21 Gendlin’s Focusing

An essential pivot in the process of unio is coming to conceptualize your subconscious mind not as a collection of thoughts— not as content— but as a thinking entity which composes one half of yourself and which carries out its own process of rationalization according to its own logic. The first step in achieving this realization on a more than conceptual level is to complete solve; dissolving the film of rationalizations which your lower mind supplies in the repressive process will sufficiently disentangle you from your own subconscious mind that you will be able to conceive of it as something other than yourself.

The next step in the process, once you have managed this realization, is to make contact with the contents of your subconscious mind through Focusing.

Focusing, also the title of the book which describes it, is a method of introspection devised by psychologist Eugene Gendlin. It’s based on the observation that only a small percentage of therapy patients ever manage to achieve lasting change in their mental health, and that all of these successful patients share a particular bodily vernacular. You can buy the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Focusing-Eugene-T-Gendlin/dp/0553278339

I’ll strip out the core elements of the method and render them out into a system in this chapter, but there’s no substitute for actually reading the book. That’s not just me covering my ass in terms of liability or anything either; acquire Gendlin’s book, read the whole thing, and do the exercises he describes. This is an indispensable part of the Framework Process.

Focusing is a process by which you attach a subconscious impulse to a bodily sensation, use this sensation as a implement by which you are able to hold the impulse in your attention (focus on it), put the impulse into words, and render into rational, understandable thoughts the subconscious contents of your mind.  Gendlin employs the term awareness to refer to the outcome of this process, but it’s important to understand that, within the context of the Framework, Focusing isn’t a tool for understanding what the contents of your subconscious mind are— this was achieved in solve— but for engaging those contents in more direct communication.

Gendlin places a great deal of emphasis on the notion that these subconscious thoughts are actually located throughout the body, rather than Focusing being a process of metaphor. I am agnostic on whether this is actually the case. It is certainly important to understand that the correspondence of thought and felt sense feels impenetrably real; if you conceive of what you’re doing in Focusing as a form of mental artifice rather than a real exploration of feelings, it simply won’t work. Whether the gut-brain genre of “woo” attendant to this conception of thought is necessary for you to take the process seriously is something for you to decide for yourself.

The process of Focusing consists of 6 steps. As extracted directly from the book:

• 1. Clearing a space

• • What I will ask you to do will be silent, just to yourself. Take a moment just to relax. . . . All right—now, inside you, I would like you to pay attention inwardly, in your body, perhaps in your stomach or chest. Now see what comes there when you ask, “How is my life going? What is the main thing for me right now?” Sense within your body. Let the answers come slowly from this sensing. When some concern comes, DO NOT GO INSIDE IT. Stand back, say “Yes, that’s there. I can feel that, there.” Let there be a little space between you and that. Then ask what else you feel. Wait again, and sense. Usually there are several things.

• 2.  Felt sense

• • From among what came, select one personal problem to focus on. DO NOT GO INSIDE IT. Stand back from it. Of course, there are many parts to that one thing you are thinking about—too many to think of each one alone. But you can feel all of these things together. Pay attention there where you usually feel things, and in there you can get a sense of what all of the problem feels like. Let yourself feel the unclear sense of all of that.

• 3.  Handle

• • What is the quality of this unclear felt sense? Let a word, a phrase, or an image come up from the felt sense itself. It might be a quality-word, like tight, sticky, scary, stuck, heavy, jumpy, or a phrase, or an image. Stay with the quality of the felt sense till something fits it just right.

• 4.  Resonating

• • Go back and forth between the felt sense and the word (phrase, or image). Check how they resonate with each other. See if there is a little bodily signal that lets you know there is a fit. To do it, you have to have the felt sense there again, as well as the word.

• • Let the felt sense change, if it does, and also the word or picture, until they feel just right in capturing the quality of the felt sense.

• 5.  Asking:

• • What is it, about this whole problem, that makes this quality (which you have just named or pictured)?

• • Make sure the quality is sensed again, freshly, vidily (not just remembered from before). When it is here again, tap it, touch it, be with it, asking, “What makes the whole problem so ⎯⎯⎯?” Or you ask, “What is in this sense?”

• • If you get a quick answer without a shift in the felt sense, just let that kind of answer go by. Return your attention to your body and freshly find the felt sense again. Then ask it again.

• • Be with the felt sense till something comes along with a shift, a slight “give” or release.

• 6.  Receiving

• •  Receive whatever comes with a shift in a friendly way. Stay with it a while, even if it is only a slight release. Whatever comes, this is only one shift; there will be others. You will probably continue after a little while, stay here for a few moments.

In my experience of unio, all of these steps were essential to Focusing. Gendlin describes somewhere in the book that these steps can condense into an automatic process of sensation and release; I think that what he’s actually describing is a post-unio technique of reaffirming your reintegration, which is distinct from what focusing in achieves at this pre-reintegration phase.

Within the context of the Framework, Focusing forms one half of a strategy of intentional self-communication. Focusing is a means of opening lines of communication with your repressed contents. Your lower mind is normally granted access to your body, including the subvocal faculties which produce verbal thought, only when you enter your repressed state. This creates an impenetrable barrier to communication; under normal conditions, the childhood-inculcated cleavage of self upon which your activity is premised prevents you from holding both your conscious and subconscious contents in your mind simultaneously. By rigorously engaging in the process of Focusing as Gendlin describes it, you will be able to grant a voice to your lower mind, without slipping so totally into your repressed mode that you are unable to direct the conversation productively.

Gendlin holds out that his process of Focusing is sufficient for the solution of personal problems in and of itself; I strongly disagree, and would (perhaps uncharitably) point to the limited cultural footprint of his International Focusing Institute by way of evidence. As a means of opening a dialogue with your repressed mind, Focusing is an extremely potent and revolutionary tool of unio. It isn’t hard to imagine that an individual who has already completed the solve process through a regimen of analytical psychotherapy would, with a little intuition, be capable of steering themselves through unio as soon as they’ve made contact with their repressed contents. That achievement of solve is not, however, something that can simply be dummied out of the equation, and Focusing without a sufficient degree of self-understanding certainly won’t facilitate any lasting results. Furthermore, the process of automatic release Gendlin describes never materialized for me, and it wasn’t until I combined Focusing with Existential Kink that I was able to achieve truly life-changing results.

Nevertheless, Focusing is an indispensable part unio, and you should master it to the extent that you can run down its steps automatically and achieve a body shift without reference to a guide before you attempt to seriously engage with the further techniques of this section of the BlogBook.

I’ll conclude this chapter with a few miscellaneous notes I took on my most recent reread of Focusing, which might help clarify some snarls between the Framework and Gendlin’s worldview.

-In his book Gendlin is constructing an image of Focusing as a self-contained solution to irrational stresses; in this process, he has a tendency to underplay the value of solve. For instance in this example:

She knew what to do. She had focused before. If you ask why, in that case, she needed me on the phone at all—why she hadn’t simply sat down and focused herself—the answer is simply that it can help to have another person present, even if that other person is only a friendly voice on the phone.

Gendlin is quick to give his client latitude in her need to have another person present when attempting Focusing. In my opinion, this sort of reflexive reliance on an authority figure when entering into an unio exercise is a sign that solve is not yet complete. A person with an open disposition generally creates bargains in which they are only able to access their repressed contents through the mediation of another, trusted person who is willing to assume authority over them. While I can’t say for certain that this is what’s happening here, if you find yourself unable to access your repressed contents therapeutically without the support of another person, you should take that as a sign that you’re not yet ready for unio. A large part of the value in unio is that it takes place outside the bargains which limit the access of your repressed mode to your conscious mind— this is a sign to your lower mind that you are attempting to reframe your relationship into something less transactional.

-Gendlin doesn’t conceive of solve and unio as fundamentally different processes, and has a tendency to mingle them together indistinctly, as in this example:

One effect of the focusing process is to bring hidden bits of personal knowledge up to the level of conscious awareness. This isn’t the most important effect. The body shift, the change in a felt sense, is the heart of the process

The phrase “conscious awareness” is slippery and tricky to define here. I think that such as it is used throughout Focusing it can map to two phenomena in Framework Process— knowing that something is true about yourself in a factual sense, which is a component of solve; and accepting that your lower mind thinks some particular thing, which is a component of unio. “I have trouble asking people to be quiet when I’m trying to sleep because my parents would get mad at me for making demands of them” is learned by solve; “I’m worried that Jennifer from work hates me” is learned by unio. The difference is that the former is a rationale, and the latter is a pure feeling without a justification. The former tells you why something is the case; the latter simply is the case, and must first be accepted in order to be changed.

-The core of the distinction between unio and solve is that solve is about disputing notions which are false, and unio is about accepting notions that are true. This example shows the distinction clearly:

George often goes past a feeling without letting a whole felt sense form. That is where I usually help. He knows it is important to accept every feeling that comes, not argue with it, not challenge it with peremptory demands that it explain itself. You don’t talk back to the feeling like an angry parent demanding that the feeling justify itself. You don’t say, “What do you mean, such-and-such would be awful? That’s nonsense! Just why would it be awful?” Instead you approach the feeling in an accepting way.

This acceptance is at the heart of unio. In the next chapter, Existential Kink will give us a more potent tool for self-acceptance than Focusing; Gendlin seems to assume that this self acceptance will come easily, whereas Elliot’s book takes the more useful stance that truly accepting your repressed contents will be maximally difficult. However, both Gendlin and Elliot correctly understand, and taught me, that accepting what the lower mind has to say as worth listening to is the most essential ingredient in actually changing your personality. By completing solve, you have already stripped away all the dishonest rationalizations which separate you from yourself; the feelings which remain are fundamentally real, and must be respected as such, even if you wish at the start of the unio process that you didn’t feel them.

-Part of the process of transition from solve to unio is about laying down your metaphorical arms, ceasing your hostility towards yourself in a very literal way:

Focusing is not like that. Instead of talking at yourself from the outside in, you listen to what comes from you, inside. You ask in a quiet, friendly, and sympathetic way, “What’s wrong?” You may never before have been quite this friendly to yourself. Most people treat themselves very badly, much worse than they would ever think of treating another human being. Most people deal with their inside feeling person as a sadistic prison guard would.

This transformation is tonal and as literal as talking to someone else would be. Thoughts, even verbal ones, do not consist of pure un-agentic atman. If saying something to someone else would be rude or cruel, then thinking it to yourself would be rude or cruel. You need to think carefully about whether the part of your mind you are directing the thought towards deserves such treatment. It doesn’t; especially not in unio, when the self-deception has already ceased.

-Focusing is a little like Taoist cultivation in that it seems to promise superhuman results if applied consistently enough. For the purposes of the Framework Process, though, “good enough is good enough” should be one’s mantra. Keep in mind that the goal here is achieving an alteration of your personality, and this is a goal which is finite and permanent; whether you choose to continue engaging with Focusing after the end of the unio process is up to you. I have continued to engage with it as a precaution against backsliding, but I haven’t experienced any further changes to my personality either “backwards” or “forwards” since April 22nd, 2022.

While you need to master Focusing to continue with the Framework Process, you don’t need to master it to continue reading this book about the Framework Process. So whether your detour into Focusing has concluded or not, let’s press onto the next chapter, Existential Kink.