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Part Four: Doing more - advanced listening and focusing methods
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Part Four: Doing more - advanced listening and focusing methods
Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, Doing more
Although we emphasize absolute listening, clearly there are other ways of being helpful to people. At times, it is necessary to do more. We want to make very clear, though, that you are then in a different ball park. When you are just listening and reflecting you are totally in the talker's space, accepting her definition of the situation, and not adding much of your own except your concern and presence. Anytime you start adding something of your own, you are altering the internal space of the other person. This may be good and appropriate or it may be unnecessary and cause trouble. In other words, when you add something more than listening you are taking risks - risk of making things better, risk of making them worse, risk that the person now talking is going to have to consider you in the relationship, too. It just changes things.
We are sounding these warnings not to scare people off, but to make them consider what they are doing. Pure listening is so good for people in that it is such a rare experience for people to be completely in their own space, that it might be good to think twice whether your input really adds to the situation. People. are sometimes so eager to be helpful and to be active intervenors that they aren't aware of the power of letting the person do her own thing.
On the other hand, the person who is talking is probably used to a much more interactive relationship and may really want and need some more input from you. Also, there will be times in which the person talking gets stuck and can't move just with reflection. This section, then, talks about the various ways that we in Changes do more than pure listening.
Helping a person focus, or " making places"
In previous sections we talked briefly about focusing in a beginning listening group, and offered detailed descriptions and directions about how you can do it with yourself. In this section, however, we will describe how you can help someone do it when they are talking with you even if they don’t know anything about focusing as a formal process.
Often absolute listening as described before leads people deeper and further into their own concerns (their issues, problems, whatever they are talking about). As what they say is picked up, further steps come. However, sometimes people seem not to go down into themselves at all. When this happens, first make sure you are really reflecting the feeling edge of what they are saying. Many people can tell you their thing just as far as it is clear to them, but then they stop, or go on to something else. Yet, it’s just where feelings and situations aren't clear that the focusing process needs to happen. It can happen if people will first focus on, or " make a place" out of what's unclear, or unresolved, and then feel their way into that.
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Frequently we have feelings but are blocked from them, or have feelings that are so chaotic that there seems to be no handle on them, or have feelings which drift off like clouds when we approach them. We use the expression " making a place" because focusing often feels like we make room inside ourselves for such feelings to be, or when we focus we are almost geographically locating our feelings. Making a place is like creating a picture frame inside yourself where feelings can come up. Then we can stand comfortably and look at what is there and experience it. Making a place is like saying to oneself, while pointing, " That there, that's what's confused, " and then feeling " that there. " Like, " There is that whole big confusion. "
Making a place can also be in some way separating out, locating, getting in touch with a feeling. It is the act of recognition: " Oh, it's just this part about it that is scary, not all of it. " Or, " Yeah, it’s that I'm so disappointed, that’s what is getting me. "
A place is not only words, but something in the person that is directly felt, and can be pointed to inwardly: " There, this, that is what the worst of it is. "
It is necessary for the person to keep quiet, not only outwardly, but also not to talk inside, so that a feeling place can form. It takes a few seconds, maybe even a minute.
Some people talk all the time, either out loud or at themselves inside, and they don't let anything directly felt form for them. Then everything stays a painful mass of confusion and tightness.
When a place forms, the person also feels better. There is some relief. It's as if all the bad or troubling feeling goes into one spot, right there, and the rest of the body feels easier and freer, and one can breathe better.
Once a place forms (and this happens by itself, if one keeps quiet and lets it), then people can relate to that place. They can wonder what's in that, and can feel around it and into it, and can let aspects of it come to them one by one.
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