Choosing Your Session Focus in Waji

Waji is designed to help you address whatever feels most pressing in your life right now. The focus you choose for each session is flexible and can be tailored to reduce the impact of things like memories, triggers, unwanted emotions, or negative beliefs. This process isn’t about understanding everything on a deep level—it’s about gently loosening the hold these experiences have on you so you can feel more calm and resilient.

Here’s a guide to choosing the session focus that will help you reduce reactivity and experience relief in areas that feel challenging.

1. Trauma Events – Reducing the Impact of Past Experiences

• Purpose: Focusing on a trauma event in Waji helps to release the emotional intensity connected to a specific memory. Trauma events are often rooted in the past but continue to affect your responses today. This focus can help you feel more at ease in situations that remind you of the past, so they no longer feel as overwhelming.

• Examples of Trauma Events:

  • Childhood Experiences: Maybe a memory from childhood keeps surfacing, like a time when you felt unsupported or unimportant. These moments often shape how we view ourselves or respond to others.
  • Relational Betrayals: Times when someone close broke your trust, impacting your sense of safety in relationships.
  • Loss or Separation: Experiences of loss that may contribute to fears of abandonment or loss in the present.

• When to Choose This Focus: If there’s a particular event or memory that feels “unfinished,", shows up in your responses today or carries an emotional charge, focusing on it may help release its intensity and ease its impact on your present life.
  
  

2. Triggering Situations – Lowering Reactivity to Current Triggers

• Purpose: Focusing on triggering situations is about reducing the intensity of your reaction in the present. Triggers are current situations that evoke strong emotional or physical responses. These reactions often feel intense because they’re rooted in unprocessed past experiences. Working with triggers in Waji helps you respond to these situations with less reactivity, freeing you from the immediate emotional impact.

• Examples of Triggering Situations:

  • Social Anxiety in Groups: A feeling of anxiety or discomfort in social settings, which could be connected to past experiences of judgment or criticism.
  • Conflict Avoidance: Feeling tense during disagreements, possibly due to past experiences of negative outcomes when expressing yourself.
  • Feeling Inadequate in Feedback Situations: Anxiety during evaluations or feedback, tied to early experiences of criticism.
    
    
• Guiding Question: Has a recent event triggered a strong emotional or physical response that I’d like to understand more deeply?

• When to Choose This Focus: If there’s a recent situation that brought up a strong reaction, or if certain situations repeatedly cause stress, this focus can help. Working with triggers helps to reduce the intensity of similar situations, and can help you explore and soften the emotional impact of similar situations going forward.
  
  

3. Unwanted Emotions – Easing Persistent Feelings from the Past or Present

• Purpose: Unwanted emotions are strong, recurring feelings like shame, anger, or fear that show up frequently and affect your mood or interactions. These emotions might be rooted in past experiences or present-day challenges. Focusing on unwanted emotions in Waji is about creating distance from these feelings so they affect you less intensely.

• Examples of Unwanted Emotions:

  • Shame or Unworthiness: Persistent feelings of not being good enough, come up often, even in everyday situations. Possibly tied to past rejection or neglect,
  • Intense Fear or Anxiety: Fear that shows up in safe situations, sometimes rooted in trauma or anxiety patterns.
  • Chronic Anger or Frustration: Anger that arises unexpectedly, often tied to feelings of helplessness or being treated unfairly.
    
    
• Guiding Question: Am I struggling with a recurring emotion, like shame, anger, or fear, that I’d like to address and understand better?

• When to Choose This Focus: If a particular emotion seems to take over your mood or reactions, focusing on that emotion can help you feel less dominated by it. Waji allows you to connect briefly with the feeling and soften its hold, whether it’s rooted in past experiences or recent situations. Over time, you may notice these emotions becoming more manageable and less likely to interfere with your life.
  

• Approach: You can choose to approach the emotion as it arises in present triggers, or trace it back to specific memories where you experienced this feeling intensely. Both approaches help ease the emotion’s impact, creating room for a more balanced and grounded emotional response.
  
  

4. Negative Beliefs – Shifting Limiting Thoughts from the Past or Present

• Purpose: Negative beliefs are deep-seated thoughts that impact how you view yourself or the world. These beliefs, often formed in response to difficult experiences, may show up in present-day interactions, creating limitations and stress. In Waji, focusing on negative beliefs helps you gently challenge these thoughts, allowing for more self-compassion and flexibility.

• Examples of Negative Beliefs:

  • “I am not good enough”: A belief that may stem from past criticism or high expectations, impacting self-confidence.
  • “The world is unsafe”: Rooted in experiences of harm or danger, leading to hypervigilance and mistrust.
  • “People can’t be trusted”: Possibly tied to past betrayals, making it difficult to form close relationships.
    
    
• Guiding Question: Are there recurring thoughts or beliefs about myself or the world that feel limiting or painful?

• When to Choose This Focus: If certain thoughts or beliefs consistently limit your self-perception or relationships, focusing on them can help reduce their influence. Although these beliefs are often rooted in past experiences, Waji can help you reframe them in the context of the present, creating space for healthier and more supportive ways of thinking.
  

• Approach: You can choose to work with the belief as it comes up in current situations or trace it back to specific memories that contributed to its formation. This dual approach helps reduce the belief’s hold, allowing space for more compassionate and supportive ways of thinking.

  
  

How to Decide Which Focus is Right for You Today

If you’re unsure which focus to choose, here are some questions that might help you identify what feels most relevant:

• Trauma Events: Is there a specific memory from the past that feels emotionally intense and affects my life today?
• Triggering Situations: Has a recent event or situation caused a strong reaction that I’d like to experience with less reactivity?
• Unwanted Emotions: Am I struggling with a recurring emotion, like shame, fear, or anger, that I’d like to feel less controlled by?
• Negative Beliefs: Do I have recurring thoughts or beliefs about myself or the world that feel limiting or distressing?
  
  
  

Experimenting with Different Focuses

There’s no “wrong” choice, and each focus area supports your goal of feeling less reactive and more in control. Healing is a gradual, layered process, so feel free to explore different focuses or revisit the same one as often as you need. Over time, you’ll find the process that best helps you reduce reactivity and build the calm, grounded responses you’re looking for.

In Waji, your journey is about finding the support you need, whenever and wherever you need it.