Tears and Focusing

Someone asked about tears and Focusing in a Changes Group back in October 2021. So I went to see what Gene Gendlin had to say on the topic. I found his article from 1991 On Emotion in Therapy. In this blog, I go over what I learned from the article, as well as my own experience of tears and Focusing. 

In the article, Gene says that tears, crying, sobs and other forms of catharsis “should be welcomed”, “should be an open, known, and included possibility.” That the release of “emotions is certainly valuable, especially where certain emotions have been blocked… can be a way to find, and release such blocked modes of the body.”

He goes on to say that while we can experience change from “an emotion we have not fully felt before, or have not expressed into outward action before”, that after a while, “discharging it over and over won't help. We need the felt sense of the wider context to form, and lead to new emotions that have not yet formed, and we need the series of steps that can come from a felt sense.”

“One must know that a felt sense is less intense than an emotion. If one always seeks for intensity one will miss the felt sense, even if it is already there. The felt sense is often slight, at first, and easily passed up, even if it has already come. And, usually, to let it come, one must be willing to attend quietly to inward physical sentience for a while, when as yet, nothing much is there.”

This resonates with my experience. In my mid-twenties, I spent about six months crying after a breakup. This was before I knew about Focusing. There was no carrying forward. Those repetitive crying experiences didn’t help me get unstuck for months. Instead I would flood with all the emotion, and then swing in my autonomic nervous system and fall asleep.

Fast forward a decade or so later, and I experienced another breakup. This time I knew Focusing. This time when I cried, I would also be attending to my internal experience. I was crying AND Focusing. And so a handle would come, about what the tears were about this time—often about how my current situation reminded me of my past. It was amazing to see all the facets that emerged over this period. The Focusing was also changing me, gradually decreasing the pain and increasing my resilience.

So the next time you’re Focusing and tears want to come, you could welcome them in you or your Focusing partner. And the next time you’re crying, you could notice if a felt sense wants to come too. Some way of carrying you forward, with “little steps of change” from your felt sense about the present interaction.

You can listen to me tell this story, share more about Focusing practice as well as be led in an exercise in the following podcast interview on Soma’ing with Twyla Kowalenko.