A Focusing Life

Once upon a time, there was a wise Chinese farmer who was admired and envied by his neighbors because, alone of all of them, he owned a horse.

I wish I could remember this story during the rough times in my life. This summer was a rough time. After 14 months of unemployment, I got a job. Then I got sick and had to cut my hours. Then my boss said he really needed me to work full time, and I couldn’t, so I gave notice and starting wondering if disability would be an option (it wasn’t). Then my boss said he might have some part-time hourly work for me. Then the owner of the rights to some content I was hoping to use for another project was very enthusiastic and supportive. Then my boss asked if I could stay on as a permanent employee (with benefits) at 30 hours a week.

During the parts of the summer where things were falling away, I was not saying, “Perhaps.” I was saying, “Oh my God. I’m going to be a bag lady. I may as well pick out my shopping cart right now. I’m going to die alone and sick. I’m never going to work again.”

During the parts of the summer when things started coming together, I was ecstatic. “This is perfect! Exactly what I need/want!”

There’s no question that I like the coming-together parts better than the falling-apart parts. But it is believing my judgments and preferences that gets me into trouble. I get scared, and then believe that there is reason to be scared. I find exactly what I want, and then believe that it is indeed perfect – and then begin to fear losing it.

The wise farmer lives in a place Inner Relationship Focusing calls “Self-in-Presence.” From this position, a person can enjoy the good times, feel compassion for her own pain and fear in the hard times, and keep an emotional balance through all of it. This does not mean never having emotions. What it means is not being dragged around by emotions.

I’m there sometimes. I promised my Focusing mentor, Reva, that I would cross-stitch the word “Perhaps” and hang in on my living room wall. Maybe I’ll see it next time when I’m caught up in the drama, and remember the farmer, and shrug a little at the parts of myself that are freaking out, and say, with a kind smile, “Perhaps.”

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

It looks like Taz the Tasmanian Devil, which is appropriate, because it is furious, so angry that it is mostly incoherent. I can pick out the swear words – the rest is lost in spitting and gibberish that might be words if played at a slower speed. It jumps up and down, sweating, waving its arms, and pointing at the object of its rage. It lives just below my sternum.

I slow down and settle in front of it. Another part pops out. It doesn’t want me to listen to Taz; it says, “Don’t get so upset.” I spend some time with this part and learn that it feels threatened by displays of irritation, not to mention rage. It wants protection. I offer clouds of cotton batting; it accepts, and I gently wrap the part in deep layers of fluff. It gratefully curls up. My attention returns to Taz.

Its speech begins to slow. Now I can pick out a bit more of the content. It is making threats against a person who questioned my professional advice. For Taz, this person apparently stands just behind my right shoulder. “How dare you!” it yells. “Exactly who the [bleep] do you think you are?” it screams. Gradually, runs out of gas, finally standing quietly and gazing at me.

I wonder if it needs something from me. I give that wondering a slight mental push toward Taz: “Hm?” Its gaze drops a bit as it cocks its head, considering, its brow furrowed.

It looks up at me. Yes. It does want something from me … but doesn’t know what.

Thoughtfully, it sinks down and sits, chin in hand. After a bit, it dismisses me with a wave: this is a new idea, this needing something from Lerissa. It wants some time to ponder. Thanks, and come back later. Or it will get in touch with me.

I let it know I’m grateful and move my awareness out, checking. What else is here?

It felt so good to return to volunteering at the greyhound rescue center last week. Blue, a big brindle boy who was returned to the center a week after being adopted several months ago, especially captured my heart. No one knows exactly what happened to Blue except that he bit one of his new people. But he returned a different dog: snappish and unpredictable, he often refuses invitations to come out of his crate. Once affectionate and playful, he is now angry and mistrustful. I had offered him my fist to sniff. He did, and then something changed in his eyes. I knew he was feeling crowded and scared and was thinking about biting. I withdrew my hand and met the eyes of the staffer standing behind him. She had seen the change, too, and nodded: This was what she was telling me about.

We moved the dogs into the outdoor enclosures for exercise, toilet time and a cooling dip in the wading pools. I hung out with Blue’s group, ignoring him and petting the dogs that invited me to. Suddenly, he was there, nosing for petting. I scratched his ears for a few moments and then turned to another dog. Blue came back, and I repeated the pattern: scritch, scritch, new dog. Again: scritch, scritch, new dog. Then Blue firmly pushed through the crowd of dogs, butted his forehead head against my legs and stayed there. I looked up at the staffer, eyes wide, and we grinned at each other.

I am wiping away tears.

“It’s so easy to make heart connections with animals,” I say. “You can see what they need in their eyes. Blue was afraid and in pain. He needed space and time. He saw my heart, and trusted me because of that.”

As I say this, my awareness moves back into my solar plexus, and there stands Taz, nodding. That’s what he wants – heart connections. He wants others to see my heart, and he is devastated when that doesn’t happen.

And then I’m aware of another part moving gently onto the scene. I sense its presence, and then I sense what it has to say: It is possible to have heart connections with people in the same way you have heart connections with animals, it murmurs. It’s more complicated sometimes. But it’s possible.

Now I am crying hard, touched to the core. Taz is nodding. The new part continues: This is what it takes to make a heart connection with someone who doesn’t do that easily.

And now I see the face of the mistrustful client right there, over Taz’ left shoulder.

You must connect with your own Self first. Then you can see the other’s pain and fear. And then you can connect with their heart.

My listener suggests I breathe into that message. I do, and stay there with it until it gradually fades and settles into a feeling of peace and spaciousness throughout my middle.

I have opened a door, expecting to see a room, and instead have stepped out into a vast landscape of rolling hills.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

You may not come here anymore with your hard and abusive thoughts, with your plague ships of thoughts, with your slave ships of thoughts, with your warships of thoughts — all these will be turned away. Likewise, any thoughts that are filled with angry or starving exiles, with malcontents and pamphleteers, mutineers and violent assassins, desperate prostitutes, pimps and seditious stowaways — you may not come here anymore, either.

As I read this passage from Eat, Pray, Love — an otherwise enjoyable book by Elizabeth Gilbert — my heart sank. Something inside me tugged on my sleeve (yes, they do that a lot), and when I bent down to hear what it wanted to tell me, I heard it plaintively whisper, “Isn’t that how we got here?”

That is how we got here. We exiled parts, judged other parts, forbade whole legions of parts from speaking, let alone showing up. We went to war. We declared our inner territories at peace and set up barricades. The result: a sense of being fragmented, scattered, uneasy.

I read Ms. Gilbert’s prescription and I feel sad for all those rejected, harshly judged, starving parts with their seditious, angry thoughts.

From a Focusing perspective, those malcontents, those desperate prostitutes, and especially those exiles — all have their story. And all are mine. They are part of me — and you — and they only look threatening because they had good reason to take on that role. It was a matter of survival. Not their survival — mine. Yours.

To declare war on parts of myself that I judge to be unworthy is to continue the very pattern that gave rise to their desperate attempts to save me from something. Nothing will change. No forward-living motion can arise in an armed camp.

The Focusing Attitude invites me to find a place to stand within myself where I can turn toward those angry, negative thoughts with compassion, and invite their authors to creep forward and be known, heard and nourished, until they no longer need their aggressive disguises. There is nothing within me that I need to fear, nothing that needs to be thrown away, exiled or rejected.

From this place — Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin call this Self in Presence — it is possible to see that each of these apparent mutineers has only my own best interests at heart. The captains of those ships want something positive for me. Even the part of me that fears them, that sets up barriers and roadblocks and metal detectors, even that part has a story, a wish, a purpose that serves my greater good.

I think I understand the intention behind controlling negative thinking. I just don’t like the negative approach. Rumi’s advice is just as specific and yet infinitely more tender:

I’ve titled this blog “A Focusing Life” with the intention of writing about how Focusing – the attitude and the practice – can infuse a life. But since that very first post, what continues to pull at my sleeve like a neglected child is the knowledge of all the times I have not used Focusing … and wish I had.

Thing One: Buying a House

About a year ago, I was astonished to realize that I made the biggest decision of my life without the benefit of Focusing. In 2003 I received an inheritance, and was advised to use part of it to buy a house. It made sense, kind of. This is San Diego; the housing market has traditionally provided excellent returns in spite of the occasional downturn. Because my inheritance included two cats and a dog, my pet inventory had suddenly zoomed to three cats and two dogs, and I knew it would be hard (if not impossible) to find a rental that would allow all of us to move in. And I couldn’t stay in my apartment because the new owner wanted to renovate.

So I went house-hunting, and when prospect of homeownership began to terrify me, I muttered a mantra I had devised: “You have to live somewhere; if you could to find a place to rent, you would pay about as much as you would if you had a mortgage; if you’re going to have to pay that much, you may as well end up with some equity to show for it.”

It’s not that I didn’t know what I was afraid of. I had always lived rather minimally – the rent on my charming two-bedroom Hillcrest attached cottage was ridiculously low, and I had lived there for 15 years. I had long since paid off my car, and my needs were few and not costly, so I worked when I needed to and spent the rest of the time goofing off. (Ambition has never been my strong suit.)

Buying a house would change all that. For one thing, I would have to remain employed for long periods of time. I would have to get serious about saving and about budgeting. I would have to think about retirement (which I should have been thinking about all along anyway). These would be huge changes, and I wasn’t sure I would be up to them. That’s what scared me: the prospect of buying a place and then losing it.

Rational and Linear vs Complicated and Less Efficient

This is rich fodder for Focusing, and I teach this stuff, so you might think I would naturally plunk myself down and invite the scared parts to come forward and be heard. I didn’t. Instead, I just carried that list of pros and cons around in my head, repeated my mantra over and over, and eventually found this cute little two-bedroom on a cul-de-sac near San Diego State University. It was not a poor decision, even though I ended up buying at the peak of the recent upsurge. My home has lost value since then, but I’m not planning to move any time within the next 15 years, so I can wait for the market to recover. And my mortgage is a relatively sensible five-year fixed – not a subprime atrocity that could force me into foreclosure.

I’m not saying that I would have made a different decision if I had done some Focusing about it. I don’t know what might or might not have been different. What I do know is that by consciously inviting only those parts of myself that make decisions through rational, linear thinking, I cheated myself of the full input of my Self – input that might have made my decision more complicated and not so efficient, but also more satisfying, more complete and somehow easier.

Fortunately, it’s never too late to Focus about an issue.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’ve known for a long time that I ought to blog. It’s a great way to keep your name and ideas — not to mention your services — in front of people. But every time I thought about doing it, an inner chorus stood up and shouted their objections:

“Are you nuts?” they wailed. “You write all day long. Now you want to sit down at the computer and write MORE? And without being paid for it?”

“People have too much to read as it is. What makes you think they are going to read your stuff?”

“You don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been already said — and said better.”

And, the most effective objection (although not the loudest – this one doesn’t need to be delivered at anything louder than a whisper to be effective): “Are you sure you want people to know you that well?”

And then I read something by Mark Silver, who has something called The Heart of Business. It’s all about being authentic in business. I’ve subscribed to his emailed articles for years, but have read very few of them. That inner chorus that hates the idea of blogging? It hates the idea of marketing, too … and, it turns out, for similar reasons.

So I read this article. It’s called “Bad-mood marketing.” The title alone was enough to make me take notice. I often feel that my particular brand of authenticity might not be particularly welcome, because … well, because I’m often in a bad mood. (My hero is the Shirley MacLaine character, Ouiser Boudreaux, in 1989’s Steel Magnolias, who at one point growls, “I’ve been in a bad mood since 1971!” It makes me smile just to think of her – a woman after my own heart.)

But here’s Mark Silver, talking about how even a bad mood is useful in marketing. He describes an encounter with a potential client where he acknowledges that he’s actually feeling kind of crappy, and explains why. The client hires him.

The client hired him because he saw something of himself in Mark, just like I saw something of myself in Ouiser Boudreaux – and was grateful for it. Mark writes:

If you read the ocean of blogs and newsletters, there’s a
lot of talk about ‘authenticity.’ And yet the overall tone
is one of everyone being in a perpetual good mood, as if
someone had been sneaking Zoloft into their lattes. Which,
when you’re looking for help and support, can either cheer
you up, or totally piss you off.

Me? I get pissed off. And then depressed. Here’s Mark’s advice:

Bow your head and ask: “What is being asked for? Where am I
being led? What’s truly alive?” If what comes pisses you
off more, say “Yes” to it anyway… and then ask for more
information: “Wow, now I’m even more pissed off. What part
of the message didn’t I hear yet?”

If that isn’t a Focusing approach, I don’t know what is. I read it. Read it again. Checked inside … and the shouting chorus stood down. Just like that.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!