The basic idea of ‘focusing’ is that if you pay attention to the feeling in your body, and don’t distract yourself with too much thinking or paying attention to other things but just ‘stay with’ the feeling
This ‘focusing’ reminds me of my understanding of meditation, where the sitter “watches” his thoughts and how they are moving around in the mind and being manifest into emotional states. With practice, this allows a detachment from negative thoughts & emotions as they are recognized to be operating in a system separate from the sitter’s source of observation.
In effect, one could stop saying “I am insecure and depressed and anxious!” and say rather “This cognitive-emotional system is insecure and depressed and anxious. I am watching it so I am aware of that now. Hm. Unfortunate & interesting.”
The shift in itself can be rather cathartic as it releases you from the sort of “self-blaming” attitude that can accompany low mood states. Further, it can perhaps provide the basis for a more objective, non-shame-filled investigation of how to improve your mood. (Or rather “how to fix that insecure cognitive-emotional system you have succeeded in identifying”)
I’d point you to Eckhart Tolle and his book The Power of Now, but I’m not sure that is on the approved reading list here at LW. It is filled with a lot of woo woo, but there is a baby in that bathwater. I think it does a good job of Westernizing some Eastern philosophical concepts that may be valuable in your pursuit. (The first two chapters will give you the gist...)
I’ve done a very little bit of insight meditation and a fair amount of focusing and they are very similar. I’d say the biggest differences are 1) focusing is not as wide open. You are trying to ‘work on’ some troublesome feeling and 2) while you do stay detached somewhat from the feeling and are an observer, you don’t just let if float away. You have an interest in it and you stay with it. You are supposed to ask it ( I hate that anthropomorphizing of it but that’s what they say) what it wants and stuff like that until you get a ‘shift’ where you have a sort of epiphany which is marked by an unmistakable release of tension. It really does feel an awful lot like mindfulness meditation.
You have an interest in it and you stay with it. You are supposed to ask it ( I hate that anthropomorphizing of it but that’s what they say) what it wants and stuff like that until you get a ‘shift’ where you have a sort of epiphany which is marked by an unmistakable release of tension.
I have to be missing the purpose of this. Wouldn’t a feeling of insecurity have a simple response like: get away from the speech podium, etc? I did look at some “focusing” websites, but this point I can’t figure out from the few bits and pieces around.
The purpose is to elucidate the feeling in more detail. Our feelings become automatic and don’t require conscious appraisal. Often, a clear conscious appreciation of exactly what our feelings are, doesn’t exist. The feeling can be there but there may not be a conscious understanding of exactly what it is and what it is for.
There is an assumption implied by this whole post that, at least sometimes, our feelings are not appropriate to the situation. Why would I want to get rid of an emotional reaction that is entirely appropriate? If it is serving me well then I would want to keep it. So, yes, there is an assumption that the feelings in question, the ones that I want to be rid of, are not appropriate. Bringing a feeling into clear conscious focus can sometimes make it immediately obvious that that feeling is not needed anymore, at which point it will vanish. That is the point of focusing. A public speaking fear, such as you describe, would certainly not go unnoticed. But that doesn’t mean that the person is fully aware, in detail, of what they are afraid of and why. But focusing can bring that awareness. And often the fear is unreasonable and will vanish when that is realized. But if the feeling is not brought into clearer focus this will not happen. I want to emphasize this point. You can make a very rational airtight argument to yourself that it is irrational and unnecessary to be insecure in that situation. If you haven’t brought a clear picture of the fear into conscious awareness it will not turn off the fear. But if you do bring that clear, detailed picture of the fear and its reasons, and you realize that the reasons are not valid, the fear will vanish. But you have to get that clear picture first or you can’t change it. That is the point of it. The feelings may be irrational but they will not change unless they are brought into clear conscious focus. Perhaps that is why it is called ‘focusing’. The name seems to work better as an analogy to focusing a camera on some particular area than in the common every day sense of ‘focus’ meaning to concentrate.
That sounds like a different version of Focusing than the one I’ve read about—I thought the procedure was to keep looking for words to describe the feeling until you find words that satisfy you.
I can easily believe that the looking for words approach doesn’t work for everyone, and so there are alternatives.
No, that’s it too. You keep looking for words to decribe it and check whether they fit. In another book you are supposed to ask the feeling (which to me is goofy) what its about and see what comes. The release of tension happens when you get the description to match the feeling.
In effect, one could stop saying “I am insecure and depressed and anxious!” and say rather “This cognitive-emotional system is insecure and depressed and anxious. I am watching it so I am aware of that now. Hm. Unfortunate & interesting.”
That sounds like disassociation of emotions instead of detachment. That’s not what someone like Eckhart Tolle would recommend.
I once attended a session of Meditation for Hackers at the Chaos Computer Congress and the psychology PHD who held them considered that kind of disassociation dark and potentially harmful.
The goal of meditation isn’t to make your emotions go away but to stop holding them so that they can go on their own.
That sounds like disassociation of emotions instead of detachment. That’s not what someone like Eckhart Tolle would recommend.
...
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.”—Eckhart Tolle
Tolle (and others) speak(s) of the value of not identifying with your thoughts and emotions, but rather observing them without judgement.
What distinction have you identified between “disassociation” and “detachment”? Are we saying the same thing using different words? If not, please elaborate?
I once attended a session of Meditation for Hackers at the Chaos Computer Congress and the psychology PHD who held them considered that kind of disassociation dark and potentially harmful.
Who was the PHD? S/he said the scenario I just described was “dark and potentially harmful”? Can you please explain how?
The goal of meditation isn’t to make your emotions go away but to stop holding them so that they can go on their own.
I don’t think I recommended making your emotions “go away”, nor am I certain what that means or how one would do it. Can you explain how you “stop holding your emotions so they go on their own” and how that is different from the understanding of meditation I presented?
I don’t know what you exprience while you meditate but I think that the description that you gave would lead the average person who reads it to dissociate emotions.
When you speak about the emotion being unfortunate, that’s gives the impression of judgement. That you don’t accept that the emotion being present is completely okay. You want to fix it. It’s not okay the way it is.
That you are attached to wanting it go away.
The sentence “This cognitive-emotional system is insecure and depressed and anxious” looks to me like dissociation. It looks like a mental description. In Tolle’s words it’s the mind speaking. There more content in that sentence than just observing insecurity, depression and anxiety.
If you do that with the “negative” emotion I would predict that the immediate effect is that it hurts less.
Why is dissociation dark?
If you are in that state of dealing with emotions there nothing stopping you directly from hurting other people. You can observe that you hurt someone but you won’t get punished through some empathy mechanism.
If you want a soldier to kill people you need him to disassociate emotions. On the other hand someone like Tolle isn’t in a state where he would kill someone. New Agey people who go the light path aren’t. In Buddhism people become vegan because they don’t want to feel what it feels like to be responsbile for killing something.
Their higher self awareness doesn’t lead them to say: “My mind feels some agony about being involved in killing. But that’s just my mind, that’s not my true self.”
Some satanist might intentionally go to a state where he can do such things but that’s not the mental place where the feel good New Age people like Tolle want to go when they advocate mediation.
So what do you do when a strong negative emotions like anxiety comes to you?
You treat it like a small crying child that comes to you. You show it love and accept that it can cry on your shoulder till everything is alright.
You don’t give the child the impression that it’s unfortunate for you that it came to you to cry on your shoulder.
The child might have unreasonable concerns but it’s still okay that it’s there and tries till it’s over. All the while the parent shows love to the child.
That’s what the New Age phrase of unconditional love is about. Of course unconditional love is a goal that most people won’t achieve at their first meditation experience.
If you can’t manage love finding the emotion interesting is a good step.
Of course you can’t force yourself to feel unconditional love and trying to attach yourself to the idea that you should feel unconditional love during a meditation will likely screw up the whole experience.
That why the usual way of teaching meditation is through a teacher that takes into account where the student which whom he talks is and not though books.
Who was the PHD? S/he said the scenario I just described was “dark and potentially harmful”?
Sai. He made the point that dissociation is dark.
It’s my judgement that what you describe leads to dissociation.
There is a lot here to respond to. And I don’t know that I can or know how to.
I think we have a disagreement largely based on our definitions of some admittedly slippery concepts.
In my example, “unfortunate” was perhaps an unfortunate word choice by me. You are right that unfortunate may be something of a judgement. I meant something more like “this cognitive-mental situation is causing pain.”
I’m speaking (generally) in the context of a response to the OP. Insecurity (and anxiety & depression) might be explained by a mental state that can effectively be observed—but not by the sufferer themselves. In fact, some of what makes these sorts of mood states difficult to improve is a lack of insight on behalf of the sufferer.
An outside observer would say, “Oh, there is nothing to worry about… in reality, you are okay.” Meditation, and some of Tolle’s work (as I understand it) allows you to become identified with that outside observer by recognizing there is an awareness beyond our thoughts and feelings, and become more familiar with that awareness.
We might taboo “disassociate” and “detach” and do better.
I guess I can see how someone could use these techniques to do evil, and I don’t want to be naive… but I’m speaking more about how to feel less social anxiety/insecurity in light of the topic at hand.
I think we have a disagreement largely based on our definitions of some admittedly slippery concepts.
I think the words are slippery but the concept themselves aren’t. The difficult thing is to trace from the words that someone uses what he actually experiences.
The other difficulty is to predict what the words will do to a reader.
An outside observer would say, “Oh, there is nothing to worry about… in reality, you are okay.” Meditation, and some of Tolle’s work (as I understand it) allows you to become identified with that outside observer by recognizing there is an awareness beyond our thoughts and feelings, and become more familiar with that awareness.
I’m not happy with the word “outside”. It’s more a place that neither inside nor outside or both.
But that might be semantics.
More importantely that observer is awareness and not thought. A phrase like “this cognitive-mental situation is causing pain.” looks to me like an intellectual descrition.
It looks constructed.
My impression could be wrong. On the other hand I do point to a failure mode that exists.
I guess I can see how someone could use these techniques to do evil, and I don’t want to be naive… but I’m speaking more about how to feel less social anxiety/insecurity in light of the topic at hand.
I think the light way of dealing with social anxiety to come out with empathy. Having empathy has other advantages besides stopping you from hurting other people. It’s my impression that’s the way that Tolle advocates.
In Buddhism people become vegan because they don’t want to feel what it feels like to be responsbile for killing something.
Is this as distinct from becoming vegan because they don’t want to be responsible for killing something, and/or from becoming vegan because they want fewer things to be killed?
This ‘focusing’ reminds me of my understanding of meditation, where the sitter “watches” his thoughts and how they are moving around in the mind and being manifest into emotional states. With practice, this allows a detachment from negative thoughts & emotions as they are recognized to be operating in a system separate from the sitter’s source of observation.
In effect, one could stop saying “I am insecure and depressed and anxious!” and say rather “This cognitive-emotional system is insecure and depressed and anxious. I am watching it so I am aware of that now. Hm. Unfortunate & interesting.”
The shift in itself can be rather cathartic as it releases you from the sort of “self-blaming” attitude that can accompany low mood states. Further, it can perhaps provide the basis for a more objective, non-shame-filled investigation of how to improve your mood. (Or rather “how to fix that insecure cognitive-emotional system you have succeeded in identifying”)
I’d point you to Eckhart Tolle and his book The Power of Now, but I’m not sure that is on the approved reading list here at LW. It is filled with a lot of woo woo, but there is a baby in that bathwater. I think it does a good job of Westernizing some Eastern philosophical concepts that may be valuable in your pursuit. (The first two chapters will give you the gist...)
I’ve done a very little bit of insight meditation and a fair amount of focusing and they are very similar. I’d say the biggest differences are 1) focusing is not as wide open. You are trying to ‘work on’ some troublesome feeling and 2) while you do stay detached somewhat from the feeling and are an observer, you don’t just let if float away. You have an interest in it and you stay with it. You are supposed to ask it ( I hate that anthropomorphizing of it but that’s what they say) what it wants and stuff like that until you get a ‘shift’ where you have a sort of epiphany which is marked by an unmistakable release of tension. It really does feel an awful lot like mindfulness meditation.
I have to be missing the purpose of this. Wouldn’t a feeling of insecurity have a simple response like: get away from the speech podium, etc? I did look at some “focusing” websites, but this point I can’t figure out from the few bits and pieces around.
The purpose is to elucidate the feeling in more detail. Our feelings become automatic and don’t require conscious appraisal. Often, a clear conscious appreciation of exactly what our feelings are, doesn’t exist. The feeling can be there but there may not be a conscious understanding of exactly what it is and what it is for.
There is an assumption implied by this whole post that, at least sometimes, our feelings are not appropriate to the situation. Why would I want to get rid of an emotional reaction that is entirely appropriate? If it is serving me well then I would want to keep it. So, yes, there is an assumption that the feelings in question, the ones that I want to be rid of, are not appropriate. Bringing a feeling into clear conscious focus can sometimes make it immediately obvious that that feeling is not needed anymore, at which point it will vanish. That is the point of focusing. A public speaking fear, such as you describe, would certainly not go unnoticed. But that doesn’t mean that the person is fully aware, in detail, of what they are afraid of and why. But focusing can bring that awareness. And often the fear is unreasonable and will vanish when that is realized. But if the feeling is not brought into clearer focus this will not happen. I want to emphasize this point. You can make a very rational airtight argument to yourself that it is irrational and unnecessary to be insecure in that situation. If you haven’t brought a clear picture of the fear into conscious awareness it will not turn off the fear. But if you do bring that clear, detailed picture of the fear and its reasons, and you realize that the reasons are not valid, the fear will vanish. But you have to get that clear picture first or you can’t change it. That is the point of it. The feelings may be irrational but they will not change unless they are brought into clear conscious focus. Perhaps that is why it is called ‘focusing’. The name seems to work better as an analogy to focusing a camera on some particular area than in the common every day sense of ‘focus’ meaning to concentrate.
Great explanation. Thanks.
That sounds like a different version of Focusing than the one I’ve read about—I thought the procedure was to keep looking for words to describe the feeling until you find words that satisfy you.
I can easily believe that the looking for words approach doesn’t work for everyone, and so there are alternatives.
No, that’s it too. You keep looking for words to decribe it and check whether they fit. In another book you are supposed to ask the feeling (which to me is goofy) what its about and see what comes. The release of tension happens when you get the description to match the feeling.
That sounds like disassociation of emotions instead of detachment. That’s not what someone like Eckhart Tolle would recommend.
I once attended a session of Meditation for Hackers at the Chaos Computer Congress and the psychology PHD who held them considered that kind of disassociation dark and potentially harmful.
The goal of meditation isn’t to make your emotions go away but to stop holding them so that they can go on their own.
...
Tolle (and others) speak(s) of the value of not identifying with your thoughts and emotions, but rather observing them without judgement.
What distinction have you identified between “disassociation” and “detachment”? Are we saying the same thing using different words? If not, please elaborate?
Who was the PHD? S/he said the scenario I just described was “dark and potentially harmful”? Can you please explain how?
I don’t think I recommended making your emotions “go away”, nor am I certain what that means or how one would do it. Can you explain how you “stop holding your emotions so they go on their own” and how that is different from the understanding of meditation I presented?
I don’t know what you exprience while you meditate but I think that the description that you gave would lead the average person who reads it to dissociate emotions.
When you speak about the emotion being unfortunate, that’s gives the impression of judgement. That you don’t accept that the emotion being present is completely okay. You want to fix it. It’s not okay the way it is. That you are attached to wanting it go away.
The sentence “This cognitive-emotional system is insecure and depressed and anxious” looks to me like dissociation. It looks like a mental description. In Tolle’s words it’s the mind speaking. There more content in that sentence than just observing insecurity, depression and anxiety.
If you do that with the “negative” emotion I would predict that the immediate effect is that it hurts less.
Why is dissociation dark? If you are in that state of dealing with emotions there nothing stopping you directly from hurting other people. You can observe that you hurt someone but you won’t get punished through some empathy mechanism.
If you want a soldier to kill people you need him to disassociate emotions. On the other hand someone like Tolle isn’t in a state where he would kill someone. New Agey people who go the light path aren’t. In Buddhism people become vegan because they don’t want to feel what it feels like to be responsbile for killing something.
Their higher self awareness doesn’t lead them to say: “My mind feels some agony about being involved in killing. But that’s just my mind, that’s not my true self.”
Some satanist might intentionally go to a state where he can do such things but that’s not the mental place where the feel good New Age people like Tolle want to go when they advocate mediation.
So what do you do when a strong negative emotions like anxiety comes to you? You treat it like a small crying child that comes to you. You show it love and accept that it can cry on your shoulder till everything is alright. You don’t give the child the impression that it’s unfortunate for you that it came to you to cry on your shoulder. The child might have unreasonable concerns but it’s still okay that it’s there and tries till it’s over. All the while the parent shows love to the child.
That’s what the New Age phrase of unconditional love is about. Of course unconditional love is a goal that most people won’t achieve at their first meditation experience. If you can’t manage love finding the emotion interesting is a good step.
Of course you can’t force yourself to feel unconditional love and trying to attach yourself to the idea that you should feel unconditional love during a meditation will likely screw up the whole experience.
That why the usual way of teaching meditation is through a teacher that takes into account where the student which whom he talks is and not though books.
Sai. He made the point that dissociation is dark. It’s my judgement that what you describe leads to dissociation.
There is a lot here to respond to. And I don’t know that I can or know how to.
I think we have a disagreement largely based on our definitions of some admittedly slippery concepts.
In my example, “unfortunate” was perhaps an unfortunate word choice by me. You are right that unfortunate may be something of a judgement. I meant something more like “this cognitive-mental situation is causing pain.”
I’m speaking (generally) in the context of a response to the OP. Insecurity (and anxiety & depression) might be explained by a mental state that can effectively be observed—but not by the sufferer themselves. In fact, some of what makes these sorts of mood states difficult to improve is a lack of insight on behalf of the sufferer.
An outside observer would say, “Oh, there is nothing to worry about… in reality, you are okay.” Meditation, and some of Tolle’s work (as I understand it) allows you to become identified with that outside observer by recognizing there is an awareness beyond our thoughts and feelings, and become more familiar with that awareness.
We might taboo “disassociate” and “detach” and do better.
I guess I can see how someone could use these techniques to do evil, and I don’t want to be naive… but I’m speaking more about how to feel less social anxiety/insecurity in light of the topic at hand.
I think the words are slippery but the concept themselves aren’t. The difficult thing is to trace from the words that someone uses what he actually experiences. The other difficulty is to predict what the words will do to a reader.
I’m not happy with the word “outside”. It’s more a place that neither inside nor outside or both. But that might be semantics.
More importantely that observer is awareness and not thought. A phrase like “this cognitive-mental situation is causing pain.” looks to me like an intellectual descrition. It looks constructed.
My impression could be wrong. On the other hand I do point to a failure mode that exists.
I think the light way of dealing with social anxiety to come out with empathy. Having empathy has other advantages besides stopping you from hurting other people. It’s my impression that’s the way that Tolle advocates.
I don’t know where the line between detachment and dissociation is either.
Somewhat but not entirely tangentially..
Is this as distinct from becoming vegan because they don’t want to be responsible for killing something, and/or from becoming vegan because they want fewer things to be killed?