FOCUSING IN COMMUNITY:  Introduction

Free sample excerpt of  manual by Dr. Kathy McGuire, Creative Edge Focusing ™, www.cefocusing.com , part of The Self-Help Package available in The Store :

INTRODUCTION

1.       How to Use the Manual

The manual has been written so that any individual can

�      sit down and read the manual;

�        find a friend or two who will also read it and practice the skills in Part Two; and

�        build a supportive community for himself. 

However, the manual can also be used by professionals:

• as the basis for a course in community mental health or counseling skills
• as an aid in beginning supportive communities in a variety of settings.

           It can be used by professionals and non-professionals alike who want to build non-hierarchical and emotionally supportive work environments for themselves.

           The peer counseling model for community offered here also insures a further step toward intimacy to groups who are already meeting some needs through mutual support.The manual is based on thirty years of experience with groups in many contexts and is the best solution I have found to the difficulties of living, meeting and working collectively.

            The manual teaches peer counseling skills of empathic listening and experiential focusing and tells how to use these skills to provide emotional support, to work through interpersonal conflicts, and to arrive at consensual, cooperative decisions. It tells how to build a peer counseling community, be it as small as four close friends or one open to anyone in a larger community who wants to come.

            In a peer counseling community, there is no distinction made between helper and helpee. Everyone learns the core skills, Focused Listening and Intuitive Focusing.  Participants exchange counseling turns as equals:  I listen to you while you use Focusing on some concern of yours; then you listen to me while I use Focusing on my concern.

           The depth of intimacy generated during the exchange of empathic listening turns grows into a feeling of connectedness and mutual regard which soon blossoms into a supportive community:  a throughout the week network of friendships and mutually supporting relationships extending into all aspects of participants" life and work.

           The manual should be useful to:

�         helping professionals who bring people together for mutual support in a variety of settings, including churches, schools, prisons, halfway houses, community mental health centers, senior citizen centers, 12-Step organizations, hospitals;    

�         paraprofessionals who offer peer counseling through hotlines, crisis centers, student centers;

�         self-help and support groups who want to deepen their level of sharing and commitment;

�         businesses, non-profit organizations, and political groups who want to incorporate "the intuitive feel," The Creative Edge,  for innovative problem solving;

�         those living in spiritual and other residential communities;

�         individuals who are looking for their own solution to isolation and loneliness.

The skills described in the manual, and the theory behind them, can be easily comprehended and practiced by any individual or group of individuals who want to create a more intimate and healing environment for themselves.

Every person should have the skills to respond to emotional crisis, to be in touch with and to share his own inner experiencing, to resolve interpersonal conflicts, and to make decisions without conflict.  The need for such skills arises constantly in everyday life: in marriage, friendship, the relationship between employer and employee, any attempt of people to meet or work together. 

When such skills remain the province of mental health professionals alone, there is a general mystification which leads individuals to feel dependent upon mental health practitioners and, in the most damaging way, to perceive themselves as not responsible for their feelings and actions and their effects upon other people.

I hope through this manual to give confidence and skills to those wishing to understand the psychological and interpersonal phenomena which arise in everyday friendship and work and thereby to empower individuals.I have received some of my own best mental health care and mental health training in support groups and peer counseling groups.  I have come to see the core skills of Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening as the basis of "human literacy," skills of "emotional and social intelligence."