Rob Foxcroft

Peacefully listening and checking out what you think you heard

A friend asked for advice. Well, who am I to advise? Still, I can always listen, and say what comes to me.

It was about somebody with a deep and genuine desire to learn Focusing. He had read Gene Gendlin’s book, “Focusing”, felt a need for some pointers, and came for one or two guided Focusing sessions.

Clearly an unusual chap, enjoyable to be with, and there was  was a good sense of rapport. It all felt comfortable, delightful even, and his Focusing went well.

Okay. Let me take this in little chunks. Taking this first chunk, I guess that the sense of rapport encouraged her to be rather open and perhaps even unwary.

She goes on to say that a while later he was overtaken by a wave of fear and uncertainty. He called it “a paranoia backlash”. I’m nervous of phrases like these. I always want to unpick them. Does he mean:  “I suddenly found myself feeling unsafe and suspicious”? And if so, was there anything for a vulnerable person to feel suspicious about?

When she spoke of having unravelled what was happening “by email and phone”, my hackles rose. I felt anxious. In my experience, email can be a disastrous medium for sorting interpersonal issues. I remember how eloquent and passionate on this point my friend Jean used to be. She said that email combines all the worst faults of speech and writing, and none of the advantages.

It leaves a permanent record, but is hasty and essentially transient. In email, people blurt out things, which would be better left unsaid. Then these things get treated as if they were considered (and perhaps vicious) accusations. Because they are written, they are preserved for ever. Further, there is no context of voice or body language. There is no way of quickly picking up a misunderstanding and clearing it. So that’s the first thing I want to say.

The phone is a safer medium. And it was so in this case. As soon as he heard her voice, he at once felt fine with her, just as he had been when they met: pleasant, respectful, very honest.

He sounds like a good person to me. And then, what follows?

He was able to talk about his reaction and explain his theory of “what happens in my head”. He has sometimes had similar reactions before, and mulled them over a good deal.

Here we notice an invitation to stray into deep waters. Why not? The questions are: is it safe for him? and for my friend? and does she want to go swimming?

Now another opaque phrase come up. The guy said something about “Asperger’s syndrome”. Again, I want to hear this in short words. Does that mean: “I often find it hard to know what is going on between me and another person. When that happens, my mind tends to run away with itself, coming up with all kinds of stuff, and it’s hard to sort it all out?”

They talked for a long time about the way he experiences himself and other people. It felt safe. The two of them spoke openly and straightforwardly about all that had passed between them. This seemed to be helpful. It comes to me to wonder whether he may perhaps have chosen her because she is so open and honest. Perhaps this is how he came so quickly to feel that she might help him learn more about what goes on between people.

It seemed urgently important to me that she should keep track, over and over, of her sense of safety here. I asked her to install a burglar alarm or something, so that the instant there would come a flicker of unsafe, it would start ringing. She could go at once and see what just happened.

I urged her to read “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime”.

The guy said he rarely has real conversations with people. I was not surprised to hear how much he valued being able to talk to somebody who was sensitive to his feelings, and aware of her own feelings and responses.

Still, she was unsure whether to go on teaching him Focusing. She had mixed feelings, but felt mostly that she would very much like to: that she would enjoy teaching him, and he might get a lot out of Focusing.

I had some sense of panic in the air. Panic is a sure sign that something is happening. The question is, what? I said, “Please be very careful not to minimise yourself, just here. Yes, OK, he’ll get a lot out of Focusing. And also, he may be hoping to get a lot out of you“.

In an encounter like this, one is going to have to pay the greatest attention to so-called “boundaries”. “Boundaries” is another jargon-word, which we must at once take to bits. Here it means, “each person’s feelings of safety”. One is going to have to pay the greatest attention to each person’s feelings of safety. That’s better. In particular, she must attend to her own sense of what is going on between the two of them.

Nuances, which one might normally not bother about, may trigger a reaction, when a person is already sensitive to a fracturing of contact.

“Still,” I said, “It’s fine. I’m guessing there’s nothing at all to worry about. You just need to keep ‘peacefully listening and saying back’.” - meaning, you need to keep checking that what you think you heard is indeed what he intended to convey.

“And to keep being simple and open; and maybe to keep a certain friendly distance, so that nothing becomes overwhelming.”

I guess it’s important, when relationship is complex, to remember that everything is always both now and then. It is happening between the two people now; and it is happening between the guy and some person in his past. You don’t have to choose, though in the end you can only deal with you-and-the-guy bit. So that has to stay squeaky clean.

My friend wondered whether this person might feel much more at home in Focusing circles than he does anywhere else. I said, “Yes. And it may take some time.”

And then she said that she was feeling some niggles. Three to be precise.

The first two were clearly linked with old stuff in that the felt-senses both brought up strong memories. I said, “Ah. Your old stuff. Well, we must listen to it.”

The first niggle was a memory of her father’s habit of attacking her for a habit which he called “jumping into things with two feet”. He hated it, when she didn’t stop to think of the consequences, and accused her of doing foolish and dangerous things, and of putting other people into danger.

I said, “So your father is your Critic?” And my friend: “Hello, Critic. What is it you are fearing, which I need to know about?”

A memory comes here: “I used to like to talk to tramps as a child apparently, and when I was thirteen, I regularly visited an old man who lived as a recluse in a caravan in the woods. I mentioned him casually to my dad one day and got a severe telling off and banned from visiting him again.”

After scenes like this, my friend was left with a sense that maybe she can’t or shouldn’t trust her own judgement. Yet she I never suffered in any way from those kinds of things. Nor did anybody else. Now, of course she can see why another person might judge there were risks, but she still doesn’t personally believe she was ever in actual danger, either emotionally or physically.

She in fact made sound judgments about what was safe for her. Nothing bad happened. In this case too, she had no sense of undue danger, nor did she fear becoming the victim of aggression.

There was some wariness, however. Was there some risk of some kind of emotional dependence developing? Might he want to take up more time than she was able or happy to give? Could the relationship even in some way become professionally damaging?

I said, “I mostly don’t worry much about those things.”

But I don’t like psycho-babble. I am SURE it is urgent to avoid it. What is “emotional dependence”? Does it mean:  “He begins to feel safe with me. He wants to lean on me. His hopes for what I can give him are unrealistic. To give him
all that he hopes for might cost me more than I have”? I think it means something like that.

Well, if that’s what it means, then if a person takes up a lot of your time (or whatever), you can talk about it, and agree on what is okay for you both.

Then there was the second niggle. My friend once made a huge mistake. There was a small child who (truly) had shut down all her senses. My friend gave her taste of love and affection. She began to re-open her sensory world. And then my friend had to abandon her, to send her back to live in a heartless African orphanage. It was utterly heartbreaking, a memory full of tears and remorse.

There was such “a deep sense of regret around the decision I made to ‘help’ her”.

I said, and would still say: “There we go. There is still grief, around that painful and heartrending experience. Please make space for the grief. In my experience, grief is very wise, once you learn to hear what it is saying. You know, if she made it to adult life, she may remember the whole episode in a very different light from yours. Who knows?”

It means a lot to a person, just to know that there can be kindness in the world.

It was clear enough what the memory was saying here, however. My friend feared that in trying to be helpful she might merely cause more problems. Yet the person she is dealing with now is able to make choices. That little girl had NO choice.

My friend said: “I have this fear, nonetheless. A sense of some risk for him and for myself. It would be hard to forgive myself if he were suffering through me.” She spent some time listening to this fear, this sense of risk.

In the end, we agreed, you can only have good intentions. Leave outcomes to God or whoever.

And then there was the third niggle. My friend reckoned it would be a good idea for this guy to be not only Focusing with her, but with others too. I was sceptical. I said, “Humph. Would it?”

I guessed she might be scared of getting into “therapy”. Ah, more psychobabble. Well, what is therapy? Does it mean (for example): ” the exchange of love for money”?

I am profoundly nervous about any profession, which consists of paying for love. Still, one may feel nervous, and still value the thing about which one is nervous. I’m clear that a lot of people are greatly helped and supported by the processes which we call “therapy”.

Still, the great advantage we have as Focusing teachers is that any love we have for our students is not part of a commercial exchange. That is NOT what they pay for. They paying you to help them learn a life-skill. It’s useful to be completely clear about that. For it has a simplifying effect.

“Is he learning Focusing in these sessions, or not?” If so, it is fine for him to be paying me for my time.

“Is he not learning Focusing, and simply paying for a relationship?” In this case, you would need to settle down and clarify what is going on. You would want both to uncover your feelings and to be clear about your values and principles.

It is clearly part of his learning Focusing, that you are listening to your felt sense; part of his learning Listening, that you are listening to him. Consequently, much which might pass for ordinary conversation can still have the function of teaching.

With this student, there was yet another issue. Although he was keen to learn listening skills, my friend was wary of his reactions to people when he is “in backlash mode”. Perhaps it would be quite hurtful. She didn’t feel clear whether she would be happy to help arrange times for him to be a Listener, and wondered whether what might happen would be her responsibility?

People have to be responsible for themselves, I said. And yet, we  have some responsibility too. If a Focusing teacher were to fail to listen to her sense of things, to see what that has to say about the student’s readiness to listen, then she would surely be failing in her basic contract - to teach Focusing. For she would, at that moment, not be Focusing herself; and “being Focusing” is the major part of teaching Focusing.

Let me say that again :-

1   People learn Focusing mainly by contagion - like catching the measles.
2   Your contract is to teach Focusing.
3   Therefore, you have to infect him with Focusing by yourself Focusing.
4   That includes this case (”Is he ready….?”). You have to let him see that you are Focusing on this, as on other matters.

My friend wondered whether she ought to advise her student to go to workshops with other teachers. But the guy finds journeys hard. Even if he were to go, she knew in her heart that any group would be too daunting, that he would have been unable to relax enough to get much from it.

Two things came to me here, which are often true for us.

First, don’t underestimate your own importance to a person. As in this case, the guy’s big reaction happened after meeting my friend, right? Why should it be a Focusing reaction? I imagine it was a reaction to a person.

Or is it? Maybe it WAS a Focusing reaction. Maybe it was himself he was scared of. One would want to find out, if possible.

And you would surely tread softly just here. You know when there’s a skin on the bog. Sometimes, when you fall through, in goes down a long way. It seems a really bad idea to fall through and get yourself up to the neck in brown peat.

Still, if that happens, you just keep “peacefully listening and saying back”, and soon it’s fine again. You always do find your way out of the bog again, I find, and tread a little more warily the next time. Don’t you?

Second, here’s another bit of psychobabble. What is a “neurosis”? Does it mean:  “I have many and conflicting feelings. I have a deep sense of mistrust, of shame, guilt and inferiority. This has made it hard for me to learn lifeskills, and hard to use the skills I have for living”? I guess it must mean something like that.

I seem to be advising people to make a policy of never letting a long word go by, without finding out what it means today.

My friend was anxious to become a little clearer about her relationship with this sensitive, interesting person. Aware of their common sense of urgency, I went back to something I said at the start: I would never want to sort something like this out by phone or in writing. I want to have all my senses working, at moments like this. Still, sometimes there is no choice.

My friend said, “My strongest sense is that I would like to continue teaching him.” So I replied, “Well, you have to listen to ALL the senses. What is the weakest sense saying?”

She said, “I feel I need a second opinion. It would really not be sensible to go on without talking to someone else first. There may be aspects to this that I haven’t even spotted.”

So I said, “Please don’t take my scribbles too seriously. Just add them to the pot, and trust your heart. The great thing is safety. Without safety, for both of you, the good things don’t happen. Or if they do happen, the process is bumpy, and
perhaps scary.”

Well, did it do?

Some years later, it seems it did do. My thoughts seem thin enough to me. Still, my friend did trust her heart, and many good things followed.

Love to all - to whoever may read this, and to all my friends, wherever you may be,

Rob

Posted in Focusing on 16 November by Rob | Permalink |