Focusing advocates for a radical notion: only when we accept every part of ourselves does change really happen. But how does this idea hold up against the self-improvement messages that bombard us? I was delighted to discover a powerful example of how it can in the least likely place ever - a TV series on Netflix.
I’d love to share the excerpt here with you, after giving you some context.
It comes from a Swedish drama called Love and Anarchy. I've kept the plot summary incomplete but there is a small spoiler from Ep 1 of Series 2..
The series follows Sofie, who is a high-powered business consultant. She has the perfect life - stunning home, cultured husband, fashionable career, and loving daughters.
She also has a zany side, however, which comes to life when a younger colleague challenges her to a set of dares. She dresses as Cindy Lauper, starts walking backwards, and dribbles coffee down her face in an important meeting.
Bizarre behaviour which her status-conscious husband deplores (he fears she is becoming too much like her troubled father, who is a regular visitor to the psych ward), but we notice Sofie coming alive. She seems more vital.
Her father, Lars, commits suicide, and Sofie begins to unravel. She keeps seeing his ghost and getting into arguments with him, and this freaks her out. She starts making poor work decisions, sleeping around and even ends up in the psych ward herself (goaded on by her dead father's voice).
It is in the psych ward that the following exchange takes place between Sofie and her father’s ghost, and this is the part that I loved:
Sofie: Papa, we can’t go on like this.
Lars: It’s just I'm so scared you'll make the same mistakes that I did. I never learned to like myself.
Sofie: I've always thought that if I was genuine, if I was myself, I'll end up like you.
Lars: Oh no! On the contrary, if you don't accept yourself, you'll end up like me.
I think that Sofie fears that if she accepts her ‘mad’ parts, she is on the road to ruination. But, as her father points out, it was his inability to accept his ‘mad’ parts that led to his ruination.
As I said, this idea that in order to lead desirable lives, we must change or eradicate our ‘undesirable’ parts is deeply rooted in our culture. There are books and books telling us how to be our best selves - how to lose weight, to get promoted, to have more willpower, to feel more confident. The assumption seems to be that it is only once you have changed your ‘bad’ parts, that you can be your most fabulous self.
But the Focusing approach is different. The Focusing approach is to first listen to these parts and give them space. We are interested in them just as they are. We do not seek to change them, no matter how socially unacceptable they may seem. We listen to them, give them our company, and our empathy. And in this space, they have room to become what they need to be.
Sofie wasn’t ‘mad’ in any way. She simply had parts that recognised that she wasn’t being herself in her ‘perfect’ life. And she had a part that believed that if she was her genuine self - instead of this apparently ideal self - she would become ostracised like her Dad had been.
But once she recognises this, and allows her parts to be themselves, her life and relationships move forward in powerful ways.
What parts of yourself feel 'unacceptable' to show in your daily life? Could those parts carry a wisdom you haven't yet explored?
I loved seeing this example on Netflix, as the more we are reminded of the power of self-acceptance, the easier it will be to adopt it as a route to change.
by Fiona O'Meara
