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Creative Edge Focusing News and Goods:
Why Cry? Wonder, Joy, Being Touched and Moved
Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director January, 2009 |
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CEF NEWS AND GOODS E-NEWSLETTER
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NEW AND GOOD FOR JANUARY, 2009
TAKING TEARS SERIOUSLY: WOMEN CRY FIVE TIMES AS OFTEN AS MEN!
William Frey, in his book Crying, states research which found that women cry five times as often as men. Certainly, there is a difference, and perhaps a skill, worth exploring here, if we take the value of tears and crying in a positive way.
TEARS OF WONDER/JOY, BEING TOUCHED AND BEING MOVED, AS POSITIVE, TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES
In a recent discussion about the many photos of "tears of joy" throughout the world which appeared in conjunction with Obama's inauguration, I started a discussion about such "tears of joy," "tears of 'being touched' and 'being moved' on The Focusing Discussion e-list (join and read the archives for November/December, 2008 ---). Fellow list members came back with some wonderful articles and multi-media on the positive place of tears.
I have had an ongoing debate with Eugene Gendlin, creator of Focusing, and others about the place and value of tears in change processes using Focusing and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy.
Gendlin's position is that some tears are simply repetitive, "sheer" emotion, and change will not happen unless the Focuser pays attention to the wider, deeper, "felt sensing" under the tears: "What are these tears about for me?" and pausing for a "felt sense" of "the whole thing" to form.
I agree with Gendlin about this, tears and crying that seem repetitive, stuck, often cried from a helpless, "victim" stance.
But there is another kind of tears and crying which I experience as deeply transformative, as part of Gendlin's "felt shift," the crux of change within the Focusing model. I call these tears "cathartic unfolding": tears and crying accompanying a deep shifting and opening and "carrying forward" at the bodily level. I experience these kind of "tearful felt shifts" as among the deepest in terms of true, lasting transformation of the psyche.
Gendlin tends to say, "Yes, receive these tears, value them, but they are a 'side product,' not an essential aspect of the 'felt shift' through Focusing." I agree that ALL "felt shifts" do not have to include tears, in fact, most do not. But I think I disagree with Gendlin and others on what I see as the ADDITIONAL significance of felt-shifts accompanied by "cathartic unfolding."
I also see more subtle "tearing up," the slight sheen of tears in the eye, as an indication of places of deep meaning. So, when being a Listener for a Focuser, or a Focusing-Oriented Therapist, I am likely to ask the Focuser if it would make sense to stop and "sense into" the place of tears, as a pathway to profound personal meanings.
I have approached this difference with Gendlin as a difference between "masculine" and "feminine" in the Jungian sense, as a difference between being a strong Thinker (T) and a strong Feeler (F) on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). On the MBTI, 60-70% of men score as Thinkers, leaving 30-40% male Feelers, and vice versa for women, 60-70% Feelers but also 30-40% Thinkers. So, there are many men for whom tears come easily, and many women who are not so close to their tears. See my articles, "Jung, MBTI, and Experiential Theory," "The Body As A Source Of Knowledge," and "Existential Phenomenology: A Philosophy Articulating Feminine Experience," .
Gene Gendlin on YouTube
First, let's take a look at Gene Gendlin in person on YouTube, through the wonderful efforts of Simon d'Ortega and Nada Lou. You will see Gendlin, now in his 80s, in his gentleness, his intelligence, his great wisdom, and his wonderful humor. However, you will not see him "being touched" or "being moved" to tears (I have, however, seen Gendlin with tears. So I include these videos just as a contrast in these moments)
Short but sweet, less than two minutes: "That Place That Knows"
Longer:
"Theory, TAE, and Democracy
If you can't open this, go to www.youtube.com and search for Kelly Corrigan and watch Transcending: Words on Women and Strength. You will see Corrigan "being touched" and "being moved" to tears as she speaks, and you may well find yourself having a corresponding emotional response. My women friends and relatives communicate between each other in this way as a matter of course, sending each other "touching" emails, as well as humorous ones. Corrigan and the women experiencing their tears with her are also being "bonded together" by their shared empathetic response. Feelings are inherently relational and draw people into contact.
Okay, in case you thing this topic of tears is "too heavy," here are two more humorous YouTubes to check out, totally for fun and having nothing to do with Focusing:
"The Mom Song," this is hysterical. Sung to William Tell Overture, about 3 minutes.
"The Mean Kitty Song"
Tears Described Through Phenomenological Research
I have collected countless paragraphs from works of fiction which mention the "coming of tears" as harbingers of deep meaning --- profound love, relief, connection, millions of things. We all know that people cry at births and weddings, beautiful, moving music, sunsets, moments of compassion seen between people, etc. Even grieving, if looked at without prejudice, contains many warm, joyful memories and re-connections with the beloved. Etc., etc.
What matters to me in terms of Focusing is that, noticing even the tiniest sheen of tears in the eyes, or sometimes just the softening of the skin around the eyes, or the quivering of a cheek muscle, or a slight wiping gesture toward the eyes --- if the person or the Listener/therapist notices these "openings," and suggests spending some Focusing time with "Whatever brings the tears," huge wealth of personal, profound, meaning/carrying forward usually arises, as well as life-giving moments of I-Thou connection between the participants (even a whole group of "witnesses") that is Sacred/soul-building.
I presented this question to the Focusing Discussion e-list, and received the following wonderful responses, which I summarize below.
"Tears of Wonder/Joy" by William Braud
A list member sent me the link to a wonderful qualitative research article. The author, William Braud, is doing a "phenomenology" of the experience he calls "tears of wonder-joy," with many concrete examples. He asked people to exactly describe this experience. In a section called "Felt Experience," (I wonder if the author is a Focuser!), Braud describes that participants reported positive affect and "feelings of joy, peace, awe, love, compassion, empathy and acceptance. There are feelings of unity, union, oneness, closeness, connection and immersion." Read Braud's article for a complete description of these powerful, positive experiences.
Braud goes on to define "wonder-tears" as an innate biological "empathy indicator," an indicator of entering the numinous (holy, sacred) and a "signal" toward what is meaningful for each individual, a "sign post" on the path.
Now, imagine adding Intuitive Focusing to go deeper, to articulate these deeper meanings, as I teach in my article, "Finding The Meaning Of Tears." The Focuser can articulate the landscape of their own soul, their "unique blueprint" in the Rogerian sense, using tears of being touched and moved as a kind of moral "compass," keeping the keel of one's soul-ship on one's unique path, leading to action steps toward "carrying forward" on this path of meaning.
Here is the link to the entire article, "Experiencing Tears of Wonder-Joy: Seeing With The Heart's Eye" by William Braud.
Tears ARE Transformation, Felt-Shifting Happening
I have found another wonderful phenomenological study of tears, this one, "Nine Psycho-Spiritual Characteristics of Spontaneous and Involuntary Weeping" by Rosemarie Anderson, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA. Anderson confirms my own experience that a certain kind of tears IS transformation happening, is our body's sign that something is changing, shifting at the deepest level, an "integration," not simply a by-product of the deepest felt-shifting but part and parcel of it. She states that tears may be the border between mind/body/spirit, an essential part, perhaps even a causative factor in transformation.
See my paper "Affect in Focusing and Experiential Therapy" , which makes the same argument in terms of tears of "cathartic unfolding."
Anderson cites the dissertation of one of her students, Dufrechou, J. (2001). Coming home to nature through the body: An intuitive inquiry into experiences of grief, weeping, and other deep emotions in response to nature. Unpublished doctoral dissertation proposal, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA. I have not found a copy, but I would love to read it.
The Fountain and The Furnace: The Way of Tears and Fire by Maggie Ross
AND Rosemarie Anderson cites the book on The Way of Tears that I have been seeking since a friend loaned it to me over twenty years ago:
Ross, Maggie. (1987a) The Fountain and the Furnace: The Way of Tears and Fire. NY: Paulist Press. And a related article: Ross, M. (1987b) Tears and fire: Recovering a neglected tradition. Sobornost, 9(1), 14-23
Now to find the book! You can get it used from $22 up through Amazon.
The Opening of Vision: "Crying For A Vision" by David Michael Levin
Dave Young brought attention to the work of David Michael Levin, a Focuser and philosopher-colleague of Eugene Gendlin, creator of Focusing, particularly Levin's book, The Opening of Vision, Chapter 2, "Crying for a Vision." Here are Dave's comments interspersed with quotes from Levin. I include the entirety, since most will not have the Levin book at hand.
A key quote from Levin:
"Crying, of course, is involuntary. But the experience of crying, with which we are all familiar, can be taken up by the self, taken to heart, and turned, through the gift of our thought, into a PRACTICE of the self. The practice is concerned with the cultivation of our capacity for care --- Crying becomes a critical social practice of the self when the vision it brings forth makes a difference in the world, gathering other people into the wisdom of its attunement."
Crying as a PRACTICE, a discipline like yoga or meditation or Focusing, a social practice for CULTIVATION OF OUR CAPACITY FOR CARE!!!
Dave says:
[Kathy]You challenge us brilliantly & beautifully: "So, just wanting people to look and then ask themselves, "What is this about humans being 'touched and moved' to tears, and how does it relate to guiding oneself and others during Focusing?"
I'm presenting some quotes, with a bit of my own commentary, from the best philosophical writing on crying that I know, this from one of Gene's closest philosophical colleagues, himself a Focuser, David Michael Levin. It's found in his marvelous book, The Opening of Vision, Chapter 2, "Crying for a Vision".
Levin: "This work on vision began, not with a vision, but with an experience of crying. Crying for the earth, the earth itself, whose devastation I see all around me. Crying over the plundering of the land. Crying from the depths of my ancestral body for the victims of the Holocaust. Crying for the Indians massacred in my country --- "
Let me urge our discussion of crying, as Focusers, begin here: with specific experiences of our crying, not merely of our sense of crying in general. And let it include our own crying & our own struggles with crying.
Levin makes a startling claim, based on his Focusing-oriented experiences: "With crying, I begin to see, briefly, and with pain. Only with the crying, only then, does vision begin."
Perhaps carefully, caringly examining our own specific experiences of crying we can bring Levin's claim within us.
Levin: "Our eyes are not only articulate organs of sight; they are also the emotionally expressive organs of crying. The site where vision takes place is sometimes a site where a very different kind of process takes place. We will now give some thought to the character of this process. What is crying? Is it merely an accidental or contingent fact that the eyes are capable of crying as well as seeing? Or is crying in the most intimate, most closely touching relationship to seeing? Is crying essential for vision?"
Understand that Levin is a Focuser. Therefore, as he will point out later, vision is never divorced from the body, and in particular, vision is never divorced from what he calls the body's "moodedness" or as he says, "our capacity for care, 'Sorge', feeling: our care-taking capacity, that is, as visionary beings." More strongly, he says, "Crying is visionary feeling, and feeling is inherently closer to a sense of wholeness than the disembodied intellect."
This, then, is what Levin means when he says that crying & "vision" are linked, when through his question he implies that crying is "essential for vision".
Levin: "Only human beings cry. Animals are beings endowed with sight; but only we are capable of crying. What does this show about us? What does this show TO us? Is it this capacity for crying, then, which ennobles our vision, makes it human? And is it not the ABSENCE of this capacity which marks off the inhuman? By the 'inhuman' I mean the monstrous and the inwardly dead: the Nazi commandant, for example, and his victim, the Jew, locked into a dance of death, neither one, curiously, able to shed a tear: for different reasons, their eyes are dry, empty, hollow."
Very strong, what Levin is challenging us to examine. And yet, on a deeply felt-sensed level, we know this. I would hold that, in any discussion of crying, the state or rather the stopped-processing of not-crying must also be closely examined, experientially, in ourselves and in others. What, societally, that stops us from crying is, of course, what we most need to cry about. And as this need is a stopped-processing, that means the need always remains within us, waiting, crying to come forth.
Levin: "What does this capacity [for crying] make visible? What is its truth? What is the truth it sees? What does it know as a 'speech' of our nature? How does it guide our vision?"
Certainly, these are questions which we, as Focusing/Listening guides need to address.
Levin: "Crying is not something we 'do'. Crying is the speech of powerlessness, helplessness --- As a response to what history has made visible, crying calls for vision, for thought, for understanding; we need to SEE what IT make VISIBLE."
Levin points what, to me, is a key in crying: that crying isn't a self-chosen act. Though we do, of course, choose to embody-open ourselves up to seeing what calls for crying. Yet crying, genuine crying always comes as a kind of cleansing & joining gift. But more on this later, when I have time to better think it through, based on my own personal experiences.
Continuing & developing this thought, Levin states,
"Crying, of course, is involuntary. But the experience of crying, with which we are all familiar, can be taken up by the self, taken to heart, and turned, through the gift of our thought, into a PRACTICE of the self. The practice is concerned with the cultivation of our capacity for care --- Crying becomes a critical social practice of the self when the vision it brings forth makes a difference in the world, gathering other people into the wisdom of its attunement."
This will take an unbundling I cannot do now. But know: crying does make a difference. Kathy, it's not only pointing to meaning, but to a special type of meaning. And this meaning is a connecting, an act that reaches out and makes a difference in the world. This I know from my own crying for abused & neglected clients who have been alienated from their capacity to cry for themselves and, worse, have become alienated from the truth that they are worth crying over. And that is only one example. But this points to a powerful truth which, when we guide those who have greatly suffered, we should not shirk from. Always, of course, we see how our crying affects, not only is affected by, in our intense "interacting first". But we must never rule away our crying out-of-hand.
Additionally, when I allow myself to cry for my clients, not only does this crying -- not all crying, not the crying of pre-empting or communicating this is too much, but the crying of being deeply touched which can be held & presented -- not only does this crying usually bring for depths & healing from within my clients or rather from within our interacting. I myself, by our genuineness, by my congruence, am far less likely to be drained & burned out. This healing capacity of crying should also be noted in our discussion.
Levin gives us a starting point to understand the types of "moods" in crying, paralleling yours, Kathy:
"We could think of our eyes as capable of three kinds of mood: (i) the ontical moodedness of everyday seeing, which can differentiate and articulate what it beholds only in a more or less dualistic, objectifying, re-presentational manner; (ii) the transitional moodedness of a seeing which cries for vision, immersed in painful seeing, immersed in the processes of its subjectivity; and (iii) the moodedness of a more joyful, more fulfilled seeing, clear and bright and articulate, and capable of being deeply touched and moved, even at a distance, by what it is given to see."
--- As a taste of where this leads, permit me one more Levin quote: "Crying is the rooting of vision in the ground of our [universal, shared & interacting] needs: [our] need for openness, [our] need for contact, [our] need for wholeness." Dave
And Franc Chamberlain also dives into Levin's work, with more on Vision and Crying:
"Hello, I haven't been following closely, so apologies if I'm repeating --- I've recently been dipping back into some of the Levin books, such as The Opening of Vision --- and there's also a questioning about tears in the early part of The Philosopher's Gaze, in the section entitled 'Blindness, Violence, Compassion' (which seems to link the two threads of tears and (non) violence).
After discussing briefly T.S. Eliot's 'I see the eyes but not the tears/this is my affliction' he goes on to say:
"What must we say about philosophers? When have philosophers seen the tears? When have they given thought to what, without words, tears are saying? Is the history of philosophy a history of blindness, a discourse disfigured by traces of this terrible, unavowable affliction? Is there something inherent in the philosophical gaze that compels this affliction to remain unavowable? (The Philosopher's Gaze, 1999 p.4)
So, is there something in the philosophical gaze that both arrests crying whilst at the same time prevents us from knowing that crying is arrested? So, could we discuss 'crying' in a philosophical sense, and even discuss the arrest of crying, without even knowing that our own crying is a stopped process? Because western philosophy often splits itself off from 'experiencing' even when speaking about 'experience'
Franc
Articles by Dr. Kathy McGuire: Being Touched and Being Moved, The Alchemy of Grieving, Focusing Inner Child Work, Finding The Meaning of Tears
Crying and vision, crying and opening the heart, crying and connecting (this is such a profound experience when it happens --- as a Listener, I tear up in empathy with a Focuser, who may also be touching on tears, and, in my experience, the walls, the envelopes of flesh separating us simply melt away, and we meet in Buber's I-Thou space --- the two of us and The Something More, The Sacred entering in).
In my own journey to understand the place of crying, being touched and being moved, particularly, I have found
(a) an early book by William Frey called Crying, which, when first published, was a media event. He collected tears in test tubes from people watching a tear-jerker movie, and compared them, their chemical analysis, with "non-emotional" tears, collected questionnaire data on frequency of crying (women five times as often as men!), etc.
(b) The book by Anglican hermit Maggie Ross, The Fountain and The Furnace, cited above.
(c) Pema Chodrin's (Buddhist nun) work on the "way of compassion" as a complement to, for instance, Tolle's "way of enlightenment." While much of Eastern philosophy seems to emphasize "detachment," "objectivity," Chodrin talks about going DOWN into the morass of human pain and living through it and into it, with other humans, with compassion.
(d) William Gaylin, Feelings: Our Vital Signs (Harper & Row Perennial, 1979), where he has chapters that are a phenomenology of many different feelings. He has a chapter on "being touched" as a human to human happening, and one on "being moved" as between a human and The Something Greater.
Here are links to some of my articles (all found on my website, www.cefocusing.com , Category Free Resources, then Articles):
"On Tears and Focusing," a mini-research where Focusers spoke about their experience with tears (I have tons of great quotes!). SHORT BUT SWEET
"Being Touched and Being Moved: The Spiritual Value of Tears", with lots of quotes about how Focuser value their tears.
"Finding The Meaning of Tears," a book chapter, with more great quotes about how Focusers use their tears and giving actual Focusing exercises for following the path of tears.
"Affect in Focusing and Experiential Therapy", containing quotes from dialogue between Gene Gendlin and myself about the value and role of what I call "cathartic unfolding" vs. "sheer, repeating emotions." THEORETICAL WITH EXAMPLES
"Medical Change Events Through Experiential Focusing," including the complete transcript of the 12- minute session (also on my DVD Listening/Focusing Demonstrations) where a woman goes from depression/migraine to felt shift, including joyful releasing teariness, and also including my "Five-Minute Grieving" procedure for helping professionals, immediate application for all physicians and helping professionals.
"Active Grieving Part One," a perspective on grieving as an alchemical, tranformative process
"Active Grieving Part Two," an actual protocol for active grieving of a loss.
"Focusing Inner Child Work With Abused Clients", which is not about tears directly but about the extreme attitude of awareness toward subtle nuances of word or body gesture which can indicate repressed memories of emotional/sexual/physical abuse in childhood and the extreme attitude of gentleness needed to allow clients to "be with" and work through, "carry forward," these painful experiences.
It was enlightening to me to see how much of my work has this emphasis upon a kind of "going deeper" and "connection" that is associated with even a slight SHEEN OF TEARS in the eyes (sobbing not necessary but welcome!)
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Mission: bring Core Skills of Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, and The Creative Edge Pyramid of applications from individual to interpersonal to organizational, to all audiences throughout the world.
Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director
Location: Beaver Lake in Rogers, AR
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Dr. Kathy McGuire
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