Series 2 Ep #14 Let’s focus!

In this episode we ask the trainers and therapists to move aside and give the microphone to a client who has offered to tell us about the experience of exploring and working with his emotions. Where did this start and where did he get to? Stephen’s generosity in telling his story allows us to understand what it is like being a client in Emotion Focused Therapy.

Find a comfortable place to sit where you will not be disturbed and join Focusing teacher, Niels Bagge, as he guides you to explore your inner emotional experience - a way to discover what is really going on for you.

YWhat is Focusing? A process of emotional self discovery, an approach to working with emotions, a way of life, or all of these? In this episode Focusing teacher, Niels Bagge, answers this question, explains how you do it and and also why you might want to bring a little focusing into your life.

You know when something happens that is completely unexpected and challenges the way we see and understand the world and our lives in it? This is what we are talking about in this episode. Juliette Becking explains ‘meaning protests’ and ‘cherished beliefs’ and what we can try and do to move on from these challenging events.

How do emotions work in sport to make us win or lose, or just to motivate us to participate? Psychologist, Thomas Nordhagen talks about the role that attachment and identity play in driving us to run, ski or swim as fast as we can and what it means to athletes when they are no longer able to compete.

Why on earth would we want to engage with emotional pain when it can hurt so much? and how come it is so difficult to locate where emotional pain is in the body? Psychologist and Emotion Focused Therapist, Ashley White, explains why it might be useful to ask yourself, ‘Where is the pain’ in order to process difficult emotions.

Dr Anna Robinson talks about the challenge of being either hypo- or hypersensitive in a neuro-typical world and dispels some of the myths about the emotional experience of autistic people. Anna describes how activism has helped to depathologize autism and contributed to advancing changes in the nature of emotionally therapeutic support.

How are shame and anger connected? In this episode Dr Leslie Greenberg speaks of shame as ‘the most painful emotion’ and describes how the experience of feeling worthless can interact with anger. Listen in to find out how an understanding of this interaction might be helpful in changing difficult experiences of both shame and anger and our relationship to both these emotions.

Is there an emotion revolution happening? Well, there’s a conference coming up in Bergen, Norway, titled ‘Emotion Revolution’, and also a podcast mini series titled ‘Emotion Revolution’ so it would seem indeed that the revolution may be upon us. In this episode, Nicolai Hansen, discusses this possibility and gives us a teaser from interviews with the conference keynote speakers recorded for the Emotion Revolution podcast mini series.

Kurt Renders is a clinical psychologist and emotion focused therapist living and working in Antwerp in Belgium. Lou Cooper lives and works in this podcast! Both Kurt and Lou work as therapists supporting clients from within their own queer community.