Helen Blackburn PTSTA-P
Field of audience: All

Language: English
Level of audience: All

‘C’est mon jardin secret’ –is a phrase I first heard from a French colleague in Paris in the late 80’s, years before I discovered TA and trained as a psychotherapist. I was delighted to learn that Berne also referred to our ‘secret gardens’. To me this means our inner nature, and our private world.

We need time to quietly tend the tender shoots of our new beginnings, our emergent ideas and imaginations, whilst protecting ourselves ‘against the profane invasion of the vulgar crowd’ (Berne 1972).  However, when this is too defended, we can keep secrets from ourselves, and feel alienated from the support of others. Berne also describes the ‘parched earth’, where what nurtures our creativity and core self-sense is so neglected, so starved of light, water and air, that we cannot bear to walk into it.

I have found that gently reflecting on being a ‘kindly gardener’ when working with this metaphor transmutes the idea of ‘self-reparenting’ into something more expansive, where we can trust the intentionality of things to grow in the right conditions.

We will discuss the idea of our ‘secret gardens’ through an Ecological TA lens- how connecting to the natural world and the more-than-human, can contribute to our work as practitioners metaphorically and practically. We will consider the non-linear process of physis, the significance of dormancy and seasonality, emergence rather than intentionality.

We will explore how we may be secret gardeners with our clients and ourselves, through group discussion of case studies, and playful, creative experiential processes. My hope is that this workshop sows the seeds of gentleness, expansion and growth.