Keep it company with interested curiosity
Check whether it is all right to be with what you feel, then sit with it the way you would sit with a frightened child: no pushing, no fixing.
Why it works
The base stance of staying curious and present is on focusing-felt-sense. What is added here is Gendlin's image of keeping a scared child company, which Cornell and McGavin quote: you do not argue with the child, push it or pull it out, you stay. Asking first whether it is all right to be with it allows for feelings that need some distance before closeness. The manual suggests a hand on the place where you feel it, and the 2008 article pairs that hand with "I'm with you."
How to do it
- Once you have found something and said hello, ask inwardly: "Is it OK to just be with this right now?"
- If it is, sit with it with interested curiosity, as you would sit beside a frightened child, without pushing, arguing or cheering it up.
- If it helps, gently place a hand on the place in your body where you feel it.
- If the answer is no, or it feels like too much, acknowledge that and keep a little more distance; you can come back to it later.
Evidence
Keeping a feeling company "with interested curiosity" is core language in The Power of Focusing and in the Student's and Companion's Manual, and the 2008 overview builds on Gendlin's image of keeping a frightened child company. No outcome study of Inner Relationship Focusing was found (searched 2026-10-14). Hendricks (2002), a chapter in the APA handbook Humanistic Psychotherapies, reviews Focusing research. The Focusing Institute's summary of that chapter says it covers more than 80 studies on Focusing and Experiencing Level (focusing.org/articles/focusing-orientedexperiential-psychotherapy). That research is about Focusing in general. (anecdotal)
The Focusing research does not test this particular move, so it supports it by analogy only. If staying with a feeling leaves you flooded, losing track of where you are, or with images that will not settle, stop, open your eyes, feel your feet on the floor, and take this work to a trained therapist rather than continuing alone.
Sources
- Cornell, A. W. (1996). The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing. New Harbinger Publications.
- Cornell, A. W., & McGavin, B. (2002). The Focusing Student's and Companion's Manual, Part One. Calluna Press.
- Cornell, A. W., & McGavin, B. (2008). Inner Relationship Focusing. Focusing Folio, 21(1).
- Hendricks, M. N. (2002). Focusing-oriented/experiential psychotherapy. In D. J. Cain & J. Seeman (Eds.), Humanistic Psychotherapies: Handbook of Research and Practice (pp. 221-251). American Psychological Association.
Common mistake
Keeping company with an agenda: staying with the feeling while quietly waiting for it to shift or leave. If you notice that waiting, it is something in you too; say hello to it.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Inner Relationship Focusing: Being With the Parts of You That Feel
- Say "something in me" instead of "I am"
Change "I am angry" to "I'm sensing something in me that feels angry", so you can be with the feeling instead of being it.
- Say hello to the part that pushes back against a feeling
When a reaction such as impatience or "not this again" rises against a feeling, say hello to that reaction as well, so it is acknowledged rather than pushing the feeling out of view.
- Sense how it feels from its point of view
Shift from how the feeling seems to you to how things seem to it: what it feels, and what its mood is.
- Invite what it does not want to happen
Invite a stuck feeling or reaction to let you know what it does not want to happen to you; underneath there is often something it is protecting.
- Be with the inner critic and the part it criticizes
Instead of fighting the critic or collapsing under it, sense both the critic and the part being criticized as something in you, each in its own space.
- Notice when you have merged with a part or are pushing one away
Recognize the two ways of losing Presence — becoming the part, or shutting it out — and come back to being the one who can be with both.
- Take turns with a Focusing companion
Trade time with a partner: one person focuses and leads, the other keeps them company by saying back what they hear.
Related concepts
- Focusing and the Felt Sense, Made Practical
Listening to the body’s pre-verbal knowledge — the six steps and their mechanisms
- Shadow Work
Meeting the parts of yourself you have been ignoring
- Internal Family Systems (IFS), Made Practical
The parts model, the mechanisms behind it, and an honest read on an emerging evidence base
- Voice Dialogue: Meeting the Selves That Run Your Life
Hearing the pusher, the pleaser and the critic in their own voices, so they stop running you unnoticed
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