when you are afraid to look

The procedure of focusing feels good. The moment it doesn't, back up a little bit and see what it is that doesn't feel good. Don't push yourself across barriers. Instead, focus on the immediate felt barrier. What is the whole feel of that? There may be bad or scary feelings to focus on, but the focusing itself always feels good and makes the feeling less bad or scary. When it opens, your body releases and again that feels better. Your guide in focusing is toward these ways of feeling better, localizing and opening, releasing, fresh air. You will feel better, whatever you find down inside yourself, when you let it name itself and be localized.

- Eugene T. Gendlin, PH.D., an American philosopher who developed ways of thinking about and working with living process, the bodily felt sense and the "philosophy of the implicit"