Focusing Inward: Cultivating a Habit of Listening
Inward listening is a lesser known skill. We can get caught up in seeking outward information, trying to learn from others, gathering head knowledge. But this kind of seeking leads to a separation of Self from deeper knowing.
Try it first:
Give space
Listening to Self takes patience. This kind of listening happens slowly, like developing a new relationship takes time.
Leave space and time to be with your Self, to listen, and to get curious about your inner world.
If any needs are already popping up, take care of those- get comfortable, set up an environment that supports listening, separate from others.
Then create space in your inner world, however that looks for you. Tune in to your mind and body and allow all parts of you to be welcome.
Invite your felt sense
You may have parts of yourself that are already wanting attention, but make sure to also invite parts that have not been heard, that feel not quite urgent enough, or that are quieter.
And if nothing comes up, the nothing is welcome too. Often there are things just on the edge, or parts that are blocked. They will come forward with time and space.
Listen for the words
As you tune into what comes up, try to name what you’re experiencing. What words describe the experience? What other sensory labels fit? What emotions connect with the feeling?
Try on the words and see how they fit. Take time to find just the right words or pictures to describe the fullness of your inner parts.
Listen for the resonance
Once you find the name of your experience, let that name resonate through you. Notice, accept, and validate your feeling. See how it feels to identify the feeling with that name.
Invite shift to happen
Notice what emerges as you identify your feeling. See what the resonance wants you to do to complete the feeling. If a change is required, notice how it feels to move toward that change. If no change is needed, that’s okay too. Some feelings only want to be seen.
Bring closure
Summarize your experience for yourself. Look back at what came up, how it resonated, the shift you needed, and how it resolved. Thank your Self for participating in the experience with you. Thank your body for letting you know what it needed. Tell your Self that you will be back to listen again in the future.
Let your attention shift outward again and take time to notice your environment. Gently return to the outside world.
Whatever you felt is welcome. Whatever you experienced is welcome.
The learning part:
History of listening inward
This practice was developed for people who are cognitively aware of themselves and outwardly doing okay but have a persistent felt sense that something is off, not working right, or stuck. Often, these sorts of people are successful, competent, and intellectual but unable to shake the sense that there is a problem.
This is the sort of person who goes to therapy and can’t identify anything to talk about because the wrongness is only a felt sense. On the surface, things are fine so there’s nothing to name and bring up.
Only listening to the felt sense inside your experience will help shift that feeling under the discomfort. Experience forms itself, and the shift inevitably leads to the next right action. Trusting this process allows for deep change below conscious awareness, but naming the process makes it even more powerful.
“Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more right way of being if you give it space to move toward its rightness.”
Connecting to trauma
Moving from the felt sense to the felt shift is powerful with stored somatic trauma. Your body knows what it needs to do, but often it needs the space and permission to act on the shift it needs.
Focusing inward is both a catalyst and a container for the somatic trauma healing process.
Your nervous system is activated throughout the day for various reasons, but we are not always able to complete the activation cycle. It’s not always appropriate or right to act on everything we are feeling at any given time. Many small things are stored in our bodies, and for people without a trauma background, these can still build up and come out explosively if they are not acknowledged. For people with trauma, these small things live in your body along with triggers, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and other larger activations. People with somatically stored trauma are more susceptible to those activation explosions which can appear as rage outbursts, panic attacks, crying fits, or breakdowns.
The constituents of experience:
All of our experiences at any given moment are made up of sensation, image, affect, behavior, and meaning (SIBAM). As we listen to our internal experience from moment to moment, we are able to notice how each of these parts change depending on what’s happening around us.
In trauma, SIBAM breaks apart. We freeze, dissociate, or go numb, cutting us off from those constituent parts of the traumatic experience. These fragments are separated from the moment and the memory. Healing trauma is about reconnecting those fragments and returning to a unified memory of the experience.
Active imagination
Doing this work, it helps to get creative and use your active imagination as a tool to facilitate the process. This is delicate, like a waking dream, and not something that can be objectively quantified.
Using imagination allows us to access visual imagery of our subjective experience as a gateway to explore our inner worlds. The process of focusing on the images often results in those images transforming like a visual picture of the inner experience.
This use of active imagination and the felt sense is key in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). This kind of inward focusing is the cornerstone of EMDR therapy, combined with bilateral stimulation in the form of eye movements, auditory cues, or tapping. If you enjoyed this exercise or found it beneficial, EMDR may be useful for you.
Want a guide on your journey?
Therapy can help you get in touch with your inner world. Learning to listen to your Self has so many benefits for your mental and physical health. Learn more about somatic therapy here, EMDR here, or more about me. If you’re ready to schedule a free 15 minute consultation, contact me here.