By Annie Fisher, MSW, LCSW
Focusing can help us we deal with something called action blocks; there’s something you want to be doing or think you should be doing, but you’re just not doing it like going to the gym or getting to work on time. An example of an action block in my life is though I rarely have a shortage of great ideas about creative activities I enjoy, I feel immobilized in regards to taking action. If I really want to complete an activity, like writing, I then have to push myself past a kind of frozeness that shows up in my body. Our genius bodies have a way of stopping us from doing or feeling something sometimes by way of creating an overall heaviness or a tightness in the throat. Although it’s seen differently in focusing, we know this feeling of “no,” as resistance.
If we find ourselves thinking we should to go to the gym to obtain better health which might boost our confidence to start dating again but are being met with a stopped feeling inside and end up sitting on the couch watching television instead, we might be likely to think of this resistance as the enemy. We may even add in criticism and call ourselves lazy and then head to the kitchen to eat something we aren’t hungry for to sooth ourselves. These are the long and twisted roads these processes can take us on.
Instead of continuing on a fruitless path of self-denigration or try and push past our resistance to finish the home project that we started 9 months ago, though that may be useful at times, in focusing we peer more deeply into the “no” that doesn’t want us to do the wonderful task. We bring our attention right to that stopped place in our bodies with interested curiosity and if it’s a good day, kindness. In doing this we quickly discover that there are good reasons for everything that’s happening and it’s not happening for the reasons we think. This for me, is the heartbreaking tragedy of humanity with so many lives spent in misunderstanding and judgment only because we haven’t been taught to and are afraid to look inside. So we want to develop curiosity and the capacity for the skill to stay with ourselves as well as compassion for our fear as we are learning to trust.
In next month’s e-newsletter, I will continue to describe how focusing can help us see the deeper truths of a situation that can then enable us to free ourselves from action blocks.
Annie Fisher, MSW, LCSW
856.448.1856
