Knowing Focusing From the Inside

Some Reflections on Being Person-Centred and Focusing-Oriented

I am a Person-Centred and Focusing-Oriented Therapist, as well as a Focusing trainer. For me, these have never been two separate approaches between which I move. They belong together.

I did not originally come into this work through the psychology or psychotherapy world, and perhaps because of that I have sometimes found its divisions into schools, approaches and communities difficult to understand. Within the Person-Centred world, these have sometimes been described as different “tribes” (Sanders, 2004). Of course, distinctions matter. Different theories illuminate different aspects of human experiencing, and different practices have developed from them. But when distinctions harden into separations, something of the living whole can easily be lost.

For me, this is particularly striking in the relationship between Person-Centred Therapy and Focusing. I do not experience a moment when I stop being Person-Centred and become Focusing-Oriented.

The two are simply there together.

In my own experiencing of therapy, many strands continually come back together: listening, relationship, experiencing, symbolisation, interaction, presence and process.

Knowing From the Inside

There is a difference for me between knowing about Focusing and knowing Focusing from the inside.

We can read about felt senses, felt shifts, resonating, symbolisation and carrying forward. We can understand the concepts and become familiar with the language. But something different happens when we have repeatedly experienced the process ourselves.

We begin to recognise the difference between talking about something and speaking from experiencing. We know what it is like when words are close but do not quite fit, and what happens when a word, image or gesture suddenly does. We know the peculiar quality of something being present but not yet clear. We know what it is like to wait without forcing, and to discover that something comes which could not have been reached simply by thinking harder.

And perhaps, most importantly for the therapeutic relationship, we learn to trust the process — not our process for the client, but the client’s process.

Gendlin wrote:

“The essence of working with another person is to be present as a living being.”(Gendlin, 1990, p. 205)

For me, knowing Focusing from the inside changes the quality of that presence. I do not need to make something happen. I do not need to know where the client should go next. I can wait, remain alongside, and trust that experiencing has its own movement.

The Steps as Touchstones

The distinction between focusing as an experiencing process and Focusing as something that can be taught is important to me.

The familiar steps can be enormously helpful when someone is learning. They give us ways of recognising aspects of the process and language through which we can begin to find our way.

But the steps are not the process itself.

The steps are touchstones.

They help us recognise something that may be happening within experiencing. They do not tell experiencing where it has to go. The distinction is between recognising a movement and requiring it.

This matters particularly in training. Many of the people I teach Focusing are not therapists and have no intention of becoming therapists. They are learning Focusing as a life skill: a way of being more closely in relationship with their own experiencing. Focusing can be deeply therapeutic without being psychotherapy.

There is another dimension when teaching those who are becoming Focusing-Oriented Therapists. Here, theoretical understanding matters, but it cannot stand apart from experiential knowing. If we are to recognise the subtle movements of experiencing in another person, we need some familiarity with those movements in ourselves.

Focusing-Oriented Therapy trainees will, of course, experience Focusing themselves as part of their training. But knowing Focusing from the inside is not something completed by having received a certain number of sessions. Our relationship with our own experiencing continues. However much we have experienced Focusing, there is always more to discover.

In therapy, that knowledge can remain quietly within me. I do not need to think, Which step comes next? The more useful question is, What is happening now?

My knowledge of Focusing needs to help me listen more closely, not know more quickly.

When the Implicit Finds Its Way Into the World

What is implicit is not simply something already completely formed inside us, waiting to be discovered and given the correct name.

Experiencing carries more. Something is there, but it is not yet fully known.

When we stay with what is sensed, something may begin to form. A word may come, an image, a memory, a gesture, a change in the body, or something for which there is still no name. We can sense whether what comes fits what is there.

The language comes alongside or after experiencing. It does not determine what experiencing should become.

This matters enormously in therapy. If I move too quickly towards explanation, interpretation or even an apparently accurate reflection, I may inadvertently take the person away from something that has not yet had the opportunity to form.

The implicit finds its way towards the explicit and, through symbolisation, finds its way out into the world.

Experiencing carries forward into living.

Trusting the Client’s Process

Perhaps the most important thing my own experience of Focusing has taught me as a therapist is to trust the client’s process.

Something unclear does not need to be made clear immediately. A pause does not need to be filled. I do not have to know where the process is going in order to accompany it.

In an interview with Germain Lietaer, Gendlin said:

“That cannot be done by a therapist doing something to a patient. That has to come in the person.”(Gendlin & Lietaer, 1983, pp. 79–80).

Knowing Focusing does not make me the expert on another person’s experiencing. If anything, it has taught me the opposite. I can know the process sufficiently well to know that I cannot know its next step for another person.

Trusting the client’s process does not mean becoming passive. It means remaining deeply present and responsive to what is happening without assuming that every movement requires an intervention from me.

Not Blocking What Is Already Happening

For me, not blocking what is already happening also asks something of me as a therapist. As a Focusing-Oriented Therapist, I need to remain in contact with my own felt experiencing of the interaction — with the sense of the space and situation between us.

The danger is that, even with good intentions, I can move away from my own felt experiencing of the interaction and into thinking: What should I say? What does this mean? What should I do next? That shift itself can take me away from what is happening between us.

An interpretation may be psychologically convincing and arrive at precisely the wrong moment. A reflection may accurately capture what has already been said while taking the client away from something less clear that is only beginning to form. A question may be a very good question — asked a moment too soon. We can fill a silence in which something was forming, or rush to clarify something that needs, for a while, to remain unclear.

This does not mean that thoughts, words or possible responses do not arise in me. They do. But I can sense them against what is happening between us rather than immediately acting upon them. Something may feel right to offer, tentatively, into the relationship. If it resonates with the client and carries something forward, we can stay with where it leads. If it does not, I can let it go and remain with the client’s process.

Gendlin’s wonderfully simple words come to mind:

“if permitted and not stopped”(Gendlin, 1981, p. 18).

Perhaps much of what I understand as Focusing-Oriented Therapy is contained in those few words. In Focusing, we are not trying to make something happen, but learning not to block what is already happening. Sometimes a reflection carries something forward. Sometimes an experiential response does. Sometimes an invitation may help. And sometimes what is needed is simply for me to remain there while something not yet known is given the time to form.

Interaction Without Intrusion

The therapeutic relationship is an interaction, and I am part of that interaction. What happens in me is part of the space between us, just as my presence, my silence, my words and my timing are part of it.

The idea of interaction is important to me here because it moves us beyond the notion that Focusing is simply something happening privately “inside” the client. We are there together.

Gendlin reminds us:

“The interaction continues in silence.”(Gendlin, 1990, p. 213).

Silence is not an absence of relationship. It is not non-interaction. The therapist is still present; something is still happening between us.

I can participate without constantly acting upon the client’s process. For me, this is interaction without intrusion. I do not become less present. I become present in a way that leaves room for the client’s experiencing to lead.

Presence Holding the Space

This is what I mean by presence holding the space. It is not a technique, nor is it simply doing nothing. It is being sufficiently alongside another human being that something not yet known can be allowed to form in its own time.

Knowing Focusing may actually allow me to interfere less because I do not need to make something happen. I can recognise the movement of experiencing, trust it and accompany it.

Gendlin writes of staying with something:

“until the next thing comes, from it.”(Gendlin, 1990, p. 210).

Sometimes what carries the process forward is not something I say or do. It is the quality of the space being held. I can hold that space while experiencing is allowed to continue.

When the Client Notices Something Different

In my own therapeutic practice, unless a client has come specifically seeking Focusing-Oriented Therapy, more often than not I do not introduce Focusing as a method. I may not use the word Focusing at all. I certainly do not announce that I am now working in some sort of “Focusing mode.”

I am simply there as the therapist I have become — grounded in a Person-Centred way of being, knowing Focusing from the inside, and informed by Focusing-Oriented Therapy and other understandings that have become part of my practice over the years. I do not experience these as separate modalities that I move between. They have become part of who I am as a therapist.

Yet clients often recognise that something feels different within the therapeutic relationship. There may be more space, less pressure to arrive somewhere, and permission for what is unclear to remain unclear. Silence can feel different.

They may discover that something bodily sensed can be attended to before it has words. They may notice what happens when they stay alongside something rather than immediately trying to analyse or solve it. And often they become curious.

It may be only then that I mention Focusing. I might offer an invitation. We might clear a space, find some distance from something that feels too close, or simply spend some time alongside what is there.

But the invitation arises from the client’s experiencing. It does not arise because I have decided that it is time to “teach Focusing.”

The relationship and the process come first. The language can come later.

Finding Enough Space to Stay With Experiencing

At times, remaining with experiencing may become difficult when what is there feels overwhelming. Here I have found some of the understanding offered by Polyvagal Theory useful (Porges, 2011), together with simple embodied invitations that can help a person find sufficient safety and space to remain present.

For me, these do not replace Focusing or become another method to apply. They simply support the person’s capacity to find enough distance without losing contact with experiencing, so that what is there can be given the time it needs to unfold.

There is a space between being overwhelmed by what is there and moving so far away that we lose contact with experiencing. Finding that space can allow the person to say, in their own way: I can notice what is happening. I can find enough space. I can stay. I do not have to force anything. I can give it time.

Eventually It Begins to Happen by Itself

Something else has fascinated me over the years, both personally and in my work with clients. When people first encounter Focusing, they may consciously make time for it. A client may say, Can you help me clear a space? They may deliberately turn their attention inward or take time to stay with a felt sense. Later they may begin to Focus alone.

And gradually something changes. The process does not always need to be called up anymore. It begins to happen by itself.

Something happens and there is naturally a pause. Something is noticed. There is a little space around it and attention stays with it. Something forms — perhaps a word, image, memory, gesture or something for which there is not yet a name. It fits, or it does not. Something shifts. Living moves forward.

The person may no longer think, Now I am Focusing. It has become part of how they are with themselves.

Gendlin wrote in The Politics of Giving Therapy Away:

“Having once experienced that, people can recognize when they are changing.”(Gendlin, 1984, p. 300).

That is very important to me. The person begins to recognise their own process. Authority begins to reside increasingly with them.

Experiencing was always there, but our capacity to attend to it may, I believe, become obscured over time. We learn through education, culture and the expectations around us to look for answers, to explain, to know, sometimes before we have had time to sense what is actually there.

For me, Focusing offers a way of returning our attention to something that has not disappeared. As we learn again to pause, attend and stay with what is bodily sensed but not yet fully known, that capacity can become more available to us.

A person may have learned not to trust bodily knowing. They may have learned to move quickly away from uncertainty, to explain before experiencing has had time to form, or to look outside themselves for someone else to tell them what their experience means.

At first, another person may help us hold the space in which we can find our experiencing. Eventually, we become increasingly able to hold that space for ourselves.

When Our Part Is Done

This is ultimately what being Person-Centred and Focusing-Oriented means to me. At first, as therapists, we may hold the space and trust the client’s process before they may yet be able to trust it themselves.

We do not tell them where it should go or make it happen. We accompany, listen and wait, allowing what arises within the interaction to unfold without assuming that we need to direct it.

Gradually the client begins to recognise their own process. They discover that they can hold some space around what is difficult, find sufficient distance without losing contact with experiencing, and remain alongside something that does not yet have words. They can recognise when something fits and when it does not. They can trust that the next step does not have to be known before it comes.

Eventually, Focusing may cease to be something they consciously “do.” It becomes part of how they are with themselves and how they meet the world.

This does not mean that every client needs to become a Focuser. But my own experiencing has left me believing that, to be a Focusing-Oriented Therapist, we need to know Focusing from the inside. Not primarily so that we can teach it or direct it, but so that we can recognise it, trust the client’s process, hold the space for experiencing, interact without intruding and, perhaps most importantly, not block what is already happening.

For me, this does not sit apart from being Person-Centred. It is part of the same way of being with another human being.

The difficulty is not that we make distinctions. We need distinctions in order to think, recognise and communicate. The difficulty comes when necessary distinctions become separations, and separations become identities and territories that we feel compelled to defend.

For me, the same caution applies to our theories and formulations of experiencing. We need the explicit. We need words, concepts and ways of communicating what we have discovered. But the explicit must not become more important than the experiencing from which it arose.

This is why the question of “tribes” has stayed with me for so long. Person-Centred Therapy and Focusing-Oriented Therapy can be distinguished. They can be written about separately, taught separately and examined theoretically from different perspectives. Yet in my experiencing of being with another person, they do not separate so easily.

The distinctions remain useful. The separations do not.

The implicit can find its way towards the explicit and, through symbolisation, find its way out into the world.

And when another human being can recognise, trust and accompany their own experiencing — when they can increasingly hold that space for themselves and allow the process to carry forward without needing us to call it up for them — perhaps our part, in the most meaningful sense, is done.

I find myself returning to Gendlin’s words:

“only some kind of unintrusive contact or company.”(Gendlin, 1990, p. 216).

For me, that says much of what I have been trying to say here.

References

Gendlin, E. T. (1981). The whole process is more natural than the divided pieces. The Focusing Folio, 1(3), 18–23.

Gendlin, E. T., & Lietaer, G. (1983). On client-centered and experiential psychotherapy: An interview with Gene Gendlin. In W.-R. Minsel & W. Herff (Eds.), Research on psychotherapeutic approaches (pp. 77–104). Verlag Peter Lang.

Gendlin, E. T. (1984). The politics of giving therapy away: Listening and focusing. In D. Larson (Ed.), Teaching psychological skills: Models for giving psychology away (pp. 287–305). Brooks/Cole.

Gendlin, E. T. (1990). The small steps of the therapy process: How they come and how to help them come. In G. Lietaer, J. Rombauts, & R. Van Balen (Eds.), Client-centered and experiential psychotherapy in the nineties (pp. 205–224). Leuven University Press.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton.

Sanders, P. (Ed.). (2004). The tribes of the person-centred nation: An introduction to the schools of therapy related to the person-centred approach. PCCS Books.