The problem with Gendlin’s book, and with this post, is that it tells you how to do Focusing but not when to do it. When a feeling is salient enough for you to notice it as “something”, you’re probably already doing some Focusing on it, and adding the official process doesn’t obviously help. The magic seems to be in identifying structure in the feelings that feel like “nothing” to you.
I agree, now that you’ve pointed it out, that being told when to do Focusing would also be very valuable; but my own experience, at least, doesn’t agree with the rest of your paragraph.
My experience has been closer to, if I have painful feelings, then I am very aware of the fact that I do have painful feelings; the default inclination of my mind has been to try to push those nasty things away, but they’ve insisted on coming back, which has led to a very blatant and obvious mental conflict that would have been impossible to miss.
What learning Focusing, and related techniques, has done is not that I notice the feeling as salient; rather the magic is in changing the response to the noticing, from “push away the feeling” to “look closer at the feeling to see more of its underlying structure”.
My guess is that this might point to a difference in how the-minds-of-people-like-me and the-minds-of-people-like-you function: maybe you’ve been better at actually successfully pushing the negative feeling away whenever it arises, to the point that the feelings have stopped consciously registering anymore, and you need to start with learning how to notice their existence. Whereas for me, the negative feelings have been so strong that I’ve been unable to push them away, so never learned the habit of automatically successfully pushing them away, and I can skip the “learn to notice them” phase and apply Focusing more directly.
I agree, now that you’ve pointed it out, that being told when to do Focusing would also be very valuable; but my own experience, at least, doesn’t agree with the rest of your paragraph.
My experience has been closer to, if I have painful feelings, then I am very aware of the fact that I do have painful feelings; the default inclination of my mind has been to try to push those nasty things away, but they’ve insisted on coming back, which has led to a very blatant and obvious mental conflict that would have been impossible to miss.
What learning Focusing, and related techniques, has done is not that I notice the feeling as salient; rather the magic is in changing the response to the noticing, from “push away the feeling” to “look closer at the feeling to see more of its underlying structure”.
My guess is that this might point to a difference in how the-minds-of-people-like-me and the-minds-of-people-like-you function: maybe you’ve been better at actually successfully pushing the negative feeling away whenever it arises, to the point that the feelings have stopped consciously registering anymore, and you need to start with learning how to notice their existence. Whereas for me, the negative feelings have been so strong that I’ve been unable to push them away, so never learned the habit of automatically successfully pushing them away, and I can skip the “learn to notice them” phase and apply Focusing more directly.