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Positive Psychology: A Focusing Approach: Joan Klagsbrun

This document discusses positive psychology and how focusing can be combined with it. Positive psychology is the scientific study of strengths that allow individuals and communities to thrive. It studies qualities like resilience, compassion, and happiness in addition to pathology. Focusing is a method of bringing awareness to one's inner felt sense through compassionate attention. When combined with positive psychology, focusing allows one to generate the positive from bodily knowing rather than concepts, fully inhabit positive experiences, access deeper meaning, and explore life-forward directions. The document provides examples of effective positive interventions for well-being counseling and ways to increase happiness.

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Darryl Louie Labial
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127 views15 pages

Positive Psychology: A Focusing Approach: Joan Klagsbrun

This document discusses positive psychology and how focusing can be combined with it. Positive psychology is the scientific study of strengths that allow individuals and communities to thrive. It studies qualities like resilience, compassion, and happiness in addition to pathology. Focusing is a method of bringing awareness to one's inner felt sense through compassionate attention. When combined with positive psychology, focusing allows one to generate the positive from bodily knowing rather than concepts, fully inhabit positive experiences, access deeper meaning, and explore life-forward directions. The document provides examples of effective positive interventions for well-being counseling and ways to increase happiness.

Uploaded by

Darryl Louie Labial
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Positive Psychology:

a Focusing approach

Joan Klagsbrun
What are the benefits of
Focusing on the Positive?
Positive experiences

• Counter our negativity bias.


• Increase our capacity to think
more clearly.
• Improve the ratio of positive to
negative experiences.
• Correlate with better health and
longevity.
What is Positive Psychology?

• The scientific study of the


strengths and virtues that
enable individuals and
communities to thrive.
• Martin Seligman and others
propose that in addition to
studying pathology, we also
study the qualities that
make life worthwhile (such
as resilience, compassion,
joy, and happiness).
Seligman’s Pathways to
Authenic Happiness

1. The Pleasant Life - Positive


Experiences and Emotions
2. The Good Life- Flow and Engagement
3. The Meaningful Life
Seligman’s Pathways to
Well-Being: “PERMA”

1. Positive Experiences and Emotions


2. Engagement
3. Relationships
4. Meaning
5. Accomplishment
Focusing
Gene Gendlin
• Our bodies are wise.
• They will “speak back” to us
if we bring friendly,
compassionate, respectful
attention to whatever we
find.
“The body is not only a structure, it is also the living
we are doing in the situations we are in. The body is
remaking itself in the behaving and meaning and
thinking and feeling.”
“Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more
right way of being if you give it space to move
toward its rightness."

• Focusing is a non-analytic method where


we bring a special kind of awareness
within.

• Focusing can be done


alone but is better
done with a listener.
Movements of Focusing

• Use “Making/Clearing a Space”.


• Invite a felt sense to form.
• Wait for something to emerge that comes
directly from the felt sense.
• Through a resonating process, find a match
between the felt sense and words or images.
• The process naturally leads to a bodily release
of tension and inherent forward movement.
What happens when you combine
Focusing with Positive Psychology?

• You generate the positive from bodily


knowing, not from concepts.
• You more fully inhabit the positive
experience and savor it.
• You have access to the
deeper meaning.
• You are invited to
explore a life-forward
direction.
Myths about integrating Positive
Interventions into your sessions
• That the
positive is
separate from
the negative.
• That you will
need to change
your whole
orientation.
Effective interventions of well-being
counseling

1. Inquire about the positive in clients’ lives in


intake or first session (Ex. What brings you
alive? When are you at your best? What are
your talents or personal strengths?)
2. Notice when the positive arises, pay attention
to it and when appropriate, invite the client to
savor it.
3. Help clients discover meaning in their
experiences.
4. Help clients cultivate an inward friendliness and
acceptance of what is.
5. Introduce ‘Making/Clearing
a Space’ to gain
perspective.
6. Recognize opportunities to
facilitate a
life-forward direction.
7. Reflect your client’s
strengths.
8. Introduce the practice of
gratitude.
Ways to increase Happiness
“Happiness is when what we say and what what
we think and what we do are in harmony.” Gandhi

• Turn a good thing into a good experience and


savor it.
• Stay mindfully in the present moment.
• Use positive experiences to soothe negative
experiences.
• Know and utilize your Signature Strengths.
• Develop a Gratitude Practice.
Special thanks to Karen J. Andrews, Artist/Photographer
www.inervision-studio.com

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