Experiential individual, couples and group therapy toward inner freedom and fuller contact with your life
In-person in Atwater Village, Los Angeles
Turning toward what you can sense inside
You're telling me about going home for the holidays. "I'm anxious," you say. It sounds reasonable, and then you pause. Something about the word doesn't fit the whole of it.
I might ask you to let your attention settle into your body, around the whole of going home. After a moment you notice something in your throat: a tightness, almost as if you're swallowing something back. We stay with it, alongside a friendly attitude, without trying to change it. You try "dread," then "trapped," checking each against that tightness. Neither quite matches. Then: "It's like I have to become the old version of myself again." Your throat eases a little. You breathe out. A sadness arrives that wasn't there a moment ago, and there may be more behind it.
Nobody told you what your experience meant. You stayed in contact with what your body was holding, and found words that answered to it. That's one way Focusing happens.
I met Focusing as a client, before I trained in it. I could explain what was happening in my life, and the words still didn't reach the whole of what I felt. What mattered was having someone alongside me who let me find the meaning myself. I could stay with something vague until a word or an image began to fit. That still shapes how I listen.
How it helps
You might be able to explain exactly why you feel as you do, even speak brilliantly about it, and still find yourself in the same familiar pattern. That's where Focusing is especially useful. Situations that have looped for years can begin to move once they're met where they're actually held, in the body. Big feelings get some space around them, so you can sit beside something hard instead of drowning in it. A decision that feels impossible in your head can become clearer when you sense how each option actually sits. And if you've been told you're too sensitive, Focusing treats your sensitivity as a precise way of knowing.
It's close to how artists work, it matters in intimate relationships, and it's there in group when something surprises you. It also runs through everything else we might do together, whether we're exploring a memory, a creative block or a decision. It's the ground the rest of our work stands on.
What is a felt sense?
You already know something about it. You leave the house and feel you've forgotten something. You can't name it, but the feeling is quite definite. Keys, phone, wallet: none of those is it, and the feeling stays. Then it comes, the letter on the kitchen table, and your body says yes, with a small release. Something was there before the words, and it was more exact than any of your guesses.
Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher and psychotherapist who worked alongside Carl Rogers, used the term felt sense for the bodily, at-first unclear sense of a whole situation. It's wider than a single emotion and usually subtler. It tends to form in the middle of the body, in the throat, chest or belly, though it doesn't have to be strong, and you don't need to hunt for it. A gut verdict arrives finished. A felt sense is still forming: you can stay with it, look for words, and check them against it. Even its arriving can bring a little relief, before anything has been worked out.
Try this. Think of someone you love, and notice what happens in the middle of your body. Now think of someone who frustrates you. Notice how different that is. You couldn't list everything you know about either person, yet your body holds all of it in a single sense. That's a felt sense.
How it may show up in our conversation
A moment like this might take two minutes, or a longer stretch. Some people turn inward like this naturally; for others it takes time to become familiar. I can reflect, invite, or stay silent with you. I can't supply the right meaning, and I'd never want you to pretend to a bodily sense because I asked for one.
There will be silences, and they're welcome. They're often where the most important things are taking shape. You might hear yourself say, "I don't know... it's something like..." That uncertain, searching place is exactly where Focusing happens. Whatever I say back is for you to check against your own sense. If it doesn't fit, that's useful too: "No, it's more like..." is often how the truer thing arrives. You're always in charge of the pace.