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.
