Our Job is to Water the Flower
Do you ever find yourself frustrated in the progress of your healing journey? Do you find yourself making significant headway, only to find yourself falling back into old resentments, anxiety, or insecurities?
You're not alone. Today I want to share a story about a client and a lesson that she taught me. I propose a new measuring stick to measure spiritual and psychological growth. In the process, I hope you feel a renewed sense of excitement for the journey. Enjoy:)
A Roadblock
In my first year as a clinician, I worked with an elderly woman struggling with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from chronic sexual abuse. Her symptoms were not gentle, and certainly qualified for chronic PTSD, a subtype which persists for months or years.
We were working through the gamut of therapy modalities, starting with the poster child of behavioral therapy, “Prolonged Exposure.” The modality is exactly what it sounds like: gradually facing memories of the traumatic event to reduce the distress associated with those memories. When PE works, it sure does work. Behaviorism has a magic in its simplicity. It does not overcomplicate, does not require insight, and focuses on rapid desensitization.
I had a practical professor in graduate school who was drawn to behavioral interventions like PE. During my first few role plays (conducting mock therapy with your classmates), I would try to provide nuanced psychodynamic interpretations, which he wittily and kindly dismembered. “Hey man, you might be right, but all this mystical psychobabble is making my head spin.” I am indebted to his blue collar wisdom for focusing on what works.
Back with my client, I can remember Dr. Workman’s words in my ears: “PTSD is primarily a disorder of avoidance. Where there is no avoidance, there is no PTSD.”
Well, we were swimming in avoidance. I remember building the exposure hierarchy, starting with the lowest level of exposure and hearing, “I don’t know Michael. Can we just start this next week?”
Where there is a lifetime of unprocessed trauma, there will be a wall of brilliant internal avoidance. The mind is a pro and locking the key and swallowing it forever! Needless to say, therapy wasn’t not working.
It was then that I encountered the metaphor of the flower.
The Flower
At the time, I was beginning to do a daily meditation practice through the app “Headspace.” The guide and narrator, Andy, provided an insightful analogy before the normal guided meditation. Here is my summary.
The process of healing is like growing a flower. We aren’t in control of whether or not the flower grows, how quickly it grows, how many leaves grow, or how many petals it has. What we have control over is whether or not we provide the flower with good soil, good sunlight, and the right amount of water. The mind is like this. We can’t force our minds to be quiet, still, unafraid, or happy. But what we can do is provide for the conditions where the mind naturally becomes more gentle, forgiving and peaceful. Providing ourselves with time to “watch the mind” without our added judgment is like giving it good soil, water and sunlight. If we do that, we can reasonably expect that a flower will begin to grow. In other words, a daily practice of meditation will lead to more freedom.
The metaphor deeply resonated with me, and I decided to bring it to my client. We began to change what defines success: not the elimination of panic and anxiety, but simply showing up for therapy. She defined her sunlight as “showing up for what matters most in life, and letting herself be heard.”
Whenever I ask, “am I healing?” It is natural to look at whether or not we feel more internal peace, forgiveness of old hurts, or a sense of empowerment. The problem is that these outcomes are somewhat unpredictable like the flower’s growth. Like happiness, they can’t be pursued directly, but are the result of the right pursuit.
I propose two questions to ask ourselves: 1. What practices will reasonably lead to the healing outcomes I am seeking? 2. Have I done my practices?
If that sounds simple, it’s because it is!
“Am I healing?” For me, I have to ask, “Well, have I been showing up for my spiritual practices? Did I show up for my friends? Have I taken care of my body? Have a shared what I’m going through with trusted friends?”
If we’ve watered the flower to the best of our ability, we can reasonably sit back and patiently wait. I find solace in the quote from St. Francis of Assisi, “We must bear patiently not being good . . . and not being thought good.” Does that make my fellow perfectionists simultaneously sigh and stress?
My client did not experience a total elimination of symptoms in the time we worked together, but I think that the analogy took us much further. She was able to tolerate a lot more discomfort without being overwhelmed. She was consistent with therapy, and didn’t cancel sessions last minute. She shared things that she never had before. In that sense, she watered the flower, and learned that the watering is a daily practice. I’d rather fall in love with being a gardener than yell at my dead flowers.
Therapy is not the end of the journey, but the beginning of a new way of seeing difficulty. Even a lifetime of neural pathways can be undone with consistent dedication, and therapy is just the beginning of learning to set our course.
I believe that we jumped the gun with our work initially. We tried growing a flower, and forgot to put the plant on the windowsill in the sunlight. Rather than simply “being healed”, she experienced growth in learning how to approach the healing journey in the first place. I believe that that was our task, and remains my task in my personal life.
I find the analogy of the flower helpful across the board. For example, I am learning to see my running journey not as “qualify for the Boston marathon as soon as possible” but rather, “learning to effectively train in a way that brings joy and challenge to my life” Ironically, that mindset will make it more likely that I qualify for Boston.
Close
Today, I shared a little bit about a client who benefitted from the analogy of the flower. I hope this short piece inspires you to pursue the pursuit rather than just the goal. Together, let’s clarify the controllables, and practice patience with the uncontrollables.
What are some ways where you are focused on the growth of the flower rather than providing the sunlight? How can you focus on giving that flower good sunlight, water and soil instead?
Until our next musing,
Michael
Hello, I'm Michael, a psychotherapist devoted to delving into the inner worlds of persons from diverse walks of life. I view this work as a profound privilege, increasingly accompanied by a sense of responsibility. Each day brings new insights into the nature of the human psyche, and I recognize the importance of capturing and sharing the meaningful transformations unfolding before me. In this age of condensed internet content, I pondered: perhaps there's room for “bite-size wisdom.” I invite you to join me in the reflective journey of musing toward the real!
