CHECK OUT MY RECENTLY PUBLISHED PAPERS:
Exploring The Possibility Of An Elimination Algorithm as the Basis for Human Intuition: A Study of a Successful Expert System for Eye Disease Diagnosis
Unlocking The Science Of Emotions Through Pattern Recognition: Establishing Emotions As A Proper Field Of Study
Developing self awareness is difficult for many people. But, it is the most important skill needed for effective mind control. Mindfulness Meditation and Focusing, a psychotherapeutic routine developed by Eugene Gendlin, have both achieved world wide success in developing self awareness. Learning to become self aware has calmed the minds of thousands of distressed people. Focusing requires the personal support of a therapist. Mindfulness Meditation requires the persistent practice of meditation.
The Self Improvment Plan (SIP) presented in this website can also help you to become self aware. You need to be comfortable with a computer to practice SIP. But, it develops self awareness quickly, by putting you immediately in lucid touch with your troubling concerns. By evaluating the big picture, you learn to feel comfortable with life. Gendlin's research suggested that many of his patients could not instinctively grasp the concept of self awareness. He suggested useful steps in the Focusing routine to assist such patients. SIP and Focusing are explained here.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
What Is The "Focusing" Concept?
You
have the capacity to look within and list the problems that bother
you one by one. It is similar to writing a shopping list. When you
evaluate the list later, PFR, your common sense, takes charge,
differentiating the facts from your emotional responses. Self
awareness is the skill of consciously identifying your emotional
outbursts. You gradually become familiar with the viewpoints of each
of the numerous intelligences, which operate in parallel within your
mind. In the process, self awareness isolates RI, your common sense,
and frees it from emotional turmoil.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Which Region Can Observe Your Internal Responses?
Your
mind contains a triune
brain, which
switches controls in milliseconds between PFR, a rational human brain and
its emotional lower levels. Emotions are
triggered by the lower organs, when they recognize problems in your
life. Emotional signals trigger subconscious
search drives and visceral
reactions. Typically,
anger searches for a successful aggressive strategy and fear, for a
sound defensive one. In this milieu RI has an unemotional view of the
problem.
Self awareness can empower PFR, enabling it to
recognize the physical symptoms of visceral reactions. When PFR recognizes the artificial nature of the visceral reactions, the
person is immediately “relieved” from his/her turmoil.
In Focusing, patients
achieve success by recognizing a “Bodily Felt Sense.” Such
recognition leads to sudden insights, accompanied by body relaxation
indicators and increases in EEG alpha frequencies. Verbalizing the
“Felt Sense” is experienced as relief, tears and a whole body
response. Gendlin's contribution is the articulation of the “Bodily
Felt Sense,” as distinct from emotions, as the key to such
therapeutic success.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Has "Focusing" Been Proved Successful?
The
Focusing Institute reports
that the therapy has been found to correlate with successful outcomes
for prison inmates (Wolfus & Bierman 1996; Goldman et al 1996)),
psychotic patients (Gray, 1976; Hinterkopf & Brunswick 1975;
1979; 1981; Egendorf 1982), the elderly (Sherman 1990) and in
patients with health related issues (Katonah 1999; Shiraiwa 1998;
Holstein & Flaxman 1997). Eleven more studies (Leijssen 1996;
Clark 1980; Schoeninger 1965; Olsen 1975; Gibbs 1978; McMullin 1972;
Hinterkopf & Brunswick 1975; 1979;1981; Bierman et al 1976;
vandenBos 1973;) found that the Focusing ability
can be increased by training, although such increase is not always
maintained after training is completed. Focusing has been applied and
researched in other areas, including medicine, business, schools,
creative writing, churches and writings on experiential
thinking.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Does "Focusing" Work For All People?
After
examining transcripts and taped psychotherapy interviews, Gendlin
found that clients who really benefited from therapy showed greater
ability to talk of bodily felt experience. Such people were found to
be more anxious, depressed and insecurely attached. But, they also
had higher scores on "intelligence, ego strength, character and
self-control, emotional stability, tender mindedness and
introspectiveness." They repressed less, were less defensive,
more self-disclosing and willing to attribute difficulties to
internal causes. For people lacking the inherent skills, Gendlin
recommended the following Focusing
Steps to
reach self awareness.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Step 1. How Do You "Clear A Space?"
When
faced with emotional turmoil, you should “stand back” from the
problems and look at them. "How is my life going? What is the
main thing for me right now?" Being an abstract exercise, a
therapist is needed to define and explain the concept. You must look
at the overall feeling you have about the problem, and not at the
details of the problem. The first step in Focusing is
to take all your problems and “put them away from you” and “clear
a space” around you.
SIP works
on the simple logic that your mind will give you answers, if you ask
yourself the question "What is it that bothers me?" You
need to write down each thought that comes up. If you don't write it
down, it will be quickly forgotten. The routine works best, when you
enter each thought in a few words, into a spreadsheet cell. In a
natural process equivalent to writing a shopping list, all the
related thoughts will come to you. By limiting each aspect of the
problem to a few words, you effectively stand back from the
problem. “This
is an issue,” rather than “Oh, what am I going to do?” The
very listing process prevents you from getting involved in the
emotional implications of the problem. While Focusing “puts
them away,” without recording the problem, the SIP method enters it
into a spreadsheet cell. The list will be finished soon and later,
you will not forget any issue. In one session of SIP, you will deal
with all the issues related to your present turmoil, not in several
successive therapy sessions.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Step 2. What Is The "Felt Sense?"
In
the second step in Focusing, you
look at each item in your list and try to sense the bodily feeling
related to that item. Focusing seeks
to find a composite feeling of the whole body for this particular
thought. The Focusing, “Felt
Sense” brings about a “bodily shift.” Such recognition stills
the emotion and you no longer feel a “weight on your
chest.”
Mindfulness
Meditation is
essentially the practice of becoming familiar with your thoughts.
After you have come to terms with your problem in SIP, it is natural
for some of the same troubling emotions to reappear later. An emotion
always records the memories of a disturbing group of thoughts in the
context of a related group of physical visceral reactions. The
emotion artificially recalls those symptoms, whenever it reappears.
With the self awareness of mindfulness meditation, PFR will identify
the physical symptoms of the emotion, as soon as they reappear.
Independent recognition disconnects the symptom from the emotion.
Disconnected, the emotion cannot exist. That is a pattern
recognition compulsion of
your mind.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Step 3. What Is "Handle?"
In
the third step in Focusing, you
try to name the feeling, such astight,
sticky, scary, stuck, heavy, jumpy or
a phrase, or an image. Just as identifying the physical symptom
helps, a name for your turmoil helps. Your PFR is able to identify it
as a group of thoughts and expel them at one go.
This process
is easier in SIP, since all your troubling issues are listed in the
spreadsheet. When you label these thoughts, you provide a handle for
the thought. Quite often, you may give different labels and find that
one of them exactly defines the issue. The same healing process takes
place.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Step 4. How Do You "Resonate?"
In
the fourth step, you must go back and forth over the label trying
alternate words.
In SIP, you
will find that when you label a thought, if it is not right, another
thought will rise and you can note that down too. As you keep
experimenting with the variations, more labels will come and one of
these will describe your turmoil exactly. The SIP labeling process
brings sudden insights.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Step 5. What Is "Asking?"
Focusing suggests
that you ask "What makes the whole problem so ______?"
Repeatedly questioning each issue elicits more information from your
subconscious mind. Evidently, if you set aside your problems by
creating a space, you will go back later for more therapy to keep
asking these questions for each of the problems you “set aside.”
Asking such questions can also result in a “bodily shift.”
In
SIP, you have listed every issue in your mind concerning your present
turmoil. That is a natural “shopping list process” of the mind.
If it is in anyway important, it will come to your mind and be
listed. When you label each item in the list, you are asking this
question.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Step 6. What Is "Receiving?"
In
this final Focusing step,
you should stay with the feeling of the “bodily shift,” evidently
to absorb it into your mind. Focusing suggests
that you will have succeeded only when you feel a change in your
feelings about the problem.
In SIP, by sorting the various
labels you will group all the thoughts related to your problem into
categories. Such categories could be, say, "Needless worries,"
"facts to be accepted" and “to do lists." Thus you
will get a global understanding of the problem, not just of oneaspect
of the problem. Evidently, if, in the end, you don't feel differently
about your problem, you will not have succeeded with that session
of SIP.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Why Is The SIP Effort Simpler?
When
an emotion troubles you, three things happen. First, the system fires
disagreeable emotion signals. Second, those signals trigger troubling
visceral reactions. Third, frustrated search drives initiated by the
emotion signals trigger more visceral reactions. Obviously, a “bodily
felt sense,” is the combined effect of the three activities within
your mind. In Focusing, such
recognition grants you a sense of relief.
With Mindfulness
meditation, you need to identify only the physical symptoms of the
visceral reactions to achieve relief. That requires less complex
pattern recognition. It is difficult to recognize the three internal
reactions to “How I feel about losing my job,” as a physical
entity. But it is far easier to identify a "knot in my chest,"
which you feel, when you think about "losing my job.”
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Does SIP Offer Privacy?
SIP
is a private exercise on a computer, while Focusing involves
a therapist. It is probable that a patient may not wish to reveal his
innermost thoughts to a therapist. While Focusing will
be difficult in such a case, a computer is impersonal and is unlikely
to gossip, or pity the user.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
How Does SIP Enable A Simple "Step Back?"
Focusing requires
a “step back” to recognize the phenomenon. From agonizing about
“What will I do?” the person has to think “I have a problem
there.” Gendlin writes of patients, who repeatedly cry over their
problems and remain unable to “step back” from the emotion. Such
patients needed to be repeatedly advised how to “Set aside"
the problem.
With SIP, the
objective is to briefly list your problems the way you write a
shopping list. That process automatically enables the required “Step
back“ from the problem.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing -
Why Is SIP "Labelling" Simple?
Focusing requires
a patient to evaluate “How do I feel?” about each aspect of the
problem. Since the problem is not clearly defined, the therapist may
need to repeatedly bring the patient to a particular aspect of the
problem.
With SIP, the aspect is a single entry in the
spreadsheet and has to be evaluated on the spot. Naturally, such a
process is faster.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
Why Is SIP A Global Evaluation?
With Focusing, the
patient is required to “put away” the many troubling issues he
faces and then attempt to label one. Since each aspect will be
independently discussed with the therapist, the concerns of the
patient will take many weekly sittings before resolution is
achieved.
With SIP, all aspects of the issues that trouble you
are listed and then each aspect labeled. Such a routine can deal with
the major issues in your life in a couple of hours of private study.
SIP is faster in delivering results.
Eugene
Gendlin Focusing
What Is The Disadvantage For SIP?
SIP
requires you to to use a computer to write down your thoughts. Many
are not familiar with the use of computers. Others may not be able to
write their innermost thoughts down. SIP is useful only for people
who feel comfortable with computers and can verbalize their inner
thoughts. For others, intimate interaction with a Focusing therapist
will be needed to achieve meaningful results.