It took six months and more than $1000 to earn the FSPM Completion Certificate (and an additional Focusing.org certification that I am professionally-trained in Focusing) and I learned a LOT. The course tuition was a gift from my brother Tim (thanks, Tim).
In 1985 I bought my first copy of “Focusing” by Gene Gendlin, Ph.D. on the recommendation of a Buddhist nun teaching a course at Point Reyes that was part of my shift from selling TV time to writing full time. I tried to focus by myself, and I read the book many times, but I never got real traction with focusing.
I ordered Jan Winhall’s book before it was even published and realized that it precisely targeted the kind of treatment I needed. I joined the third cohort of her FSPM class taught online through the Polyvagal Institute. Some of what I learned:
- PTSD can be broken into two main categories. First: what happens to adults, such as on the battlefield or after an assault or car crash.
- Second: what happens to children. Calling it by the same name as adult Shell Shock is not good medicine.
- PTSD is usually thought of as physical threat, and this kind of trauma is associated with the fear of being killed.
- Moral Injury is a different type of PTSD and also occurs in the context of war but requires different treatment. Here is the Veteran’s website on the issue.
- Traumatic events can be public, like war; private, like the death of a parent or the loss of a platoon member; or secret, like child sexual abuse or being commanded to murder a bound prisoner.
- Healing secret moral injury requires more than acknowledging it. Some events require an actual sense of being forgiven.
The FSPM class added several very powerful elements to the classic Gendlin model.
- Actually focusing with another person revealed what Gendlin calls “the power of human presence” which seemed to create a kind of “force field” that kept me from wiggling out of looking at what was coming up to be seen.
- The focusing practice required reciprocity with the focusing partner. Bessel Van der Kolk describes childhood PTSD as “a failure of interpersonal safety and reciprocity.” This practice consciously addresses both issues in the context of an ongoing, mutually-beneficial relationship.
- The course trained us to create images using “bodycards” using non-verbal ways to express the sensations, feelings, memories and thoughts that came up during the focusing session. This non-verbal process was crucial in shifting me out of linear thinking. It drew me into somatic ways of connecting with my body.
- We were required to complete at least 15 Process Recordings over the six months. To me, this is the Secret Sauce of the FSPM training. The Process Recording of the focusing session is only a few sentences, maybe a paragraph, and includes the image of the bodycard or other image from the session.
- Actually, the Secret Sauce was that the Process Recordings went directly to Jan Winhall who personally replied to them, often within minutes. The felt sense of being witnessed by a therapist of Jan’s caliber gave me a tremendous sense of being seen, finally, by a kind adult who offered “unconditional positive regard” as Carl Rogers would say. This supplied the missing puzzle-piece that seemed to have been broken off my nervous system by the years of unrelenting punishment and degradation from which I could not escape.
The Process Recording could take an hour or more for me to prepare even though the report itself was just a few sentences. As I approached the fifth of the 15 required sessions, I began using my phone to record the last 10 minutes of what I said out loud, as well as making hand-written notes during the session, sometimes of things I did not say out loud. I would review the recording and sometimes I would transcribe the entire 10 minutes as a way to re-experience what came up. Some of the drawings I made were images of my relationship with my bad mother, or with parts of myself, or a visualization of a transformation.
Several times, I wrote out a script and recorded it on my phone for my own use, combining the revelations of the focusing session with other insights from the Paul Linden aikido-based Being-In-Movement classes, the John F. Barnes myofascial release practices and readings, and a Teal Swan Completion Process course. I would listen to my recordings when I couldn’t sleep at night. I became willing to be much more in contact with the information and messages from my body.
I am grateful for the course. I learned a lot and I feel hopeful about becoming fully present, 100% regulated, my true self.
Came home and finished Whalefall by Daniel Kraus, a very fast read because it was so absorbing. I hated Finnegan’s Wake because it was word salad, but as the main character, Jay, dissolves into nitrogen narcosis inside the diving whale, the jumbled words make sense. Whether he survives, how he survives is the “McGuffin” that drives the book. On the framework of the McGuffin that keeps us turning the pages, author Daniel Kraus hangs the story of a teen boy bedeviled by his attentive but abusive father and his loving but powerless mother and two older sisters. Jay is flashing back to when he was 15 and the pressure from his father became unbearable in the aftermath of the loss of the boat after poor-maintenance caused two paying passengers to fall overboard. The father’s descent, and his mistreatment of Jay, drive the boy to risky behavior that leads to his becoming entangled in a giant squid which is the prey of a large sperm whale hunting in the Monterey Canyon. As you can see from the Google Earth image below, Monastery Beach features ditches that slide into the depths. My PADI Open Water diving certification took place in the water off Monastery Beach. I had to enter the surf (backwards) in full wetsuit and tank gear, swim out past the surf line, sit on the bottom with my regulator in my mouth, take off my mask and my air tank and put them back on, underwater with my eyes closed. I passed and went on to dive the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.
