Felt Sense
August 14th, 2010
“I knew there was something not right, I felt it in my gut. It crept into my subconscious, my dreams, my whole being knew.
He was cheating on me”
I understand that felt sense is a profound bodily awareness that can influence our conscious thoughts. It is not a mental experience as Eugene Gendlin mentions in article on Focusing but a physical one. However the felt sense can soon move into a mental experience through the act of focusing. Focusing on this feeling the once un-known information comes into the conscious mind.
It could almost be described as intuition in a way.
An example I can give of my own experience of felt sense is as follows –
I felt it for months, I knew there was something not quite right in our relationship, but what was it? He had lied to me before, but could he be lying about this? Surely not I kept trying to convince myself. How could someone look into the eyes of another day after day claiming they love them, when their body is full of lies. I knew deep in my gut that there was something, I just didn’t know what. I slept next to him that night & I dreamt it, him cheating on me. I awoke in tears and turned to him and said, “ You slept with her didn’t you?” He replied, “No”. I knew in my body that what I had dreamt was true and it made me feel sick, I didn’t have factual truth but my internal taste[1] was so strong I knew I was right. I experienced as Gendlin describes as a change in my body. Although it was not a nice feeling I felt I had been relieved of this feeling. A couple of months later I needed confirmation that the felt sense I was experiencing was in fact leading to an actual event that took place. I called her myself, she told me the truth. At that moment I had a sensory overload, all that my body already knew was now brought into my conscious mind & my body was about to explode. I drove to his house in what seemed like a blur of emotion. The afterward feeling in my body was a complete feeling of emptiness. I believe I went from a very vague form of felt sense to a very intense form of knowing & my thoughts finally got in the way.
I believe felt sense can be closely linked to emotion in some cases. For me the feeling was unclear; the emotion however was very clear and easily labelled. I felt anger, frustration, pain, sadness and disappointment. I experienced a complete body shift throughout this event.
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