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How you can you tell when it isn't working, and when it is
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How you can you tell when it isn't working, and when it is
1. When people look you straight in the eyes, then they aren't yet focusing inward. Say, " You can't get into it while you're looking at me, let me just sit here and get with yourself. "
If the person speaks immediately after you get through asking them to be quiet, they haven’t done it yet. First get, and say back the crux of what they say, then ask them again to make a place as described above. If you've done a very heavy trip on it, let it go fifteen minutes or so, and then if the person still isn't into anything, try again.
If, after a silence, the person comes up with explanations and speculations, ask how that point feels, and what's in that, to feel it out. Don’t put the person down for " just head stuff. " Rather, pick up what people do say, and keep pointing into feeling, so they get there eventually.
If people say they can't let feelings come because they are too restless, tense, feel empty, discouraged, trying too hard, etc., ask them to focus on that. They can ask themselves (and not answer in words), " What is this ‘rattled’ feeling? " ''What is this ‘tense' feeling? " " What is this ‘empty’ feeling? ” “What is this ’trying too hard' thing? "
2. How can you tell when a person has a place, and when referring to this place is working? One has a place when one can feel more than one understands, when what is there is more than words and thoughts, when something is quite definitely felt, but it hasn’t opened up or released yet.
Referring to a felt place has worked when something further has come up, something one hasn’t just thought up, or figured out. This way a person feels something directly, and doesn’t only figure that it must be so.
Anything whatever, which comes in this " from the gut" way, should be welcomed. It is the organism's next step. Take it and say it back just the way the person tells it.
It feels good to have something come directly from one’s feeling; it shifts the feeling slightly. Even if one doesn’t like what has come it feels good. It is encouraging when more is happening than just talk. It gives one a sense of a process, and movement from stuck places.
This whole way of listening, responding, and referring to people's own experience just as they feel into it, is based on the fact that a person's things, feelings, and troubles are not just concepts, ideas, but are bodily. Therefore, the point of
helping is never just to figure out, just speculations, abstractions, explanations. There has to be a physical, concretely felt bodily process of steps into where the trouble is felt. Such a process gets going when someone responds to the personal, felt side of anything said, just as a person feels it, without anything else messed into it. Felt movement and change happen when a person is given the peaceful moments to allow the bodily sensed version of a trouble to be, to be felt, and to move its own next step.
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A person can do this alone, but the presence and clear bit by bit responding of another person who gets each bit, has a powerful peace-and-room-making effect. With most people, one can feel into oneself less than when alone. With some rare people who will really listen and get each thing, we can get into ourselves much
more than when alone.
In this process the bodily felt steps, that are next, " come" as of their own accord. As each bit is taken by you, just as it is, a moment of peace is possible, and then some next thing or part of the thing will come. (Don’t theorize about all this until you have observed and experienced it. See first if you experience and observe a powerful process when you try these things out. )
Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, How to use your feelings and thoughts of the other person without laying trips on him/her
What you say isn't as important as how you do it. You can try out almost anything with pretty good results, or at least without disruption, if you will do it in the following ways.
How
1. Whatever you say or do, watch the person and respond to where ·your input leaves him/her. If you can't tell, ask him, then get with that. Even if what you say or do is bad, stupid, or hurtful, it will come out good if you ask about, and respond with absolute listening to whatever the person’s reaction is.
2. Make what you say about him/her be questions, not conclusions. And not questions to his/her head, but invitations to him to sense into him/herself and see if something like you say - or something else - is there, directly for him. You don't ever know what he/she’s got, you can only wonder and help him/her to ask himself. So, use a non-conclusive, inquiring way. For example, " I wonder if that makes you hurt in some way, " or " It seems as if you might be angry, are you? " (You can also tell him/her, " I don't mean that I would know. Feel it out and see, is it like that or how is it?
3. Let go of your thing easily, as soon as you see that it leads him into arguments, speculation, or just doesn’t get him further into anything he feels directly. If you think it's good you can say it twice but after that, let it go. You can bring it up later (you could be right but something else might have to come first).
4. Make sure that there are stretches of time when you do only absolute listening, or helping the person focus. If you interrupt with your ideas and reactions constantly, his process can't get going. There should be ten or fifteen minutes at a time when you follow only him. If the person is feeling into his thing, do less of yours; if he is stuck, do more.
Let his process go ahead, if it seems to want to move a certain way. Don't insist that what you sense should be next has to come next. Go on with what’s next for him.
If he tries to teach you to be a certain way, be that way for a while. For instance, he might say he needs you to be more quiet, or more talkative, or to come at him some definite way. Do it, you can always go back to your preferred way later, if it comes to nothing good. People often teach us how to help them.
It's always enough that a person heard your thing, he needn't agree with it, or make use of it, certainly not just then.
5. If you got him off his track, and he is now arguing, speculating, or confused, bring him back to the last point where he was in touch with himself. Say, “You were telling me … Go on from there. "
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