Focusing-Oriented Therapy
How Would I Describe Focusing-Oriented Therapy (FOT)?
Focusing-oriented therapy is a client-centered form of psychotherapy that’s based on the “felt sense,” which we perceive in our bodies. It’s a message, an internal communication, with identifiable features, such as images, metaphors, sounds, or physical feelings, at our experience’s core.
Often this felt sense starts blurry. It appears at the tip of our unconscious, neither clear nor easily understood: out of focus. For example, we feel a pressure in the chest or a churning of the gut, or we see a bright light or hear a loud “ugh” of frustration coming from within.
When we are curious and non-judgmental with this felt sense, more layers can unfold for us. The chest pressure might be accompanied by an inner voice telling us we’re “bad." But when we remain open to what is there, we then connect more deeply to understand this critic's many facets – such as its age or resemblance to a parent’s voice – and we allow ourselves to foster a new felt sense of compassion and self-acceptance that ultimately becomes our vehicle for healing.
Many therapy models do not reach the crux of our felt sense or value this as key to the process. Instead, they can pathologize the symptoms one might reference experiencing and shut down the exploration of the many layers of feeling held in the body. FOT offers a more supportive, mindful approach to being with our behaviors, experiences, and choices, producing a broader understanding of ourselves and ultimately better outcomes.
How Was Focusing-Oriented Therapy Developed?
In the late 1950’s, American philosopher Eugene Gendlin began collaborating with psychologist Carl Rogers setting out to answer the question, “Why does therapy work and how do clients make lasting, positive change?” Through extensive research, Gendlin created the concept of Focusing as the client accessing the nonverbal, bodily felt sense and bringing it into clearer focus, thus creating positive change.
Rogers developed humanistic person-centered psychotherapy. He believed in the inherent value and potential of all human beings to find solutions to their suffering, and that this belief held by the therapist would create the safest possible therapeutic environment for clients to process. Focusing-oriented therapy is an adaptation of Focusing and person-centered therapy.
Focusing became one of the first somatic approaches to counseling, and Gendlin’s work informs many of the newer somatic models, such as Somatic Experiencing and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP). Focusing-oriented therapy is considered a mindfulness-based experiential therapy because it cultivates present-moment awareness on a physical and emotional level.
How Does Focusing-Oriented Therapy Differ From Traditional Talk Therapy?
The way we sit with our experiences in sessions distinguishes Focusing-oriented therapy from other models. Intellectualization often happens in “talk therapy” and is a defense mechanism. As Gendlin analyzed, when we talk without recognizing what it is we are feeling in our body, change cannot occur. Change happens when we notice what we feel in our body and interact with that feeling in a more supportive and compassionate way than how we had been doing previously.
In other forms of therapy, the therapist is seen as “the expert” in the client’s experience; to empathize and then to explain and guide the client on how to behave, to be happier. In FOT, as a person-centered therapy, it is the client’s felt sense that becomes the expert. When we slow down and hold space for the felt sense, it will show us the pathway forward for our unique circumstances. The Focusing-oriented therapist is there with you, side by side and non-judgmental or authoritarian, figuring out how best you can lead yourself for lasting growth.
Who Can Benefit From Focusing-Oriented Therapy?
Focusing-oriented therapy can help anyone who wants to identify the root of their challenges within a mindful and deeply self-compassionate framework.
Whatever the experience and however it came to be, the purpose of Focusing-oriented therapy is to hold space openly and curiously. We work to process those experiences, so you find a “forward path” instead of feeling stuck, ashamed, and hopeless, which is when unhelpful coping ways arise.
People who have difficulty expressing or getting their needs met find this type of therapy beneficial. Even before developing greater awareness, holding space for oneself is therapeutic because it places value on their own experience, something lacking in their life. Then, when they gain a greater understanding of their own experiences instead of prioritizing that of others, FOT clarifies their life goals, direction, and meaning.
Focusing-oriented psychotherapists do not typically diagnose or label since it can be reductive and fail to encapsulate a person’s whole experience. Rather, our specialty is getting to the root of the experience and helping clients keep company with it until they gain clarity and resolution.
A Little About My Background In Focusing-Oriented Therapy
I began my FOT training at the Focusing Institute in 2015. Focusing has had a profound influence on both my practice and approach to healing. I’ve maintained multiple Focusing partnerships, a practice that trains me to more constantly maintain contact with my felt sense so that in our session I am best able to attune to your experience. Focusing has been the most accepting, least pathologizing process that I’ve learned in my career and I know that for me it creates a space devoid of shame and judgment through which I have been able to grow.
Focusing has taught me to be with what is in the moment. I, like many, have a way of thinking several steps ahead. Focusing is a tool that I use to be with what is right here in this present moment, allowing me to take my process one step at a time. When we are present and aware of our deeper emotions and the felt senses, we are in alignment with our true selves and inevitably create a more peaceful internal, and subsequently external, environment.
Experience A New Way Of Healing And Understanding Yourself
If you want healing that transcends traditional talk therapy, Focusing-Oriented Therapy is a person-centered, mindfulness-based approach that provides space for a lasting healing experience. Please call (646) 543-9791, Contact Us, or Schedule your free, 15-minute phone or Zoom consultation to see how online therapy can help you.
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