Posts

The Benefits of Focusing-Oriented Therapy for Managing Anxiety

/in , , , /by

Do you often feel overwhelmed by anxious thoughts, unsure of how to move forward? Anxiety is a common experience, affecting millions of people worldwide. While traditional talk therapy can be beneficial, some individuals struggle to break free from the cycle of anxious thoughts.

Focusing-Oriented Therapy (FOT) offers a unique, body-centered approach to understanding and managing anxiety. By tuning into your body’s felt sense, FOT helps you connect with deeper emotions and access inner wisdom for healing.

What is Focusing-Oriented Therapy (FOT)? Focusing-Oriented Therapy (FOT) developed by Eugene Gendlin, is a gentle and powerful therapeutic approach that helps individuals develop a deeper awareness of their inner experiences.

A key concept in FOT is the “felt sense”—a vague, bodily knowing that holds information about our emotions and experiences. When anxiety arises, it often manifests as tension, restlessness, or a tight sensation in the chest. Through FOT, clients learn to listen to these bodily signals with curiosity and compassion, rather than fear or avoidance. This process fosters self-awareness and emotional regulation, making it easier to manage overwhelming feelings.

How FOT Helps Manage Anxiety: Anxiety often feels stuck and repetitive, fueled by looping thoughts and persistent worries. Many people try to think their way out of anxiety, only to find themselves more entangled in distressing thoughts.

FOT provides a different approach—one that shifts the focus from thoughts to bodily sensations. By gently turning inward and noticing how anxiety feels in the body, clients gain new insights and access emotions that may have been buried or unprocessed. A trained FOT therapist guides clients in exploring these sensations, helping them feel less overwhelmed and more in control.

Key Benefits of Focusing-Oriented Therapy for Anxiety FOT offers several benefits for those struggling with anxiety:

  • Increased Body Awareness: Learning to tune into bodily sensations helps individuals become more present, reducing the power of anxious thoughts.
  • Improved Self-Regulation: FOT supports emotional regulation, allowing clients to access a sense of calm and control over their anxiety.
  • Deeper Emotional Understanding: Unlike traditional talk therapy, which focuses on verbal processing, FOT uncovers underlying causes of anxiety that may not be immediately obvious.
  • Sustainable Relief: By developing a compassionate relationship with their inner experiences, clients find long-term relief from anxiety rather than temporary symptom management.
  • Real-Life Examples: Many clients who have tried FOT report experiencing breakthroughs in understanding their anxiety, leading to lasting emotional growth and relief.

What to Expect in an FOT Session for Anxiety A typical FOT session is client-led and paced according to individual comfort levels. Sessions generally include:

  • A grounding exercise to help clients tune into their body.
  • A guided exploration of bodily sensations associated with anxiety.
  • Gentle inquiry into what the felt sense is communicating.
  • A closing process to integrate insights gained during the session.

Clients are encouraged to share as much or as little as they feel comfortable with. The therapist provides a supportive and non-judgmental space, ensuring that clients feel safe throughout the process.

Is Focusing-Oriented Therapy Right for You? If you struggle with anxiety and have found traditional talk therapy ineffective, FOT may be worth exploring. This approach is particularly beneficial for those who:

  • Feel stuck in repetitive anxious thoughts.
  • Experience anxiety as physical tension or discomfort.
  • Are open to a body-centered, experiential approach to healing.

If you’re curious about how FOT can help you, consider booking a free consultation to learn more.

Focusing-Oriented Therapy offers a unique and effective way to manage anxiety by tapping into the body’s wisdom. Through this approach, clients develop self-awareness, emotional regulation, and long-term relief from anxious thoughts. If you’re ready to explore a new path to healing, reach out today to book a consultation and discover the benefits of FOT for yourself.

Focusing Practice #4 – Giving Some Comfort

/in /by
Read more

Focusing & Self-Compassion

/in /by
Read more

Focusing Practice #2 – A Part of Me

/in /by
Read more

Focusing Practice #1 – Clearing Space

/in /by
Read more

Anxiety? There’s an App for it!

/in /by

Don’t have a lot of time to address anxiety? If you have a smart phone, you are in luck, because as far as anxiety is concerned, there are many many apps for it! Here is a review of some of my favorites:

Breathe2Relax – Free (iPhone or Android)

This is a free app created by The National Center for TeleHealth and Technology. According to them, this app is “a portable skill rehearsal tool for practicing diaphragmatic breathing.” Even though we’ve been breathing since the day we were born, many of us develop breathing habits that can actually increase the experience of anxiety. Practicing proper breathing techniques is a great way to start decreasing anxiety.

Universal Breathing by Saagara – Free (iPhone or Android)

This is another free breathing app that offers more variations on breathing techniques. It also tracks the amount of time you spend practicing. If you have practiced breathing in yoga or meditation classes this is likely a good one for you.

Buddhify – $1.99 (iPhone or Android)

Does the idea of meditation fill you with more anxiety? This guided app makes for a gentle way to experiment with meditation.  Using short guided meditations for everything from walking to work to trouble sleeping to working online, this app offers a practical way to try meditating.

Relax Melodies – Free (iPhone or Android)

Anxiety often makes it difficult to relax which can make it difficult to fall asleep. This app offers soothing sounds and white noise to help the mind and body unwind.

Worry Box—Anxiety Self-Help – Free (Android only)

Not everyone likes to keep a journal, but there is lots of research to support the benefits of writing down our thoughts. This app allows you to write down your thoughts and asks you questions to help evaluate different aspects of those thoughts.

Do you have any favorite apps? Please leave us a comment and let us know!

Can You Escape Your Thoughts?

/in /by

With anxiety, repetitive thoughts, worries and rumination can become intense. It’s easy to feel like a prisoner to these thoughts and worries without any way to control them or make them stop. Some of these thoughts we can recognize as being extreme but others can seem so real, so inescapable….so us.

Here’s a little experiment. Sit down if you aren’t already, put your feet flat on the ground. Close your eyes and take a few slow breaths. Let your attention focus on your body from your feet to the top of your head. Notice any sensations, thoughts or emotions.  No need to change anything, just simply take a moment to notice what’s there.  Are any of these sensations, thoughts or emotions familiar?

Likely you noticed something during that experiment; so if you are your body sensations, thoughts or emotions, who was doing the noticing? Yoga, mindfulness and other self-reflective practices would say that it’s our Self (with a capital S) doing the noticing and that the sensations, thoughts and emotions are just parts of us that come and go depending on how our personal filters interpret the world around us.

Who cares? you might ask. Well the good news here is that if we are more than our thoughts, emotions and body sensations we have the possibility of learning to simply notice these vacillating parts of ourselves without being so impacted by their sometimes random nature. Given that anxiety is to a large degree created by being overwhelmed by thoughts, emotions and body sensations, this is good news indeed.

This idea may not be new to you, but I think it’s an idea worth revisiting because knowing something as an idea and knowing something as an experience are two very different things. Cultivating the ability to just notice our thoughts, emotions and body sensations without jumping down the rabbit hole with them, requires a lot of practice and commitment. This journey is no quick-fix solution, but a long term, deep internal transformation.

So maybe this is something you already practice, but if you don’t and would like to, there are a number of different ways to start (this is just a short idea list)

  • Guided mindfulness meditation (click here to receive our 15 minute meditation FREE)
  • Sitting meditation (try the 3 Minute Meditation Experiment)
  • Yoga or tai chi, many great instructors located in both Richmond and Squamish, BC

I’d love to hear what you sorts of things have worked for you, please feel free to leave a comment.

3-Minute Meditation Experiment

/in /by

Once anxiety takes hold, our nervous system escalates and it can feel like being trapped in a tidal wave. Becoming more aware of the thoughts and emotions that can lead to nervous system escalation is a key step in anxiety management.

One tool that can help you to experiment with gaining awareness of your nervous system  is meditation. Now I know that word can set off reactions in people so I’ll clarify what I mean by it. I like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness meditation: “paying attention in a particular way on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.”

Easier said than done you might think, and for most of us the non-judgmentally part is especially challenging. It can be tricky to simply observe ourselves without evaluating or judging. There is no ‘right’ way to do this, only figuring out what the experience is like for you.

The aim is just to gather data about your experience, not necessarily to be relaxed. The 3 Minute Meditation experiment is a way to help you get more familiar with your interior space which is part of the journey towards figuring out how to manage your nervous system escalation.

Here are the steps:

  1. Get something to write on: journal, notes in iPhone, download our meditation tracking form
  2. Set aside 3 minutes at the same time each day for 5 days
  3. Find a timer you can set for 3 minutes (there is a free Meditation Timer App available)
  4. Sit on the floor or on a chair
  5. Close your eyes and just notice the breath moving in and out of your nose, or notice the sounds around you.
  6. Not to worry when your thoughts wonder, just gently come back to the breath or the sounds around you.
  7. After you sit for 3 minutes take a moment to write down what you noticed
  • What thoughts did you notice? E.g. ‘Is this ever going to end’, ‘I find this relaxing’, ‘I think this is stupid’, whatever you notice
  • Did you notice any feelings? E.g. ‘a part of me is angry’, a part of me is impatient’, ‘a part of me is happy’
  • Where there any sensations in your body? E.g. tingling, tension, relaxation, temperature, itchiness, etc

Feel free to ask questions or to post about your experience with the experiment.