[Guest]

What does this mean?

I keep seeing it a lot...but I don't quite get what it means.

 

[agentcooper]

the way i have interpreted "focusing outwards" is by living in the moment. i try not to pay attention to my dp/dr and focus on what's going on around me and what i'm doing.

 

[Guest]

I'm so SICK of the damn phrase "focus outward" lol

I made it up awhile back as my briefest answer to what you "should do" when the dp states are unbearable, then we all used it alot and now it's taken on a life of its own. lol

What I, the original FO creator, meant by the idea is this:
When dp is at an alltime peak, we all say "HOW can I make this simmer down a bit? How can I live through the next second, let alone the next hour or month?"

Our INSTINCTS at those time tell us to search for answers or to carefully tune into how we're feeling, to watch it (ourselves) very closely and look for "am I better now?" or "am I worse now?" moments. Our instincts tell us to be careful with our own thinking and to note it all, to watch ourselves watching ourselves....to monitor our experience instant by instant.

NOTHING could be worse. That is precisely what is driving the DP state deeper and deeper.

The only way OUT at those times is to force yourself to think about ANYthing that is not about Self. Read a newspaper, listen to a tv show, thumb through a magazine and look for cars, or count the number of red dresses you can find in the pages....SOME little game or some distraction that, even for a moment, takes your mind AWAY from self-examination.

We all know when we felt okay that we could "get lost" in a good book or a movie or a conversation or a puzzle, etc. That is the objective here. TO get so INTO something for a moment or two that you can NOT be aware of yourself doing it.

OUT of self, out into the External reality - that's where we want the mental energy to go. If/when we're invested ENOUGH - even momentarily - the experience of THINKING becomes something besides self-awareness. We "forget about' ourselves for an instant.

THAT is the thing that eventually alllows the mind to "re-adjust" and take itself out of the dp experience. NO amount of inner searching, or self-observation or careful scrutiny about the experience of being me will take away dp. It only makes it worse.

Focus outward = focus your conscious attention on anything besides self. IF you're aware of watching yourself focus outward, you're not doing it right!

 

[Kelson12]

See how incredibly important and respected you are Janine!!!!! You've created a monster!

 

[mcsiegs]

Kelson - thanks for the Old School reference. I am still laughing. It takes someone with a great sense of humor to put that there.

I loved in that movie where he got shot in the neck with the dart gun. ("The dart man...there's a fuc**in dart stuck in your neck....)

 

[Guest]

Thank you, Janine, for the run down on Focus Outward, perfect timing for me to read this.

Here I was all set to put myself under a microscope and study each atom of my experience. And the more I tuned in today, the worse I felt.

Time to do something else. Thanks again.

 

[Ben]

Focus Outward means this to me:

Okay,so, I have you here and you're reading my words and seeing the letters. You're thinking about what I'm saying at this moment and now try something: stop for a second and, instead of focusing your eyes on my writing, focus your eyes on the monitor screen right in front of it . Do you notice how you suddenly became aware of the monitor and lost focus on the text?

Think of your sensory system, all of it, as the monitor to the outside world - instead of paying attention to the content on the screen, we focus too heavily on the screen itself and lose touch with the reality on the other side. The content seems bogus to us as we're seeing everything 2-D. *tap* *tap* Yup, it's there. It's always been there, but now that we're focused on it we're freaked out about it.

To get over this thing, it seems, the best policy is to just let the monitor be there and live your life, the best you can, by interacting with what's on the other side.

To me, focusing outward is focusing on what's on the otherside of the glass instead of focusing on the glass itself.

 

[Da'Burgh]

Kelson, I don't know who that guy is, but I like his hat. Is he from Pittsburgh?

 

[Guest]

To get over this thing, it seems, the best policy is to just let the monitor be there and live your life, the best you can, by interacting with what's on the other side.

To me, focusing outward is focusing on what's on the otherside of the glass instead of focusing on the glass itself.

I like! I followed that exercise through, got it, grinned. Will put it to use, thank you.