Curs pe EDx partea 21 - 25

21. Try at least one of the experiential invitations to focusing offered in this section. You might practice a focusing step for yourself (e.g. focusing with a “child inside”), or you might integrate small bits of focusing into your way of working with clients. What happened when you tried out some of these focusing steps?

I believe there's always a child inside us. I was writing poems for some time and I enjoyed especially poems about my childhood, in the middle part of my journey through poetry. My mind was maybe somehow idle and receptive, in order to create a feeling of intimacy with my childhood. Here in this course, when I tried the beginning with " When I was a little child.." I was once again suffused into beautiful and pleasant memories and moods, so I don't have anything new to recount. My childhood was very happy and the least happy moments were covered by goodness and happiness. Only in the past years, over 45 years old, I began to experience more often vivid childhood memories, more like a mood and shortly taking place - as if they get out from the pool of old unconscious things. Their appearance is triggered by walking idly on the street when going to the supermarket or grocery store, by familiar scents or the way a tree casts its shadow, etc. All these experiences are pleasant but powerful and short-lived and a little bit too tiresome and I "fear" they come in order to disappear, to diminish my life energy as an unconscious whole, but maybe it is only getting old, which is normal. They remind me of a sad story by Andersen – The Little Matchgirl.

In which of the focusing subskills (awareness of bodily sensations, ability to find the right distance to emotions, ability to symbolize bodily felt experience, ability to follow a bodily felt sense of direction, ability to recognize different parts of the self) do you personally feel most vulnerable? How do you understand your vulnerability?

I don't feel vulnerable at all. It is true that the only difficult thing seems to be finding the right distance to emotions, but I am happy to be like I am - a little too far from my emotional self in the eyes of the others - but this allows me to know myself better and to cope better. This is me - my feelings are deep and sincere, but mostly on the serene side of the continuum, or they are intricated gentile or complicated patterns, like a concerto when it is about me in relation to others or like a symphony when it is about the world of others, including me. A sonata is my intrapersonal relation with myself. Sometimes, from the point of view of following a bodily felt sense of direction, I was driven into spiritual and connectedness experiences - for example, I was walking aimlessly on the streets and I used to feel the need to go aimlessly somewhere in the unknown and one day, maybe 2 years ago, on one particular unknown street, because something felt inside called me there. I went there and found the answer - it was the street where I once visited (with a car) a particularly good family, only once, which had a daughter 3 years older than me, but a very good person, whose memory I treasure among the very few people like this in my life. Her parents too were very good people. An uncertain feeling called me there. I need to say that these wanderings alone, purposeless are hurtful to me now, at my age. When I was young I used to walk in order to protect myself and it is the same now, but now I know that people can watch and get the wrong impressions and communicate it through gossip on the grapevine. My life is sadly devoid of meaning, being totally alone for such a long time, not accepted to serve someone else's interest. Yet, by walking I can see people and sometimes beautiful things happen. And it is very necessary for my health.

22. What are your most important comments on the focusing process in role play “David”? Imagine you were the “focusing partner”: would you have done the same as the “focusing teacher” in this session? Or what would you have done differently?

I enjoyed very much reading the role-play David. I don't have the experience or intuition to criticize it. Nor to find new forms of expression. I will focus only on one thing that captured my attention, because of my own on-going difficulties. At some moment the therapist acknowledges the client's expressed needing to yawn and to breathe deeper and verbally expresses that too. At another time in the session, she acknowledges his need to burp and speaks loud about that too. From my inner knowledge, I know that almost all dejections or liberating physiological needs like these ones can bring more comfort and free space and create a relaxed overall feeling. For example - when my stomach burns heavily and it aches and my esophagus is burning too, there comes a moment later on when I feel the need to burp and that's the first sign of healing. From that very moment. I found very good the idea of expressing even these minor details that can make a difference. These are good words, maybe they can facilitate these processes, but not always. When I was a child and throughout my whole childhood, I felt disgust and shame in speaking about normal physiological signs or activities like normal eliminating - urinate, defecate, eructate, etc. There are other words, like burp, used for these things in common language, but I was reluctant to speak them in my native language. I was always very shy. Now I can say that these are useful bodily defenses and are wise things. Yawning, sighing, coughing, sneezing, sputum, sweating, burping, urinating, defecating, and farting are good ways of freeing oneself of something bad. All of these. I will not put them in order. I am reluctant about tears - all psychologists agree that they can be liberating and relieving but I always felt the opposite, so, if I feel I could burst into tears, I make efforts to contain this. And I can do this. Maybe for some people it is good. For me, their use is to clear the eye from dust or to maintain proper humidification. It was like this for me ever since I was a young girl, tears can only harm my well-being.

I lived the greatest part of my life in an oppressive environment and I found my hair filled with sputum from above, and many times people (men) were spitting in front of me, I don't know why, because my life was caring and respecting them. I found that aggressive and inexplicable, along with other non-verbal signs, like grinning, different lip-signs, or tongue-out gestures. I was the opposite, maybe they felt disgusted by me, yet I was filled inside with deep love and understanding for good things, for my people and city and country and I had been raised in the countryside. I was alone since I was 13 and very poor since birth and that was obvious. I had a suicide attempt in 1998, but I got well with my prosthetic limb and I was able to work different things. Maybe they knew something that I did not know, but I certainly did not forget a thing about my life "history". No mistakes, no evil thoughts, etc. Only 3 apparent errors my whole life, but even then I was not guilty. I always helped others when I could. I never heard voices, not even in my head until 34-35 years of age- and those "voices" were very vulgar and hateful, saying on and on that they want to kill me. That is all about my infernal experience.

What are your most important experiences in working with non-verbal expressions, or in focusing on your dreams?

I know only about my mother. She sits in front of me sometimes and she continuously fidgets her toes, clasping them, clutching them. When she is standing, she can do this only with one foot. I don't know why or what for. She is a very nervous person, or maybe she only fakes that she makes scenes about anything, yelling, talking too loud, repeating, or forcing me to repeat 3-4 times the same sentence, etc. Then she calms down all of a sudden and sometimes says that this is something that she cannot control, and apologizes with a fake tone maybe(?), but she does not look like a disorganized person at all. I cherish each moment with her, because I was almost completely alone since 1984, and I know that if she dies - it would be too hard to bear absolute solitude and facing others' aggressivity towards me, though I am totally unknown to them and to anyone else. When I was a little child, my mother did the same thing - smashing me without any reason for certain and then forcefully kissing me.

23.What did you learn about yourself regarding your emotions?
How do you react or respond to others expressing their emotions?

When I think about myself, I feel and acknowledge that my emotional part is my best part. I know that others think that this is a grandeur image or simply a self-illusion process, because I was alone almost my entire life, and professionals and people treat me as being abnormal and not worthy of respect. Moreover, if they know how stressful is and was my life, they can have the tendency to see me as being inauthentic or having a split personality or a kind of disharmonic/discordant type of psychopathy. Yet, I trust that intelligent people know that this is not the case and they can understand that it is exactly the opposite.

What I see when I think about my soul (that's how I name the affective section of my mind) I can see a huge and peaceful ocean but one that is very good to be floating upon or being submerged in. Something very huge and beautiful and good, and sometimes very complex and delicate like thousands of multicolored blossoms. It is never stormy, it never dries up. That's why, like I wrote before and found today in Greenberg's theory about emotions, I am a little sad when a part of that good and immense thing comes up suddenly in the form of a vivid reminiscence of good emotional answers, and I found that it is written that, by this emerging process, one can forget and lose that underlying neuronal, cortical emotional scheme, or that it can be disrupted and drawn into another scheme of emotional response, which in my case can be maladaptive, because of my present-day circumstances.

My emotional side is my central pillar, it supports the other sides of myself and can be comforting and a healing force too. I was very happy when I was a child and partly in my adolescence or later on, when reading and understanding different things. Even I wondered at times how can this be, such a huge beauty and goodness - then I answered myself lately that it was so because I was smart and also a part of a huge universe where I am immersed. My emotional schemes adapt to new meanings or events, for example, while walking in the past years beside old and tall fir trees, I perceived them as being like very old countryside women, wearing their head scarfs, and that word in my language is a homonym to another word about being fooled, and that was a negative word, but not too much. Only the good emotional side mattered and was stronger, because when I was a child I was partly raised amid such old women, wearing their traditional headscarf. Then I realized that even old firs, with their dangling-down branches and darker color, are effectively still budding fresh green in spring. Usually, I integrate new meanings into much better other meanings than the example above. We keep on growing fresh even when we grow old, just like those old fir-trees.

When I saw others expressing emotions, if they were not too nervous or angry or violent, I always was carefully and emphatically listening to them, because I was always in love with stories and the idea of helping others by hearing them - and this happened to me by chance while I was young and traveling by train long distances - some people opened up their emotional side and started to talk about their lives with me in a natural way, although I did not invite them to do so. These facts are precious moments to me and created for me a positive emotional scheme, whatever their cause might have been.

24.What type of power (omnipotence, powerlessness, power struggle, power strength) resonates with you most? Is there a situation in your life that you especially associate with this type of power?

Maybe it is not exactly the case, but I feel that the 4 existential dimensions are matching in my life the 4 types of power presented in this theory. That seems to be relevant and true: from the perspective of my psychological self it is rather a power struggle - struggling to overcome fears or anxiety, solitude or sadness or trying to self-actualize my own being into some kind of intellectual activity, from the perspective of my relational self it is powerlessness - because I am alone and no one sends an SMS, let alone giving me a phone call, from the perspective of my biological self it is rather power strength - because I have different bodily disturbances and I try to contend them, to relax, to shift perspective, not to disturb them by fight or surrender, and finally I experience omnipotence from my spiritual self's standpoint - because I truly admire the wholeness of this world we're living in and our spiritual realm of being at peace with it, philosophizing or meditating and so on. Maybe my compartmentalization of this kind can be done by others too, maybe they don't feel all 4 types of power related to their self or to different realms of existence, different specific chains of events.

I shall give you an example of how I dealt with bus perverts who were chasing me when I was young. Usually, I felt powerless and said nothing and did nothing, but that was in vain. I felt that if I talk aloud about that awkward situation it will be like a circus scene. My parents refused any kind of dialogue or complaint from my part, not to speak about intimate things like this. Then I tried to move from spot to spot on the bus but it was not good either, because they continued to come to me against my back. This was a kind of power struggle. And finally, when I grew older, I clasped the unwanted hand which was lurking on my body, I twisted its fingers as fast and strong as I could, and then released him. He said nothing and left me in peace, alone. So it worked and back then I believed that that was an efficient strategy of facing a problem, my one and only courageous act like this, because I was really annoyed by bus perverts. After a few more years I tried the method again and the man did not keep quiet and began to insult me in front of all the other passengers, although it was clear what he was doing to me. So, the method did not work again. Happily enough, since then I was left in peace completely in every bus or trolley or tram.

Which coping mechanisms do you use to handle your fear?

Usually, I used shifting to another thing or activity, changing perspective, or facing it. One evening I was so tired that I got scared by the projection of my own shadow on the wall, then I felt like laughing, understanding what it was. When I feel some kind of anxiety in the dark - which rarely happens, I try to face it - e.g. if there is suspect noise in the other room I go there regardless of my fear, or if I feel something in my back I turn my body to the other side of my bed. I need to see if there is danger, even if there is a real danger. Once my neighbors, whom I did not know, put a hologram in front of my window between three blocks of apartments. I was very scared, I could not guess at first what it was - so I lit up all the electric lights in my apartment and I looked at that thing which did not change and did not move farther or closer. Then I began to use my computer with my back to the thing. Back then I did not have a phone with a camera or my photo batteries charged so I could not take a picture of it and I was immobilized in my apartment, walking with crutches, in need of another prosthetic limb. Volens-nolens I had to face the thing, but, in the end, I was defeated, not knowing what it was.

25.How would you describe your overall sense of “EFT”? What touched you in the role play “Arthur” and Professor Greenberg’s comments?

My overall sense of EFT is good. It seems to be a real role-play, so it is a play after all. A thing that makes other things less serious or less threatening. In the first place, I can see this play like an oasis in the desert, where the client can feel acceptance and tackle some of his uncertainties together with the therapist, on an emotional level. Secondly, it has a cathartic role, like many other plays. Thirdly, it can lead to insight to some extent, because it is not only about manifest emotions, but also about deeper layers of emotionality and these different emotional selves can speak to one another and can interchange roles on the horizontal and on the vertical dimensions.

What touched me in the role play "Arthur": first the pseudonym Arthur reminding me about the symbol of the round table thus the need for dialogue, second- the broad use of nonverbal language with the climax maybe when the client draws in the air the puppet of him, a little thing compressed by his father's expectancies. I believe that here the emphasis is on primary emotions and this made me realize a thing about myself, which I intended to write down here in this course's fora a few days ago, but I forgot - I never stifled my emotions, but it is true that my inner felt sense, the deeper layer of my emotivity is a softened feeling of sadness which I cannot accept as dominant, because it is like I cannot be that sadness, it is too hard for me, it is like listening to the second movements of Chopin's piano concertos, where beauty and sadness are too deep to bear, like dripping gentle droplets from melting icicles, when the soloist is more than the rest of the orchestra, and this sadness is too powerful, even though acknowledged or understood. Yes, I admit, at times I feel nostalgic to embody that real sadness of mine, then I cannot, and my superficial all-good feeling is fairly enough and adaptive from the emotional point of view.

Anyway, in order to brighten the atmosphere a little, I cannot stop myself from saying that Chopin reminds us also about "chaud pain" (the similar sound of his name) which is warm bread in English and this can lead to the other part of the use of beauty - it is like fresh and warm bread to the soul. (And those concertos are in minor keys too.)