So what helped me move through the challenges of abandonment, fear and feeling unsafe?
My counselor has been helping me work on a focusing therapy that helps me sense the problem in my body and work with it from that direction. It is similar to a guided meditation but with a specific goal in mind which helps me identify what the feeling is, where it is in my body, what it looks like and the emotion that goes with it. This process is kind of hard for me to explain and to put into proper words, although I wish I could because after using it I was able to make some real change in how I felt and move myself from a place of vulnerability to a place that feels safe.
Below I have posted some information on focusing that I found on the internet. I did my best to edit it to help get the point across, without it being to clinical or boring or dry. I would say if it is something you wanted to try for yourself than do some research on the internet or ask your counselor if they might be willing to help you learn this.
1. I believe the next right step in my life will occur when I turn to myself, when I pay attention to my inner experiencing. I do not believe that you know better than I what that next step will be.
2. Who is "I"? "I" is nothing else but "I". "I" cannot be defined by anything else. Beyond the "I" there is no going back. Nevertheless there is more than "I". But this "more" is only accessible by or through the "I". Notice, that the "I" is not the same as the "ego". The "ego" is an object, the "I" is the subject. The "I" is blank. The "I" is free. The "I" is always there - even if it is sometimes or for a long time withdrawn, hidden or lost. It is neither sick nor healthy. It is always intact, inviolable.
3. What does "myself" signify? "Myself" is what I am presently experiencing, everything I perceive within myself at the moment. What I perceive are contents. It is good and it does me good to perceive everything, whatever that may be. However, all that is not what I am, all that is what I "have". By becoming aware that I have these contents, I feel that the "I" is free. As long as I do not become aware of what is there, I believe all that is what I am. The "I" then is identified with contents and thus becomes an "ego". The "ego" is not able to be aware, is not able to face the "adopted" content. Because of the lack of relationship, of interaction between "ego" and content, the content cannot change. The content remains rigid. The manner of experiencing gets structure bound. Therefore this identification may give rise to many of those states we describe as "ill". This identification confines us, oppresses us, obstructs us, takes our breath away as well as our space.
4. "To turn towards oneself" means to open towards the inner world, to be silent and attentive. To listen, to look, to feel inwardly. To listen with friendly ears, to look with soft eyes, to feel with free breath. Inner attention. "To pay attention" means: to be aware without valuing, without explaining, without describing. To become aware without words.
5. Turning towards myself in this way immediately gives rise to a bodily feeling of increased freedom and, in the same time, of increased security. A whole mood of greater lightness comes up, even if the words that usually describe the contents which are in awareness sound unpleasant: loneliness, helplessness, tension, irritation, pain, etc. An inner, bodily felt space is created within in which the "I" is able to walk around, to choose, to look, to feel or to separate from something, to drop it, to pass it.
6. If the "I" is turning towards a content and directing its attention towards the implicit part of this content, towards the felt sense, the "I" will sense something. This something is obviously already there (it is felt) but it is not complete, not finished yet. It is felt but not known, it is felt but not communicable, it is felt but it does not become an action yet. It is waiting for a carrying forward, it is demanding a next step. This step will change the something itself.
7. This step forward will come "by itself", I don't have to figure it out. Therefore the step comes as a surprise. It comes because the body, the whole organism "knows" what it needs, "knows" what would be right, "knows" what the next step should be. Why does the body "know" all these things? Our body is a living process that has always interacted and is always interacting with its environment, in fact it has never actually existed without its environment. And thus it "knows" about its environment. Our body is an ongoing living process that grows by itself, that takes steps by interactive processes. It is neither a chaotic bundle of drives that one has to impose an order on, nor it is a white sheet on which environment first has to write its story, nor it is an empty box that is only filled by education, by the gathering of knowledge. Because we understand the organism, the body, the creature, the human being as a process that is environmental from the very beginning and that takes its own steps from this interaction with its environment.
8. All this means: the body implies its next step. This order of carrying forward makes us understand exactly the inner logic of changing processes. The order of carrying forward defines, governs the changing processes, the therapeutic process.
9. What is this order of carrying forward? This term says that the way the body discovers the next step that will carry forward the present process of experiencing has a certain order. The next step is not a logical result of what is already there, nevertheless this carrying forward does have a certain order. It is an order which is not yet finished. This order demands a carrying forward. The body (nature, felt sense, ...) is ready for the next step. But it is not easy to find one. Most of the questions or concepts do not lead to an experiential, felt step, do not carry forward the process (body, nature, ...). In Focusing Therapy we are looking for those concepts (questions, words, actions, ...) that bring this experiential step forward. Concepts (questions, actions, ...) leading to a bodily felt step forward give us the inwardly felt evidence that only these concepts, questions, concepts are right and "true". What was there before the step is changed by the step. Therefore every step changes the whole body - and the whole changed body, the changed felt sense is again ready for a next new step. Thus a changing process occurs. Looking backwards this process seems to be logical. Afterwards we can read an order (a logical one, a dialectical one, ...) into this process. But this later imposed order is not the "natural" order, it is the order made by our construction. The natural order is an order of carrying forward. Each carrying forward step is a new one, not completely determined by what had happened before the step.
10. If in Focusing Therapy we use the word "body" we do not mean the body we can see from the outside, but the inwardly felt body. "Felt inwardly the body is directed towards the world and towards what has not happened yet, but may happen. ... The body is in the given situation and the situation also is in the body. Feelings are not inner objects, but the life of the body continuing in the environment"
11. The body is capable, but not obliged to proceed at any given moment. It may be that the next step won't come now. It is sometimes hard to find the right question, to find the right concept, to find the right symbol that carries forward the process. Insisting means delay, detours are only such in the light of specific intentions.
12. Experiencing is expressed last of all in words. It manifests itself in bodily sensations, in feelings, in inner images - and also in words. Speech is not the only means of expression. Expression occurs above all directly through the body: in stopping or changing the body (its breathing, its skin and muscles, its posture, its expressions and gestures). It can also occur in painting, in dancing, in playing.
13. Focusing therapy cannot be defined only by methods. We cannot and should not describe Focusing Therapy by listing specific techniques. In Focusing Therapy the client comes first - and after this we also are creating and using specific methods. Focusing therapy doesn't impose a method on another person.
Focusing Therapy can be a home coming, a coming home to oneself.
Okay, I'm sorry that this was kind of long and a bit boring, but I worked with the focusing method on my own for three days in a row and by the third day I felt as if it had really helped me. Of course all of you know that I am always willing to put myself under the microscope and try to figure stuff out.
What I can say is, whether it was the focusing, the blogging or just me dissecting it all, I am glad that some how I got myself and my emotions to move and change. It feels as if there is new light in what once a dark corner.
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