Ten. Finding Richness in Others.

How many people do you really know? Your husband or wife? Your best friend? Your parents? It's probable that you don't really know even them. Sure, you know what they are likely to do under certain circumstances. What they always say, and what they are likely to go right on saying. You can probably imagine the next conversation you will have with them, and what you both will say. You'll come close to being right, but there is no opening up of inward experience.

Who really understands you? Who wants to hear what you feel? Most people will answer, "No one." Some few will say "So-and-so would like to hear it, but he can't understand me really." Very few people have someone they can share inner experience with, and then only up to a point. And even with yourself: have you not left certain places dark? Without even knowing just why you are scared of them? Or how you would go into them? Being so largely unknown and un­seen makes us feel somewhat unreal, as if we exist only to ourselves and perhaps not quite even that.

We find that if listening and if focusing are shared, people can come to know each other more deeply in a few hours than most do in years.

Contact is a human need. Contact comes when we sense the difference we make to other people and they to us. Contact without really knowing each other (and ourselves through each other) is limited. We can hud­dle for warmth, get a little comfort, but too much pri­vacy emphasizes our isolation, even as we huddle together.

Authentic seeing and knowing each other comes with focusing and listening; inward experience opens up to ourselves. And if it doesn't open it cannot be seen and shared; it remains locked in its own dumb half-being.

Most people live without expressing their inner rich­ness. Much of what people do is canned routines, "roles." Sometimes they are alive in their roles, but more often not. Most often people have to keep them­selves down, put themselves away, hold their breath till later. For many people there isn't much of a "later" either—and their inner selves become silent and almost disappear. They wonder if, inside, there is anything to them.

Even when we get into a relationship, much of it is the same thing: more roles and routines. We feel shat­tered and destroyed when they break because without them we are back to being alone.

Even when our relationships are "good," much of it exists in silence, or driving in a car saying, "Oh, look at that sign over there ..."

Nor are the times of "openness" better. Usually it's a matter of the same torn and pained feelings ex­pressed over and over again. Two people who are close tend to have the same feelings, year in and year out. To "speak openly" means saying and hearing the same stuck phrases from the same stuck places.

This chapter and the next will show you some ways to help closed, stuck relationships through focusing and listening.

At first, try the steps presented here with someone other than the person you're closest to. It need not al­ways be the same person. The experience of contact and depth is easier to get at first with people who are not the most important to you.

Certainly you want to experience human beings in their inner reality. And, vice versa, you want the reality of being actually seen and taken in and sensed by an­other person as you really are.

We all know people with whom it is best not to share anything that matters to us. If we have experienced something exciting, and if we tell it to those people, it will seem almost dull. If we have a secret, we will keep it safe from those people, safe inside us, untold. That way it won't shrivel up and lose all the meaning it has for us.

But if you are lucky, you know one person with whom it is the other way around. If you tell that person something exciting, it becomes more exciting. A great story will expand, you will find yourself telling it in more detail, finding the richness of all the elements, more than when you only thought about it alone. What­ever matters to you, you save it until you can tell it to that person.

Focusing and listening are like that: like talking to a person who makes your experience expand. In focusing, you must be that kind of person within yourself. And you can also be that way with others, and show them how to be that way for you.

You win often want to focus alone. But also try it with someone else.

Suppose you want a friend to listen to you while and after you focus, and then help your friend focus, with you as listener. You may want to focus before ap­proaching the friend, in order to find out just what your feelings are.

If you feel the relationship is close and easy, with leeway for talking about deeply felt personal matters, you might find and say something like this: "I've just read this book, and it's about a kind of personal prob­lem solving that sounds good. It says that it's easier to do with someone else than alone. Let's divide the next hour -- half for you, half for me. I think we might like to try it together. I thought I'd ask you because I found that (for example) I'm not scared of you, and I'm too scared to say anything about myself to most people."

You might point out that most of it can be done in silence. It's important to explain that people are asked to say about themselves only as much as they wish to say. Whoever is focusing or talking is in charge. The listener quietly waits while the other goes silently into feelings. If you explain the process to a friend this way, it won't sound difficult.

It is possible, right on the spot, to ask the person to pay attention to you for five minutes, and not to say any­thing. Then focus. When you shift, wait a few moments and say something general like: "I got a bad feeling, and just now I felt it easing up, and I see what the trouble was." Then be quiet another minute or so. Focus further until you get to a good stopping place. Sit up and remark (if true) that it was easier to focus this way than alone. Then ask if your friend would like to focus while you listen.

Now a surprising fact: focusing is easier with another person present, even though focuser and listener say nothing at all.

Usually, when I first ask people to give me their at­tention and company while I focus, I have to explain that I won't say anything much. I ask if that is all right. "Oh...," they say, and turn to pick up a newspaper or book. Then I have to explain that I need them to focus their attention on me, even though I won't be entertaining them with stories. At first they find it hard to believe that this could help, or that I could want such a thing. But the people who know how to focus also know this odd fact, and are quite glad both to give at­tention and to receive it.

It happens quite naturally. For example, an exchange like this is common:

"I feel grumpy and annoyed, and I have this work to do tonight, and I don't want to do it. Just can't make myself start."

"OK, can you go down to where it is, and see what it is?"

"Are you OK for a while, if I do that?"

"Yes, it's fine."

"OK." There is a long silence while the person focuses. Then: "Whew ... I feel better. I got what it is."

"Are you OK now, or is it not completely OK yet?" "I think it's OK for now. Thanks! How are you?"

It might surprise you that this exchange actually oc­curred during a long-distance call between Chicago and New York! Neither person thought it the slightest bit odd to take up five long-distance minutes with the si­lence of focusing.

In the above example the person who focused chose not to talk during the focusing. But this need not be so. As we've already seen, in many focusing sessions some talk may go on. More often, it's before or after silent focusing that people may wish to talk at length.

Now let's discuss how to be a good listener. It sounds simpler than it is. Few people are, in fact, good listen­ers, and this judgment includes most psychotherapists, social workers, teachers, vocational counselors, and oth­ers whose professions should require of them that they listen well. I hope the Listening Manual, which follows, will be read and studied by professionals and people who are not in the "listening" professions.

It was originally written for people who simply wanted to help each other. It has already been widely distributed around the country under the name Rap Manual

You will find it helpful to read both this and the Focusing Manual aloud, with another person or a group. Even though I was part of writing the manuals, it still helps me when someone reads them to me.

⇐ Предыдущая14151617181920212223Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: