Spring has Sprung

Spring is my favourite season in Buenos Aires. The winter isn't long or hard here, but it's like an ill fitting dress, it doesn't suit us and that's that. So I was excited to go and explore new plants in @easyargentina a few weeks ago and find that all the plants were sporting new buds. While I was there I saw a lady googling the names of the plants and looking to see what the flowers would look like. Understandable, I was doing the same, I don't want the boring bigonia rosada that flowers in summer, I want the bigonia venusta with its amazing tubular orange flowers to brighten up my garden in winter.

Of course this got me thinking about therapy. Clients come to therapy during their different seasons. Sometimes you can see some of their flowers but not others, sometimes you can just see the buds, and sometimes you can't see anything at all. When there's nothing at all this can seem daunting, like a tree or a plant during its winter hibernation, how can new growth come from something so barren, where to begin? When there are buds, it's difficult not to rush ahead to see the changes now now now! What are we waiting for? And the easiest for us therapists, when we can see some flowers already, we know what success looks like, we just have to repeat it in other areas.

And this is the delicate balance of therapy. Accepting the now unconditionally. You are where you are and it's perfect. No leaves, no buds, look at the beautiful white, smooth wood, it's so elegant, so simple. Meanwhile keeping the faith that growth will come, because it always will, that's how people are. BUT! Without rushing the process, risking transforming motivational energy into dangerous criticism and wreaking havoc! Because flowers come when they come. And then finally, accepting that the flowers that come might not be what I would have chosen, I don't get to choose, I just get to hope, wait and see.

The legendary Carl Rogers said "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. We cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed" and I couldn't agree more. For the therapist there is no googling plant names to find out what the flowers will look like or when they'll come. Instead we have to live and breath acceptance so that our clients can use it to find their flowers how and when the time is right.

So when you come to me and we talk and talk and talk again about how you're scared of changing and not changing in equal measures, and the voices that tell you you can't are louder than the voices that tell you can, hopefully I'll appear calm and accepting. But rest assured, later that week I'll be with my supervisor doubting myself, rechecking my work, wracking my brains to see if I can help you more, better. And she'll be accepting me, my impatience and self doubt so that the paradoxical change that her acceptance brings can inhabit me also and allow my flowers to come too, when they can, how they can.