Tending Your Mental Garden - The Rooted Way
At Rooted, we believe that you are the master gardner of your own story. We are simply your gardening tools, awaiting your use. We recognize that therapy is not a one size fits all solution - instead, it is deeply nuanced, and we seek to deeply nurture that nuance.
Step 2: Tend to the soil
I usually know I’ve gotten to this stage in therapy with a client when they bring in something that I had either noticed and intentionally didn’t bring up or that I had not noticed myself. The action we, as your therapists, are looking for here is an “a-ha” moment that leads you to action on your own. When working with trauma survivors, it can often be something like this:
“I noticed whenever this family member calls me, I feel really irritated the rest of the day. What do I do about that?”
It is not our job to tell you what to do but to rather help you notice patterns that you can begin to work on in your own time outside of the one hour a week you spend with us. Essentially, you begin to know what it feels like to be your own gardening tool.
Step 1: Clear out the weeds
This step is maybe the most tedious! At the beginning of working with our clinicians, it may feel more like an un-doing than actionable steps. Our goal here is two-fold:
First, we want to get to know you more personally and for you to get to know us as your clinician. We’ll often utilize the first few sessions to simply ask about your life and your past.
Second, we want to start to call out any unhelpful patterns we’re seeing. Again, we tend to be quite gentle with our approach and we want you to take ownership of your life.
Step 3: Plant some new seeds
This step is maybe the most tedious! At the beginning of working with our clinicians, it may feel more like an un-doing than actionable steps. Our goal here is two-fold:
First, we want to get to know you more personally and for you to get to know us as your clinician. We’ll often utilize the first few sessions to simply ask about your life and your past.
Second, we want to start to call out any unhelpful patterns we’re seeing. Again, we tend to be quite gentle with our approach and we want you to take ownership of your life.
Step 4: Water and Tend to your new garden
The last step begins long before therapy ends. It normally begins when your clinician or yourself (ideally both of you) have the thought, “wow, most of our session time is being taken up with talking about how well things are going.” Because life is fickle and one moment a flower is blooming and the next moment, your dog has dug it up, we don’t like to end therapy right when we have this thought for the first time. It is often tempting for the client to immediately stop sessions as soon as they feel this way (and, because you’re the hero of your own story, we fully support your decision to end therapy at any time).
Because life is so unpredictable, your time in therapy is too. We are not nearly as concerned with how long you’re here as we are with the quality of care you receive from us. Our ultimate goal is that you build up your gardening abilities and tools apart from us so that when the time comes, you’re ready to tend your garden on your own.