Learning from your moods: Focusing

[Buddy]

The exercise described here has helped me a lot, so I wanted to give others an opportunity to read and try it if they think it might help. It's from the book Constructive Thinking, The Key to Emotional Intelligence, by Seymour Epstein.

In this book, Daniel Kahneman's System 2 is called the rational mind, and System 1 is referred to as the experiential mind. Also, a fairly recent comment by Laura regarding (paraphrasing): 'finding the right label' or 'getting the label right' is also mentioned. [note: This post may actually be better placed on the Psychology & Cognitive Science board, but I'll leave others to decide since I didn't think of it until after posting].

The actual exercise of focusing is said to have originated with the psychologist mentioned in the first paragraph of the text below.

Learning from your moods: Focusing

Whereas emotions indicate how you automatically interpret specific events, moods indicate how you automatically interpret your overall life situation. You have a great deal to gain, therefore, by being able to uncover the automatic construals that instigate your moods. A procedure called focusing, developed by psychologist Eugene Gendlin, can enable you to do just that.

A colleague of mine who had been a paratrooper during the Second World War and had participated in some very dangerous missions, had an anxiety attack many years after the war while riding in a train. When he realized that the sight of the terrain rolling by reminded him of being about to jump from an airplane, the anxiety immediately vanished. This incident was a spontaneous demonstration of what happens in focusing: in labeling an underlying disturbing feeling correctly, the feeling often goes away or, at the least, becomes less distressing.

Focusing is based on two assumptions: first, that there are two levels of knowledge, one associated with feelings and the body and the other with intellect; second, that tension occurs whenever the two levels of knowledge are not in agreement. This tension can be relieved by putting the two levels in contact with each other so that the difference between them can be resolved.

The following example illustrates how focusing is done and what can be gained from it.

Kevin was angry at his wife, Lynne. He had come home from work tired and hungry, and Lynne wasn't there. She came home shortly, eager to tell him about an exciting new development in her job. "I'm really happy for you," he said, "but can't you just once get home on time?" She snapped back, and before long they were having a full-scale argument. They had been arguing this way for a couple of weeks now, and Kevin was beginning to think their marriage was in serious trouble. Everything Lynne did annoyed him, and sex with her no longer had any appeal.

Since Kevin had experience with focusing, he decided to see if it could help him clarify what was going on. He went to his special quiet place and put himself into a meditative state. Re-creating the feeling he had when he was distressed by Lynne's absence, he paid careful attention to how it felt deep in his body. As he concentrated on the feeling, he waited for a thought to rise spontaneously, as if directly from his body. He was careful not to force the thought. He asked himself, "What is the quality of this feeling? What do I feel to be the sense of it?" The word 'anger' came to mind. "Yes, it's anger," he acknowledged, "but that's not the whole of it." He stayed with the feeling longer, and the word 'sad', which surprised him, came to mind. "No, that doesn't fit completely either," he said, "although there is a trace of it." The word 'jealous' came to mind, and he felt a definite click. It really fit, he knew, because as he thought of the word, there was a decided shift in the underlying feeling, and the tension suddenly lessened. As he thought further about this feeling, it clarified what was going on between he and Lynne. She was doing exceptionally well in her job, and he was going nowhere. He resented her success in comparison to his failure, and he was taking out his frustration on her.

Later that evening, Kevin apologized to Lynne for his behavior, admitted his jealousy, and acknowledged that the real problem was not with her behavior but with his feelings of failure. He had known all along that he should quit his job, which was at a dead end, and look for another, but he hadn't wanted to face it. Lynne was sympathetic, and after their talk they felt close to each other, as they had in the past.

As this example illustrates, focusing is an excellent technique for getting in touch with your experiential mind. The essence of focusing is to become a passive observer of your feelings and let thoughts arise spontaneously. When a thought arises, you check it against the feeling you are attempting to clarify, until one occurs that "clicks".

How will you know when you have hit on the right label? When you do, you will feel a shift in the feeling. That doesn't mean you should quit after the first small shift; in fact, it's important not to. Stay with the feeling until your understanding of it is complete.

From Constructive Thinking, The Key to Emotional Intelligence, pg. 238-40

[Saieden]

Thank you very much! Just what I've needed for a while, though I was unaware I was looking for it
A few weeks ago, while I was still staying in our outside room, I was attacked and robbed at around 2:30 in the morning (in what I very strongly suspect was part of a 4D attack to cause anxiety, disruption, fear, etc, in me and my family. In short, my grandfather passed away the very same morning as well as that it happened on the Monday of my one week varsity "vacation" and had to be in hospital for 3 days just to see if my wound showed signs of infection) and since I've been really paranoid at night, even though I'm consciously fine and KNOW that what I'm hearing is our cats jumping over the board that keeps the dog out the lounge or something similar. Even since my dad put up electric fencing and spikes, it hasn't really helped me sleep much better.

While I have been identifying the misplaced feelings of fear and anxiety as a paranoid result of my experience, the explanation of the dissonance between the levels of knowledge and how to approach gives a much clearer idea on how to separate the cause from symptoms.

Again, thank you for sharing, will definitely see if I can get hold of that book somehow as emotion in general is a particular weak point of mine (my Personality being quite typically INTP)

[andi]

Thanks Buddy, I've noticed I'm myself that whenever there is a contradiction between mood and feeling and after focusing and realising what is really happening,  that if I do not tell the trurh to the other person involved,  I just end up giving myself reasons and end up liying to myself . This looks like a need for aceptence largely but teling the truth of the situation, another program is defeated, the need to be right . That in turn eases the need to be accepted for the sake of emotional feeding . OSIT

[anothermagyar]

Thank you Buddy it is helping a lot to do the work, another aspect from the psychology side.

I'm catching myself saying or doing thing from emotional reaction and asking myself: why did it happened?

I'm reading "Strangers to ourselves" and I'm really slow, because the language( English is my second)

and I appreciate every information helping to work on self because it's not easy!!!