The Inner Focusing Partner


At this point in my life, I am surrounded by an abundance of people who will keep me company in my focusing or listen to me in the special respectful way focusing offers. It was not always so. When I first started focusing, I didn't know other focusers. I taught a couple of friends to focus, and exchanged focusing for Alexander classes with a man who is now a certified Focusing Trainer. My husband learned to Focus and he and I narrowly avoided divorce as we steered our course through some bewildering experiences in focusing (described in our article Couples Focusing Together: A goldmine or a Minefield?)

I have never had a regular focusing partner, though, in spite of the fact that I consider focusing partnerships very valuable and have witnessed their power at the Centre for Focusing where I have paired all the Trainers for purposes of training and mutual support.

Perhaps because of my own solo beginning in focusing, I have developed for myself the Inner Focusing Partner (IFP). I should like to outline how I discovered IFP and how you too may carry with you your own partner who requires no scheduled meetings and no travelling across the city to meet. All that's needed is a little imagination and a problem or issue waiting to be unburdened and carried more lightly.

I first found my IFP when I was giving a workshop far from home and my usual support system. Some interpersonal problems arose and as the workshop facilitator I had no one to talk to. Feeling very alone and troubled, I went off into the woods for a walk. It was hard even to enjoy the beauty of that fine summer day. My inner space was cluttered and heavey with the difficulties I was encountering. At last I plunked myself down on a log. What was I going to do? And then it happened! There on the nicely rounded rock right in front of me sat Gene Gendlin. I told him my problem and he listened, nodding, slowing me down, saying parts of it back to me, directing me inward to my body felt sense of "al that". I sat there for a long time. Sometimes it was Gene and sometimes it was Mary McGuire listening and facilitating. By the end of that remarkable session, I knew what I needed to do. I carried the whole issue differently and felt that sense of my own clear energy focusers are familiar with following a number of felt shifts. I thanked my guides and turned back to deal with the situation.

Since then, I've refined what happened in spontaneously that day in the woods. Now when I have a problem, I ask myself who would be the person I'd like to have keep me company in this issue? Often the guide changes during the process as it did that first time.

I have another aspect of the IFP you may find useful for yourself. Often I am able to isolate a part of me that is having the trouble. This may be an inner child part, a critic part, a fearful part or a confused part. I suggest gently to that part that it might like to take a seat opposite me. Then, tapping into that part of myself which is good at helping others access their own knowing, I suggest to the troubled part that it just take a minute to pay attention to the centre of its body. I'm sure you know how it goes from there. This recalls Gendlin's paper "The Client's Client: The Edge of Awareness" (in Client-Centred Therapy and the Person-Centered Approach, ed. Levant and Shlien [New York:Praeger, 1984] pp.76-107) about teaching clients to eventually act as their own therapists. That part of me which is the person-centred facilitator helps the part sitting in the chair get clearer and solve the problem or move forward in its inner process.

There must be other ways to access our own knowing and act as our own focusing partners, facilitators, guides, trainers or therapists. I am very interested in hearing from other focusers who have found ways of doing this.

"The Inner Focusing Partner", The Focusing Connection, Vol VIII, No.4, July 1991.