Imagine building your inner strengths to deal better with stress, frustration and change.
Do you ever notice the feeling of relief in your body when you’ve arrived at a good decision or feel the tension when you’re uncomfortable about something you are about to do? We are always being guided by our inner experience and receiving signals or feelings guiding us in a direction. This assistance is a powerful natural capacity called a ‘felt sense’ (some call it intuition), one of the greatest natural tools we have to enable us to create the next right step or insight. When we are open to our felt sense, we allow ourselves to be in tune with and connected to more of our experience and feelings than we could access from thinking alone.When we mindfully stay in touch with that inner felt sense, it’s a sense that guides, that can lead to actions that are authentic and satisfying.
So how can we become attuned to our felt sense and allow this inner compass to aid us to make better decisions and live more effectively? The first step is to listen. So often we judge or doubt our own experience or let our usual analyses get in the way. The Focusing method provides a structure for listening, openness, mindfulness, the ability to “pause”, and focus attention on our present experience. These attitudes enable you to pay attention to your experience in a way that leads to solutions that you hadn’t come up with before. And if practiced, these attitudes will lend themselves to better decision making and more happiness overall. Whether its deciding which job to choose, what direction to take when you are feeling lost or how to handle a conflict in your family, by checking in with a felt sense, a person’s experiencing can come up with the exact idea or action that’s needed to move forward.
Marsha Smith
As a psychotherapist for 25 years, I support people to find solutions, make changes to deal well with life challenges and have more satisfaction in life. I offer empathic and practical approaches to help with a variety of psychological and social challenges, including relationship issues, anxiety, depression, parenting, work, grief, and coping well with health issues. My collaborative approach helps you increase your ability to deal with stress and frustration with more calm and take the next steps to creatively solve problems. I work with adults and couples and offer training and consultation. Please contact me if you would like to know more and I would be happy to answer your questions.
From comments from a client: “Marsha has an intuitive sense of how to gently guide me to help myself and find clarity in my thinking. She leads me to insights and ‘solutions’ that I find within myself. I would recommend her to anyone in need of an advocate of his or her own spirit and inner knowing” -JB
Credentials: MSW, LCSW