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By Kathy McGuire, February 4, 2008 1:07 pm

HEALING YOUR ALONENESS THROUGH INNER NURTURING

Caring Feeling Presence Inside

This four weeks, while practicing a Complete Focusing Session, we are learning about turning a Caring Feeling Presence, the Focusing Attitude of friendly, curious, non-judgmental, gentle attention to whatever arises inside. We practiced finding Inner Nurturers and Inner Woundedness (Week 1), Reestablishing Trust With Exiled, “Unpleasant” Inner Aspects (Week 2),  Dealing With Critical Voices and Conflicts (Week 3), and now, Healing Your Aloneness Through Inner Nurturing (Week 4).

Developing Strong Images-With-Felt-Senses of Your “Inner Nurturer” Self

As I said in Week 4 Healing Your Aloneness e-newsletter above, almost everyone can find their own Inner Nurturing Self, the part of them that knows how to reach out to someone else who is scared or in pain or hurting or ashamed or embarassed….all the things our Inner Woundedness might be experiencing. The trick to practice is recognizing and turning this Inner Nurturing Awareness, this Caring Feeling Presence, toward whatever we find inside.Try the Complete Focusing Session below again, with special attention to the actual bodily-feel, the felt sense, that goes with turning caring inner attention toward whatever comes inside, as you would in embracing that abandoned child of the hospital steps and communicating, “You are totally OK. You are wanted in this world. You are deserving of loving attention. I will help to make you safe.”

COMPLETE FOCUSING SESSION: “HOW AM I TODAY?”

In Intuitive Focusing, first, you relax and find a felt sense, an “intuitive feel” that is before words and more than words. Then, you go back and forth between open-ended questions (“Why is this hard for me?”, “What’s the meaning for me?”, “How is this related to that other decision?”) and the “intuitive feel,” looking for words or images that exactly capture “the feel of the whole thing,” until you find a sense of resolution, of knowing the meaning.

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 

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By Kathy McGuire, February 1, 2008 6:26 pm

“I Can’t Fix Myself! It’s too late! My parents should have done it! I don’t have an Inner Nurturer!”

For this four weeks, we are working 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.

In Week One, I talked about turning a Caring Feeling Presence toward your inner experiencing, finding an Inner Nurturer and an Inner Woundedness.

In Week Two, I talked about establishing an inner, trusting relationship between “parts” of the Self that had perhaps been at war for years and didn’t really like each other.

In Week Three, I talked about dealing with the Inner Abuser, Inner Critics, and Inner Conflicts.

Now, we take on a common “Inner Child Focusing” problem. As Focused Listener or Focusing-Oriented Therapist, I might say, when a Focuser is sobbing with shame, emptiness, being unlovable, having a hole inside of themselves, “Can you find a way that your Inner Nurturer can comfort, can put her arms around that unloved part and let her know she is okay, she is loveable?” 

And the Focuser might say, “I don’t have an Inner Nurturer!!!” or “I can’t fix that! It’s too late. It needed to happen when I was a child, come from my parents.” Or “I don’t have a lover or a spouse, someone who can hold me so I can feel better.”

Everyone Has An Inner Nurturer, and Healing Can Begin NOW

If this were true, then people really would be trapped. There would be no way they could heal their own aloneness, their own emptiness. However, this really isn’t true. Almost all of us (and those who really can’t need the help of an external Nurturing Therapist until they can incorporate this outer presence inside of themselves) can find a “part” of ourself that knows how to love someone else, knows how to be a friend, would know what to do if confronted by an actual sobbing child or wounded animal, for many of us, a part that is a wonderful counselor/therapist/guide for many other people!!!

And it is perfectly possible, once you find images for these nurturing parts of yourself and “sense into” the whole bodily-felt sense, the “intuitive feel” of how these parts of yourself offer Caring Feeling Presence to others, then you CAN turn this inner nurturing attention toward the wounded, empty, hurting parts of yourself and heal them NOW, hold them NOW, tell them NOW that they are perfectly loveable and acceptable and wanted and deserving.

And this is a most hopeful possibility, a way of healing your own inner aloneness, your own emptiness, your own “unworthiness” without a desperate and, usually unsuccesful, search for some “outer lover” to do this for you. Try The Caring Feeling Exercise Again With Special Attention To Believing That You Can Heal Your Own Inner Aloneness, To Finding Some Representation of Your Own Inner Nurturer

BOOKS AIDING HEALING YOUR INNER ALONENESS, INNER CHILD

 When using exercises from any of these books, be sure to take the extra step of “sitting with” the “felt sense,” the “intuitive feel” that comes with images, and using Focusing to go deeper in a non-linear way. Going from image to image, in a linear way, is not the same as letting the “intuitive feel” of an image arise, and using Focusing to find the something new, the something “more than words” that can come from the “felt sense”: Healing Your Aloneness: Finding Love and Wholeness Through Your Inner Child by Margaret Paul and Erika J. Chopich  Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child (Paperback)by John Bradshaw 
  
BioSpirituality: Focusing As a Way to Grow by Peter A. Campbell and Edwin M. McMahon

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 

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By Kathy McGuire, January 26, 2008 5:21 pm

Caring Feeling Presence Inside
 
This four weeks, while practicing a Complete Focusing Session, we are learning about turning a Caring Feeling Presence, the Focusing Attitude of friendly, curious, non-judgmental, gentle attention to whatever arises inside. We practiced finding Inner Nurturers and Inner Woundedness (Week 1), Reestablishing Trust With Exiled, “Unpleasant” Inner Aspects (Week 2), and Dealing With Critical Voices and Conflicts (Week 3).
 
Just Acknowledge Critical Voices, Say “I’ll be back later to spend time with you”
 
Today, when you practice the Complete Focusing Session #1: “How Am I Today?”, pay special attention to any Critical Voices which arise. In general, seeing a Critical Voice as an Inner Worrier or Inner Protector, you can simply notice it :” Okay, there is something saying ‘You’re no good at this; nothing is happening; Focusing is stupid” and, simply by noticing it, acknowledging it (saying “Hello,” Ann Weiser Cornell says), you can often just set it aside for the moment and go back to your steps of Focusing.
 
At a later point, you might go back to that Critical Voice as part of your Focusing process: “Okay, now I would like to spend some time with the part that says “This is ridiculous; you are failing like always,” etc., and ask yourself, “Okay, what is that all about?”, and wait for the “feel of that whole thing” to form, and continue with the Focusing Steps:looking for words, images, symbols that capture the “intuitive feel,” resonating and checking until you find symbols that are “just right” and experience a release, a small or large “felt shift” or “paradigm shift.”
 
Articulate “Conflicts” Into “Two Sides” and Spend Time With Each….(Read on here and find the Complete Focusing Instructions to practice )

Download Dr. McGuire’s article, Focusing Inner Child Work

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

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 

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By Kathy McGuire, January 25, 2008 6:42 pm

DIFFERENT FORMS OF INNER CRITICAL VOICES AND DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THEM
 
For this four weeks, we are working 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.In Week One, I talked about turning a Caring Feeling Presence toward your inner experiencing, finding an Inner Nurturer and an Inner Woundedness. In Week Two, I talked about establishing an inner, trusting relationship between “parts” of the Self that had perhaps been at war for years and didn’t really like each other.
 
Now, we take on Inner Critical Voices: recognizing them and dealing with them.  These, too, will each have an “intuitive feel” to them, a “felt sense” holding a lot more information, if you can take time to separate out the various aspects and “sit with” the “intuitive feel,” the “felt sense,” the “something more” about each of them.
 
The Inner Abusive Relationship: “I Hate Myself, I’m So Stupid, I’m So Worthless”
 
Actually, we are going to start with the most difficult Inner Critical Voice, and that is the one you don’t recognize and you don’t have a “felt sense” for. When you are having the most negative feelings about yourself, you are actually suffering as the Victim of an Inner Abuser…only, instead of hearing the Inner Abuser saying, “You are hateful! You are so stupid! You are so worthless!,” you are saying these words to yourself: “I am hateful, I am so stupid, I am so worthless.”
 
So, here the first step is just separating out these two things. You need to begin to hear the voice of the Inner Abuser saying”You are so…!” and, separately, experience the “felt sense” of your Inner Victim —  feeling afraid, beaten down, overpowered, overwhelmed. And, then, the Inner Victim, with the help of Inner and Outer Listeners/Nurturers/Anchors, needs to be able to stand up to the Inner Abuser and say, sometimes very strongly, “Shut up!”, “Go sit over there!” “I’m putting you behind this brick wall and locking the gate!” Or the Inner Nurturer can join with the Inner Victim and stand together, saying, “We are not going to let this go on!” or “I am not going to let you talk to her that way.”Read the rest of the Focusing approach to Inner Abusers and Inner Critics

Download Dr. McGuire’s article, Focusing Inner Child Work

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

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 

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By Kathy McGuire, January 19, 2008 1:57 pm

For a listing of Self-help manuals, CDs, and DVDs by a variety of Certified Focusing Professionals helping you learn Focusing, and a listing of links to Focusing Teachers worldwide offering classes and workshops, by phone and locally, including a Level One Introductory Focusing Teleclass beginning tomorrow, Sunday, Jan.20, please click the link here to Creative Edge e-newsletter archive, sent out yesterday.

 You’ll find all kinds of immediate help, as well as another chance to try out the Complete Focusing Session: “How Am I Today?”

Read Dr. McGuire’s article, “Focusing Inner Child Work”.

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 

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By Kathy McGuire, January 17, 2008 1:25 pm

THE FOCUSING ATTITUDE: CREATING A CARING FEELING PRESENCE INSIDE AND AS A FOCUSED LISTENER
 
For this four weeks, we are working 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.
 
Empathy, Congruence, and Unconditional Positive Regard
 
It 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.
 
Caring for “Unpleasant” Parts of Ourselves
 
In the first part of the Caring Feeling Presence exercise below, you are asked to imagine picking up an abandoned infant and conveying to it, through your body, that it is totally wanted and safe in the world. That is a “relatively” easy task!
 
But the parts or aspects or “images” of ourselves that most need our own Caring inner attention are often parts that we have most wanted or needed to ignore, push down, turn away from, often feeling that leaving these parts behind is really the only way to survive. So, now, to turn toward and embrace these very aspects of the Self? Very difficult, a life-long task.
 
Unpleasant Images for Abandoned Parts
 
Here are some images people have given for their wounded part:
 
“A gangraneous leg — I just want to cut it off.”
“The Golum — it has been underground so long that it is white and totally blind, cannot survive in the light.”
“That fat, little crying girl from childhood — Ughhhh!”
“Quicksand, waiting to suck me down!”
“A dark well of pain without bottom—”
 
Using Touchstones and Anchors to Establish a “Safe Distance”
 
Initially, you may need to establish some “safe distance” from it, some firm ground where you can “take a whiff” of it without getting sucked in, stick a toe in the water and quickly step back to the shore. The Inner Anchors in the second part of the exercise, be they pleasant places, remembered nurturers, fantasy warriors or guides, can serve this purpose as safe harbors, touchstones to return to when beginning to approach an old, sore, long-ignored, negatively judged inner aspect or felt sense.
 
Being Willing To Take Time To Establish Contact, Healing Relationship
 
And the feeling is mutual! Left alone, pushed out, uncared for for many years, the wounded part is not always immediately welcoming of your attention now:
 
“A dirty, little girl and she is screaming ‘Get away from me!’
“A porcupine — all quills, waiting to shoot them at me.”
“A wounded dog —biting my hand!”
 
Gene Gendlin, creator of Focusing (Bantam, 1981, 1984) used to say in these tenuous inner moments: “Can you just pitch a tent and settle down nearby, letting it know you will just hang out there, as long as it needs to feel comfortable with you?”
 
Try The Exercise Again With Special Attention To Negative Images, Inner Anchors, and Taking Time To Re-Establish Mutual Trust
 
Please try out again Pete and Ed’s introductory Biospiritual Focusing exercise for finding a “felt sense,” an “intuitive feel” for developing Caring Feeling Relationship inside. 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:

Find the Caring Feeling Presence exercise at this Creative Edge Focusing e-newsletter archive link

Read Dr. McGuire’s article, “Focusing Inner Child Work”.

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 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