Mentxu Martín-Aragón and Josep Santacreu - Working with the “internal character” in F.O.T.to deal with unwanted emotions
From a wide experience in both Focusing training and psychotherapeutic work, we want to contribute some reflections related to the Focusing process, and how the body can help to guide us. We live in uncertain times, where anxiety and stress of our clients, as well as unwanted emotions are a challenge to manage in psychotherapy. Taking into account the fundamentals of the technique proposed by E. Gendlin, we will propose a work with the "parts" is of great importance.
The approach is born within the so-called humanistic paradigm, and addresses a diversity of models where the authors involved focus on the development of human potential and experiential contact. With this in mind, we would like to highlight the strengths of Focusing.
In particular, we would like to highlight and work on the inner dynamics, the "inner characters" (a concept invented by us), and the conditions conducive to the "aha", the passage - rather the leap - to explicit understanding, where the state of presence and the adjustment of the symbol are essential.
Mentxu Martín-Aragón and Josep Santacreu, Focusing Oriented Therapy and Focusing Coordinators. For us Focusing has become an important place. We are psychologists, psychotherapists, supervisors of psychoterapists, and also Psychology teachers at University. We have known F.O.T. for many years. In 2004, we joined together to teach Focusing by creating our own training and psychotherapy center, Focusint THuS, in Madrid. For more than 20 years, we have been giving training courses in many places in Spain. We work not only privately, but also as university professors and in various institutions in the world of clinical psychology. From our experience, and following in Gendlin's footsteps, we would like to offer some reflections and proposals on what we understand as "inner characters".