Show Posts
1
Successes, Progress? / Compost
« on: September 11, 2021, 08:01:46 PM »
For a long while, the book The Secret Garden and its 1975 BBC-TV adaptation played a huge role in altering my thnking. While I've had gardens here and there over the years, I just never gave it lots of thought. Finding that story, first suggested by someone on this forum, rejuvenated my thought about gardens. I no longer see them as just pretty places or a system of food production, but in reference to one's entire life.
In the story, Mary Lennox becomes enchanted with the idea of finding this secret garden she keeps hearing snippets about. Once she finds it, what she does with it becomes so much more than merely a nice project to have. Sure, she reacted to the magic of plants and all that goes with them. But deep down, mostly unsaid, it was a form of therapy for her. Yes, it was a garden; yet it represented her whole life. Plus, as she told her new companion Dickon once, she'd prefer it not just be a "tidy" garden, but have wild aspects to it, a place where she'd discover new things.
I became so engrossed with the tale that I'm sure my T was on the edge of feeling bored with my enthusiasm for the story. But once she actually unwittingly added to my mystique by something she said about compost. Actually I'd mentioned it first, and then only in passing reference to something else. Afterwards my T wondered if I'd ever considered how I could use the off-handed comment in reference to my own issues.
She suggested that I give it some thought. She's good at planting (a very apt word in this regard) -- suggestions that I might pick up on. In this instance the light bulb flicked on to the idea of compost.
Compost is, after all, formed mostly from leftovers. One could just throw them out, haul them away, or even burn them at some point, but composting presents an alternative. Fertilizer comes to mind in this regard, but even that often comes by way of an unplanned process of mixing the no longer needed ingredients into the formation of something new that can still benefit future plantings.
I'm hoping you catch the drift. For me it set in motion the idea that even the dregs and discards of life can somehow fit and function into one's ongoing story. Instead of plants only, in this instance I'm talking life. My preference would be for the easy -- toss the old story aside, haul it away, burn it, etc. While I'd love to do that with everything in my life up to my early 20's, and even some well beyond that, it became apparent that the old stuff had a way of haunting my adulthood too. In the gardening context, all that old material tended to still stink.
Well, okay -- so along comes this notion of composting. Not valuing the decaying matter for itself, but finding a way to add it, rot and all, and maybe even seeing it transform into something else I had no idea might happen. I've experienced some changing perspective via these subtle mood shifts. Like so much else in Cptsd-land, it's not perfect, but part of the new wild garden, like Mary Lennox said she'd dreamed of for her 'piece of land' (and life).
In some ways I've come to regard therapy as resembling a huge mental compost pile. What to do with the messy, smelly, still-rotting leftovers? I tend to think in pictures, and that's one I like to contemplate. And begin to picture the newly created plants growing in just where they need to be. I've still discarded the leftovers, but in a way this transformation bears more promise than I'd ever thought of before.
In the story, Mary Lennox becomes enchanted with the idea of finding this secret garden she keeps hearing snippets about. Once she finds it, what she does with it becomes so much more than merely a nice project to have. Sure, she reacted to the magic of plants and all that goes with them. But deep down, mostly unsaid, it was a form of therapy for her. Yes, it was a garden; yet it represented her whole life. Plus, as she told her new companion Dickon once, she'd prefer it not just be a "tidy" garden, but have wild aspects to it, a place where she'd discover new things.
I became so engrossed with the tale that I'm sure my T was on the edge of feeling bored with my enthusiasm for the story. But once she actually unwittingly added to my mystique by something she said about compost. Actually I'd mentioned it first, and then only in passing reference to something else. Afterwards my T wondered if I'd ever considered how I could use the off-handed comment in reference to my own issues.
She suggested that I give it some thought. She's good at planting (a very apt word in this regard) -- suggestions that I might pick up on. In this instance the light bulb flicked on to the idea of compost.
Compost is, after all, formed mostly from leftovers. One could just throw them out, haul them away, or even burn them at some point, but composting presents an alternative. Fertilizer comes to mind in this regard, but even that often comes by way of an unplanned process of mixing the no longer needed ingredients into the formation of something new that can still benefit future plantings.I'm hoping you catch the drift. For me it set in motion the idea that even the dregs and discards of life can somehow fit and function into one's ongoing story. Instead of plants only, in this instance I'm talking life. My preference would be for the easy -- toss the old story aside, haul it away, burn it, etc. While I'd love to do that with everything in my life up to my early 20's, and even some well beyond that, it became apparent that the old stuff had a way of haunting my adulthood too. In the gardening context, all that old material tended to still stink.
Well, okay -- so along comes this notion of composting. Not valuing the decaying matter for itself, but finding a way to add it, rot and all, and maybe even seeing it transform into something else I had no idea might happen. I've experienced some changing perspective via these subtle mood shifts. Like so much else in Cptsd-land, it's not perfect, but part of the new wild garden, like Mary Lennox said she'd dreamed of for her 'piece of land' (and life).
In some ways I've come to regard therapy as resembling a huge mental compost pile. What to do with the messy, smelly, still-rotting leftovers? I tend to think in pictures, and that's one I like to contemplate. And begin to picture the newly created plants growing in just where they need to be. I've still discarded the leftovers, but in a way this transformation bears more promise than I'd ever thought of before.
-- and the holes into which I plunge seem ever deeper. Coping doesn't do it anymore. Then I fear ... did I ask too much?
to those of you who've shared your own positive experiences with IFS.
. Your harshness in doing so only rings as unwanted echoes of those horrid harsh voices that reinforced my loneliness, heightened my fear, and tortured me with shame and self-abasement to the point of not wanting to even live if this was all life had on offer. I'm finding out there's more, but it's still a struggle. If you left, this might relieve some of the pressure to want to attain perfection.