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By Kathy McGuire, January 13, 2008 11:31 am

With Ruth Hirsch, Creative Edge Associate, Inner Relationship Teacher,  and Certified Focusing Professional and Certifying Coordinator: 

FROM THE BODY COMES OUR NEXT MOVES

A quote from Eugene Gendlin, creator of Focusing:

“The body is not just a pipeline for incoming sensory data.
It’s not a safe deposit box where you put something in
and expect to get the same thing out. There’s something more.  The body can imply something new-a right next step. It’s more like you put a worm into a cocoon and get a butterfly back.”

And another from former UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold:
 

“The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you,
the better you will hear what is happening outside of you.”

After participating in Levels 1-4, a person can enter supervision to become a Certified Focusing Professional (Focusing Trainer or Focusing-Oriented Therapist)

 Level 1: Focusing Basics: Self Guiding, and Empathic Listening

This is a great opportunity to learn the basics of Focusing: How to Focus alone & with a partner, as well as how to facilitate focusing for another focuser-  And to reap the benefits of enhanced relationships with yourself and others, stress reduction, ease of decision making, and much more!  All this from the comfort and safety of your own home or office. 

Contact Ruth ruth@ruthhirsch.com  for dates and time.

Level 2: Advanced Listening & Beginning Guiding /Facilitation
The goals of this course are to enhance the Focuser’s competence in self-guiding, and to learn advanced listening techniques, and a few guiding techniques that can deepen the Focuser’s ability to stay with present awareness. The essence of the course is learning to be an increasingly facilitative companion to the Focusing process for yourself and for others. Prerequisite: Level One with a Certified Focusing Professional.

Contact Ruth ruth@ruthhirsch.com  for dates and times.

Level 3:  Advanced Guiding: Basics
Beginning to learn how to facilitate a Focusing session for someone new to Focusing.
Supportive suggestions for each stage of the Focusing process will be taught.

Level 4: Advanced Guiding & Troubleshooting
In Level 3 you’ve learned the basics of facilitating (guiding,) a Focusing session for someone new to Focusing.In Level 4, you’ll learn a variety of compassionate, clear approaches to handling various possible challenges and obstacles that may arise in the Focusing process.

Some of the topics to be addressed will include working with the Inner Critic, working with action blocks and addictions; how to assist a Focuser who feels “nothing”- or “too much,” or has one part attacking or victimizing another; and what to do when deriving “meaning” seems to be illusive.

Contact Ruth  ruth@ruthhirsch.com for dates and times.

Level 5: Seminar/Practicum in working with first-time Focusers
This course is an experiential workshop in introducing someone new to Focusing to this wonderful process. we will discuss and role-play how to introduce Focusing, and then each participant will have the opportunity to introduce Focusing and to guide the new Focuser in an introductory session. After the new Focuser is debriefed and leaves, there will be an opportunity to receive constructive feedback from fellow participants in the course and from the instructor.

Contact Ruth ruth@ruthhirsch.com for dates and times.

About the Trainer: Ruth Hirsch is a Certified Focusing trainer, bodyworker, and consultant based in Jerusalem, Israel. For the past 18 years she has maintained a private practice in which she works with people individually, and in groups. She is in her 13th year of teaching Focusing. In her individual work, she specializes in balancing and bringing peace, comfort, and insight to body, mind, heart and spirit.  In her teaching, she delights in sharing Focusing with others as an individual life-enhancing practice, and as an adjunct to enhance the work of other healing professions.

General Info: Courses are limited to a maximum of 6 participants each. The trainings are largely experiential, and are taught in a clear, compassionate, enjoyable manner. Registration fees include the course, unlimited questions between sessions (to be answered via email or at the next class session), and a manual specific to each level.  (Space permitting, those who have already taken the course and would like to review the level may do so for half price.) The course will be taught via a Conference line to a US number which will be provided before the class.

VERY IMPORTANT: To register, or for any questions, comments, or to just say hello, ruth@ruthhirsch.com  .

Ruth Hirsch  MSW, MPH, CMT
Focusing Trainer  & Certifying Coordinator

http://www.ruthhirsch.com

http://www.innerrelationship.com/teachers/hirsch.html

We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don’t make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner peace.
  Dalai Lama

Posted for Ruth Hirsch by

Dr. Kathy McGuire

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

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By Kathy McGuire, January 12, 2008 5:18 pm

THE FOCUSING ATTITUDE: CREATING A CARING FEELING PRESENCE INSIDE AND AS A FOCUSED LISTENER
 
For the next four weeks, we will work on perhaps the most essential aspect for successful Intuitive Focusing, creating a positive attitude, inside of yourself, for whatever might arise during a Focusing turn.This is The Focusing Attitude.

Free Downloads:

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

“Ajas” Instantaneos Mini-Manual

Empathy, Congruence, and Unconditional Positive Regard

Caring Feeling Presence is also the essential attitude which you convey to a Focuser when you are being a Focused Listener:
“I am here for you, without judgment. I am happy to receive anything that comes up inside of you, without criticism. I will set aside my own reactions, judgments, own experiences and be here as a Caring Feeling Presence simply to listen to and to give back to you your own experiencing.” It is a necessary component of the “empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard” which Carl Rogers defined as the crux ingredients for the healing relationship.
 
Leaning in with Tenderness: A Caring Feeling Presence
 
Once I was having a prolonged argument with another Focusing Trainer at a workshop I was teaching. I kept emphasizing, going with the tears and anger, letting them be experienced. He said it was sufficient to work his feelings through in his imagination, that he did not have to say them out loud, that he did not need to feel them.  Then, in a Focusing turn, the Listener used his name: “So, H, you are saying—” “So, H, what mattered was”  My friend reported to me that just hearing his name created an intimacy that allowed him to feel his tears, and the deeper meanings in his experience, and how valuable that was to him—
 
Another time, I was the Focuser, being Listened to accurately but—well, it felt distant, too objective—I didn’t feel “safe” becoming vulnerable in front of that distance. I asked the Listener to “lean in toward me more—be tender toward me—” When she did this, I was able to feel compassion for myself, and to touch into the place of tears, the deeper meanings for me, the part of me that needed to be comforted in order to grow forward.
 
The Real “First Step” of Focusing: Self-Empathy, Self-Love
 
Pete Campbell and Ed McMahon, creators of the Biospiritual Focusing approach, always started their workshops by teaching The Focusing Attitude, which they called “A Caring Feeling Presence.” They did not think anyone should begin to try out Focusing Instructions without first learning how to be kind and gentle with everything that arises inside.
 
And they knew that Focusers had to have this experience in a bodily-felt way, not just as an intellectual idea. Learning to take this Focusing Attitude toward oneself is a life-long learning for anyone wanting to “make peace” with all the different “parts” or “aspects” of themself.
 
Please try out their introductory exercise for finding a “felt sense,” an “intuitive feel” for this kind of inner caring. It involves learning how it feels, in your body, when you are trying to show complete love and safety to someone. Then, turning that same loving attention, that Caring Feeling Presence, toward your own inner experiences:
 
A CARING FEELING PRESENCE INSIDE
 
“Take a moment to find a comfortable sitting position—
Loosen any clothing that is too tight—
And begin to come quietly inside by closing your eyes and starting to just notice your breathing—
Just noticing your breathing—going in—and out—in—and out—Let any sighs or deeper breathing arise naturally—
(one minute)
Now, notice your body, how it feels in the chair —
Massage any spots that feel sore—
Massage your head—
Wrinkle up your face and stretch your jaw—and relax!!!!!
Make a few circles with your shoulders, bringing them up to your ears, around toward the back, and dropping them down—and repeating four or five times—
(one minute)
And now bring your attention inside, to the place where you find a “felt sense” or an “intuitive feel” when you are using Focusing, often in the center of your body, around the chest/heart area—-
(one minute)
And now, imagine that you work in a hospital—
An infant has been left on the hospital steps—
Let yourself feel the impact of this situation in your body—
It is your job to pick up that infant and to convey to it, through your body, your way of holding it, that it is safe, that it is perfectly and truly wanted in this world. Imagine picking up that infant—
Now, imagine what you would do in your body to convey to that infant that it is prefectly safe, that it is truly wanted in this world—
(one minute)
Notice what you do in your body to convey this loving attention, without words—
(one minute)
Now, imagine turning that same kind of Caring Feeling Presence toward your own inner places, whatever they may be—
(one minute)
Bring to your mind times in your life went you felt loved and valued in this way. Look for particular places or people or animals or situations where you felt completely safe, completely wanted, basking in the warmth of loving attention—
(one to three minutes)
Choose one of these images/places/people/situations that could stand as such a strong symbol of this kind of safety that you could use the memory of it as an anchor or talisman to bring you to that sense of Caring Feeling Presence to your own inside experiences. We’ll call that your Inner Nurturer—
(one to three minutes)
Now, look through your life and store of memories and images and see if you can find an image of a part of yourself that is now or was at some point very much in need of that kind of Caring Feeling Presence. It could be an Inner Child, yourself at a certain age or time of life. But it could be another kind of image: like “a wounded animal” or “a butterfly with a crumpled wing” or “a gangrenous leg—I just want to cut it off” or a particular physical tension (headache, tight jaw, stomach knot) that you often suffer from. We’ll call that your Inner Woundedness—
(one to three minutes)
Now, imagine taking your Inner Nurturer and turning that Caring Feeling Presence toward your Inner Woundedness—
(one to three minutes)
Just spend some time seeing if you can touch your Inner Woundedness with that Inner Nurturing—
(one to three minutes)
And come back into the room when you are ready.
 
Things That Get In The Way of This Inner Attitude
 
This exercise is just a first step. You might have found that Inner Critical Voices arose while you tried this exercise (“This is silly!” “I don’t have any weaknesses!” “It’s too late. The past is the past,” etc. In the next weeks, we will continue working with establishing a Caring Feeling Presence inside, and the things that can get in the way of that. Turning toward oneself, and others, with love and self-love, is a life-long learning! But we are starting today.

Sign up for RSS feed to receive a continuation of this lesson over several weeks.

Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening  at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (”Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire in the Store.

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Comments (1)

By Kathy McGuire, January 10, 2008 4:46 pm

EVERYONE PARTICIPATES IN  MEETINGS!
LET’S MAKE THEM PRODUCTIVE AND PLEASANT
 
If you are in a business or academic setting, you may have decision making meetings many times a week, even several times a day. They may be in a twosome, a small group or team, or a larger group.
 
There are meetings of religious community committees and non-profit organizations we belong to. And, we have decision making meetings with our significant others, our partners, children, or whole family every day!
 
Below you will find a link to the simple “How To’s For Groups” which arose from my dissertation research, Listening and Interruptions in Task-Oriented Groups, University of Chicago, 1977, with Eugene Gendlin, creator of Focusing (Focusing, Bantam, 1981, 1984, 2007) as advisor.

You will also be able to download articles explaining the theory and practice around incorporating Focused Listening and Intuitive Focusing into task-oriented meetings. 

Main point: creativity and innovation happen when people are allowed enough of a “pause” to check in with their whole intuitive knowledge about an issue or situation. Intuitive Focusing, with Focused Listening, allows space for articulating completely new ideas, not simply recycle old, polarized arguments.

Free Downloads:

For a complete explanation of the theory behind access to The Creative Edge and innovative decision making, you can download Dr. McGuire’s comprehensive article,
“Collaborative Edge Decision Making Method, ”  As a bonus, the Appendix of this article includes Handouts you can use at actual meetings, one for each role in Shared Leadership.
 
The PRISMS/S Problem Solving Method,  with its Core Skills of Intuitive Focusing and Focusing Listening, and the seven methods from The Creative Edge Pyramid  for incorporating PRISMS/S at every level of organization, can be explored in the Core Concepts area at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, and the many Free and Purchased resources found there. Articles en espanol

Read  the simple How To’s for Collaborative Thinking  at Creative Edge Focusing’s website.

Download Dr. McGuire’s article “Collaborative Edge Decision Making”   en espanol

Metodo de Toma de Decisiones del Borde de Colaboracion

Read theory connecting Pauses for Intuitive Focusing with Quality of Decisions in an excerpt from Dr. McGuire’s research, “Listening and Interruptions In Task-Oriented Groups”

Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Creative Edge Organizations at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (”Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire in the Store.

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Comments (1)

By Kathy McGuire, January 8, 2008 3:28 pm

Mientras que el Ajá Instantáneo # 4 Cinco-Minutos de Dolor se dirige  específicamente a qué hacer si un paciente, amigo o compañero de trabajo comienza a llorar, el resumen de abajo muestra cómo el usar Focusing Intuitivo para “permanecer con” el “sentir intuitivo” de un síntoma físico puede permitir que ese síntoma se abra a un Ajá de significado más profundo, con un brillo de lágrimas en los ojos como una señal del cuerpo de que es un lugar seguro para detenerse e ir más profundamente dentro del “sentir de toda la cosa”.El resumen muestra una pequeña porción de la sesión de Pareja de Focusing.  La Focalizadora es una persona experimentada en el uso de Focusing Intuitivo.  Al principio, cuando la Focalizadora habla acerca de levantarse con lo que parece ser el inicio de una migraña y los asuntos relacionados con ella, la Escuchadora se da cuenta de una leve presencia de lágrimas.

Ella sugiere que la Focalizadora se detenga y “sienta adentro” en el lugar de las lágrimas.   Hacia el final de la sesión, la Focalizadora se ha movilizado desde un profundo sollozo acerca de la carga pesada de la depresión que ella ha tenido “por tanto tiempo” y el experimentar la animación de un “cambio sentido”, “sentirse más liviana”, “¡querer bailar!”  La Focalizadora señala que la migraña ha cedido.

La sesión se inicia con la Focalizadora y la Escuchadora sentadas frente a frente.  La F., debido a su experiencia previa con el proceso de Focusing Experiencial, escogió mantener los ojos cerrados durante la sesión, prestando atención a su experiencia interna.  La Escuchadora, la Dra. McGuire, comienza:

Escuchadora: “Siéntate cómoda, cerrando los ojos para ir adentro, para estar sintonizada con lo que sea que haya allí  Díme si necesitas alguna ayuda o cuando estés lista para comenzar a hablar”

Focalizadora: (Pausa de 10′) “Esta mañana cuando me desperté tenía un dolor en la parte izquierda de la cabeza y pensé: “Oh, es la migraña que viene”… así que estaba tratando de sentir acerca de lo que se trataba, humm, como que mi cuerpo está lleno de toxinas, como si quisiera sacudirme de esas toxinas”.

Escuchadora: “Así que cuando te levantaste, notaste que tenías el comienzo de un dolor de cabeza en la parte izquierda de tu cabeza,  y permaneciste  un momento con ello, tratando de sentirlo. El sentimiento fue el de toxinas en tu cuerpo, y querías simplemente sacudirlas, quitártelas.”

Focalizadora (Pausa de 30 segundos)  “Y noté que mi garganta se cerró esta mañana y eso es algo sobre lo que he estado trabajando – lo hemos estado trabajando juntas – algo emocional, profundo allí, en mi garganta, algo así como “atorado”.

(La Focalizadora está dando el primer paso de Focusing Experiencial “aclarando un espacio”, notando y nombrando los diversos asuntos que ella lleva para poder escoger uno en el cual trabajar).

Escuchadora: “Sí, así que te das cuenta de eso también, tu garganta, atascándose,  eso es algo que hemos trabajado antes, está conectado con cosas emocionales profundas, hasta parece que pude ver un viso de lágrimas mientras lo describías, tal vez solamente estar con eso, permanecer con ese “atascado”…

(La Escuchadora se da cuenta del inicio de lágrimas y da una Instrucción de Focusing Experiencial, sugiriendo el detenerse y prestar atención a la “sensación sentida”)

Focalizadora: (lágrimas visibles bajo los cerrados párpados, enrojecimiento de la cara, voz se torna más ronca)

“Lo que me molesta de ello es que trato de aclarar mi garganta y no se aclara.  Sigo intentándolo y me impide hablar de la manera en que me gusta hacerlo y esto molesta a las personas, creo.

Escuchadora: “Humm”

Focalizadora: “De alguna manera me impide al tratar de proyectar mi voz”

Escuchadora: “Humm”

Focalizadora: “Trato de quitarlo y se mantiene allí, es hum…”

Escuchadora: “Humm – así que lo que te molesta es que intentas aclarar tu garganta y esto no sucede, también piensas que esto es difícil para las otras personas.  Deseas proyectar tu voz y que esta salga.  Esto es difícil para las otras personas también,  en realidad, no puedes hablar”.

Focalizadora: “Eso realmente impide la comunicación”.

Download “Ajas Instantaneos”. Other Spanish Translations at Creative Edge Focusing website. Translations by Agnes Rodriguez of Costa Rica, offering Listening/Focusing Training by phone in English or Spanish .

Ud. puede leer el resumen completo con el comentario, y ver por Ud. mismo el “cambio sentido” en Medical Change Events Through Experiential Focusing.

You can read the entire excerpt, with commentary, and see the “felt shift” for yourself in Medical Change Events Through Experiential Focusing. You can view the entire 12-minute session in the DVD Listening/Focusing Demonstrations, also part of The Self-Help Package. Download “Being Touched and Being Moved: The Spiritual Value of Tears for many examples of how tears and Focusing interrelate.
Download “Finding The Meaning In Tears” for exercises for using Focusing to find the meaning in your tears. Both articles are packed with real-life examples of how tears “touch us” and “move us” in positive ways.

Spend some fun time taking some of the Personality Tests and discovering your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (”Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dra. Kathy McGuire

Focusing de Borde Creativo ^TM

http://www.cefocusing.com

Comments (2)

By Kathy McGuire, January 4, 2008 6:40 pm

Listening To Your Child: Developing An Inner Guide, Not Only Outer Authority

Authoritarian child rearing was effective in producing the assembly-line workers needed by an industrializing society. Times have changed. Now businesses want to hire flexible, creative, self-directing team players.

Families have also changed. Large farming families needed military-style discipline to keep everyone in line. In today’s one or two-child families, parents can give attention to the unique personality of each child.

As we struggle for equality between men and women in relationships, we also look for ways in which children can be treated as persons with dignity and rights.

In the 1950s, psychologist Carl Rogers took a stand against the authoritarianism inherent in psychoanalytic and behavioral theories of psychotherapy and created “client-centered” psychotherapy. The therapist did not impose values or goals upon the client but acted only to facilitate the unfolding of each person’s unique way of being in the world. Rogers later called his movement the “person-centered” approach, and it spread to education, childrearing, and peer self-help.

Rogers created “empathic listening.” The therapist tried to hear the client as if standing in the client’s shoes. He or she would then try to reflect back the client’s own words such that the client could hear him or herself more clearly. The client continued clarifying and articulating his or her own vision until the words and images exactly fit inner experiencing. Just this — finding exactly the right words or images for unclear body sensings or intuitions — allowed the client to move forward, to become more clear about values, goals, and action steps.

Empathic listening became the basis of many self- help techniques, including the “active listening” of Thomas Gordon’s Parent Effectiveness Training, and Faber & Mazlish’s How To Talk So Kids Will Listen, How To Listen So Kids Will Talk.

Eugene Gendlin, a student of Rogers, discovered a further essential thing about human beings: they could only change, through therapy or through life experiences, if they were able to check with and refer to their present bodily “feel” of living in situations. He called this self- checking “Focusing” and developed self-help and therapeutic techniques for teaching people this self-healing capacity (Focusing, Bantam, 1981).

“Child-centered” or “positive” parenting applies Listening and Focusing skills to raising children such that they do not lose the capacity for self-checking — for articulating and being guided by their own unique vision and for taking responsibility for their own behavior. A three-prong approach is necessary: listening to your child, listening to your partner, and listening to your own Inner Child. Read more about Inner/Outer Parenting

See our Interest Area: Positive Parenting

Download Dr. McGuire’s article, “Don’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Failure, and Juvenile Delinquency” .

Spend some fun time taking some of the Personality Tests and discovering your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (”Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Comments (0)

By Kathy McGuire, January 3, 2008 1:15 pm

Raising Flexible, Resilient, Self-Confident Children

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, Sigmund Freud confirmed everyone’s worst fears: Yes, human beings were voracious bundles of desires, ready to devour the world.
 
Society had to instill a strong superego, a conscience to hold the id’s desires in check. The job fell to authoritarian parents. The children produced obediently took their places on the assembly lines of industrializing nations.
 However, later theorists like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow insisted that human beings also have inborn tendencies toward altruism and cooperation. Rather than subduing a monster with authoritarian rules, parents could see themselves as “gardeners,” providing the right conditions for the unfolding ofeach child’s inborn potential.
           
Expectations also have changed in the work world. Today’s workers are asked more often to be part of idea- generating teams and to work cooperatively than to be assembly line workers. They must be creative and flexible enough to retool their skills formany job changes in a career. Obedient rule-following no longer insures survival.

However, some worried that the more “permissive” childrearing espoused by theorists like Dr. Spock led to a generation which could not conform to any limits. However, it is the total lack of limits that produces out-of-control children. Children like freedom-within-limits. They need boundaries to feel loved and cared for. And they need to make choices in order to build self-confidence.

You Must Set limits…

Parents need to strike a balance between setting limits and allowing choices. Authoritarian parents who must prove that they are boss and do not allow their children choices stifle creativity. But overly permissive parents who do not set limits produce children unable to cooperate with other people and to respect boundaries and follow rules.

I’ve seen children afraid to choose a toy for fear of being yelled at for doing the wrong thing. I’ve also seen children running in the streets, not wearing bicycle helmets when riding their bikes, and playing with firecrackers because parents were unable to set limits and stick to them. Setting limits is a way of caring as much as giving a child some power over decision making.

If you want your child to grow up able to negotiate and cooperate, you’ve got to teach those behaviors now: “I do lots of things for you. If you won’t do what I need, then I won’t feel as good about helping you when you want something.”
Here’s a list of simple limits I enforced with my child from toddlerhood: (Read more at Creative Edge Focusing’s website)

See our Interest Area: Positive Parenting

Download Dr. McGuire’s article, “Don’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Failure, and Juvenile Delinquency” .

Spend some fun time taking some of the Personality Tests and discovering your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (”Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Comments (4)

By Kathy McGuire, December 31, 2007 3:57 pm

Narcissism = Lack of Self-Esteem

We all know the story of Narcissus, the youth so taken with his own reflection that he could not tear himself away from it and so starved beside the pool. 
We know a lot of narcissistic people. They talk and talk about themselves, unable to listen to another. Or they are so busy beautifying their own body or house or car that they have little attention for anyone else. Or they dress up their child as an image of what they themselves wish they had become. They exhaust us with their selfishness.

We think of narcissists as being “full of themselves,” but actually they are empty shells, desperately trying to fill a void inside. The psychological term is “narcissistically wounded.” At the time in childhood when they were supposed to be the center of attention, much admired, they did not get “filled up” with reflected images of their wonderfulness. Throughout their lives, they then seek this affirmation from outside, having no positive self-image inside.

Youngsters need lots of praise and encouragement to develop a good image of themselves. Contrary to popular thought, it is too little positive attention in childhood, not too much, which leaves behind the emptiness of the narcissistic wound. 
Forming Your Child’s “Self-Image”
Especially from birth to 3, and actually extending through age 6 or 7, children are incapable of seeing something fromthe point of view of another. Simple experiments show that if you ask such children to draw a picture as it would be seen by someone standing at another viewpoint, they are unable to do so. They are “ego-centered.”
Actually, it’s not accurate to say a child is self-centered at the earliest ages. The infant is not aware of being a self at all. Self and other are all mixed up in one soup. “Mother’s milk is my milk; mother’s anxiety is my anxiety.”

A separate self arises only as children are mirrored back to themselves by the surrounding environment.  Mother does not come when called, and the infant begins to see her as a separate person. The crawler bumps into an immovable object and learns, “Oh, this is not me.” But much of our mirroring comes from the words of our parents: “Oh, you’re such a good walker. I see you’re really trying! …What a good idea! …You’re so nice to share. ..What a helpful boy. ..I’m so glad you’re here. .. You’re such a sweetie. ..I love you how you keep trying.”

 I remember my child toddling into view, filled with pride in some small accomplishment, and I would simply say, much to his delight, “I see you!”

Filling Your Child’s Self-Esteem To The Brim

What you put into a child is exactly what you get back. Reflect to your child. “Oh, you’re so cooperative. ..You’re being so gentle with kitty …What a good plan. .. You’re really thinking!” and you get a cooperative, gentle child, confident in his or her ability to think and plan. Reflect to your child, “You’re so stupid…How could you do that?…You’re ugly. ..Who would want you? …What a dumb thing to do,” and you’ll get a child who feels stupid and ugly,  with no confidence, sure to fail and behave inappropriately.

The child filled to the brim with admiration in the early years has self-esteem over- flowing and therefore is able to give to others. Self-confident, he or she can share the limelight. The child who was not admired spends a lifetime seeking attention, good or bad.

The Reflection Must Be Accurate

Reflective feedback needs to relate specifically to the behavior of your child. Be on the lookout for positive behavior and congratulate it. The reflection needs to be an accurate mirror, evidence that you see your child’s uniqueness. Saying “You look like a model” to an ordinary child or “You’re a great athlete” to one better at math than sports will never fool the child, who will realize, “You don’t see me. You only see what you want to see,” the parent’s own narcissistic reflection.

Trying to make your child a mirror of yourself creates the narcissistic wound. You are trying to fill the child up with your own image, not his or her own. Trying to make your child a great ballerina or a great football player to fulfill your own dream, when the child’s talents and interests lie in a different direction, is an attempt to use your child as a reflection of yourself and leaves your child empty inside.

Healing Your Own Wounded Inner Child

What gets in the way of giving reflective attention to your children? Your own wounded child inside who says jealously, “I never got any attention. Why should she or he? Pay attention to me! Me!”

Almost all of us have a narcissistically wounded child inside. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Our parents or grandparents grew up in large families, pools of farm la- borers, extensions of their parents. It’s only as families have gotten smaller that parents
have had time to give attention to each unique child. None of us is filled up. We don’t have to berate ourselves for being needy. But we can take steps to nurture ourselves so that we can turn our mirroring attention toward our children and break the cycle of narcissism.

Here are some steps you can take to “fill up” yourself:

1. Spend time each day doing something that lets you feel competent and good about yourself. Spend time nurturing yourself. Work toward having a minimum of four hours a day separate from your child, time to give attention to yourself and to have your competence reflected by friends or co-workers. Use extended family, start a baby-sitting
   cooperative, use the various relief nurseries, get a part-time job, and use preschool or day care. Even folding laundry or going grocery shopping by yourself can feel like luxurious time alone.
2. Couples arrange time to be together without your children, mirroring yourselves to each other.
3. Read books about the inner child (John Bradshaw’s Homecoming and Margaret Paul’s Healing Your Aloneness are a good start) and do some of the exercises for nurturing your own inner child. Go to an inner child workshop. Learn to play.
4. Join a support group (Adult Children of Alcoholics, Birth To Three, a divorce or single parenting support group,  etc.) where you can share your feelings and ideas with adults who can mirror you.
5. Get yourself reflected by other adults who can really see and appreciate you so that you can turn your parenting attention to reflecting the positive behavior of your child. It’s never too late. I’m over 40 and would be delighted to have my parents say “I see you!”
6. Visit Interest Area: Positive Parenting at Creative Edge Focusing ™ , www.cefocusing.com to join our e-discussion/ support group and find other projects.
7. Purchase The Self-Help Package at www.cefocusing.com so you can create your own Listening/Focusing Partnerships and Support groups.

Read more about Positive Parenting

Download Dr. McGuire’s article, “Don’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Failure, and Juvenile Delinquency” .

Spend some fun time taking some of the Personality Tests and discovering your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (”Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Comments (1)

By Kathy McGuire, December 30, 2007 4:52 pm

For background, read previous blogs on Creative Edge Education, especially for ADHD, or visit Interest Area: Education at Creative Edge Focusing (TM)’s website.

Here are ten suggested first steps for bringing a Creative Edge Focusing approach into school systems:

1. If you are not a teacher or school administrator, brainstorm with any you know about Creative Edge Focusing as “human literacy” and how to interact effectively with school systems to propose a Creative Edge Focusing curriculum
2. Collaborate with others at Creative Edge Focusing™ to create a Creative Edge Focusing™ curriculum for each level of education, from pre-school through graduate school.
3. Offer a power point presentation on Creative Edge Focusing™, with PRISMS/S and The Creative Edge Pyramid of skills and methods to a Parent Teacher Organization meeting. Interface the core skills with Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence work.
4. Offer to follow up with a ten-week Focusing Group/Team training with interested staff and parents ( or separate groups for parents and school personnel, if this is more comfortable for those concerned), to learn the core Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening skills  and Interpersonal Focusing and Collaborative Decision Making skills and to problem solve on how to bring Creative Edge Focusing™ into their school or school system. Make a plan and help carry it out.
5. Offer a similar presentation at higher levels in the school system hierarchy, for instance, district-wide teacher inservice days, Education Collaboratives funded to offer training to teachers, education conferences, teacher training programs in Universities, followed up with a Focusing Group ten-week training.
6. Offer Focusing Groups as a burn-out prevention method for teachers and as a first step in their learning Listening/Focusing skills to turn around and teach to students.
7. Offer to start a peer counseling training program at a school or school system, training selected students in Listening, Focusing, Interpersonal Focusing and Collaborative Decision Making who can then serve as peer counselors to other students and to mediate interpersonal conflicts and facilitate group decision making when needed (as in a Student Court, for instance). Peer counseling is an established practice in some schools that can be built on. Google it and network with others using this approach in schools, try to get a grant….
8. Find ten foundations which sponsor innovations in education (such as George Lucas’ foundation and Gardner’s Project Zero. Approach each with a proposal for integrating “human literacy” training through Creative Edge Focusing™ into some chosen schools (e.g., Head Start, Career Academies, Waldorf, or other innovative kinds of schools)
9. Approach Business Schools with an “emotional intelligence/human literacy” Creative Edge Focusing™ curriculum of PRISMS/S and The Creative Edge Pyramid. This would  prepare business students for Focused Listening to clients, Intuitive Focusing for creative problem solving, Interpersonal Focusing for conflict resolution, and Collaborative Edge Decision Making for productive team/group meetings.
10. Find ten foundations which sponsor education-based interventions in impoverished areas, such as the Peace Corps and Vista. Propose that they incorporate “human literacy” through Creative Edge Focusing™ into their programs.

Just ideas! As a psychologist/consultant and parent of two children with special learning needs, I have lots of experience interacting with school systems, but I’m not a teacher or administrator. I would like to see ideas from inside of these systems for integrating “human literacy” into curriculum. Please join our e-discussion/support group for continued collaboration on Creative Edge Focusing and Education. 

Download Dr. McGuire’s article, “Don’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Failure, and Juvenile Delinquency” .

Spend some fun time taking some of the Personality Tests and discovering your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (”Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Comments (3)

By Kathy McGuire, December 29, 2007 2:58 pm

Creative Edge Education pays special attention to the needs of students with ADHD and other non-traditional learning styles. It  joins with Juvenile Justice in prevention of school dropout and juvenile delinquency.

The Creative Edge/ Differing Gifts model  can apply to all education, but the education of those children labeled as  having “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or “Attention Deficit Disorder” and other learning differences  is an urgent area needing response.

  “Attention Deficit Disorder” simply defines children in terms of their “deficit” in the ability to participate in and benefit from traditional, passive, obedience-based education. These children receive a positive definition for their “unique abilities” in the Myers-Briggs and Keirsey definitions of differing temperaments and learning styles. The child with an SP, hands-on learning style, called The Artisan by Keirsey, can excel in an active, independence-based, hands-on learning environment, steered toward careers which maximize the use of these special skills.

In a traditional classroom, where obedience and passive learning are the watch word, the Guardian children (who make up one-third of the typical classroom) have an advantage, while the Artisan children (which, according to Keirsey, make up another one-third of every classroom!):

1. Are doing the “wrong thing” all day long, given their inability to “sit still, listen, and obey.” Their behavior is just the opposite, a need to learn by moving, and by their own hands-on, trial and error, not by passive listening. The medications like Ritalin help them to “sit still,” to conform to the traditional model.
2. Are being punished all day long for doing the “wrong thing,” ending up in time-out, in the hall, in detention. Their self-esteem and trust in themselves to make good judgments are destroyed, encouraging them to identify themselves as “losers,” “bad kids.”
3. Are pushed out of school and into school dropout, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, drugs, and other high-risk behavior.
4. Become our lower-tier of “working class poor” or jobless people.

Needed instead: Hands-on and other learning approaches which respect their different learning style and lead to careers which they can thrive in.

Of course, legislation at the national or state level specify academic content which must be learned by every student, as an attempt at holding educators responsible for delivering an equal product to all learners. This seeming conflict with a Creative Edge model, which aims at maximizing the unique, creativity-motivated learning of each child and producing creative, innovative, self-motivated and collaborative adults, must be given attention in finding compromises which work to the advantage of each child.

Join the Creative Edge Collaborators yahoo group  for further brainstorming with interested others, find “one small step” people are willing to do, create action plans for carrying out our mission, and use our power as a concerned “group” to approach legislators, foundations, whoever has the power to bring listening/focusing into education.

The goal? Having training in PRISM/S and The Creative Edge Pyramid as a cost- and time-efficient part of curriculum for teaching “emotional” and “social” intelligence as basic to “human literacy.”

Download Dr. McGuire’s article, “Don’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Failure, and Juvenile Delinquency” .

Spend some fun time taking some of the Personality Tests and discovering your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

Download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (“Ajas” Instantaneos en espanol) for ten exercises bringing Listening and Focusing into your everyday life starting today.

Download our complete Intuitive Focusing Instructions to start practicing Relaxation, Getting a Felt Sense, and Intuitive Focusing today!

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Comments (5)

By Kathy McGuire, December 23, 2007 10:53 pm

In business settings, there is great appreciation for the fact that teams need a balance of people with different skills, interests, and talents. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is one personality test widely used in organizations to help co-workers come to appreciate the “differing gifts” each brings to the table and to avoid conflict by respecting these differences. The MBTI helps businesses to hire personnel, organize teams, and increase conflict-free collaboration.

The MBTI is also widely used in education, to identify students’ differing gifts and to offer guidance in terms of career choices utilizing various gifts. The MBTI, has proved highly valid in predicting future career choices and guiding students into careers which are a good fit for their particular skills, talents, and interests (Myers, Gifts Differing, 1980).

Kiersey’s Please Understand Me, Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, and Mel Levines’ All Kinds Of Minds all offer additional perspectives for appreciating the “differing gifts” of each child. See Personality Tests for thorough descriptions and sample tests from these models.

The Career Academy model for high school education, sponsored by the federal Department of Labor in the USA, allows students to become exposed to a variety of possible career choices through hands-on, real-life activities. It also helps students to specialize in an area of interest leading directly into actual jobs or next-step accreditation programs, such as community colleges and technical schools, as well as colleges and universities.

Read Dr. McGuire’s article, “Don’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Failure, and Juvenile Delinquency” .

Spend some fun time with holiday company, taking some of the Personality Tests and comparing your “differing gifts,” your Temperaments, your varying Multiple Intelligences, your Shadow Side in the Enneagram.

–Learn more about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening and Experiential Focusing Therapy at Creative Edge Focusing’s website, filled with free downloads on creativity, spirituality, collaborative thinking, parenting, innovation in business, and many other aspects of application of Focusing and Listening skills at home, at work, in your community, and globally.

See actual demonstrations of Listening/Focusing in our Self-Help package, a manual in English or Spanish, four CDs of Focusing Instructions, and a DVD with four demonstrations of actual listening/focusing sessions — everything you need to start your own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Support Group or to incorporate these basic self-help skills into existing support groups.

In the side bar at Creative Edge Focusing, subscribe to our free e-newsletter for weekly reminders to practice Relaxation and Focusing exercises and join our free yahoo group, Creative Edge Practice, for ongoing demonstrations, practice, and support.

Find classes/workshops/phone coaching in our Listings section or Coaching/Classes/Consulting with Dr. McGuire

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way