research procedures to the realm of human behaviour. He was one of the first 'modern' behavioural scientists, and he strove all his life to justify his work by exposing it to the rigours of scientific analysis (though nowadays there are those who would question the validity of some of his scientific methods).
WHAT CARL ROGERS DISCOVERED
Carl Rogers discovered that if you allowed a human being to be truly heard, without judging him or weighing him down with advice, he would begin to discover the cause of his problem - and the solution - for himself! It may not sound so now, but in the 1950s, when Rogers was making these discoveries, this opinion was considered revolutionary. Before Rogers, therapy consisted largely of analysis and prescriptive advice. Patients were analysed by doctors or psychiatrists and told (a) what was wrong with them, and (b) what they should do. It was assumed that only an 'expert' knew the answer, and in many cases drugs, in the form of pills, were considered the remedy. Rogers turned all that on its head. He maintained that all human beings knew the solutions to their own unique problems. He also maintained that the very idea of an 'expert' in a white coat, telling people what to do, was misguided and disempowering in itself. He believed that only the clients themselves could know the full extent of their problem, because only they had experienced all the pain and the damage it had caused. He had an optimistic view of human nature, believing that man was intrinsically able to find the answers to his own problems. It only required that the therapist listen to the client with total empathy, putting aside any personal judgement or advice, for the client to come slowly to his own resolution of the problem. But this approach got Rogers into trouble with all sorts of people, from fundamentalist Christians and the established churches to other therapeutic schools - all of whom viewed human nature differently, believing man to be flawed and weak and in need of firm guidance and strict, even totalitarian, control.
'EMPATHETIC LISTENING' - THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL THERAPY
Rogers's research showed that successful therapy came through empathetic listening. Empathetic listening is where you listen not only to the meaning of the words that a person is speaking, but also to how it must feel for the person to say those words. To listen empathetically is to get inside the skin of another human being. To do this you must:
put aside your own judgement of the person being heard and how he or she is coping with the situation
put aside your own opinion as to what the person should do in the situation
listen totally to what the person is saying
repeat back the key things the person says, using his or her own words wherever possible
ADVICE IS NOT ALWAYS HELPFUL!
In order for the therapeutic process to take place, Rogers discovered that it was vital that the therapist refrain from telling his client what he or she should do. This only disempowered the person even more, making him or her come to rely on the therapist for direction and perhaps reinforcing the cycle of dependent behaviour that had disabled the client in the first place. When people were heard in this empathetic way, Rogers observed that several remarkable things started to happen. Clients could begin to get a clear picture of the true state they were in - the full extent of the mess! Previous to that it had been hidden behind a wall of effort, while they desperately tried to follow the advice of friends, family or therapists, often to such an extent that they lost sight of the true problem. It would be like trying to concentrate on doing an exam while all your friends, family and teachers were gathered around your desk shouting advice. You would not do a good paper!
But if you were left on your own, in total peace and quiet, and given time, then slowly you could begin to examine the problems in front of you and come up with your own analysis out of which solutions might arise.
EXPERIENCING LIFE FOR OURSELVES
I cannot live your life for you, neither can you live mine. But we are very quick to suggest to people how they should live their lives. Look at your own experience. Have you noticed how easy it is to sort out the problems of a friend or relative? ‘You should tell the boss to get lost!’ or ‘If I were you I would get out of that relationship today!’
It is so easy to sit with friends and sort out all their problems for them; and then to sit in judgement when they do not follow your well-intentioned advice, and say, ‘I told you so.’ But have you noticed that when you yourself get advice over a personal problem of your own and your friend tells you to leave your job/wife/boyfriend/son/work/old friend/grumpy relative ... it is suddenly not so easy to follow the advice and drop the relationship? Why is that?
EASY SOLUTIONS - DIFFICULT PROBLEMS
The reason is simple. It is easy to solve other people's problems because we only ever get the most superficial idea of what the problem is really like. It may seem obvious that your best friend's wife is cruel and uncaring and that he should get out of the marriage, take the two kids with him and set up on his own. But you have no real idea of all the complex, unconscious forces that are at work in the mind and soul of your friend; or what it is like to suffer his own particular 'lows' (low self-esteem, for example). Nor are you talking into account the nature of the complex and often contradictory state that many of us call 'love'. You do not wake up in his bed and get into his clothes each morning and lead his life. Neither can you really know what is going on deep in his heart and in his emotions for the woman that he has shared his life with and who has given birth to his children. You cannot know fully all that he is feeling for another very good reason - he himself may not know fully why he cannot leave this apparently abusive relationship!
“UNCONSCIOUS” FEELINGS
Most of our deep emotional character stays hidden in our unconscious - as does most of the childhood conditioning that formed us. We remain a mystery even to ourselves, unless we are intra-personally intelligent (having the ability to understand our own emotions) or lucky enough to meet friends who will really listen to us empathetically. Or we might come across good psychotherapy or a self-awareness technique like Focusing. So it is hardly surprising that “advice” - however well intentioned - does not usually help. And worse: bad things can come from it. Strongly worded advice may get in the way of people finally getting to the root of their own problems and finding their own solutions.
In the end Rogers discovered that only the individual human psyche is capable of understanding the full complexity of its own intricate problem. Only it is wise enough to come up with the solution. It can be helped, and empathetic listening seems to help greatly.
WHAT HAPPENS DURING EMPATHETIC LISTENING?
Several things happen during empathetic listening. The person gets distance from the overwhelming problem. He or she starts off by being overwhelmed by the problem and may feel that there is no hope of a solution. This is very debilitating and potentially dangerous. Think back to your own experience of being overwhelmed by a personal problem or feeling. Take a moment to remember exactly how it felt when you were overwhelmed by a sense of abandonment or hopelessness, when someone had died or left you. Take a few seconds to get a flavour of that feeling. You can jot down the key words that describe how you felt in the space below or on a separate piece of paper.
. . .
. . .
. . .
HOW I FELT WHEN I WAS OVERWHELMED BY DIFFICULT FEELINGS
Did it feel like any of the following?
I felt trapped like an animal.
Everything looked black.
Hope receded - there seemed no point in going on.
It felt like it would never get better.
Being overwhelmed can cause people to give up. It can also lead to a feeling of extreme isolation, and in that isolation the feelings seem to get worse. From feeling a little sad, you become sadness itself. And just as you thought the whole world was happy when you were in love, so now it feels as if the whole world is sad and a terrible place to be in. But this is just where empathetic listening comes into its own and helps.
‘IT’ AND ‘ME’ - GETTING DISTANCE FROM THE PROBLEM
When you are listened to empathetically, you start to talk about the problem, referring to it as ‘it’. For example, instead of feeling totally overwhelmed by grief, you say things like,
‘It's like I'm locked in a dark room - I can see no way to get out of it. It's a terrible feeling! And I don't seem to be able to do anything about it.’
This is actually the beginning of something very beneficial, because by referring to the problem as ‘it’, you are already putting distance between yourself and the problem. It is out there and you are over here talking about it. You are no longer all of the problem, there is a part of you that can see ‘it’ and talk about ‘it’.
All the research shows that getting distance from a previously overwhelming problem is a fundamental first step in finding a solution and getting well again. Empathetic listening scores very highly on this point. It allows people to explore their feelings from a safe distance. In this way they begin to form a picture in their minds of what the problem is. Repeating to them the things they have just said helps them get a picture of their true state, in the same way as looking in the mirror helps you see exactly how you look, so that you can adjust your tie or hair.
THE IMPORTANCE OF 'MIRRORING'
If you were going on an important date or to a crucial meeting, would you rely totally on what a friend said about your appearance or would you want to check for yourself in the mirror? It is the same with reflective empathetic listening (when you say back to the person what they have just said). This form of listening creates a mirror in which the person can see their exact feelings and the emotional clothes they are wearing. On hearing it repeated, they are able to see their own emotional landscape just as it is - and not as someone else sees it. Just check your own experience. It does not matter if a dozen friends say, ‘You look great!’ if you do not feel it yourself. Only you know what feels right on you, just as only you know what feels right inside.
SEEING YOUR REALITY IN THE MIRROR
All the research shows that confronting reality is the first step - the primary foundation for permanent and effective healing. (Reality is all important. When you know the stairs at home are rotten and about to fall down you can do something about it. Pretending they are safe will not make walking up them any less dangerous!)
Empathetic listening helps people discover the reality of how they are feeling. Once they have done that they can begin the exploration which will lead to action steps and resolution.
‘QUALITY OF ATTENTION’ - THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL THERAPY
Towards the end of his life, Carl Rogers was asked what he felt was the most important element in the healing process. He replied that his research showed that the key thing was the quality of attention the therapist gave to his client. This was more important than what the therapist said, or his qualifications, or the environment in which the therapy took place. Rogers had observed that clients could tell when a therapist was genuinely interested in them and their wellbeing. If the therapist could create an atmosphere where clients felt totally safe and accepted - no matter what they might say or do - then Rogers believed they would be able to get to the root of their problems and eventually find solutions. The requirements for the resolution of emotional problems include:
empathetic listening
reflective listening
unconditional acceptance
genuine attention
These are the things that Rogers encouraged in the therapists that he trained, and they form part of the wonderful legacy that he left, not only to the field of psychotherapy and counselling, but in the realm of human behaviour. All his work and his research led to a deeper understanding of the human condition.
BEING 'PERSON CENTRED' - HOW WE COULD LIVE OUR DAILY LIVES
Rogers was convinced that all human beings had locked deep within them the ability to reach their full potential. Empathetic listening and unconditional regard were the tools that would help unlock that potential. More profoundly, Rogers believed that this approach to human beings - where people were fully heard and their views respected - was how people should be treated in day-to-day life by their parents, families and society at large. This empathetic approach should not just be reserved for the therapy room and the client/therapist relationship (which sadly was often the case).
Rogers believed that in order for the world to attain peace, we had to begin by treating ourselves and each other in empathetic and unconditional ways that allowed individuals to be heard and understood. In this respect, Rogers was anti-totalitarian and against dogma and fundamentalism that crushed the individual under the weight of beliefs and ideas.
In the end he, like Carl Jung before him, believed that the redemption of the entire human race would come about by individuals dealing with the fractured or damaged parts of their own souls - ‘the shadow’ as Jung called it - and not through mass movements or crusades which only led to more fractures in the form of totalitarianism and nationalism. In this respect he shared Jung's fear that humanity would kill itself by not dealing first and foremost with the problems of individual conflict and pathology. While the Cold War threatened the world with the spectre of the mushroom cloud, Rogers dedicated his last years to spreading his gospel of listening.
ROGERS’S PLEA FOR WORLD PEACE
Rogers
spent his last years travelling the world sharing his ideas on
listening and conflict resolution with politicians and presidents on
both sides of the Iron Curtain. It was partly his influence that
helped to get people talking - and more importantly, listening - to
each other. Cold War detente owed not a little to the culture of
tolerance that Rogers encouraged in everyone he met. Rogers was a
latter-day peacemaker of almost Biblical proportions, and in many
people's eyes a sort of modern day saint. But he himself scrupulously
avoided religiosity of any sort. It could be said that this was in
reaction to his own strict religious upbringing. He rebelled against
it all his life and would deliberately eschew any mention of
spirituality or God in his work or in the process of inner healing.
That was until the very end of his life, when he almost grudgingly
accepted that something numinous and mysterious happened at the heart
of the healing process; something akin to the gift of grace, where a
mystical or transcendent force seemed to operate quietly to bring the
healing to a sort of perfect completion that was beyond human wisdom.
Here we again find reference to our guiding spirit or angel, the
transcendent and mysterious force that visits man when he is at a
loss or devastated; the force that seems to want to make the fracture
knit again and bind the emotional wounds. And whatever we call it -
be it our intuition or
Guardian angel, our conscience or the guiding spirit of our genius - really does not matter. What is important is allowing the 'force that binds' to work on the emotional wounds that need healing, in the same way that we encourage our body's own repair and immune system to knit broken bones and destroy viruses.
Later on we too will learn how to listen empathetically, as Carl Rogers taught it. By so doing, we will be touching that ‘guiding awareness’ inside, the part that helps us explore and find solutions to our most intimate problems.
6 EUGENE GENDLIN AND FOCUSING
If Carl Rogers discovered ways by which people could help one another, namely empathetic listening and unconditional regard, Eugene Gendlin (a former student and colleague of Rogers) went on to show how these methods really worked. Rogers showed that something therapeutic happened to a person's emotions when they were listened to empathetically; Gendlin showed how and why. He examined the internal mechanism for ‘getting well’, taking it apart and explaining how it functioned. He found that it was possible to get in touch with the psyche's problem-solving process by following certain steps. These steps enabled people immediately and directly to touch this source of knowing. He called this process Focusing.
HEAD THINKING VS GUT FEELING
Gendlin was able to identify how people could listen to their bodies in a certain way. He discovered that there were characteristic ways in which the body ‘felt’ or held a problem that were very different from the ways in which it was viewed or ‘thought about’ in the head; and he found that for true resolution to occur, it was necessary for the body to ‘feel’ the problem solved as well as ‘thinking’ it solved. For example, let's listen to an ‘everyday problem’ of a client starting a Focusing session:
I had a row with a partner and we both left the house on bad terms - both blaming the other. But deep down inside my gut was a feeling that I was really rude to her - hurtfully so. This feeling was very insistent and kept on making me feel bad even though I didn't want to recognise it. I felt I should pick up the phone and apologise, but another part of me was too tired and dug in its heels and refused. So I returned home that night determined to act as if I had done nothing wrong - which a small part of me genuinely believed was true! But as I turned my key in the door I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was indeed badly wrong, and as it turned out my partner was very hurt and resentful at my behaviour. We had another blazing row and she walked out. Later on I realised that I should have listened to that unsettling feeling in my body earlier and taken action. It's as if my body knew what my mind refused to accept. And however hard I tried to ignore it, it still kept warning me that something was wrong - that I really had to do something to save the day - but I didn't! And I regret that now. It's as if I failed to listen to my own ‘early warning system’.
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