Video Role Play Patty. Illustration of Focusing on Overwhelming Fear
Channel: Existential Well-being Counseling: A Person-centered Experiential Approach
Date: 2017-08-31

The therapist Prof. Dr. Mia Leijssen illustrates how the experiential approach helps to put overwhelming images at a distance and then to watch them as a means to open underlying feelings. Paying attention inwardly to the unclear sense of something may arise spontaneously in the client or it may need facilitation. The way to touch the inside felt sense in a Focusing way can be presented as a six-step process: 1. clearing a space; 2. attending to a felt sense; 3. finding a handle; 4. resonating; 5. asking; 6. receiving. However during therapy, it is not recommended to 'teach' Focusing; here it is preferable that the therapist models the more general focusing attitude of waiting in the presence of the not yet speakable and being receptive to the not yet formed. The 'steps' can be referred to as 'micro-processes' offered at certain moments in psychotherapy. 

This clip is part of the MOOC Existential Well-being Counseling: A Person-centered Experiential Approach.

You can enroll for free using this url: https://www.edx.org/course/existential-well-being-counseling-person-kuleuvenx-ewbcx