Do It for Yourself Now! - What is Emotional Recycling

Written by Ilan Shalif, Ph.D.

In addition to these reservations about cheating yourself, we want to stress and emphasize the seriousness of this kind of emotional recycling. You have to take into account that this way of sneaking into the garbage pile of the trash-programs is more like using explosives to force an entry into the safe of a bank than picking pockets. You can never know in advance what the intensity of the pent up emotions will be if they are tampered with through harsh measures.

Therefore, when using this technique to tackle behavioral patterns, especially if they are related to central themes of your life, be cautious. At the beginning, content yourself with small "doses" of focusing on the relevant felt sensation. Later, when you feel that a breakthrough is near, you can quicken the pace.

Recycled emotions E - Popular scientific literature, art works, nostalgia

Many authors strive to enrich the public with the knowledge accumulated by scientists from various branches of the social sciences. Many of these books contain suggestions and even direct advice about life, that are of the "do it yourself" kind. A lot of them spotlight some parts of our life. While reading them and applying the new knowledge, one encounters emotions, feelings, sensations, both above and below the threshold of awareness.

Whatever the scientific or the practical value of these books, focusing while reading them may be a wonderful way to meet felt sensations of trash-programs related to specific areas of one's life. The contents of these books may acquaint the focuser with problem areas he had not previously been aware of or did not even suspect were there. While reading these books, the focusing on the felt sensations encountered may stress for him the importance of problem areas he was only marginally aware of.

Many people, if not all of us, derive from art works in general, and especially literary works, a wide spectrum of positive and mixed emotional feelings. Focusing on these will usually bring about both an improvement of trash-programs and greater pleasure.

Recycled emotions F - A most violent patrol

There are well-established findings of the dynamic psycho-therapies (Freudian, Adlerian and others), and the behavioral ones, as well as those of the research of upbringing, education and socialization of the first years of life. Both these (and other scientific findings) point out the intimate relationships between the trash-programs of the adult, and the prolonged intensive encounters with the key personalities of that early period, especially the parents and siblings.

One can always "fish out" these trash-programs which are intimately connected with those figures by using various tactics. But, as it goes straight to the heart of things, it is not recommended for beginners or those who do not feel themselves proficient enough with the various tactics of focusing. Even later, after having mastered the new technique, do not force upon yourself intense feelings related to that age. Impetuous encounters with those memories might result in the strengthening of cover-programs.

The routine activities of primitive cover-programs which originated at an early age and were not updated and mended in time, are the main reason and the most important contributor to the chronic delay in the mending and updating of the supra-programs of the mind. The most elegant way to make these and other trash-program more flexible is to recycle the early memories of childhood. This can easily be done by using photographs of those significant figures from the present or the past.

It seems that for the people one is still in touch with, the best photographs are the most recent ones. In contrast to the other components of the trash-programs related to them, this part (i.e. - the facial expressions of these agents) is easily and spontaneously updated all through the years.

According to many satisfied focusers, the best way is to focus the eyes on the picture, and parallel to this, to focus on the feelings and sensations they arouse - using the various tactics of focusing previously mentioned: opening the nape of the neck, focusing on subliminal sensations, etc. It seems that this recycling of emotional content brings up felt sensations that are free of too problematic contents. Thus, cover-programs rarely interfere or hinder, if not done too recklessly.

At first, it is best to focus for only short periods of time so as not to arouse too intense feelings. Later, one can gradually lengthen the sessions. After there are no more significant feelings to experience, and no more discernible expressions of the relevant trash-programs encountered, one can use the photographs to recycle specific episodes from the past.

In the first sessions of using the photographs, the emotions may surge, even if the pictures have been periodically looked at outside of the focusing context. The intensity may be unbearable or almost so even after only a few seconds. Therefore, be ready to abandon this activity swiftly or to use other emergency means to trim the emerging felt sensation to the right measure. Don't strive to be a hero of sensate focusing. This wish is itself a trash-program!!!

The above technique can be applied also to photographs of situations, places and less significant people, as well as through other media - such as drawings, music, reunions, etc. It seems that this technique, when applied in cases of death or separation, shortens the mourning period and restricts the damage borne by the focuser. It is especially so when the mourning is the result of the severance of intimate ties with a mate.

Recycled emotions G - The provocations

Professor Eugene T. Gendlin and a group of associates at the University of Chicago discovered focusing many years ago. After developing the General Sensate Focusing Technique, I learned that "I had invented the wheel for the second time". The idea of verbal provocations as a means of arousing felt sensations to focus on was adopted from him and from publications of the Focusing Institute. The following section explains in brief the version of the "Provocative Assault" method used by me and my trainees.

Though it is stressed very often in this book that the felt sensations and the focusing on them are non verbal processes, I do not have any prejudice against verbal processes. In daily life, "some of my best friends" communicate with me verbally. I think verbally in private from time to time, and even use words in focusing training sessions for various purposes. As long as one does not forget that focusing and the felt sensations are mainly a non verbal process of the right half (hemisphere) of the brain, the use of verbal processes can be of no harm and even of great help.