Posts Tagged ‘focusing’

I have just returned from the UK to my house in rural Poland and it is traditionally time for me to moan about the lack of colour. But sometimes this blanket whiteness makes a space and a silence in which I can hear all kinds of things…

“The world is much more than can be formulated by our theories, but when we approach it with a particular theory it responds in a particular way. Our theories can draw out different aspects of the world.” This quote comes from The Focusing-Oriented Counselling Primer, which I have just finished reading.

“How do I know how if what I think and feel is right? Maybe everyone else is right? I think I know what I think and then someone comes and says something different and I automatically believe them! Why do I do that? Then I forget what I thought in the first place so I must have been wrong!” Sometimes all we need to do is relax, make a space inside and ask ourselves in a friendly way…

As the counselling room is a safe place for all those fears and emotions, including the not so pretty ones, to be, so eventually we learn that we ourselves are a safe place for them to be. We eventually, slowly, gain some experience in being separate from uncomfortable feelings, in being, in fact, bigger than they are.

It’s as if you live in an extremely cluttered room or in your own handbag. You can look at each object and work out where it comes from, who is associated with it, what it means to you and if it is of any use to you now — as in therapy. You can just throw it all away, but you are going to regret that! Or — you can make some kind of temporary space in there in which to work.