Focusing-Oriented Therapy

You’ve heard the old cliche, “The answers are all inside you.”

But what if it was true?

And what if you had a way to access that inner knowledge, those inner truths, to resolve the most difficult challenges in your life? 

And what if, by accessing this inner knowledge, you could also have greater self-acceptance, feel calmer and more even-keeled, be gentler with yourself and others, and live your life according to your own inner compass, even when a therapist is not there?
 
That is what Focusing-Oriented Therapy is all about.

Focusing is a mind-body self-help technique developed in the late Seventies by Dr. Eugene Gendlin at the University of Chicago out of research he conducted into what most predictably led to lasting positive changes in therapy. It is a gentle yet powerful way of connecting very deeply to an underground river of information that contantly flows within you — information that, if you know how to listen to it, will let you know who you really are, and what you feel, need and want. 

This information is embedded in a certain kind of sense we all have inside, which Gendlin called the felt sense. A felt sense is something you’ve already experienced. If you’ve ever gotten into an elevator and automatically moved over because you felt too close to someone, or gone house-hunting and stepped into a house or apartment and gone “Aaah! This is it!” then you know what it feels like.

Focusing and Focusing-Oriented Therapy are about accessing your felt senses and following them, in a guided and structured manner, to bring you remarkable, surprising, and important truths about yourself. Through Focusing-Oriented Therapy, you stop fighting with and trying to change yourself, which rarely leads to long-lasting change. Instead, you start uncovering the deeply held but mostly unconscious feelings, thoughts and desires inside you that may be getting in your way, and by working with them, you transform them.

I’ve used Focusing-Oriented Therapy to successfully treat depression, anxiety, anger issues and panic disorders, and as part of the treatment for people recovering from addictions. And for those people (both women and men) who feel as though they are “too emotional,” Focusing-Oriented Therapy offers a wonderful way of gaining all the benefit of your emotional nature without having it overwhelm you.

Focusing-oriented therapy is not right for everyone, but the Focusing-oriented attitude is always part of my work. It’s an attitude of radical acceptance to all aspects of what my clients feel and are going through. It’s an attitude of going below the surface, of paying attention as much to what is unsaid as what is said, and of helping my clients to sense “inside,” into what their heart and their gut are trying to tell them.  

And most of all, it’s an attitude of helping people to stop fighting, managing, fixing and trying to control what they feel, and instead, start to listen to their own feelings, thoughts and heart-felt desires …. with compassion.  

Bethesda Psychotherapy Services:
Bethesda Psychotherapy

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Frederick Psychotherapy