Enough with the Process Skipping: Using Focusing to Shift Something Big

This ten-week online Focusing course is a wellness workshop for people who want to work with a bad habit or addiction that keeps them from something they long to be or do. Using Focusing, the body-based practice developed by Eugene Gendlin, participants unpack one pattern of "process skipping," doing something to avoid feeling something, and in the process tell their untold story. It is led by Annette Dubreuil, founder of PUPA Focusing, and meets live on Zoom.

What Happens

The course builds on the work of Gendlin and on the BioSpiritual Focusing teachings of Fathers Peter Campbell and Ed McMahon. It offers a new model of process skipping that draws on the absencing cycle in Theory U, Polyvagal Theory, and models of habits and addiction, including those of Doug Silsbee and Jan Winhall.

Two frameworks organize the ten weeks. The LARVA process skipping model describes how the pattern runs: Leverage (something reminds us of our past), Activation (the autonomic nervous system reacts), Rejection (something in us doesn't want to feel that way), Vindication (we justify the behaviour or the feeling), and Acting out (we take the substance or do the behaviour for some relief). The PUP2A processing model describes how change happens through Focusing: Pause, Understanding, Permutation, Practice, and Action.

The LARVA is taken in reverse order, starting with acting out, since that is usually the part we know best. Each week you use Focusing to listen to your felt sense and get to know how your own process skipping works. In the final five weeks, you turn toward what your system was trying to avoid. Often that leads back to earlier memories, where you can give attention to what was needed, and then look for new ways of living that no longer cause harm.

Each session follows a steady rhythm:

- centering and check-in
- teaching on that week's LARVA or PUP2A component
- a guided Focusing experience
- a demonstration, with possible prompts for further processing
- breakout room practice, in pairs for traditional exchanges, in groups of three or four for round-robin practice or Empathy Circles, or in a second demonstration
- closing and final sharing

PUPA Focusing Trainees co-teach, and when they are not leading an Empathy Circle or demonstration, they can visit your breakout room to offer co-listening, which is coaching on your listening. Participants are encouraged to form a Focusing partnership with another member and meet between classes. You can also opt to be assessed for the Proficiency in Focusing Partnership Award through TIFI.

The upcoming winter group meets Tuesdays from 10 am to 12 pm Eastern, with a break week partway through.

About Annette Dubreuil

Annette Dubreuil is a Focusing teacher, facilitator, and environmentalist based in Toronto. She grew up in Wawa, Ontario, on the northeast shore of Lake Superior, studied environmental science, and completed an MBA in sustainability and strategy at Schulich. She then spent over a decade in communications supporting research projects. She found Focusing in 2012, felt she had to teach it, and started PUPA Focusing in 2020. She describes her work as embodied creativity for a better world, helping people return to their bodies, listen to their inner wisdom with compassion, and move from stress toward resilience.

Before You Go

Some previous Focusing training is required. The steps are not taught, and some listening experience is expected. That background can come from the 8-week beginner course or the 4-week intensive beginner course. Within that requirement, the course suits Focusers of all levels.

Each group is capped at 24 people, and sessions take place on Zoom. The course offers sliding scale pricing to reduce financial barriers for people with different incomes.