An Interview with Joan Klagsbrun
by Dawn Flynn
I had the great fortune to come across Joan Klagsbrun’s work years ago while looking for articles on integrating Focusing with medicine. Her articles in the Folio and a video of her teaching Focusing demonstrated to me the deep healing possibilities when Focusing is brought into a doctor’s visit - a visit that has the potential to be a sacred encounter between two people.
Sitting together on opposite sides of the country years later, we discuss her touching experiences with Eugene Gendlin that make me laugh out loud. We also talk about how she integrates Focusing with positive psychology and positive aging, how she helps those with chronic illness, and how Focusing can help us develop meaningful rituals in times of struggle. I’m delighted to share our conversation with you.
Dawn: How did you come to Focusing and Gene Gendlin?
Joan: I came to Focusing out of serendipity. In 1976 I was sitting in the library trying to finish my dissertation. And of course, in those moments, everything else is more interesting than doing a dissertation. So, I scanned the bookshelves in the room that I was in, and saw a couple of books that caught my eye. I picked them up, and one of them was a philosophy book. I'd never read a philosophy book, but that's how much I wanted to avoid my dissertation. So I opened it up, and it was Gene's book, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning. I was fascinated. I didn't understand all of it, but I got the essence which is about how we pay attention to something that is pre-verbal and allow it to come into symbolization. That relationship between experiencing and symbols fascinated me. And then, either again by serendipity or maybe it was by divine intervention, four days later I received a flyer in the mail from Naropa Institute in Colorado. And who was presenting, but the same Dr. Gene Gendlin from the University of Chicago. On a whim, I decided to go. And so there I was that summer at Naropa Institute sitting in a very large lecture hall. I was in the first row, and Gene was introducing us to Focusing and leading us through Clearing a Space when I felt something I hadn't felt before. I had been in therapy. I had been trained as a psychologist. By that time, I had finished my dissertation. But this was completely new, the way he helped us related to our inner life. Even saying things that we take for granted as Focusers, like, "What's the whole of it?" and "Is there a way, a word, a phrase, an image or a gesture that captures that?" I found that very useful and helpful for the issues I was dealing with.
I'm pretty shy so I didn't go up to him afterwards as many people did, but he actually came to me and said, "This really speaks to you, doesn't it?" I said, "Yes, this is like Gestalt therapy for introverts." We both laughed and then he said, "You've been here. Please show me around." Of course, I had only been there a few days before he arrived, but I took the opportunity to learn Focusing over the week he was there. I went to all of his workshops and lectures and at the end of the week I told him, "I wish you lived on the East Coast because I can just feel Focusing is something I want to bring into my teaching and into my therapy practice." And he said, "Well, you're in luck. Next year, I'm going to be in New York for two years. I'm taking a sabbatical. Come down from Boston. I'll supervise you with your clients anytime." Wow. That was such an incredible invitation. I had never had a mentor, and he was just stepping into that role for me which was so fortunate. So every other week I went down to New York and he supervised me, and that's how I learned Focusing Oriented Therapy, through his teaching me Focusing and then helping me integrate it into my therapy practice.
Dawn: That does sound serendipitous - the sequence of events, to have him personally offer himself so generously, and for the two of you to meet one another that way. And that took a great amount of effort on your part to make that trip to New York twice a month.
Joan: I recognized the opportunity that it was. I had a felt sense this was going to change everything for me. And in fact, as I look back, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning was there on the bookshelf in the study hall by serendipity. It all changed my whole life in such a positive way.
"Oh no, no, no. I don't need you to do anything. I just need your presence." -- Gene Gendlin (to Joan Klagsbrun)
Dawn: Do you have any memories of Gene Gendlin you would like to share?
Joan: The second time I went to New York to see him, he and his wife Mary [Hendricks] were living in an apartment. I remember it overlooked the river. It was a very beautiful view, and I sat down and he said, “Oh, I'm so glad you're here. I need to Focus." Then he immediately saw the performance anxiety on my face, and he said, "Oh no, no, no. I don't need you to do anything. I just need your presence." And I sat there, and he Focused. He didn't say too much, but he said, "Ah, yeah, that's there. Let me see. Let me just be with that." He gave that Gene sigh that he's famous for and then he said, "Yeah, okay, I think I need to... that's right. I'll put that here." And then he said, "I think I'm good till tonight." It was such a teaching for me. Number one, that what you need when you're Focusing is not someone who knows all the instructions to give you - you need someone who will just be fully present for you. And he showed me the importance of interaction. Here is "Mr. Focusing" and he didn't Focus alone. He needed someone to be there for him to go inside. He said, "I think I'm good till tonight." He showed me he's so human, and then he showed me that Focusing is not a one-off thing. It's a continual process.
Dawn: That's so helpful to hear about Gene Gendlin's humanness and the example that Focusing is a continual, ongoing process.
Joan: He was so warm and normalized anything I said. I remember one time saying to him, "This client is in their head. I just don't see how I can do Focusing with them." And he said, "Oh, yeah, I have clients like that too. Focusing doesn't always work."
"You don't have to put your head in the soup to smell it. Just get a whiff of it." -- Eugene Gendlin
Every time I had a chance to see him do a workshop, I would take the opportunity to be there. I always learned something new because each time he used fresh language and fresh metaphors in whatever he was teaching. For example, one of the important things we need to learn when we're teaching Focusing is how to help people get the right distance. He had six different ways of doing that. Whether it was "You and I are here and we're just camping out and the issue is over there," or "You're feeling sadness, but let's not be the sadness. Let's have the sadness next to us,” or “Can you just kind of put your arm around it?" Or he would say, "Let's make sure you have dancing distance." He would lean back and put his arms up and say, "You can't solve it if it’s breathing down your neck. Let's just get some distance." And my favorite one that I remember him saying, and that I have used with clients was, "You don't have to put your head in the soup to smell it. Just get a whiff of it." All just different metaphors for how to get into the right relationship with an issue before you.
Dawn: In the many years that you observed him, learned and worked with him, over time did you notice anything that changed inwardly for him? For example, his perspective, how he worked with clients, or what he included in the Focusing process?
Joan: There are two things that I noticed. One was one day, before he was teaching a workshop in the 70s when there were a lot of different approaches being taught, he said to me, "Oh, by the way, we don't teach Focusing anymore. We teach Focusing partnership." And I said, "Why is that?" And he said, "If we teach Focusing, people will think it's interesting but they'll go home and they'll never do it. But if we partner them in this workshop and then make sure that they stay connected to that partner, then it will stick.” Because when you are listened to, something magical happens. Focusing is better with someone else. You can do it alone, but it really helps to have another presence there. That was another big teaching for me to always make sure that there's partnership.
The second thing is that as Gene got older, I noticed there was a little more reference to what he called the "the great big everything." He didn't use the word “spirituality,” and I asked him once why not? And he said, "If I use the word ‘spirituality,’ half the people in the group will be nodding, and the other half will think we're going to be chanting ‘Om,’ and they'd be turned off." So again, he wanted fresh language to refer to spirit. The word “spiritual” has so much baggage attached to it. So, he would say “the big everything,” or “the big system” or whatever. I noticed that he was more interested in naming that as he got older than he was earlier in his life. He saw Focusing as a doorway to the spiritual realm. He was so humble. He would say, “When it comes to spirituality, I am just a consumer like everyone else. I need what is there but it’s not my expertise.”
"That great big everything is always there, no matter what else you're dealing with, that's always there as a resource."
-- Eugene Gendlin (to Joan Klagsbrun)
I have another memory of once riding in a long cab ride with him. Previously that year, he had been in a serious automobile accident. He had been in a taxi on the way to catch a flight to Europe from New York when the taxi got into an accident and he was hospitalized. For the rest of his life, he had a lot of pain. People might remember how he always had to sit on a cushion because he had a lot of back pain. In the taxi he said to me, "Do you want to know what I learned from the accident?" He looked out the window, and he pointed to the nature that passed by as we were driving. He said, "That great big everything is always there, no matter what else you're dealing with, that's always there as a resource." I was very touched by that. And it really helps me to remember that.
I also want to share how humble he was and how much he lacked having an ego. We used to call him the anti-guru because he was just so modest, so warm, so authentic. One of the ways that showed up was how he did not care about his appearance. One time he came to Boston because I had arranged for him to teach a workshop for 150 people. He came to my home the day before and stayed over, and I noticed he was badly in need of a haircut. So, I said to him, "Gene, would it be okay if I just trimmed up your hair a little?" He agreed saying, "Just do whatever works." The next day we got to the center and the director met us and said, "Hello, Dr. Gendlin, I'm so glad to have you here.” And then the director turned to his attention to me and said, "If Dr. Gendlin wants to change into his presenter clothes, he can do it in this room." Gene was wearing a flannel shirt and sweatpants. I looked at the director and I said, "Dr. Gendlin is in his presenter clothes." And when he led the workshop, everybody fell in love with him. There was no ego, there was no persona. He was so clearly himself.
Dawn: I am impressed by that quality of him when I hear him or see him in videos. I think that's why many of us are so touched by him, his presence and his words. He feels so loving and easy. Do you know how he got to that place? It just feels like it's natural with him. Was he born that way or did he work over the years to arrive at that place?
"If the individual isn't sacred, nothing is sacred." -- Gene Gendlin
Joan: He had a very tough beginning. He left Europe with his parents to flee the Holocaust, and arrived here at the age of 13. He had lived through trauma, and it left him with scars and with a passion for protecting individuals from any kind of assault.
He once said, "If the individual isn't sacred, nothing is sacred." Gene was very careful to protect individuals. Whenever he was in a group, whether it was a workshop or a social event, when there was somebody who was criticizing someone else or putting someone down, he would always put his hands up and say to the person who was being critical or hostile, "Wait, wait, say it to me, let's leave that other person in peace. I want to hear what you have to say, but don't say it to them. Say it to me."
Dawn: So he's allowing that critical or hostile person to have their voice and say what needs to be said, and he's also at the same time, really looking after the other person being criticized. Oh, that's a beautiful way to handle that situation and there is much in that for me to learn.
Joan: I've never met a listener who was so present. He was fully there with you and he also remembered what you said for years. When I first met him, I was 30 years old. I was thinking of leaving my first marriage. During a Focusing session, I said to him that I was afraid that I would never have children. He reflected it and said very comfortingly, "Oh, there are always children in the world to love," and I really held on to that. Then, at age 39 when I remarried and had a child, he asked me every time I was with him, “How's your son? How's it going with your son?” He remembered how important having a child was for me all those years later. He didn't just listen and then forget it. He held whatever you shared with him.
Dawn: That's a beautiful example of presence and listening. Anything more you would like us to know about Gene?
~ He (Gene) wanted Focusing to be integrated into politics, at the UN, in synagogues and churches, and in prisons. ~
Eugene Gendlin and Social Transformation
Joan: We all know Gene as a philosopher and as a psychologist, but he actually had a huge commitment to social transformation and social change. He had a very big vision. He wanted Focusing to be woven into the fabric of society. He said there are many organizations that want change, but they don't have the knowledge that change usually happens at a deeper level of inward attention. Focusing is that method. He wanted Focusing to be integrated into politics, at the UN, in synagogues and churches, and in prisons. It feels important that Gene’s vision doesn't get lost. Here's a little example of what he meant: He once said that at synagogues and churches there is usually a coffee hour after the service where people just chit chat, and then they go home. He said we should institute 15 minutes of listening where people are partnered and they can talk about what touched them in the sermon, or how they're feeling that day, or whatever they want to talk about, and they'll get listened to. He knew that when people listen to each other, there's a depth of connection that happens. He believed that a listening partnership is the antidote to loneliness, to isolation, and even to violence. He understood that the power of listening and Focusing had a much wider application than just for therapy or even for Changes groups. He wanted to see it in society. He actually said that he thought Focusing could help with the next step of human evolution, and he called that step “inter-human attention.” He was a visionary.
Dawn: This has been so interesting and valuable to me to hear of your direct personal experiences with Gene. I'm also interested in in your personal experiences and what in your work has been the most gratifying for you?
Clearing a Space
Joan: My parents both died when I was in my 30s, and that was my first experience with illness and death. From those difficult experiences in hospitals, I was very motivated to want a more holistic approach to illness that included the physical, emotional and spiritual. So after their deaths, I took a training in how to be a hospice volunteer and pretty soon I was teaching Focusing to the hospice volunteers. That got me very interested in bringing Focusing to people with illness. I noticed that in my practice, where I had increasingly worked with people with serious illness, Clearing a Space was a particularly useful approach for them. It seemed to activate some self-healing abilities, and it helped people discover a sense of themselves that was separate from their illnesses. It gave them more space and for some, it led to really deeply spiritual experiences. One woman said, "You know, I feel when I put down each of my issues and burdens and I sit in the cleared space, I feel bubbles of lightness, and a sense of calm that I haven't felt before."
I became very inspired by my work with people with illness, and also by some research by Doralee Grindler Katonah. So I started two research studies, one in 2005 and one in 2010. In both studies, we worked with women with breast cancer, and in the first study, we incorporated Clearing a Space with the arts. The participants learned Clearing a Space, and then had two day-long retreat days. They were engaged in writing, art making, and movement. Gene had advised to “always put Focusing with other approaches.” That study showed that there were significant changes in the participants’ quality of life after these two retreat days. But I was very curious about what part was due to the expressive arts and what part was due to Clearing a Space. So, in the next study, we just offered sessions of Clearing a Space by itself. We had women come in-person for the first and last sessions and held telephone sessions for the four sessions in between. The results showed positive changes in their quality of life using both quantitative and qualitative measures. That was very exciting. From there, I began to teach Clearing a Space to nurses and physicians, wrote an article on Focusing that was featured in a holistic nursing journal, and gave workshops to teach health professionals Clearing a Space. That is one application of Focusing that I feel really passionate about.
As a university-level professor teaching graduate students, I began every class - no matter what I was teaching - with Clearing a Space. I guided students in Clearing a Space for 10 or 15 minutes to notice what was in the way of being present for class and how to put each concern aside, knowing they could come back to these issues later. In my teacher evaluations, students always mentioned how valuable they found this method of Clearing a Space.
~ We know Focusing is very useful to explore what feels wrong in our lives, but it's also very helpful to look at what's right in our life, what's going well, what we can be grateful for, and where the joys are. ~
Positive Psychology
Joan: I have moved on in my interests, but I've always taken Focusing as the central method for whatever the interest is. I have become very interested in positive psychology, which is a sub-specialty of psychology that is based in research. It looks at how we can cultivate resilience hope, courage and optimism, and how these qualities can benefit people's lives. But I find that it's very important to include Focusing because while positive psychology brings us the research showing the benefits of, for example, gratitude, it doesn't tell us how we can get there, and Focusing is the method of embodying some of these states.
We know Focusing is very useful to explore what feels wrong in our lives, but it's also very helpful to look at what's right in our life - what's going well, what we can be grateful for, and where the joys are. I find that if we have that balance in not ignoring the difficulties, but also looking at the positives in our lives, it leads to resilience. Then we can be more resourceful in times of challenge, pain, and loss. Focusing on what's going well in my life as well as what‘s troubling me has been very helpful to me in challenging times.
Dawn: What you said feels so important to me because in Focusing, we're so conscious of welcoming whatever is there, even the deepest hopelessness. So if somebody is in that moment of deep and dark despair, complete hopelessness, they are likely not feeling any form of gratitude. But positive psychology isn't denying the hopelessness. Focusing can help them get to that place, or maybe find that feeling of gratitude along with all those other feelings as well.
Joan: Focusing is the first important step. We want to have the Focusing attitude, that respectful, loving attitude, to just notice what's there - to be very honest, to be able to express all the negativity, anger and frustration, the sadness and hopelessness, and to stay with what arises and to have it tell us what's the worst of it, what's the whole of it. And I think only then, when people really have been able to symbolize what they're carrying, then they can be more open and notice if there is anything that's giving them hope right now, or is there anything that's positive in their life right now. Then people are freed up to actually notice what more is there. I also always emphasize the very small positives in your life - not the 10s, but the ones or twos. For example, did you notice it was a sunny day today? How is that in your body? Just stay right with that. Start with very small things.
~ He (Gene) implied that Focusing inherently tilts us towards the positive. ~
Dawn: What I understand from what you said is that the more a person is truly with the despair and feeling the whole of it in a bodily way and accompanied in that despair, then the body is going to be more open to feeling the light. The next step will unfold and the person will naturally be able to feel the ones and twos, and likely hope will come.
Joan: Exactly. And you know, Gene really guided us in that direction. He implied that Focusing inherently tilts us toward the positive. He said things like, "Every bad feeling is potential energy for a more right way of being, if we give it space to move towards its rightness." He also counseled therapists that a frequent therapist error is to be interested only in things that are troublesome. He explicitly counseled therapists to welcome new positive life energy. So Focusing, in a way, was the first positive psychology, 50 years before Martin Seligman started this new subspecialty.
It's another way to implement Focusing, to bring attention to what we love, to what brings us alive, to what we're grateful for. And I think when we do that, it offers us an experience of safety and protection that new research in neuropsychology is showing leaves lasting traces in the brainstem and the limbic system.
Focusing Partnership
Joan: The last area I want to bring attention to is the importance of Focusing partnership for therapists. My Focusing partner Lynn Preston and I wrote an article for a magazine called Psychotherapy Networker, which is read by thousands of therapists who are not necessarily Focusers, about the importance of a Focusing partnership. We called the article "Don't Go it Alone." Therapist partnerships can sometimes Focus on personal issues, and sometimes on our stuckness with clients. I believe partnerships are life-giving. I think they have contributed to my supervision and support groups continuing for over a decade. One reason these therapists stay in the groups is because they deeply value that partnership support. It can be a rare thing for us to feel deeply listened to, and it's such a revelation when we experience that level of connection and support.
Dawn: Is there anything you once thought would be great to accomplish, but now looks like you yourself might not be able to in this lifetime?
Joan: I have a lot of hopes for the next generation. One of them is to get Focusing into the academy. And by that I mean that in every graduate program - in disciplines as varied as medicine, social work, nursing, counseling, or psychology - Focusing should be taught. In that way, Focusing will become a more widely-known skill that we research, and bring more into the world. We need to develop the inclusion of Focusing in universities worldwide.
Another wish is to have Clearing a Space become more well known. It is a brief and quite teachable process that could have wide applicability for accessing wellbeing.
Finally, I'm very encouraged to see that there soon will be an updating of the Focusing Oriented Therapies website, and that we also have a new video channel for Focusing Oriented Therapists. These are promising new projects that I'm excited about.
~ Focusing helps people who are ill find the next right healing direction, the next life-forward step. ~
Focusing and the Illness Experience
Dawn: Will you discuss your work with people struggling with illness?
Joan: Focusing can help in three different ways with illness experience.
One is to gently and compassionately help people sit with and name what's most challenging, and what's most disturbing and what is hardest for them.
The second is to allow people to connect with the part of them that knows they are more than their illness or more than their pain or their grief.
The third is that Focusing helps people who are ill find the next right healing direction, the next life-forward step. What does this situation need? Do I need to share my distress with more people? Do I need to call my doctor? What does this need? When I'm working with someone who's ill, I talk about finding health in the midst of illness. There is a healthy part of us, and we don't want to ignore that part, because when our bodies betray us with pain or with illness, we can forget that. We need to remember that we're more than that. We need to notice where we come alive.
Focusing is a way to help us remember who we are and what's still healthy in us. My husband is dealing with a treatable cancer, so of course we live with some fear. However, when he's with our three-year-old grandson he forgets that he has cancer. He is living from the part of him that's playful and active and laughing and joyful. And I think we always have those parts. We can be reminded through Focusing, where we come alive, where there is still joy in life, and Focusing can help us with aging too.
Focusing and Aging
Joan: Aging by itself presents all kinds of challenges and difficulties. I teach classes now in positive aging. It's so important to spend time with what's hard about being the age you are. So, I ask people to Focus on: What's the worst of it? What makes it so hard? What have you lost? And then we turn to what's good about you the age you are now? What have you gained? And people are always surprised to find out that list of positives is just as long as the negatives. They realize that they care less about what other people think, or they have now time to pursue things they've always loved. Or they get to see their children launched. Or they get to treasure friends when before, they were so work-oriented that they took friends for granted. Or that they get to really appreciate their bodies still working.
And the other thing that I think is true, both for illness and aging, is that when the present is difficult, we have the ability to savor things from the past. We can Focus on highlights of our life or joys that we had, or things that we're proud of. It's all in the past, but we're feeling it in the present, so to ask what was the best of that, it's very enlivening.
Dawn: I love that. Who they were, what their contributions were, and how they influenced others’ lives in them still and can be brought into the present.
Focusing and Ritual
Joan: Yes! It's so important. Another way that I find Focusing useful is that when people are going through retirement or are in the middle of illness or about to have surgery, it's very helpful to utilize Focusing to help them come up with a ritual to help them make this transition a little more sacred. As an example, I have a client who's about to have surgery and I asked her, "Would it be useful for you to gather your friends the day before you go into surgery, to have support and to strengthen you?" I asked her, in a Focusing way, to go inside and see what would make that ritual beneficial for her. She realized she wanted her friends to sing to her a song she wanted them to sing. And then I asked her to check inside and ask, “Is there more? Is there something else that would be helpful to you?" And she said, "Yes, I want them to each name a quality that they treasure in me so that I can remember these qualities people see in me." I asked, "Would that be the end of the ritual?" And she said, "Wait a minute, there's something else. I don't know what it is yet." And she brought her attention inside then said, "Oh yes, I'd like them to each touch me, one on my shoulder, on my leg, on my arms, on my head, and as I'm lying down, I want them to just send energy to me for the surgery." I believe that she sailed through that surgery in part because she had figured out what she really needed, and created a sacred ritual to honor that need.
Dawn: What a touching story.
Joan: Ritual has a place, and Focusing helps us to design the right ritual for the occasion, whether it's a retirement ritual, or a ritual for saying goodbye to your loved ones, or an end-of-life ritual. I think that brings in the sacred dimension.
Dawn: That seems so much more powerful to me than somebody assigning a ritual or reading something out of a book. It's such a great way of using Focusing. How can caregivers to those who are aging or struggling with illness benefit from Focusing?
Focusing and Caregiving
Joan: Focusing is so helpful for caregivers, because it implicitly gives permission to the caregiver to talk about their distress, their frustration, their anger. It's so important that they have a space to share their burdens, whether it's with a partner, or journaling, or in therapy.
I'm working with a woman in her 50s now whose parents are elderly and dying. She has a husband who had a stroke, so she is so overwhelmed. We talk about how she needs to recognize her own limits and her own needs, to have joy in her life and to put energy into her career as a singer and to make sure that she's still growing as a person. And what she came to was that she needed to delegate so that she is able to have more freedom and joy in her life. It's made such a big difference. So now, she has more energy to give to these people who need her because she's taking care of herself. And that reminds me of a little something that Gene said to me a few times that really stuck with me.
~ ... he (Gene) wanted to make sure that whatever work you're doing in the world to advance Focusing or whatever else you're doing, to make sure you remember to nourish yourself. ~
When I would tell him, “Gene, I'm going to be doing this research,” or “I got this idea of starting a Focusing Oriented Therapy Conference,” he would always say, "Oh, that's great, I'm so glad." But then he would lean in and he'd say, "Make sure to get something for yourself." And what I think he meant by that was that he wanted to make sure that whatever work you're doing in the world to advance Focusing or whatever else you're doing, to make sure you remember to nourish yourself. You don't want to give so much that you burn out. And so I say that to caregivers. Make sure you're getting something for yourself, such as the knowledge that you're giving this person a wonderful last chapter, or you're showing your lifelong love for your parents, etc. Make sure that there's something in it to nourish you.
Caregiving can be very depleting and you can't give as much when you're depleted. You get frustrated and short-tempered and annoyed. It's important to remember to nourish yourself in whatever ways are helpful to you; through nature, through taking time off, through having fun, because then you'll have more to give.
Dawn: This has been very valuable Joan, and I just feel so inspired. You've given me so many ideas and your stories have touched my heart and make me appreciate all the work that you've done, and that Gene Gendlin has done, and all the people before me have done to bring this practice into my life and the lives of my patients.
Joan: I feel deeply grateful not only to Gene, but to the entire Focusing community. People who share this deep belief that we have a life forward direction inside of us that we can find are kindred spirits. I have made lifelong friends through the worldwide Focusing community, and some of the peak experiences of my life have both been being at Focusing conferences, and presenting Focusing to non-Focusers. Opening that doorway for people is exhilarating and meaningful!
Dawn Flynn is a naturopathic doctor, acupuncturist, and certified Focusing teacher practicing in the Skagit Valley of Washington state. For more information visit www.wholebody-holistic.com.