The Radical Acceptance of Everything: Living a Focusing Life

by Ann Weiser Cornell

If you’re ready to experience more self-acceptance, let this book be your roadmap.

How can you bring peace to the inner wars that are in the way of having the life you want? For more than 30 years now, Ann Weiser Cornell has been exploring, teaching, and writing about the mysteries of emotional process, including:

The paradox of how we become more whole by acknowledging our parts
How the most despised places in us contain our greatest treasure
How the body's felt sense, held in a compassionate state of Presence, is the key to change
Now her key writings have been brought together in one place, freshly edited for this volume, with four new articles offering Ann's leading-edge work.

All are accessible both to the seeker of personal change and to the professional who wants to be more effective in working with others.

What you’ll gain from this book:

Clear, specific examples of what an inner relationship can look like as a conversation between you, as a compassionate Presence, and a “something in you” that needs your attention/acknowledgment.

An understanding of how some aspects of your experience get exiled and why it’s so important to invite them back in again.

An inside look at the “third way” that is so essential to Focusing - a way where you are neither identifying with nor dissociating from your emotional experiences.

Translations are available in Spanish & German. Contact the publisher for more information.

Genres: Psychology, Health, Self Help, Spirituality

371 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

Ann Weiser Cornell was getting her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Chicago when she met and studied with Eugene Gendlin, the originator of Focusing, starting in 1972. Learning Focusing with him has led to a lifelong process of discovery and personal development.

In 1980, Eugene Gendlin invited Ann to assist with his Focusing workshops. This started her on a path to become a Focusing teacher, and in 1991, Ann joined with Barbara McGavin to create Inner Relationship Focusing, internationally recognized as one of the leading innovations in Focusing.

Ann has taught Inner Relationship Focusing in twenty countries, and her Focusing books and manuals have been translated into eleven other languages (Czech, Dari, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, and Spanish).

Ann is well-known in the Focusing world for her attention to the language that facilitates Focusing, her popular manuals, and her co-creation with Barbara McGavin of Untanging®, a body of work applying Focusing to difficult areas such as addiction, depression, action blocks, self-criticism, and unfulfilled desire. She is the author of five books on Focusing: her bestseller The Power of Focusing (1996), The Radical Acceptance of Everything (2005), Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change (2013), Presence: A Guide to Transforming Your Most Challenging Emotions (2015), and 21 Days to Healthier Boundaries (2020). Ann is authorized by the Focusing Institute in New York to offer the Institute’s certification as Focusing Trainer.

Reviews

[JY Tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always wanted a proper primer into Focusing, which has deep ties to my preferred therapeutic approach as a counsellor. I enjoyed a lot of the ideas from Gendlin and loved his demonstrations, but I still wanted a more down to earth introduction that can help elucidate what Focusing is about at heart. This book didn't exactly met all of that, but it did put into understandable form about the value of focusing and what it can bring to the table. The metaphors used to teach are varied, and it pays homage to the various therapeutic skills I am already familar with, which helps. I like how most of the jargon are basically everyday use words but capitalized, such as Presence, and Listening. It adds a certain quality of significance and sacredness to these everyday terms, and that if we treat these processes with utmost respect we can engage with the deeper realms of the felt sense.

On the other hand, without a good grounding into the art of Focusing, much of this book may not make a lot of sense. There is probably a better primer for the new Focuser or Focusing therapist. I can often see the point of focusing, but I cannot really get a good handle on how it fares compared with other therapeutic approaches clinically.

[Rif A. Saurous · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cornell learned Focusing from its originator, Gendlin, and spent the next several decades teaching, refining, and making it her own. This is a book of essays, most previously published, a few written anew for this book. The essays range wide and deep, including an introduction to Focusing (which I believe makes the book accessible as a first Focusing book), and then deep explorations of lots of aspects of Focusing. The book is more theoretical than practical, but still deeply practical.

I loved this book. I will almost certainly read it again. It's my favorite Focusing book by far so far.

Disclaimer: I am taking a class taught (partially) by Ann Weiser Cornell. I read most of this book before the class started and before I knew the class existed.

[Spencer]

Radical acceptance of everything includes acceptance of aspects not in awareness

Focusing is a process of awareness of the body, and how a felt sense can reveal meaningful symbolic info, release, relax, shift

When u bring awareness to the inner world, it moves, unfolds, becomes its next step. If u can provide the right conditions, it knows what it needs to change

If youre here you belong here

Go to the place you have feelings

Move from identification with/merging to presence. This enables release

“Something in you is in pain”
“Something in me is trying not to be”
Acknowledge them both and let them know you hear them (there is more to you than this)

The only way to change is to not try to change

You cant make yourself accept anything. But you can refuse to deny it

Be friendly to the feeling, or be friendly to the part of you that doesn’t want to be friendly to the feeling. Just turn toward what is there

Focusing is neither dissociating or identifying (with desire, etc). Its association and disidentification. Suffering is attempting to control painful experience. Be with it.

Is there a part of me that wants to forget everything? To lack clarity and connection to my desire? To have my libido fade? Or am I just aging?

The inner critic isnt criticizing you, its criticizing something in you. Criticizing the critic is perpetuating the problem

We (the body) are not composed of units but of process

You cant get rid of feelings. You can only send them underground to get wilder, darker, lonelier, crueler

All that is needed is for a human being to be with another human being - gendlin

Questions can delay/interrupt process. Because the head process is faster than the body process

[Valentinabriochina · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading ‘The power of focusing’ by the same author and successfully applying Focusing for the first time, I chose this book to deepen my knowledge.

I’m a psychologist and holistic health practitioner. I come from embodied awareness methods that were vital to my healing and spiritual journey. But since I’ve learned focusing everything accelerated, and all the pieces started falling into place. So i can rightly say that finding focusing has been truly a divine guidance kind of discovery.

I used this book to deepen my focusing practice, apply focusing in therapy, and especially focus on, as the title goes, the radical acceptance of everything -that comes into experience- that I feel was the missing piece in my practice.

Deep gratitude to the author and everyone involved in the teaching of focusing

[Rebekah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an older read that I forgot about until an article mentioned the author. I remember this book being perspectives shifting for me. It lead me to investigating Internal Family Systems which I find useful for processing stored trauma and chronic stress. Generally I find this authors likable and that shines through in the way the book is written.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good easy to read guide on focusing but repetitive and strung together previous works, not much new thought.

[Roma Cheeré · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite story was the dog and the forest.

[Birdie Passaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um livro simplesmente fabuloso, não só na forma como nos introduz ao conceito de Focusing, como pela forma sedutora em como a autora nos relata a sua experiência pessoal ao longo do seu processo de experiência e aprendizagem desta técnica que nos ajuda não só a lidar com os nossos problemas mais profundos, mas principalmente, a descobrir informação guardada no nosso subconsciente e que determinam muitas das nossas atitudes.

Aconselho vivamente!

[Terrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the articles are very good, but some of the commentary is not. It offers a gentler, kinder approach to doing Focusing work. A nice refresher.