Tending Inner Gardens

The Healing Art of Feminist Psychotherapy

Lesley I Shore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317764052
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Tending Inner Gardens: The Healing Art of Feminist Psychotherapy transforms the theory and practice of psychotherapy, one that values both the feminine and masculine perspectives. Set within a naturalistic framework, this model utilizes nature's growing and healing processes. It proposes nature's seasonal cycles as a model for the psychotherapy process, and author Lesley Irene Shore introduces nature's seasonal cycle as a model for successful psychotherapy and demonstrates how to tune techniques to the rhythms of each season. Dr. Shore speaks with the voice of an experienced psychotherapist, sharing her struggles with therapeutic dilemmas and addressing issues common to every practitioner. She refuses to present simple solutions to the difficult process of helping people grow, yet offers new ways of thinking about this work. Readers will find this a healing book--for themselves as well as for their clients. The book covers relationship issues as well as the use of language, hypnosis, dreams, and creativity. Specific areas readers learn about include:

• language--teaches therapists to differentiate between questions that address conscious regions of the mind and ones which communicate with less conscious processes.
• metaphor--describes ways of working with metaphors to access less conscious processes
• trauma--explores the effects of psychological trauma and offers tools for healing its wounds
• psychotherapy process--uses nature's seasonal cycle to chart the process of psychotherapy Tending Inner Gardens transcends the artificial dichotomies currently characterizing much psychological thought. Psychotherapists will be interested in the natural model of psychotherapy which integrates a wide range of ideas and theories, especially the sections on the psychotherapy relationship, dreams, creativity, working with metaphors, language, and the process of psychotherapy. Interesting case studies illuminate this material. Students can benefit from seeing how the tools of psychotherapy are integrated with the art. Laypeople will enjoy reading about Dr. Shore's personal evolution as a therapist, her life on Harmony Farm, and her cases, which are discussed in detail. While this book is primarily geared toward a professional audience, it attracts a wide range of readers. It should be read by experienced psychotherapists, faculty members, and practitioners, as well as those in training. This would generally include psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, psychiatric nurses, and related professions. And while the book presents a primarily verbal, psychodynamic approach toward healing, its theoretical conceptualization will appeal to professionals in healing traditions such as art therapy, massage therapy, and expressive therapy.

Tools

Space

Therapists promote growth by working with the environment. Recognizing the parallels between physical and psychological space, we look to create conditions conducive to growth. We attend to the spatial dimensions of our clients' inner and outer worlds.

Most therapists recognize that the design of an office can influence therapy. As confidentiality is essential, we guard the privacy of our offices with soundproofing devices such as double doors and sound shields. We also pay attention to the seating arrangement, among other details, making sure that it communicates an atmosphere of intimacy while affording clients a sense of safety and respect for their boundaries and personal comfort.

I believe that the importance of working in harmony with nature can also be communicated to clients. Although I am not suggesting that every therapist's office should be in a natural setting, I personally prefer working in close proximity to nature. Harmony Farm's setting not only keeps me in tune with nature's healing processes, it also sets the tone for my clients. And it subtly invites them to pay attention to their sensory experiences.

A rural mailbox marks the entrance to Harmony Farm. Clients turn off a heavily traveled suburban road onto a dirt driveway. They're entering another world, moving into a sacred place.

Once off the road, clients are transported into an idyllic rural setting. As they wend their way along the winding drive, they're surrounded by nature. Stands of trees are punctuated by open spaces with wild vegetation.

Clients usually slow their cars to negotiate the unpaved path. This gives them time to notice the seasons, to watch them pass by, for the cycle from leaf to flower to fruit to seed is ever apparent along this drive. During fall the trees boast shimmering shades of red, orange, and yellow. Once their leaves descend to earth, they become graceful brown silhouettes, perfect contrasts against the glistening snow of a winter's day. Green returns when skunk cabbage makes its appearance in early spring, a welcome sign that daisies and daylilies will soon be on their way.

Sheep graze in the meadow - a perpetual source of entertainment. Their thick woolly coverings offer protection from the ravages of weather, even harsh cold wintry winds. Although the sheep are wary of cars, they are curious to see who may be passing by and often lift their heads from the task of satisfying healthy appetites. During spring and summer they often resemble a giant lawn mower, lined up one next to the other, moving ahead slowly, step by step, leaving shorn grass in their wake.

After lambing season, in early spring, sheep-watching becomes irresistible. Cars automatically slow to a snail's pace so their occupants can get a better view. Lambs capture everyone's heart. They're full of boundless energy, leaping and bouncing, expressing their spirited lust for life and joy of discovery.

when it is time to nurse, patient mothers stand calmly chewing their cud while exuberant lambs forcefully butt their heads into the mothers' abdomens. This activity signals the mothers to release milk into their udders. The lambs fall to their knees, attach themselves to udders, and eagerly guzzle life-giving juices.

Tearing themselves away from the sheep, clients continue their journey by heading toward a bam. As chickens range freely in this area, they may need to stop their cars to allow one to safely scurry out of the way. After passing the bam, a house soon comes into view. My herb garden, replete with additional wildflowers and an assortment of weeds, is on their left as they turn toward the house and park the car. Once out of the car they may pause to savor the smell of pine wafting through the air. Depending on the season, other aromas may also greet them.

A flagstone path leads the way to the office entrance. Thyme grows between the stones, spreading its tendrils in all directions. Even the most careful clients can't avoid stepping on the thyme, releasing its aromatic oils and distinctive aroma. As they walk to the door, they're surrounded by muted hues and subtle smells, with birds singing in the background.

The outside door opens to a set of stairs that lead to a small waiting area. There is classical music playing in the background, hot water ready for a cup of herbal tea, and magazines proclaiming the joys of country living waiting to be read. A "thank you for not smoking" sign shines forth from the bulletin board, and a herbal chart of natural remedies adorns the wall.

Inside the office, plants are everywhere. Each flowering season is gaily represented, creating a year-round profusion of blooming color. Christmas and orchid cactuses hang from pottery baskets attached to the ceiling. Medicinal aloe plants multiply in pots on top of a table. Cyclamen galore, along with various Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter cactuses sit on bookcases beneath two large southern windows that overlook a pond. There are vibrant pinks, purples, and reds through fall, winter, spring, and summer - a perfect foil for blue skies and white bookcases. The room is bright with light, alive with color, yet calm and still.

My office is a safe place, an inner sanctum. I sit here with clients, enter their space, and help them wrestle with their issues. This is a physical space - a place where they come with their difficulties, a place where they can begin paying attention to themselves. My office is protected space - a place reserved for them - offering peace and quiet for listening to concerns, voicing them, and having them heard.

I see it as my responsibility to ensure that clients' sessions are their sacred space. I protect this space and insure no intrusions, no ringing telephones, no interruptions. They are away from the demands of their lives, their jobs, families, friends, society. It is their time - time to devote to themselves in whichever way is most useful to them. It is precious time, and I protect it.

Clients usually need to begin experiencing their value, their worth - to respect themselves and their time. As I want them to know that I honor their therapy time, I endeavor to be punctual for appointments. Keeping clients waiting would be not only impolite, inconsiderate, and disrespectful, it also implies that their time doesn't matter whereas mine does. I won't do them a disservice by keeping them waiting.

Once they're inside the office, clients have a chance to pause, take a breath, and travel inside themselves. Many arrive breathless from a morning of getting children ready for school or dealing with issues at work. Often when they arrive, head dizzy with all the doings they've just left behind, they need to slow down and become still. Then, and only then, can they begin focusing in, listening to an inner voice.

I've learned to be quiet - to allow space between a client's sentences and between us. This space is especially important at the beginning of a session. It enables clients to settle in - to wind down, then in - to enter the space inside themselves.

Sometimes clients arrive saying, "I have nothing to talk about today" or "on my way over I was wondering about what I would talk about." Once they're given the time to sit quietly with themselves, subjects invariably present themselves. Issues that were beneath the surface begin bubbling up.

At times, clients anticipate their sessions and use the drive over as a time to slow down and begin focusing inward. This usually isn't done with conscious forethought. They begin their sessions by commenting about the drive, their thoughts along the way. We go on together from there. And when they leave, they take the stillness with them. Images, symbols, and thoughts addressed during a session continue to reverberate during the drive home, later in the day, and throughout the week.

Clients need to enter their quiet, peaceful, inner place before they can begin hearing themselves. All too often their fast-paced lives don't allow time for stillness. They're focused outside themselves, bombarded by demands - communications from people, the media, the telephone ringing. Moving into stillness is a necessary precursor for other shifts, for creative internal moments, change. It initiates the shifting process.

Therapy is defined by its protected time and place. It provides a safe, predictable place where time can stand still - an environment for change. The safety of this time and place enables the space, the stillness, the precursor of other shifts. This protected space needs to be reserved on a regular basis, for predictability contributes to its safety.

All the details or time and place set the stage, pnme the pump, facilitate the process of moving into stillness. And as this happens, other shifts become possible. Time slows down, becoming ever more still until a doorway in time opens. Past, present, and future combine in a fleeting eternal moment, a moment of connection. This is sacred space.

Sacred space is timeless. It exists in the "betweens" - between here and there, known and unknown, conscious and unconscious, creation and destruction, good and evil, life and death. Shifts take place in spaces, in betweens, in twilight zones. Sacred space is a place of shifting sands, a place where disparate forces combine in new and novel ways - sublime moments of association.

Momentary though they may be, these between times can be unsettling. The ground is no longer steady and firm, but moving and transforming. Clients sometimes describe themselves as feeling adrift on a sea, floating. They look for an anchor, a place of mooring. At these times I offer myself as their anchor - a place of settledness, stillness, silence. And while I offer my center, my space, as a place of mooring from which we can both operate during the hour, I gently invite them to become anchored within themselves, to sense firm ground under their feet.

Sacred space is inside and outside. It's a womb - a place for creation, union, giving birth. Clients give birth to themselves, and we're midwives in this process, the timekeepers. Our job is to help them move into sacred space - help slow down time.

Therapy occurs in a space between two people, but the main work is done inside one person. Our role as therapists is to provide an environment that fosters growth - their growth. In fulfilling this function we attend to all the dimensions of time and space. We nurture their space, tend its garden, ensure that there's adequate moisture, sunlight, and nourishment.

The seeds are within our clients. They're waiting for the right conditions, for a fertile environment in which to send out roots and unfurl leaves. It takes time for seeds to germinate and for growth to unfold. We wait and watch, offering comments here and there, nourishing growth. And while we may help by nurturing the soil, cultivating an area, we cannot make seeds grow/We're only caretakers of the environment, guardians of sacred space.

The therapeutic journey is a long and winding path, punctuated by brief excursions into sacred space. Clients are free to focus on their journey, be fully present in it, knowing that someone else is ensuring its safety. We're overseers - waiting and watching while clients maneuver through their journeys' twists and turns.

Clients need time for their symbols to incubate, to mull around in the unconscious, and allow new ways to gradually emerge. There may be a momentary "ah ha," but these are few and far between. Instead, there are little "ahs," pauses for internal mulling, shifting, moving. These serpentine shifts slowly weave together and evolve into a spiral path.

And as clients take this path, their perspectives change. Ihey emerge from cotyledons, like butterflies from cocoons, ready to flower and fly. And when they reflect upon their journey, they comment on the sense of peace and tranquility that descends upon them the moment they turn into the driveway. They've been enveloped in nature's silent stillness, the magic of Harmony Farm.

Relationship

Most therapists believe that the relationship we develop with clients is an important therapeutic tool. And while we generally also concur regarding the inappropriateness of sexual intimacy with clients, there is less agreement about the type of therapist involvement most beneficial to client growth and healing. This issue affects many aspects of therapy, including the names we call ourselves and whether we purposefully reveal personal information.

More traditional, psychoanalytically based, models recommend maintaining an impersonal stance with clients, one which facilitates the development and analysis of transference. Earlier relationships, particularly those between parent and child, are re-created in the interest of separating past from present and offering a corrective educational experience. Many therapists, myself included, were schooled in this tradition. Within this model we also expected clients to use our formal titles, e.g., Dr. Shore, rather than our first names, and avoided sharing personal information about ourselves.

My early years as a therapist were spent hiding behind a blank screen. While most of my training was in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, I was also influenced by existential analysis and nondirective counseling. As I was committed to becoming a good therapist, I endeavored to practice what my teachers, supervisors, and books preached. I went by the book, and the books of those times proselytized the fine art of noninvolvement.

While I listened intently to clients, integrating and paraphrasing what I heard, I did not allow any aspect of myself to be revealed. I became adept at ducking questions, deflecting them back to clients. It was like playing hide-and-seek. Whenever they tried to find out who I was, I hid. I either dodged behind an interpretation or "answered" their question with another question. And when clients developed relationships with me, I saw our relationships in terms of transference and countertran sference phenomena.

After working in college counseling centers, I was hired as the psychologist on the treatment team of a new detoxification ward for drug addicts and alcoholics. Working with these people required a different approach. I had to literally think on my feet, for many of these clients approached me in the hallway when I was en route from one place to another. While I also had an office, I could no longer hide behind its closed door or the blank screen that was available there. I immediately recognized that my clients were better at dancing around bushes than I, for they had been on their toes much longer, and playing for much higher stakes. These people required a more direct approach, one that encouraged them to face issues they preferred to avoid. Although I continued to dodge and duck, I developed a different style for working with this population. I became more direct, up front, and outspoken.

Continuing with my professional career, I moved from one clinical setting to another, adapting my style of therapy to the people with whom I was working. As I gained confidence in my clinical judgement and therapeutic skills, I started trusting my own sense of the therapy situation. Questions and comments often came from my "gut," not just my head. And while it had felt safer to hide during my early years as a therapist, I no longer needed to hide. My relationship with clients grew more open and natural. I cared deeply about them and knew that they felt my warmth.

Even though my heart was telling me that warm, caring relationships are healing, intellectually I still adhered to the principles of the psychoanalytic approach and believed in the usefulness of the blank screen. I felt conflicted, and questioned the value of staying uninvolved, disconnected from clients. My heart and head were split.

My questions continued, particularly after becoming a wife and then mother. These caretaking roles pulled me in another direction, toward the physical realm. Feeling responsible for the welfare of people I loved and wanting to ensure their health and well-being, I began reading about nutrition and visiting health food stores. My interest in health didn't follow the traditional path, for I consumed books on medicinal herbs and old-fashioned "home" remedies. And when kissing a child seemed able to make everything "better," I became intrigued with the body-mind connection and wondered if there could be a curative aspect to caring.

While I was pleased to see my family benefitting from these explorations into holistic health, I felt split between two worlds. In my home I was a nurturing, giving, and loving human being. But these emotions were considered "inappropriate" in the traditional therapeutic session where I wanted to be able to share my knowledge about health and well-being without compromising my uninvolved, disengaged, professional stance.

Hearing about a new held, behavioral medicine, which legitimized my interest in the mind-body connection, I began taking seminars and attending conferences on the subject. One was organized by Beth Israel Hospital, a respected teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School. Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist already well known for his books, especially The Relaxation Response, was a featured speaker.

After registering, I was approached by a smiling man who welcomed me to the conference and introduced himself as "Herb Benson." We talked for a while, and during this conversation he happened to touch my shoulder. His touch wasn't sexual, but a connection, a bridge between us. Walking away from this meeting I felt special, cared about, "touched."

This meeting with Herb Benson made a lasting impression. I remember him as a man radiating warmth, gentleness, compassion, and caring. His physical touch had reached inside me, warmed me. It showed he cared about connecting and told me more about the mind-body connection than was later communicated in many hours of well organized, dynamic presentations.

When I returned to my office, I began thinking about the role of touch in therapy. While touch has a long history in the healing professions, it is a complicated topic. Touch can be confused with sexuality, especially by people who have difficulty distinguishing between different kinds of feelings. Because of the highly intimate nature of psychological material, the potential abuse of touch, and the importance of psychological boundaries for vulnerable clients, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Nature
• Tools
• Seasons
• Bibliography
• Index