Have you ever said aloud how something truly is—no fixing, no bright-siding—and felt a sigh of relief or a softening within? It can seem paradoxical that voicing a tender truth can bring ease, but that shift is at the heart of Focusing. It’s where real change begins.

A couple weeks ago, I had a Focusing session with my Focusing partner where I said: "I wish it wasn't this way and ... it is this way."

Can you relate?

There's something about naming just how it is and having that truth be allowed, welcomed and received. No fixing. No advising. No bright-siding.

Right after sharing how I was feeling, one of Andrea Gibson's lines emerged. In their poem, "Gender in the Key of Lyme Disease," they wrote:

"Even when the truth isn't hopeful the telling of it is."

 I find that to be spot-on true. And, that reminded me of something Gene Gendlin, the founder of Focusing & creator of the felt sensing process, wrote in his book Focusing.

"...an important characteristic of focusing: You feel better, oddly, even when what emerges doesn't sound encouraging, to anybody trying to analyze the situation rationally.

One effect of the focusing process is to bring hidden bits of personal knowledge up to the level of conscious awareness. This isn't the most important effect. The body shift, the change in a felt sense, is the heart of the process. But the bringing-up of bodily sensed knowledge - the 'transfer' of this knowledge, in effect, from body to mind - is something that every focuser experiences.

Often this transferred knowledge seems to be part of a tough problem, and it might be expected that this would make you feel worse. After all, you now know something bad that you didn't know before. Logically you should feel worse. Yet you don't. You feel better.

You feel better mainly because your body feels better, more free, released. The whole body is alive in a less constricted way."

Something I keep coming back to is how Focusing is a change process that actually feels good ... even when we're with something tender, hard and challenging.  And, if it stops feeling good, then we back up.

This process brings immediate, in-the-moment relief and .... over time those small shifts add up to a big, lasting change.

If you want to experience this kind of gentle relief, I’d love to support you! Click below to schedule a session or a free, no-obligation 20 minute chat.