神戸学院大学心理学研究 2020 年 神戸学院大学心理学研究
第 2 巻 第 2 号 pp.109-137
2020 年

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海外研究報告Research Report

Focusing: Listening to your “Clients’ Client”

The Counselling, Psychotherapy and Trauma Studies Seminar
Series, the University of Nottingham
March 20, 2019
Akiko Doi (Department of Psychology, Kobe Gakuin University)
Kobe Gakuin University Journal of Psychology
2020, Vol.2, No.2, pp.109-137

expected results - yet this failure gave birth to Focusing.

I. Introduction“Why is psychotherapy helpful for some people, but
not others?” -- this is one of the research questions they
had. Gendlin and his colleagues studied the recordings ofhundreds of therapy sessions and made a fascinating andimportant discovery: successful therapy clients were able
to do something more than worry about the future or react
to the past. They could pause and pay attention to what
was happening in the present moment, in their bodies, in
response to the problem at hand. Sometimes in ways thatwords could not easily convey. Gendlin called this a “feltsense,” and developed the method he called “Focusing” sothat anyone could learn this profound way of experiencing
breakthroughs in whatever has been holding them back.

Thank you for coming to the seminar this evening. I am
Akiko Doi, Visiting Academic of the School of Education.
I am a professor of psychology at a Japanese university. I
teach counselling and counselling psychology, supervise
graduate students, and I see clients in companies and SelfDefense Forces, that is, the Japanese Army. I have been
here in Nottingham since last September on sabbatical.
Today, I would like to talk about Focusing, which I
have been practicing for more than 20 years since I was a
graduate student. I teach Focusing as a certiﬁed Focusing
Professional and I oﬀer Focusing-oriented psychotherapy
to my clients. I also do researches on Focusing.

So, what they found was that the successful clients
shared the same characteristics in the way they talk. They
often hesitate, pause, re-state, go back and forth... It seems
they always check inside if their words really ﬁt with what
they feel, and if it does not ﬁt, they try to ﬁnd the betterway to explicate it. So, their way of talking is not smooth.
That kind of talking or attending to their inner feelings is
the key to the successful therapy.

So, today, I will explain what Focusing is, who Gene
Gendlin is, what tools/measures for research are developed
for Focusing, mention a little bit about my research, talkabout the benefits of Focusing, and the relationship of
Focusing and PCA.

II. How Focusing was born
1. Let us start from Carl Rogers

The surprising result of this study was that the success of
the long-term therapy was already predictable by the ﬁrst
several sessions and the variable was not so much what thetherapist was doing but what the client was doing (Kiesler,1971). Those clients who can refer to and speak from the
fresh, present, bodily-felt of issues and symptoms proﬁted
from therapy.

In 1960s, Rogers and his colleagues were doing alarge-scale research on the counselling process. One of
the famous researches was the Wisconsin Project. In his
research group, there was Eugene Gendlin, the originatorof Focusing.
Rogers and Gendlin worked together in the Wisconsin
Project; however, as you all know, they could not get the

Gendlin describes this way of talking as follows:109神戸学院大学心理学研究 2020 年

Those research clients who are later successful, diﬀer
from failure cases in exactly this respect. It can beheard on the tape. After saying something, they often
stop to check. For example: "I feel helpless... uhm...
is that right?..." After a silence they might then say:"No... that's not right. Uhm... I can sense it, rightthere, but I don't know what it is. (Silence)...Oh,(breath)... whew, yes, it's... " as a large shift occurs.
Or they might say: "...oh ... one thing about it is... " assome new facet came. (Gendlin, 1984)

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and the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy
in 2016.

III. What is Focusing?
1. The types of FocusingLetʼs go back to Focusing. When we say Focusing, there
are two types of Focusing: how to teach Focusing, and the
Focusing process itself.
1-1. Teaching Focusing
Focusing is a natural way of being and everyone can do.
Maybe you are naturally doing Focusing in your everyday
life even if you do not know the term of Focusing. For
example, when you decide what to eat for lunch; you lookat the menu, and check if any of the dishes on the menu ﬁts
your feeling today. Your state of feeling or the bodily sense
is usually described as hunger, but the hungry feeling feels
different every day. Maybe your hunger today tells youthat you need something very light, whereas you mightfeel you needed something rich and creamy yesterday. The
hunger is diﬀerent every day, in every moment.

2. What matters?
What matters is the way of speaking. The successfulclients speak from the fresh, present, bodily-felt of issues
and symptoms. When they speak, they often pause,
touching down inside, trying to sense the not-yet-clear
something
What the clients talk about does not matter; if they talkabout the past, about the future, about their secrets, about
their trauma, these contents of their stories were nothing
to do with the therapy success. Through the examinationof the therapy recordings, Gendlin found that they could
even predict if the therapy succeeds or not by listening
to the first several sessions. If the client does not talklike that, the therapy is diﬃcult to succeed however hard
the therapist tries. Well, then the clients who do not havesuch capacity never succeed in therapy? The answer is
NO. Gendlin thought this way of attending to oneself isteachable. That was the start of Focusing. Focusing wasborn as a way to teach how to attend to oneself.

There is always more than just hunger. That is felt sense.
When you look at the menu and check what most ﬁts withyour hunger today, you are checking with “something here”-- your felt sense. You are already doing Focusing, andthe “hunger” in this moment tells you what you do next
precisely. It tells you what you want to eat now -- maybe
a slice of pizza, or ﬁsh and chips, or maybe just a half-pintof beer.
Felt sense is something you cannot fully verbalize, but
it implies your next step, and it is very precise. When you
notice that a slice of pizza really ﬁts your felt sense, there
is a sense of shift, a releasing sense in your body.

3. Who is Gene Gendlin?
Before getting into the details of Focusing, letʼs lookat who Gendlin is. Eugene Gendlin was born in Vienna,
Austria in 1926. As his family was Jewish, they escapedfrom the Nazi, moved to the United States, and he lived in
the US until he passed away in 2017 at the age of 90. In
Vienna, there is a plaque honoring his achievements, at theschool where Gendlin was attending.

Felt sense implies your future direction, or the next step.
By attending to your felt sense, the new meaning unfolds,
which leads you to the direction your body really needs.
This process is called carrying forward.

Gendlin studied philosophy at the University of Chicago
where he met Carl Rogers. Reading Rogersʼ researches, he
got interested in psychology and joined Rogersʼ researchgroup. He studied and worked with Rogers thereafter.

Yet, there are people who ﬁnd it diﬃcult to feel the felt
sense. Gendlin developed a guiding step to teach thosepeople how to do Focusing. This is called the short form or
the 6 steps (Gendlin, 1981).

Gendlin was honored by the APA 3 times; he was
the first recipient for their Distinguished Professional
Psychologist of the Year, he was awarded the Viktor Frankl
prize in 2008, lifetime achievement awards by WAPCEPThe 6 steps are as follows:
1. Clearing a Space: Pay attention inwardly and ask, “Howis my life going?”
2. Getting a felt sense: Get the sense of how the problem

110土井：Focusing: Listening to your “Clientsʼ Client”

feels like
3. Finding a handle: What is the quality of this unclear felt
sense?
4. Resonating and checking: Go back and forth between
the felt sense and the word. Check how they resonate
each other.
5. Asking: Ask felt sense questions to help it unfold.
“What is it, about this whole problem, that makes thisquality (which you have just named or pictured, forexample, ﬂuﬀy, expanding, urging, ...)?”“What is so hard about that?”“How does this apply to everything else?”“What is the crux of the whole thing?”“How does this want you to be with?”“What does it need?”“What does the whole issue feel like?”
6. Receiving: Receive whatever comes with a shift in afriendly way.

2. Client’s Client
Gendlin called the felt sense as the clientʼs client:
The felt sense is the client inside us. Our usual
conscious self is the therapist, often a crudely directive
one who gets in the way of our inward client all thetime. That therapist frequently attacks in a hostile way,or at least wants to use all the old information, claims tobe smarter than the client, talks all the time, interrupts,
takes up time with distant inferences and interpretations,and hardly notices that "the client" is prevented fromspeaking. That "directive therapist" hardly knows theclient is there. That "therapist" starts without the client,
as the old joke had it, and goes on indeﬁnitely without
the client.
Research shows that those clients succeed, who areclient-centered with their felt sense.

The 6 steps is NOT the only way to do Focusing. There
are other ways to teach Focusing developed by other
Focusing teachers. Gendlin clearly explained that you
do not have to follow this step if it does not ﬁt (Gendlin,1981). I myself do not follow these steps when I do
Focusing myself. It is interesting Gendlin put these steps
as an appendix of his book of Focusing (1981), showingthat this is NOT the central thing.

Of course, this is not a person within a person, but acertain kind of self-response process.
But it would be imprecise to call it being client-centered"with oneself." Rather, one needs the distinction within
the person between the usual self, and the felt sense.
The latter is exactly that part to which client-centeredresponses are directed (Gendlin, 1984).

1-2. Focusing as a process
Focusing comes from a question: What is that, fromwhich change-steps come? Gendlin found that when aperson finds something new, he or she pays attention tosomething felt inside. It is murky and felt in the body;
it is not what we call “feeling” which is familiar andidentifiable. Change steps come rather from this unclear"edge," a "sense" of more than one says and knows. Thisis called felt sense. Felt sense is something which is not
yet clear, bodily-felt, and we can sense something isthere, some meanings are there. By sensing the felt sense,
explicating how it feels and asking it questions to let it
unfold, new meaning will emerge. The whole process iscalled Focusing.

Change comes when the clients let their felt sense speak.
What counsellors should do is help the client listen to is
the felt sense, and what counselors should listen to is what
this clientʼs client wants to say.

IV. Researches on Focusing
1. EXP scales
There are two measures developed from the studyof Focusing. One is the EXP scale and the other is the
Focusing Manner Scale.
The EXP scale was developed from the Process Scale(Walker, Rablen & Rogers, 1960). Being one of theresearch members, Gendlin and others revised part of
the Process Scale and developed the EXP (Experiencing)
Scale (Klein, et al, 1970) to indicate the level of the clientʼs
experiencing. According to McGuire-Bouwman (2000), the
EXP scale is a measure to distinguish when therapy was“just talking” and when personality change is occurring. It
has strong validity and reliability credentials, and has been
widely used to measure the eﬀects of various interventions

In short, Focusing is a process of attending to your felt
sense, symbolizing or explicating how it feels, checking if
the explication ﬁts the felt sense, and wait for something
to emerge. Something new comes from the not-yet-clear
zone, or the murky edge. You can do Focusing by yourself,
but in most cases, it is easier when we have someone as alistener.

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神戸学院大学心理学研究 2020 年

on in-session client process (Doi, 2006; Gendlin, et al,
1968; Leijssen, 1996; Rogers, 1967). In addition, in an
early study with the EXP Scale, Kiesler (1971) found thatschizophrenic patients tended to score lower on the EXP
Scale than neurotic patients.

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The work of the helping professionals can becharacterized as follows:(1) Emotional labor (Hochshild, 1983): We are supposed
to control, use and sometimes repress our emotions when
we work with clients. This is sometimes exhausting but not
noticeable to others.
(2) Working alone: Most of the helping professionals inbusiness companies are working alone. They have no one
to ask for advice, and no feeling of connection with others.
(3) High risk of burnout: It is well known that thehelping professionals have the high risk of burnout.

EXP Scale consists of 7 stages. Stage 4 is the levelof felt sense. It is necessary for the client to talk at thislevel for the successful therapy. Stage 6 is the level of “aha” experience, or getting insight, or the level of carrying
forward, at which the clientʼs experiencing is carriedforward and a new meaning unfolds.

So, this is the research question: Is Focusing helpful for
helping professionals for their self-care and recovering thesense of connection?

One of my researches was published in 2006; it is a casestudy and I examined the change of the client using the
EXP scale and discussed what kind of therapist responses
were eﬀective (Doi, 2006).

In order to find out if Focusing could be of help,
I administered a survey. The measures I used in thequestionnaire are shown in the slide.

2. FMS
The more recently developed measure is the Focusing
Manner Scale or FMS (Fukumori & Morikawa, 2003). It
was developed by two Japanese researchers and now has
an English version (Aoki & Ikemi, 2014). It measuresthe level of the Focusing attitudes, which are categorizedin 3 factors: (1) Being aware of the felt sense, (2)Accepting and acting from the felt sense, and (3) Finding a
comfortable distance from the felt sense.

The result was as follows: each measure showed theenough reliability, with the Cronbach alpha from 0.749
to 0.928. The number of the participants was 359 (Male;65, Female; 289; Other; 5). The average age was 44.12(SD=9.60, 23-72), and the average work experience was
10.97 years (SD=8.74). 82% of the participants wasnurses.
According to the result of the T-test, the FMS high-scoregroup showed signiﬁcantly high scores than the FMS lowgroup as to work satisfaction, positive stress coping andsocial support. The FMS-high group showed signiﬁcantly
low scores as to burnout and stress symptoms. About thenegative stress coping (escape) and support from spouses,
there was no signiﬁcant diﬀerence.

There are many researches using FMS: the FMS scoresshowed high correlations with many physical and mental
health measures: the GHQ (Fukumori & Morikawa, 2003),
Resilience and self-actualization tendency (Aoki, 2008),
Depression (Yamazaki, et al, 2008), self-efficacy, social
skills and the locus of control (Doi & Morinaga, 2009)and many more. Focusing trainers have higher Focusing
attitudes than those without Focusing experiences (Aoki& Ikemi, 2014), indicating that the FMS scores show
the Focusing ability (Aoki & Ikemi, 2014). It was also
indicated that Focusing attitudes are enhanced with the
Focusing-oriented interventions (Mikami, et al, 2008).

From these results, helping professionals with thehigh FMS scores (high Focusing attitudes) had higher
workplace satisfaction, effective coping skills, showed
lower risk of burnout and stress symptoms, and showed
higher recognition of social support.

Let me talk about my research using FMS (Doi,2014). I am developing a workshop program for helping
professionals using Focusing. I would like to introduce
part of my research in order to identify if Focusing could
be helpful to the helping professionals.

Therefore, it can be said that the helping professionals
with high Focusing attitudes has healthier mental
conditions and has higher recognition of social support.
That may suggest that they may have the ability to ask fornecessary support, which they notice by paying attention
to themselves.

I wanted to develop the effective self-care program
which meets the needs speciﬁc to the helping professionals.
They are expected to take care of others, but they do nothave opportunities to be taken care of.

Therefore, from these research ﬁndings, it is suggested
that Focusing can work for them when integrated in the
self-care programs.

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We can become more congruent by Focusing. During
the session with the client, we are doing Focusing
while listening to the client, that is, we are continuously
monitoring what is going on inside of us. We can always
be aware of how we feel in the interaction with the client,which means we are continuously open to how we are.

V. Benefits of Focusing
1. For the individuals
Focusing comes from the study of psychotherapy, but it
can also be used in our daily life. When Gendlin wrote thefamous book of Focusing in 1981, he introduced Focusing
as a way of self-help. (That is why this book is often
placed under the self-help corner of a bookstore).

Focusing is also available as an alternative for a
supervision. It is called “Focusing for Therapists” (Hirano,2018) in which a counsellor reﬂects on the client and workon the felt sense of the client or the sessions. As this is in
the form of Focusing, you do not have to tell the detailsof the client or the content of the sessions. All you have totell is the felt sense of the whole situation. In this way, we
can keep the conﬁdentiality and still ﬁnd answers from ourfelt sense of the situation or the relationship. One moreadvantage of Focusing for Therapists is that it only needs
a “listener” instead of a professional supervisor. Thisadvantage increases the availability of supervisions.

Ann Weiser Cornell, a famous Focusing teacher,summarized the advantages of Focusing (Weiser Cornell,2018). Focusing can help you to (1) Make decision thatreally fits your feeling, (2) release blocks to action, (3)know what you really feel about, (4) get in touch with yourlife purpose, (5) release emotional burdens, (6) Nurture asense of self-worth, and (7) be present to your life.
I would also like to add that Focusing enables you totake gentle care of yourself, be true to yourself or becomea person/fully-functioning (Rogers, 1961), find peace inyourself, and to have your own reliable compass for life. I
feel that Focusing has helped me to survive the hard times
and ﬁnd ways to ﬂourish in my life.

In addition, Focusing for Therapists can also be used forthe self-care of the counsellors. It helps us to understandwhat we feel and to keep the right distance from theconcerns.

VI. F o c u s i n g a s p a r t o f t h e P e r s o n Centered Approach

2. For therapists
As a therapist / counsellor, Focusing helps us to (1)understand what to / how to listen, (2) understand how
to facilitate the process of the client, (3) be congruent in
the interaction with the client, and (4) understand what
was happening with the client as an alternative for thesupervision.

1. Directly comes from Rogers
I have been aware that there is a controversy if Focusing
belongs to the Person-Centered Approach (PCA). Well, inJapan, we take it for granted that Focusing is part of PCA,
and the PCA people and the Focusing people are getting
along very well. I was surprised to know the situation is
diﬀerent in UK, Europe or the US.

As Gendlin says, we will listen to the clientʼs client or“the person in there / person behind the gaze” (Gendlin,1990). This beautiful phrase is one of my favorites. We do
not listen to what has just been said only but we try to bewith the person “behind the gaze”, or the felt sense of theclient. The focus on listening should be on the processof the client, not on the content of the narrative. We will
listen not only to what has been said, but also to “still,
small voice” which is not yet clearly articulated.

In my opinion, it is obvious that Focusing is part of
PCA. It directly comes from Rogers, from the research on
how counseling works. Rogers (1951) mentioned “visceraland sensory sensation” or “gut feeling” is important forchange, and this is what Gendlin calls “felt sense”. Theylooked at the same thing using diﬀerent terms. In addition,
in Focusing, clients (or focusers) are considered experts, as
Rogers regarded his approach as “Client- Centered”.

Focusing also help us understand how to help the clientʼs
process. By attending to the felt sense of the client, we canfeel if the process of the client is moving forward or stuck;
if it feels stuck, we can oﬀer necessary means to facilitate
the process. These means include asking questions,oﬀering reﬂections, and just nodding to follow the process.
Focusing lets us know what kind of responses may be
eﬀective for the client in this moment.

Ann Weiser Cornell explains how Focusing is clientcentered in this way:
As the person doing Focusing, YOU are the expert. We
believe that you know YOU the best. Thatʼs why, with
Focusing, you donʼt need an expert. Many other methods

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approach. New directions in theory, research andpractice, New York: Praeger.
Gendlin, E.T. (1990) The small steps of the therapy
process: How they come and how to help them come.
In G. Lietaer, J. Rombauts & R. Van Balen (Eds.),
Client-centered and experiential psychotherapy in thenineties, 205-224. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Gendlin, E.T., Beebe, J., Cassens, J., Klein, M.,& Oberlander, M. (1968) Focusing Ability in
Psychotherapy, Personality, and Creativity. In J.
M. Schlien (ED.), Research in Psychotherapy, vol.
III. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological
Association, 217-241.
Hirano, T. (2019) What Happens in Focusing for
Therapists, Person Centered and Experiential
Psychotherapies: 18 (4):1-12.
Hochshild, A. R. (1983): The Managed Heart, Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Katsura, T., Murakami, M. & Matsuno, T. (2004)
Shortened Stress Check List, Stress Scale Guidebook,Tokyo: Jitsumu-Kyoiku Shuppan, 411-415.
Kiesler (1971) Patient experiencing and successful
outcome in individual psychotherapy of schizophrenics
and psychoneurosis. Journal of Consulting andClinical psychology, 37(3) 370-385.
Klein, M., Mathieu-Coghlan, P. L., Gendlin, E.T., &Kiesler, D. (1970). The Experiencing Scale: A researchand training manual (vol.1). Madison, WI: Wisconsin
Psychiatric Institute.
Kubo, M. (2004) Burnout Scale (Japanese Version) Stress
Scale Guidebook, Tokyo: Jitsumu-Kyoiku Shuppan,324-328.
Leijssen, M. (1997) Focusing processes in clientcentered experiential psychotherapy: An overview
of my research ﬁndings. In The Folio: A Journal for
Focusing and Experiential Therapy, Fall 1996/Winter1997, 15(2), 1-6.
Mikami, T., Misono, Y. Tamaki, T. & Ikemi, A. (2008) The
eﬀects of Focusing-Oriented Mental Health Workshop
on Corporate Managers: Utilizing FMS. Paper
presented at the 27th Annual Conference on Japanese
Association of Humanistic Psychology, Kansai
University, Osaka, Japan.
McGuire-Bouwman (2000) EXPERIENTIAL FOCUSING
AS A BRIEF THERAPY INTERVENTION, In
Feuerstein, H., Muller, D. & Weiser-Cornell, A.
(Eds.) Focusing im Prozess, Gesellschaft f. wiss.
Gesprächspsychotherapie.
Rogers, C. (1951). Client-centered therapy. Boston, MA:
Houghton Miﬄin.
Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person. Boston, MA:
Houghton Miﬄin.

require a practitioner to facilitate, but not Focusing!
Focusing empowers YOU to make your own choices
and get in touch with your own truth (Weiser Cornell,2018).
Thus, it is apparent for me that Focusing is part of
PCA. As we are minorities in the world of counseling/
psychotherapy, I would strongly believe that it is necessary
for us to collaborate rather than pick up the differences
between us.
Thank you.

VII. References
Adachi, T. (1998) Job Satisfaction of Sales Workers,
Journal of Japanese Psychology, 69(3), 223-228. (inJapanese)A o k i , T. ( 2 0 0 8 ) R e s e a r c h o n m e n t a l h e a l t h o f
undergraduate students: Discussion on the relation
between Focusing attitudes, resilience and selfactualization. (Unpublished Master’s thesis), Kansai
University, Osaka, Japan
Aoki, T. & Ikemi, A. (2014) The Focusing Manner Scale:its validity, research background and it potential as ameasure of embodied experiencing. Person Centeredand Experiential Psychotherapies: 13 (1) 31-46.
Cornel, A.W. (2018) 3 things that set Focusing apart,
Focusing Resources, https://focusingresources.com
Doi, A. (2006) Experiential Listening in FocusingOriented Psychotherapy: Sessions with a Client who
were unable to touch down inside, Japanese Journalof Humanistic Psychology, 23 (2), 11-22. (in Japanese)
Doi, A. (2014) Development of Positive Mental HealthWorkshops for Occupational Health Workers, Journalof Occupational Mental Health, 22（4）, 305-309. (inJapanese)
Doi, A. & Morinaga, Y. (2009) The relationship between
Focusing attitudes, self-eﬃcacy, social skills and locus
of control of Japanese undergraduate students. Paper
presented at the 51st Annual Conference on Japanese
Association of Educational Psychology, Shizuoka
University, Japan.
Fukumori, H., & Morikawa, Y. (2003). Relationshipbetween Focusing and mental health in adolescents.
Journal of Japanese Clinical Psychology, 20, 580–
587. (in Japanese)
Gendlin, E.T. (1981). Focusing (second edition). New
York: Bantam Books.
Gendlin, E.T. (1984). The client's client: the edge ofawareness. In R.L. Levant & J.M. Shlien (Eds.),
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Rogers, C. (1967) The therapeutic relationship and its
impact: A program of research in psychotherapy withschizophrenics. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press.
Shimazu, A. & Kosugi, S. (1997) Development of Stress
Check Sheet for Company Workers (2) Developmentof Coping Scale, Waseda Psychological Annual
Journal, 30(1) ，19-28．
Tsutsumi, A., Kayaba, K., Ishikawa, S., Kario, K., Matsuo,
H. & Takuma, S. (2000) Revision and Examination of
the Validity and Reliability of Jichi Medical School

Social Support Scale (JMS-SSS), Journal of Japanese
Public Health, 47(10), 866-878.
Walker, A. M., Rablen, R. A. & Rogers, C. R. (1960)
Development of a scale to measure process changes in
psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1,7985.
Yamazaki, A., Uchida, T. & Ito, Y. (2008) The influenceof Focusing attitudes and self-focused attention on
depression. Journal of Japanese Clinical Psychology,
26 (4), 488-492.

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FOCUSING: LISTENING
TO YOUR “CLIENT’S
CLIENT”
AKIKO DOI, PH.D.

VISITING ACADEMIC

PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, KOBE GAKUIN
UNIVERSITYAKIKO.DOI@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
A-DOI@PSY.KOBEGAKUIN.AC.JP

Who am I?
Visiting Academic, School of Education

Professor at a university in Kobe, Japan
Certified Clinical Psychologist

Counselor in occupational field (companies, SelfDefense Forces)
Certified Focusing Professional (2003 - )116

土井：Focusing: Listening to your “Clientsʼ Client”

My talk is about…
• What is Focusing• Who is Gene Gendlin• What measures are developed for research• My research• Benefits of Focusing• Focusing and PCA

HOW FOCUSING WAS
BORN

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Origin of Focusing: Let’s Start from Carl
RogersResearch on
counselingprocess in 1960s

Wisconsin
Project

Gendlin as amember of theresearch project

Why is psychotherapy helpful for somepeople, but not others?

Successful clients vs Not successful clients

Way of talking: pause and pay attention to what was happening
in the present moment, in their bodies, in response to the
problem at hand. Sometimes in ways that words could not easily
convey. (McGuire‐Bouwman, 2000)

Therapy success predictable in the first several
sessions

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土井：Focusing: Listening to your “Clientsʼ Client”

Those research clients who are later successful,

differ from failure cases in exactly this respect. It
can be heard on the tape. After saying
something, they often stop to check. For
example: "I feel helpless... uhm... is that right?..."
After a silence they might then say: "No... that's
not right. Uhm... I can sense it, right there, but I
don't know what it is. (Silence)...Oh, (breath)...
whew, yes, it's... " as a large shift occurs. Or theymight say: "...oh ... one thing about it is... " assome new facet came. (Gendlin, 1984)

What Matters?

Speaking from the fresh, present, bodilyfelt of issues and symptoms
Pausing, touching down inside, trying tosense the not-yet-clear something
Talking about past/trauma/secrets …
contents do not matter

This “way of attending to the feelings” isteachable = Focusing
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Eugene T. Gendlin（1926ー2017）• Philosopher andpsychotherapist• Born in 1926 in Vienna• Fled to the US• Studied philosophy at
the University of
Chicago• Studied and worked
with Rogers

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AwardsDistinguished Professional
Psychologist of the Year award by
APA

the Viktor Frankl prize in 2008

Lifetime achievement awards by
WAPCEP and the United States
Association for Body Psychotherapy
in 2016

WHAT IS FOCUSING?

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Focusing: Natural way of Being

Natural/inherent process

Bodily feeling- unclear but precise
Implies the next step

New meaning unfolds
Carrying forward

Focusing: Teaching/Guiding

Teachable

Short form/6 steps

122土井：Focusing: Listening to your “Clientsʼ Client”

Teaching Focusing: 6 steps

1 Clearing a Space

2 Getting a felt sense

3 Finding a handle

4 Resonating and checking

5. Asking

6 Receiving

Focusing as a Process• What is it, from which change steps come?
• Felt sense• Something felt inside, which is murky, or not yetclear• Unclear “edge”, a "sense" of more than one says andknows• Something which is bodily-felt, and yet we can sense
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Focusing as a Process

A process of attending to your felt sense,

symbolizing or explicating how it feels, checking if
the explication fits the felt sense, and wait forsomething to unfold.
(Youtube)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7PEC5Mh5FY

Client’s Client (Gendlin, 1984)• The felt sense is the client inside us. Our usual
conscious self is the therapist, often a crudely directive
one who gets in the way of our inward client all thetime. That therapist frequently attacks in a hostile way,or at least wants to use all the old information, claims
to be smarter than the client, talks all the time,interrupts, takes up time with distant inferences andinterpretations, and hardly notices that "the client" isprevented from speaking. That "directive therapist"
hardly knows the client is there. That "therapist" starts
without the client, as the old joke had it, and goes on
indefinitely without the client.
124土井：Focusing: Listening to your “Clientsʼ Client”• Research shows that those clients succeed, who areclient-centered with their felt sense.
• Of course this is not a person within a person, but acertain kind of self-response process.

• But it would be imprecise to call it being clientcentered "with oneself." Rather, one needs thedistinction within the person between the usual self,
and the felt sense. The latter is exactly that part towhich client-centered responses are directed.

• Client’s Client =felt sense

Client’s
Client(Gendlin, 1984)• Change comes when the clients
let their felt sense speak• What counsellors should do ishelp the client listen to is thefelt sense, and what counselors
should listen to is what thisclient’s client wants to say.

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RESEARCH ON
FOCUSING
MEASURES:
EXP-SCALE & FMS

Research Measures• The EXP (Experiential) Scale (Klein et al, 1970)• FMS (Focusing Manner Scale) (Fukumori & Morikawa,
2003)• FMS-A.E. (Aoki & Ikemi, 2014) – English version

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The EXP Scale (Klein, et al, 1970)
Being developed from the Process Scale (Rogers, 1960)
Indicating the level of the client’s experiencing by 7-point
scale
Showing high validity and reliability

Being widely used in research in Focusing and EmotionFocused Therapy (Gendlin, et al, 1968, Rogers, 1967; Leijssen,
1996; Doi, 2006 )• Stage 1: No personal account• Stage 2: External events with the speaker involved• Stage 3: feelings (but reactive)• Stage 4: felt sense

Change Occurs
above Stage 4• Stage 5: Self‐reflective questioning• Stage 6: felt shift (emergence of new meaning)• Stage 7: Global application

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FMS(Fukumori & Morikawa, 2003)
FMS-A.E (Aoki & Ikemi, 2014)• Measuring the Focusing Attitudes(3 factors)•A. Being aware of the felt sense,•B. Accepting and acting from the felt sense,•C. Finding a comfortable distance from the felt
sense.

Items

Fac. A

Fac. B

Fac. C18

When I speak, I am conﬁdent that what I say comes from my feelings.

0.55

0.17

0.19

15

I know I can trust what I sense inside.

0.49

0.31

0.08
0.2

Factor A: Accep�ng and ac�ng from experiencing

Items of FMS

7

What I do comes from what I feel.

0.48

0.2

19 *

It's hard for me to have a sense of myself and what I feel.

0.44

0.03

-0.02

5

I try to match the words I say to how I feel inside.

0.44

0.08

0.19

4*

I cri�cize myself.

0.37

-0.11

0

Factor B: Bringing awareness to experiencing

2

I ﬁnd �me in daily life to get a bodily sense of just how I am.

0.07

0.57

0.12

1

I can sense a variety of rich feelings in my body.

0.01

0.5

-0.03

23

When talking to someone I check with my inner sense to know the right things to
say.

0.05

0.41

0.35

8

I know I have unclear feelings in my life.

0.04

0.37

0.06

16

I value my own unclear personal sense of things.

0.25

0.37

0.16

11

When I face a diﬃculty, I know that if I take �me and listen inwardly, I will get asense of what to do or what needs to happen.

0.27

0.36

0.29

22

I like to give myself the space to check out “just how am I right now?”

0.04

0.36

0.34

Factor C: Finding a comfortable distance fromexperiencing
13

If I have issues to face in life, I like to keep them at a distance.

0.09

0.04

0.69

21

When worrying about things, I pause and step back.

0 .3

0.02

0.44

3

It is be�er to hold back and get some distance from things that concern me.

0.06

0.17

0.39

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Researches using FMS

Showing high correlations with both physicaland mental health : GHQ, resilience, selfactualization tendency, etc.
Showing the Focusing ability

FMS scores can be enhanced by Focusingoriented interventions

My research using FMS:
Development of Mental
Health Program for
Helping Professionals(Doi, 2014)129

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Background & Research Question• Develop self-care programs meeting theneeds specific to helping professionals• Emotional labor – fatigue not noticeable• Working alone – no support, isolation• High-risk of burnout• Research question: Is Focusing helpful for
helping professionals for their self-care andrecovery of connection?

Measures
FMS (Fukumori &Morikawa, 2003)

Japanese Burnout
scale (Kubo, 1998)

Work satisfaction(Adachi, 1998)

Stress checklist(Murakami,
Matsuno & Katsura,
1998),

Coping Scale(Shimazu & Kosugi,
1997)

Jichi Medical School
Social Support Scale(Tsutsumi et al,
2000)

Focusing
experience / Stress‐
symptoms

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Result• Participants: 359 helping professionals(Male: 65, Female: 289; Others: 5)• Average age; 44.12 (SD=9.60, 23-72)• Average work experience; 10.97 years(SD=8.74)• Reliability (Cronbach α of FMS andother measures=0.749〜0.928

Occupational Distribution

Nurses/occupational nurses
5%

4% 1%

Hygene Managers

8%

Labour Managers
Safety Managers
82%

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FMS high‐score/low score groups and otherscoresFMS High group（49）> FMS low group（55）except “giving up (negative coping)” and “support fromspouses”

Helping professionals with high Focusing attitudes showed:
Higherworkplacesatisfaction

Lower stress,
lower burnout
risk

Effective coping
strategies

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Higherrecognition ofsocial support
34

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Discussion

Helping professionals with high Focusing attitudes:

Healthy mental health status

Recognition of higher social support– ability to ask for necessary support‐ ability to notice if s/he needs support by
paying attention to the inside（＝being awareof the felt sense)

Focusing can work when integrated in the self‐care
programs
35

BENEFITS OF FOCUSING

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For Individuals – Our Daily Life
(Weiser Cornell, 2018)

MAKE
DECISIONTHAT REALLY
FITS YOURFEELINGRELEASEKNOWBLOCKS TO WHAT YOU
ACTIONREALLYFEELABOUTNURTUREA SENSEOF SELFWORTH

GET INTOUCH
WITH
YOUR LIFEPURPOSERELEASEEMOTIONAL
BURDENSBEPRESENTTO YOUR
LIFE

With Focusing, you can also

• Take gentle care of yourself• Find peace in yourself, have your own reliable
compass for life

• Be true to yourself – becoming a person/fully
functioning… and many more!
134土井：Focusing: Listening to your “Clientsʼ Client”

For Counsellors• What to/how to listen• listening to the client’s client or “”the person in
there/person behind the gaze” (Gendlin, 1990)• How to facilitate the process• How to be congruent – able to monitor what is goinginside while listening to the client• Focusing for therapist (Hirano, 2018) – alternative forsupervision/ self-care

FOCUSING AS PCA

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Focusing comes from Rogers’
Researches
Focusing stemmed fromGut feeling/visceral

Rogersʼ researches onand sensory

how counseling works

sensation (Rogers,

and on the process of1951)

counseling

Focusing is Client-Centred• Client as the expert• As the person doing Focusing, YOU are theexpert. We believe that you know YOU the best.
That’s why, with Focusing, you don’t need anexpert. Many other methods require apractitioner to facilitate, but not Focusing!
Focusing empowers YOU to make your own
choices and get in touch with your own truth.
(Weiser-Cornell, 2018)136土井：Focusing: Listening to your “Clientsʼ Client”

THANK YOU!

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