Emotional Protection

In this part of Colorado, it is good to protect the roses for the winter, but not for the reasons some may assume. We have a freeze/thaw cycle in the late winter and early spring and the roses need protection from the warmth rather than the cold during this time. So, once the ground is frozen, the roses are served by having mulch or dirt packed up around the base, about six inches high. This way, the rose will not think that it is safe to send out tender shoots during a thaw, only to have them frozen and killed when it gets cold again. It is important, though, when it is warm enough in the spring, to take the mulch off, or else the protection will become harmful to the rose, and it will be blocked from the air, warmth, and light it needs to grow and thrive. Taking the mulch off is something to be done slowly and in increments, over a few weeks, a few inches at a time, so as not to shock the rose from the sun and the warmth.
If we are raised in emotionally unpredictable environments, we learn to protect ourselves in a similar way, so that the “tender shoots” of our hearts are kept from being injured. We may have been frozen a few too many times when we thought it was safe to open up and be ourselves. We bury the true parts of ourselves under a protective layer of emotional mulch, so that the outside elements can’t hurt those parts. This protection was important to help us survive childhood. Eventually, though, in adulthood, the same protection can harm us, block us from the warmth and love we need to grow and thrive. The trick is to find out when it is safe to take off the layers, and how to do it in a way that isn’t shocking to the tender parts of ourselves.  Taking a slow approach to a relationship goes a long way toward learning the difference.

“I WILL NOT FALL DOWN!”

I have a three year old friend. One day, when she thought no one could see her, she was climbing a piece of furniture while declaring loudly, “I WILL NOT FALL DOWN!” In reality, the probability of her falling was high, but she seemed pretty convinced that just announcing that she wouldn’t, at the top of her lungs, would be protection enough from such a thing. Perhaps she was impatient with the pace at which her body was growing able to do what she wanted it to do, and she thought maybe this announcement would make it all happen faster. Or perhaps she doubted the wisdom of her parents who told her that climbing this piece of furniture is forbidden and dangerous, and wanted to find out for herself.

This made me think of how many times we adults do a similar sort of thing. It could be that we are saying “I WILL NOT GET INTO ANOTHER BAD RELATIONSHIP!” or, “I WILL NOT OVEREAT AGAIN!” We think these announcements protect us from our actions, hoping that we won’t make unwanted, painful choices anymore. So, we swear off unhealthy relationships, until that irresistible but not-very-nice person ends up in our bed. Or we go on one of the countless diets out there, only to snap and binge. This erodes trust in our abilities to stick to the goal of these announcements.

Making those announcements is like making a promise to ourselves that we often can’t keep. Rather than doing this, we can be a little kinder to ourselves. In therapy, the point isn’t just to remove “bad” behavior. We are in these habits for a reason. If we are attracted to people who treat us poorly, we probably learned that we deserve that treatment, and so it is familiar. Rather than focus on avoiding that bad relationship, we can focus on that injured part of ourselves and give it the real love that it needs. Eventually, we won’t tolerate being treated poorly, and the attraction toward those who would mistreat us will dissolve. Similarly with food- when we are bingeing, we are trying to feed a neglected part of ourselves that was starved at some point. Just taking the food away only makes us feel more starved. Rather than focus on the food, we can learn to feed and love our starved parts. All of this takes time, and our inner three-year-old may get impatient, but this sort of change and growth is slow.

Old Houses

Today I’ve got old houses on my mind. I think that fixing up an old house has many parallels to therapy. In an old house, you have no idea what you might find behind the walls, and you may put off any sort of project until something breaks. Perhaps you call an electrician because your light switch has stopped working. When the electrician shows up and gets to the work behind the wall, she may find that the problem is in the wiring. Whoever wired the light did so in a way that is not to code, and is a fire danger, and now you need to rewire everything. Suddenly the project becomes more complicated, and you wish that you didn’t know what you now know, even if being unconscious of this problem meant that you were in danger. You may even have had your suspicions, but as long as all the lights were turning on, you could push those suspicions aside and ignore it all. So, you agree to fixing the wiring, and you invest a good chunk of money into the project, which takes more time than you thought it would. But when it is finished, every time you turn on that light switch, you are feeling confident that everything working the way it was meant to, and you don’t have to wonder just what is behind those walls, or whether what’s behind can go awry and hurt you.
Emotional work is very similar. We may be “wired” in a way that got us through a difficult childhood, but it may no longer be working for us in our adult lives. It could even be that our old wiring is dangerous, attracting us to unhealthy relationships or life situations. The work we need to do to re-wire ourselves can be scary, can involve a lot of emotional investment and time. When we get started, we may wish we could go back to a time when we didn’t know all these uncomfortable things about ourselves. But in the end, we are rewarded with the confidence that we know and trust what is inside of ourselves.

Welcome…

Welcome to my blog. In my practice, I rely heavily on metaphor to reflect what is going on with clients, as well as to make sense of the emotional world. This blog is an examination of various emotional issues through some universal life metaphors.

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