Articulación de la formación de pre y/o postgrado con las demás funciones

A friend recently used Focusing when he was unable to write an academic paper. As the hand-in time drew closer he grew increasingly stressed. He couldn’t get down to writing and found himself doing anything (including his tax returns!) to avoid it. When he focused on the problem, he had a ‘felt sense’ of something murky and unclear in his stomach area. It felt ‘almost as if there is nothing but a blank space in there’. He sat with it and described it some more, haltingly at first. The words ‘unclear’ and then ‘insubstantial’ arose but he knew these weren’t quite right. The feeling inside did start to change, however, and became clearer. He said, ‘It’s now more like a brown muddy pool.’ Next the words ‘a mess’ came up. This still wasn’t quite right but these descriptive words told him that he was on the right track.

In time, having stayed with the bodily sense, he suddenly got the word ‘insufficient’. He felt a shift in his body indicating that this was important. He felt a resonance between the felt sense and the word ‘insufficient’. It was a match. He asked, ‘What makes this so insufficient? ’ and he waited. From the felt sense the answer arose. He didn’t feel up to writing the paper as he thought others were more knowledgeable and could do it better. He felt a sigh of relief and his body relaxed. He knew that this was what had been stopping him from writing. Instead of feeling hopeless, he felt buoyant.

This is very common when people use Focusing successfully. They may discover something that seems very negative but they have a sense of relief. They feel better that it is now in their consciousness rather than hidden inside. Funnily enough he now felt able to write. The next day my friend sat down and started to write the paper with ease, finishing it with no further hiccups.

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Learn from your difficulties

Interestingly, the Chinese word for ‘crisis’ is made up of two characters, one meaning ‘danger’, the other meaning ‘opportunity’. Embedded within the Chinese language and culture is the belief that opportunity arises out of our difficulties. By believing this, we can start to feel positive about our ability to deal with any situation.

A simple procedure that can be used to develop this viewpoint is learning to ‘reframe’ whatever situations come our way. This will in turn develop our good feelings about ourselves. Mistakes literally become opportunities to learn and difficulties seen as opportunities for change. We might then find out that there is ‘no failure, only feedback’.16 _{We feel better about ourselves as we begin to}

learn from our mistakes. Try repeating this simple sentence to yourself every time you are in difficulty:

x What can I learn from this?

So, ‘an error of judgement’, can turn into an opportunity for greater understanding. If we do something ‘wrong’, the wrongdoing can become something we can change next time around. The more we ask ourselves, ‘What can I learn from this?’ the more we see ourselves in a positive light. Instead of feeling you are a person who does things badly, makes mistakes and is generally ‘not good enough’ you can become a person who feels good about who you are, and you learn from your circumstances.

Learning from past events helps us to resolve any emotional blocks resulting from them. If we do not learn from them, similar situations will bring up the

same feelings again and again. An emotional ‘pattern’ occurs. We may often blame other people who have said or done things that bring up these emotions, but the more we take responsibility for our lives, the more we realize that we are reacting because we have unhealed emotional wounds.

Action Box

Repeat this simple sentence to yourself whenever you are in difficulty: • What can I learn from this?

Remember that every difficulty can become an opportunity for greater understanding.

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Use talking therapy

Linda Chih-Ling Koo, in her book Nourishment of Life about life in Chinese society, wrote that:

The traditional family structure served to provide support for the individual. Personal secrets were frequently solely shared between siblings or cousins . . . between husbands and wives and between

grandparents and children. These conversational and intimate exchanges allowed family members to release emotional tensions, to have disputes settled by a third party family member and to reaffirm their self worth because of the emphatic feelings expressed by their confidante.17

When we are angry, sad, fearful or grief-stricken there is nothing better than being able to talk to another person in order to release our deeply held feelings. Afterwards, we often feel much better just for having talked.

The most important part of ‘talking therapy’ is to find a listener who will hear us without giving advice. Once our problem is out in the open and we feel heard, we may understand it better and it may recede on its own.

One patient told me that she finds it incredibly relieving and reassuring to know that someone else knows about her difficulties. It reduces the scale of the problem and puts it in perspective. Once she’s told someone about it and knows she’s been heard, the problem instantly feels more manageable and she can cope with it. Another patient said that when she’s feeling tired and the tiredness doesn’t get better after a rest, she knows there’s an unexpressed emotion that needs to be teased out. She often does this by talking it through with friends. Generally the problem then blows through easily.

People in China often won’t talk to ‘strangers’ about their problems. In the West, where family ties are less strong, we may visit a counsellor or therapist. Alternatively, it may be enough to talk to a friend.

Action Box

Bear these points in mind when choosing someone to talk to:

• Make sure that you trust the person. If you suspect that they may give away your deepest secrets then you will be unable to open up to them.

• Only talk to someone you have rapport with and who can understand you. • The person must be able to listen to you without giving you a ‘solution’.

• You may like advice sometimes. Make an agreement with the listener that they will only give advice or a solution if you specifically ask for it.

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Use writing therapy

Sometimes it’s hard to talk about our problems, so why not write them out? Writing can help us to resolve feelings or thoughts that have become stuck in our consciousness – especially if we find it difficult to talk about them.

Action Box

Here is one useful way of writing about our feelings:

• Find a place to write where you’ll be comfortable and won’t be disturbed.

• Write about your situation or problem for about 10–15 minutes continuously – don’t think about your writing style or grammar.

• Completely let go and say anything and everything you want.

• Explore the whole situation. Write about it objectively (what actually happened) as well as subjectively (your feelings from your point of view).

• Feel free to let out your deepest feelings. Don’t plan to show anyone else – it will affect your ability to say whatever you want – make yourself your audience.

After writing, you may feel relieved and immediately better or you may feel a little depressed or sad for a while. Don’t worry about any negative feelings – they’ll pass within an hour or two and are likely to be replaced by a new perspective on your life.

You can keep what you have written in the form of a journal or diary. Alternatively you can throw the letter or writing away or even make a ritual of burning the paper to show you have cleansed the problem from your psyche.

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The importance of having positive goals

Buddhist monks who meditated in the Tien Tai mountains in the Shixuan province of China hundreds of years ago had a specific method of dealing with their negative emotions during meditation. If negative thoughts came into their heads while they were meditating they would become conscious of these thoughts – then think of something that was opposite.

For example, if they were thinking negatively about someone, they would find something about them that was positive, or if they were thinking about something that was a problem for them they would try to imagine it solved in the future. By doing this they could once more find tranquillity in their meditation.18

Like the Tien Tai monks, we too can find ways to retrain our mind to think positively. One way of doing this is by constructing positive goals for ourselves. If we listen to the recurring thoughts that go through our heads we will find some that come back persistently. These could be thoughts such as, ‘I’ll never get what I want in life’, ‘Don’t trust anybody – they’ll only let you down’, or, ‘I always fail at everything I do’. Negative thoughts tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies, bringing with them emotional turmoil and possible ill health. Sometimes just one negative thought can be at the root of many negative experiences but we may be unaware of the thought. For example you may think ‘The good times will all go wrong’, and as a result you notice that every time you are enjoying yourself or doing something successfully you feel anxious and unsettled but don’t know why. You may often be aware of your negative thoughts but find it difficult to stop them. If you are aware that you have a recurring negative thought, it can be useful to try to turn it into a positive outcome or goal.