I want to posit that self-empathy and a felt sense that can be related to and symbolized, articulated by word, gesture, image, sound, are two ends of the same see-saw.
One of the ongoing problems of teaching focusing is the person who has great difficulty recognizing or acknowledging or relating to a felt sense. Moreover, even people who do know how to get a felt sense may have difficulty getting a felt sense in relation to a particular issue. Moreover, even people who can get a felt sense with a particular issue, may not be able to allow it to emerge to the place where it is moving through steps (Not Gendlin’s “6-steps” but the little changes that a felt sense goes through) and eventually, a qualitative change. Understanding the role of self-empathy and its intrinsic relationship to the felt sense, even it being part of one “self-empathy>>felt sense” process can help with these problems. Moreover, self-empathy has the potential to add elegance to the focusing process by linking many strategies to one idea. In addition it adds strategies that were hitherto unthinkable or difficult to think.
I want to elaborate on self-empathy theoretically, in practice, and in new practices.