Chapter 7 of Erna de Bruijn, Focussen, de kracht van innerlijk luisteren

(Focusing: The Power of Inner Listening) , Lannoo, 2014.

A CHILD INSIDE—A PROBLEM CHILD?

Like all children, a child inside needs a home—and
who else can offer it one but you?

A child inside is a part of us that grows out of childhood experiences and

influences how we lead our lives—usually without our conscious awareness.

Playful children and problem children

A playful, energetic child wants to live, play, and grow, to discover and do new
things. You can give a child like that a great deal of freedom, although it often
needs attention too, and sometimes supervision.
This chapter is mainly about the type of child inside who is more
troubled and vulnerable. Children of that kind need extra attention. When they
can't be part of your life for whatever reason, they sometimes block or spoil
large areas of your life. That often goes together with a constant emotional
undertone: for instance, a subtle sense of defeat, defensiveness, insecurity, or
suspicion.
Even experienced focusers may run into this, after many sessions that
don't go quite deep enough. It's usually a background feeling you're not
consciously aware of, like wallpaper you no longer notice. There is often
incredible energy in a child inside, who has somehow managed to survive in
its own way. That energy is liberated when the child feels seen and
acknowledged in the past situation by the present-day adult.

During one session, a woman in her mid-forties went from a hopeless,

tired feeling to the image of a little girl in a dark corner who could
"never do anything right." That was what the child told her, after they
had carefully built up a relationship. Once the little girl realized that
 "her adult" had received and understood her message, and accepted
her as she was, something started to shift; she was, quite simply, free
to be herself! A little later, the two of them went looking together for
something the girl could do right. They started to enojy the process,
coming up with one thing after another that she could certainly do
well. They also saw that it was also perfectly fine to fail once in a while.
And what about the woman's tired feeling? In the weeks that followed
the session, it started to fade.

A child who is hiding, or trapped, or one who has never received enough
attention, can be given a place in the adult's life—even if it's too young to talk.
Then the child and adult can move forward together. The felt sense of "the
whole thing about this child" can help to show the way.

A young man who had difficulty making and maintaining human

contact arrived, through Focusing, at the image of a baby alone in a
remote little room, fed and changed punctually, but with no other
contact. Crying didn't help, so the child had stopped. The man started
to care for the child. It felt as if he were putting the baby in a carrier –
a first body sense of contact!

"The organism knows how it should have been"1

Past events cannot be undone. But something that became stuck in its
development can often find its way back to its original course.
Sometimes a certain quality was not tolerated in the past. For instance, a
vivid imagination may have been seen as dishonesty. It had to be buried away,
and it stayed buried. When a quality like that is suppressed or exiled,
something withers inside, or else becomes rebellious.
In this case, something was once present, but wasn't allowed to be there.
By Focusing, you can make room for it now. If you allow that vivid imagination
to be present, it can become a valuable helper in your life today, especially if it
goes together with clear insight.
Another possibility is that something should have been present for the
1
"Het organisme weet hoe het had moeten zijn." In Gene Gendlin aan het woord en aan het werk, chapter "Het
Ik", FocusCentrum DenHaag, 2003. This booklet is a Dutch translation from the original spoken German.
child, but wasn't—attention, safety, warmth, or room to grow. When a basic
need is not fully met in childhood, the adult is likely to feel that same need in
the form of an insatiable desire, or to be at a loss when the opportunity comes
to meet the need—or both. When you do Focusing with an issue of this kind,
you can look for the exact quality of what was missing back then, and invite
and allow that quality into your body and soul. In this way, the void can be at
least partly filled. In Gendlin's words, "It fills itself in."
It could, for instance, be filled by a memory of a childhood friend's
mother, who once gave you real attention. Or by the intimacy between a
grandfather and grandchild, which you couldn't help noticing recently on the
bus. Or by a touching scene from a book or movie, or something you dream
about or long for—whatever gives you the feeling, "Yes, that's it, right there!"
When you focus, you can invite that image into awareness and experience it in
your body and soul. Then, after all that time, it can fill the empty place from
childhood and become truly yours. Like a matching skin or bone graft, it can
temporarily fill the gap in the tissue. Then, as your body grows new cells there,
the graft slowly breaks down, until it has been completely replaced with tissue
of your own.

Old traumas
When a traumatic experience has been "forgotten," fear or anger from the
past can suddenly overwhelm you, in the form of a panic attack or fit of rage.
The emotion can be triggered by the faintest reminder of the past situation. It
may be no more than a smell, the sound of a voice, the look in someone's
eyes, or a touch—even a well-meant one. After you experience that kind of
overwhelming emotion, it's important to reflect afterwards on exactly what
aspect of the situation set you off, and what you are still feeling now. That can
help you trace the footprints of the frightened or enraged child inside.
Your "child" may have been waiting for a long time—for you, the only
adult who can get to know it through and through and give it whatever
support it needs. That can lead to major shifts in misunderstood,
"unreasonable" patterns of behavior that have made life difficult for you—and
for the people around you. To reach that stage, a person usually needs expert
help.

Focusing with the child inside

Coming into contact with your child
Say to yourself, "When I was little . . .", and make a quiet place inside. All sorts
of things may then come into your body and soul: feelings, images, memories,
an atmosphere, a mood. Sometimes things like these arise spontaneously
during Focusing. Whatever comes up, give it priority, and as you do, stay in
touch with what you're sensing in your body. The child inside is probably very
close by.
An inner feeling, like the feeling of "huddling in a dark corner," can point
the way to a child who was never really included. Another child might have
become rebellious, or found some other strategy for surviving. Children don't
usually have many options, and the child inside probably chose the strategy
that best fit its own personality and situation. That's quite an achievement; you
might want to give the child a compliment now!

Spending time with your child

As an adult, you can spend time with your own "child" in his or her unique
experiential world—seeing, sensing, listening, and finding out more about
how it came to be this way. You can acknowledge that it feels the way it feels,
and act as a kind of witness for the child:

 "Yes, that's how it was. That was really hard to bear [or sad, or
terrifying, or whatever fits best]."
 "You had to face it all by yourself."
 "And even so, you found a way to survive!"
 "This time, we're here with it together."
This type of acknowledgement, all by itself, can bring a sense of liberation.
And if you also give the child the simple freedom to be angry, withdrawn,
stubborn, sad, or however it may feel, then that's how it is. You reflect its
feelings: "Oh, it seems like you're angry." You make room for them. Something
was stuck; now it may start moving, even if you don't yet know how. You tell
the child, "I'm here for you, just the way you are, without any musts or
shoulds."
The child can let you know how it would like you to be with it: close by,
or at a distance, or in some other way. The adult can ask the child that lovely
question: "How do you want me to be with you?" And of course, that
exchange doesn't have to take place in words, as long as the inner attitude is
present.
Usually, once the child feels respected, it's willing to risk joining together
with "its adult." You have offered it the safety and space that it clearly lacked
in the past. In that safe space, the point is not who is to blame for what—the
point is how the child experienced it. The adult can still be in touch with that
same experience now. The point is also to learn more about the strategy the
child developed to cope to go on living, as well as it could.
That old strategy was probably vital for the child; you wouldn't want to
just get rid of it. The problem is that it became an automatism, like huddling in
a corner even when there's no reason to hide, and even though you don't
really want to hide but find yourself doing it anyway. When you notice that
feeling, that urge to hide, coming over you again, you might recognize it as a
signal from the child. Then you could bring your awareness to the child and
make a safe space for it. Let it know, "We'll look at this together. We can
always hide in a corner if we need to. And maybe this time we'll have the
courage to stay out in the open, you and I." That can help you make choices
about your attitude in life, instead of staying stuck in a rut.

A few things you definitely shouldn't do with a child inside:

 Don't hug it, or pull it onto your lap, without asking. That may not be
what it wants from you at all, or it might feel unpleasantly surprised. If it
 wants to come onto your lap, and if that feels right to you, then of
course it's fine.
 Don't try to get close to it right away. Let the child determine the right
distance between you.
 Don't tell it things. It's more helpful to listen!
 Don't talk about the child—to your companion, for instance. Instead, be
there for the child.
 Don't make judgments, draw conclusions, or do all the other things you
should never do with an adult's felt sense.
 Don't try to keep going if the child wants to stop. The younger the child,
the shorter its attention span.
 After the session with the child, don't discuss it with anyone. That could
damage the tender bond of trust.

The companion's role in Focusing with a child inside

As a companion, you can help the focuser to find a child inside and keep it
company. Certain invitations often lead the focuser straight to the child:
"Maybe there's something familiar about that feeling you have now, that
mood." Or "Maybe that's a very old feeling." In this way, you can find even a
child who is too young to talk. Stories about "those days," photographs, and
so on, can sometimes support the process, but they can also distract you from
how it really was, and how it felt for the child.

An unexpected visit from a child inside

Sometimes, during a session, you may unexpectedly notice something
connected to a child. For instance, you may notice something childlike in the
focuser's voice or posture, in the use of words like "always," "never," or
"again," or in the overtones of a statement like, "I'll just have to put up with it,
as usual." Sometimes the focuser will spontaneously mention a memory that
surfaces, or an uninvited image of a child. Always encourage him or her to
give priority to that and put aside everything else, except for the body sense
that goes with it. An opportunity like that should not be wasted. Invite the
focuser to be with the child while remaining the adult in the present, and to
do this in a way that feels right for the child at this moment.

Anna is seventy-three years old and learned to focus many years ago.
Now her life partner is starting to show signs of dementia. He often
repeats the same question, doesn't understand the answer, asks again,
gets another answer, and then snaps at her, "You never tell me
anything." That irritates Anna, but she bottles up the emotion until she
explodes. Neither of them is happy with that. For practical support,
Anna plans to attend meetings for family caregivers of people with
dementia. She has come to me for Focusing so that find better ways of
relating to the emotional aspects of the problem.
As we explore how she is carrying all this in her body, she notices
pressure in the area from her upper jaw to halfway down her chest.
"Like holding something in," she says, and a little later, she adds,
"Gritting your teeth, going on till you can't take it anymore, and the
fear of what will happen then!" The "holding in" has a cramped quality;
something isn't allowed to escape: "If only I could cry some time, when
I'm by myself." When I ask how all this feels inside, in her soul, she
says, "Horribly abandoned," in a tone of voice I hardly recognize as
hers. I ask if that feeling seems familiar, maybe from long ago. "Oh,
yes!" she replies, in almost the same tone. She falls silent for a while,
and then a story comes. She was ten years old; her little sister was
eight. Her mother was sick and had to go away for a long time. Anna
had to accept the situation, without whining, crying, or complaining,
and she had to take care of her sister. No one took care of Anna; no
one even took the time to listen to her. She was "horribly abandoned."
Anna, as the adult she is now, listens to that ten-year-old girl. Paying
attention to the child, listening, and acknowledging her for taking on
all that responsibility—that is enough for now. When the child hears
that she is welcome, and this time there are no musts or shoulds, she
responds with a wide, surprised smile. Anna starts to look much
happier then too.
After a pause, she says, "Oh, and now there's another one!" At the
age of six, during the winter famine at the end of the Second World
War, she was sent to live with a farm family. The farmer's wife knitted
socks for Anna, "which was sweet of her," and the girl sat down to try
them on, on the lid of a laundry tub that had just come off the stove.
The lid tilted open and she ended up with her upper legs and rear in
the hot, soapy water. She was lifted out again right away, but of course
she was in great pain and had been through a terrible shock. She
couldn't stop crying. The farmer's wife had no idea what to do with the
overwrought child and ordered her to stop crying right away. When
that didn't work, she pushed the girl into a closet. There, Anna
stopped crying after a while—because she wanted to be let out. She
felt angry and, again, horribly abandoned. And to think that at first the
farmer's wife had been sweet enough to knit socks for her!

What follows is part of a transcript I made from memory after the

session. "F" stands for the focuser and "C" for the companion. The tilde
(~) marks a reflection, ellipses (. . .) stand for short or long silences,
and comments in parentheses describe what happened without words.

C: You might sense how the child would like you to be with her
now . . .
F: Carefully, because it hurts so badly . . . Something cold on it,
water, then a cool sheet around it . . . I can't touch her, it hurts too
badly.
C: ~ . . . So badly . . . Now you might see how she does want you to
be with her.
F: (surprised): She's standing here now (to the right of F), and I can
hold her like this (F's crooks her right arm at the level of a six-year-
old's shoulders). That feels good! . . .

Her shoulders and arms visibly relax, twitching many times. Anna's
eyes are moist, "and that's something, anyway." Her whole posture
and facial expression are relaxed. She looks almost happy. “The fact
 that someone really listened to that little girl, and stayed with her—
that does so much good!"

C: ~... Now you might check how it feels in those places, there,
around your jaw and chest...
F: My whole jaw and throat area feels relaxed, and in my chest
there's still a slight trace of that holding-in feeling.

The focuser lets the child know that she'll come back and spend more
time with her. The "holding-in place" is her way in.
We identify a couple of manageable action steps for dealing with
her life partner. What matters is not figuring out who is right, but
seeing and hearing both the partner with dementia and the
"something there inside" of Anna. And if once in a while the emotions
run high, that's hardly a disaster. Anna's partner will soon forget, and
she doesn't have to be perfect. Relaxed, happy, and reflective, all at
once—that's how Anna walks out the door. A few weeks later we talk
again. The situation hasn't become any easier, of course, but now she
can cope with it better.

As a companion, you make sure that the focuser uses the word "I" for him or
herself as an adult and refers to the child as "he" or "she" (or as "that little
one" or "that boy"). That can help to keep the adult from merging with the
child. For instance, if the focuser says, "I always took the blame," you could
offer the reflection, "That little one always took the blame." If it seems
necessary, you could also suggest that the focuser use words like "that little
one."
This way, the child is no longer on its own. The adult focuser is with it
(and the companion is there for the focuser). In one session, the focuser put it
this way: "She can come to me now. I can take it." In that climate of safety,
they can look at how the child managed to survive, with full respect for what it
achieved, and they can explore new possibilities together.
The first contact between child and focuser is often surprisingly easy to
bring about. Other times, the process is more awkward or hesitant. That's
understandable when a child has gone unseen for a long time; it takes a while
before the child trusts the adult.
One thing that often helps to break the ice is for the companion to say
aloud what he or she senses or notices—for example, "It seems like there's
something sad there." The focuser may reply, "Not sad, angry!" If so, that's the
start of the inner conversation. The companion can reflect that for the focuser:
"That's what it's letting you know. It's angry." Then the focuser can check the
word "angry" with "the one there inside."

Sometimes a child was present, but suddenly vanishes. Maybe the focuser
came too close. Then it's better to take a step back, wait patiently, simply be
there, and let the child know, once again, that it's welcome, just the way it is,
without any musts or shoulds. If it doesn't come now, no doubt it will come
some other time. Most of all, make sure the focuser doesn't put pressure on
the child; it was there, for a moment, and that's quite something.
It's also possible the child is hiding and wants to be found. You could
suggest that the focuser play a game with it: "Hey, where did you go now? Do
I see something moving over there?"

Different "children" need different things from you.

How you relate to a child depends mainly on what kind of child it is: timid,
enthusiastic, wounded, tough? A toddler, a baby, an adolescent, a seven-year-
old? A traumatized child has to be approached very cautiously; an introverted
child has to be carefully coaxed out into the open, and a scared child needs a
safe place. You have to pay very close attention to find out exactly what a
particular child needs; there is no standard approach. The more you get to
know a child, the easier it will be to find an approach which suits that child's
needs.

For instance, my own child inside, aged five or six, needs to feel
challenged before she will spring into action. Otherwise she falls into
sweet sleep, her thumb in her mouth. A challenge, a confrontation, a
shock is what sets her in motion—both in my past life and now.
 One thirty-five-year old man has a child inside who becomes wary
when he receives attention or appreciation: "What do they want from
me?" Back in childhood, when the boy received attention, he was
expected to do something in return; words of praise didn't usually feel
genuine at all. That child, and his adult self, require a direct approach,
authenticity, clarity.

Another man, raised by two women who adored him, can feel how
confusing the excess of attention was for his "child." The boy had the
feeling that this attention was not entirely unselfish; they were too
eager to swipe down on his feelings. His child responds better to a
passing glance, out of the corner of the eye, at least to begin with. The
boy needs a quiet place of his own.

A very young child often manifests solely as a body feeling, linked to a vague
mood. Then you can seek contact with the child through that feeling.

For years, a young woman has had an unpleasant feeling in the lower
right abdomen, and for about the past six months it's been growing
more intense. In a Focusing session, she decides to check exactly how
it feels from the inside. It's not really pain, more like pressure, along
with a melancholy mood. It's like a rubber ball with thorn-like parts
sticking out. Later it turns out to be a small child that has crawled
away. "It doesn't want to play," she observes in surprise. She spends a
few minutes with it, in a cautious, curious way, and reports, "Now it's
starting to move... it's jumping up and down." The pressure in her
abdomen dissolves; a rush of warmth and energy rises from her belly.
Now that she has given her child space, the energy that was blocked
all those years can flow freely from the child to the adult.
She draws a connection to something she already knew
intellectually: when she was a year and a half old, her younger brother
was born. Her mother couldn't handle the situation and started hitting
the young girl. Now the adult focuser sees how the child withdrew and
didn't want to play anymore. She starts to make a warm, safe space for
 the child, the space she suddenly found herself lacking back then. Her
own daughter is now one-and-a-half years old; that may be one
reason why the melancholy pressure feels so intense to her right now.

A teenager may need help from her adult too.

A fifty-three-year-old woman experiences recurring emotional crises in

an otherwise happy marriage. During these crises, she feels as if she's
dragged along in something heavy and dark that sucks her in. When
that darkness sucks her in and drags her along, she can't speak, and
other people's words don't reach her. The only thing that helps is
walking, for hours at a time. Then some sense of light and movement
slowly returns.
Now, in a guided Focusing session, she is with the dark, heavy
feeling, not in it. She looks startled and says, "It has nothing to do with
him." So what does it have to do with, that heavy feeling that sucks her
in? She relives the experience: when she was fifteen, her stepfather
died of a heart attack. Her mother said, "If it weren't for you, this
would never have happened, and he would still be alive today." She
heard this as meaning, "You should never have existed."
In crisis situations, right before being sucked in, this woman
usually confronts her husband with all the things he has done to
"negate her existence" (in fact, simply times when he didn't show
enough consideration for her). She has now sensed the link to her
mother's words from her childhood: "If it weren't for you . . .". And
that's what led to her great discovery: "It's not because of him!"
During her session with her teenager, she talks about how her
mother was overwhelmed with emotion back then and said something
unjustifiable. Now the teenager has her to rely on, and she discovers
that they can even have a lot of fun together.

When one person's child inside clashes with another person's child inside

A man and woman, happily married for many years, have occasional
arguments, which always follow the same pattern. Every time, they
 each experience their own sense of being hurt and their inability to
reach their spouse.
In a Focusing session, she encounters a little girl. When things are
difficult, the girl wants to crawl away and calls out, "Hold me tight." He
meets a young boy who lashes out with his fists and shouts, "Let go of
me!"
Since then, every time they notice the old pattern emerging, they
start by each turning toward their own child inside. After that, they can
reach each other again.

Sometimes there's something in the adult that needs attention first.

A fifty-five-year-old woman who was sent to a boarding school run by

nuns at the age of five said to her child, in a Focusing session, "The
church is rotten to the core." It didn't really help—even though she
was speaking from her own bitter experience, she wasn't responding
to the needs of that frightened, homesick five-year-old child.
The woman's hard, bitter feelings needed to be cared for first, so
that there could be the kind of space into which you could invite a
child. She had to create that space, so that the child could feel safe
and welcome, before it would tell her anything about how it had felt at
that boarding school. This was the first chance the little girl had ever
had to talk about it. She had been there the whole time—on the inside,
alone—but no one had ever heard her. For the first time, there was a
grown-up—the focuser—who wanted to listen to the child, who could
sense how she felt, who was there for her. Once the child had been
heard, all she needed, for the moment, was attention and security.
In a case like this, the adult can also try speaking to the child as
you would actually speak to a five-year-old. For example, "It's so awful,
what happened to you there. But you're a good girl. You couldn't help
it. Come here, what shall we do together?" Together, the grown-up
and child can become a little more complete.
Very often, the child inside is not pitiful, and not sweet or well-behaved
either.

A thirty-six-year old man realizes that he considers his "child" a real

nuisance. It feels good to acknowledge that; he never before allowed
himself to do so. Now that he's taking a closer look, he sees that the
boy has a lot of spirit; he never goes along with anything, never lets
anyone get the better of him. The boy's not just sitting around pining
for love and affection; he's poised to react to whatever happens next.
The man and the boy develop a kind of mutual curiosity and respect.
That helps a lot with the migraines the man has suffered from for
years.

Sometimes it doesn't take much before a child is happy to move on.

A thirty-year-old man's "child" brightened up when he heard how

much his adult would miss him if he were gone.

Sometimes the child needs something very different from what the adult
expects.

A forty-three-year old woman realizes, while Focusing, that she

"doesn't want to give herself over" to intimate situations, even though
she feels a need for physical contact and closeness. During the session,
she sees a baby in front of her. When the baby was fourteen days old,
she was taken to the hospital with serious burns and spent six weeks
in a glass box there. Whenever someone came to take care of her,
every touch made the pain even worse.

During the session, the woman makes sure she doesn't touch the
baby. Instead, she holds out a finger, which the girl is quick to grab.
Comforted, the child falls asleep. That was exactly the physical contact
and closeness the child had been waiting for, for such a long time. The
woman's fear of giving herself over to intimacy transformed into a very
cautious openness, a willingness to stick out a finger and see what
happens.
 Sometimes the adult needs the child much more than the child needs the
adult

A ten-year-old child takes her sixty-four-year-old adult firmly by the

hand and, with energy and enthusiasm, pulls her along into a
challenging situation. That child is still whole; she dates from long
before the strategy of fitting in that the woman relied on between the
ages of eighteen and sixty. And even after all those years, the girl is
still bursting with life!

A few tips that the companion can offer the focuser

 A young child usually has a short attention span. It often doesn't take
long before it grows sleepy or wants to go off and play. Don't try to
hold its attention any longer than that.
 After a session, you can take a small child with you in a "carrier" on your
back, glancing over your shoulder now and then to make sure
everything is all right. If the child is older, the two of you can make a
deal: "When I have that familiar feeling in my body, I'll know it's you, and
then I'll come to see you. And is it all right if I sometimes decide on my
own to come and visit?" (If you do visit, try to schedule a regular time,
so that the child can "make its heart ready").2
 Never promise a child more than you are willing and able to give.
 Whatever the child tells you, keep it in confidence. Even the companion
doesn't have to hear everything. Otherwise the child might feel
betrayed.
 Children generally have a need for authority, but not for an authoritarian
approach.

Further sessions
Of course, a child inside often needs more than one session. When you come
back in a later session, sometimes it has grown, and it's not unheard of for
someone to start with a teenager and encounter a younger child every time.

2
As the fox says in chapter 21 of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince.
Sometimes, the age varies unpredictably. You may also find the child in a very
different situation, or a different mood. As always when you focus, you can
trust the process to unfold in its own way. There's always a good reason for
what comes, and the form it takes. You might invite the child into awareness,
let it know it's welcome just the way it is, spend time with it, give it your
attention and respect, and offer it space. All the familiar elements of being
with something in a Focusing way are included in the approach to "the child
inside."

The child and the critic together

You often find the child and the critic together, although one may be more in
the foreground than the other. They have a lot in common; neither one is used
to being approached with respect and curiosity about what they could
contribute—and they have so much to offer. Both tend to be caught in
stereotypes that stem from the focuser's childhood years (although a critic
may occasionally have developed more recently). Both are hardy survivors, and
both want to go on with life as well as they can, but each in their own way.
That often leads to clashes. They fight or hold each other in a deadlock;
they get in each other's way or get tangled up together. Only an impartial
mediator, the focuser, can learn to engage with both of them, using the same
approach that works in other stuck situations: first separating the two
"opponents," and then sensing into each one separately.
It's usually a good idea to turn toward the critic first. Otherwise it may
go on blocking any change, because it's frightened that something will go
very wrong. Of course, the focuser should check inside whether this is the
right order in the present situation. If the child needs attention more urgently,
then make sure the situation is safe for the child—don't let the critic do
anything more than look on from a distance.

The critic and the child each need to be approached in their own way, the
critic as an adult, the child as a child—and of course, a six-year-old needs a
different kind of attention from a baby or a teenager.
 Both the critic and the child are caught in rigid patterns. How liberating
it will be for them, and for you, once they have the space to move more freely!

Conclusion: a report on a session in which the child and critic both

appear in different guises
Marja, who recently turned fifty, feels a profound desire for human
contact, but as soon as anyone or anything comes close to her, she
feels herself pushing it back or even kicking it away. She takes that as
the subject of her session. Marja is an experienced focuser. The forty-
five-minute session includes long silences, during which there you
could always tell that a great deal was going on.
In the following transcript of her session, with commentary, F
stands for the focuser, C for the companion, the tilde (~) marks a
reflection, and ellipses (. . .) mark silences, short or long. Non-verbal
aspects are described in parentheses.

(Marja brings her attention to the center of her body and presents the issue
there.)

F: Pain, here, on the right side of my chest . . . Deep-down pain . . .

sadness . . . a wordless sadness . . . lonely . . .
C: ~ . . . You might like to let it know that you're feeling that now,
that pain and that wordless sadness . . . you could sense whether
it's an old sadness . . .

Her use of "wordless" suggests that it probably is a sadness from long ago.
Asking "whether it's an old sadness" helps make the focuser aware of how old
it really is.

F: Very old . . . all the way back in the cradle . . . reaching out and
no one comes . . .
C: ~ . . . No one . . .
 F: No one . . .
C: You might sense how that pain feels there in your chest . . .

The most important thing is always the specific nature of what the focuser is
feeling—in this case, of the pain in her chest.

F: Black . . . a large, black hole . . . moving toward my right

shoulder . . .
C: ~ . . . You might put a hand on it, see how that feels.

Putting a hand on it is a simple, effective way of keeping it company.

F: A little better . . .
C: ~ . . .
F: Now there's another one, who doesn't want to feel it. In my right
leg . . . and lower belly, on the right . . . really tense . . . all set to run
away . . .

This new figure emerges before we can go on exploring the pain around the
child in the cradle. So it probably wasn't the right moment to go on with that.
The newly arrived figure is what is here now, so we attend to that, and the first
step is to greet it.

C: ~ . . . Would you like to say hello to this one too?

F: Yes. It doesn't want to experience all that anymore . . . It has me
push away any kind of contact. (She extends her right arm in a
defensive gesture, her head turned all the way to the left. Then she
moves her right arm as if shaking something off, for several
minutes.)

If this shaking-off motion happens spontaneously, as it did here, old tension is

drained away at a bodily level.3

C: ~ (describes physical actions and postures and gives the

process time. Even if it goes on for a long while, this kind of
3
More information about this process can be found in the works of Peter Levine, such as Waking the Tiger, North
Atlantic Books, 1997.
 process always comes to a natural stopping point.)
F: Now there's a strong, tough one (bringing down her fists in
front of the middle of her body, a gesture that suggests taking a
firm, uncompromising stand, with a self-confident smile). No more
crap . . . you'll never knock me down, no stopping me . . . . . . that
one pulled me through it.
(A long silence follows, during which there is clearly a lot happening.)

Up to this point, three figures have appeared. The focuser acknowledged them
all, greeted them, and experienced them in her body and soul: the very young
child, the child who wants to run off and push away human contact, and the
tough one. The last two are protecting the youngest child, each in its own way.
That's what they have always done until now, and they will go on doing it as
long as there is no change in their relationship with the focuser.
In Focusing, images from very early childhood surface mainly through
feelings in the body, tied to a wordless sense of a whole situation (in Marja's
case, pain and sadness). In adult life, Focusing can bring these images up into
consciousness, where the focuser can find specific words for them and
respond with understanding ("no one comes . . . lonely"). Marja experiences
the one who pushes away human contact through a strained physical posture,
"all set to run away." Here we can recognize a somewhat older child who has
learned to protect herself by fleeing. The tough one comes from much later in
life and brings words of her own ("no more crap").

F: Now there's also another sadness, from much later . . . (points to the
center of her chest) . . . that combines with the old sadness . . . they
merge . . . it's more like a kind of disappointment, something like, "After
all, I'll never get what I really want . . ."

She greets this sadness, too, and explores it further in her body and soul.
Everything inside her gets the space it needs.

F: That feels so good . . . that feels so good . . .

C: ~ . . . so good . . .
F: (spends a long time enjoying how good it feels, often repeating
 "that feels so good." Then she frowns.) There's the skeptic, saying,
"Yeah, right." . . . a weight on my chest . . . yeah, right (in a mocking
tone).

The skeptic is one of the many forms an inner critic can take.

C: ~ Would you like to say hello to him too?

F: (nods) . . . Well, I can't imagine what purpose that one could
ever have had.

(On a previous occasion, she realized that a critic had once had a purpose.)

C: You could ask him to tell you himself.

Not knowing makes you passive when you get bogged down in it.

F: (surprised at first, then smiling broadly) That made him really

happy! . . . He has so much to say. Gosh, so much to say! (a long
silence, during which her face and her entire attitude communicate
all sorts of things. Then she summarizes.) What he always does is
protect me . . . protect me from new disappointments . . .
Otherwise that child would have died . . .

(She finishes the session by checking in with all the places, moods, and felt
senses inside her.)

F: What a difference—even that little one, who was so deeply

buried there on the upper right . . . they've all been seen, heard,
felt . . . they all belong again . . . one big puzzle, all the pieces have
fallen into place!

Relaxed, relieved, much lighter, and very tired, she heads for home. The
thought of human contact still feels "scary," but "so many things have
happened and become clearer."
A couple of weeks later, she lets me know that there has been a lasting
change. Of course she still falls back into to old patterns easily, but now she
recognizes them. That helps her, together with the child inside, to find a way
out again every time.