Shame and Addiction to Perfection – Doing our “Garden Work”: lessons from Robert Bly

Hi, I am Harry Venice, an Attachment, Trauma, and Jungian Therapist who is also certified to score the Adult Attachment Interview for Reflective Function.

If you want to do Shadow Work, Jungian Analysis, trauma healing, or repair insecure attachment, book a Free 1:1 Discovery Call today: https://calendly.com/harryvenicepsychology/30min

Shame and Addiction: exploring Robert Bly’s poetry and his metaphor of the garden.

Photo: Robert Bly pictured on a farm.

Today I will cover how we can heal from Shame and Addiction by exploring Robert Bly’s poetry and his metaphor of the garden.

Robery Bly uses the metaphor of needing to tend to our ‘garden’ when it comes to healing and inner work. This metaphor focuses on flowers and weeds. When we have shame, we tend to not only remove weeds from our garden but also destroy our flowers. This desire to ‘split off’, expunge, break away from our existing ‘self’ and want something new, something else. To start over fresh. Ashamed of what we are or what we were or what we did. This is the ‘shame’ that Robert Bly was getting at in his book ‘Iron John’.

I have done this many times in my life. Started over. Destroyed the garden. The flowers and the weeds.

In more technical and clinical terms, I think this is steeped in conditional attachment provided by parents and also complex trauma. In more human terms, in the world of metaphor, psychoanalysis, poetry, soul: it is shame and addiction to perfection.

That is why Robert Bly refers to Marion Woodman, Jungian Analyst, and her book ‘Addiction to Perfection’ when he discusses his metaphor of the garden and the shame that men and women hold deep in their hearts. Below is the relevant quote from Iron John:

“Addiction to perfection, as Marion Woodman reminds us, amounts to having no garden. The anxiety to be perfect withers the vegetation. Shame keeps us from cultivating the garden. Men and women deeply caught in shame will, when they tend their garden, pull out both weeds and flowers because so many of their own feelings seem defective and soiled.”

How garden work begins

It may begin unexpectedly. For example, the loss of a job or an illness may slow us down. Or we may consciously choose to slow down. For me, the loss of a job after working my tail off and being bullied forced me into what Jungians would call ‘the mid life passage’ but what most would call a ‘mid life crisis’. I had to tend to a garden which has been neglected for decades. I had to find the garden which was hard enough. Then I realised the garden was neglected and needed new soil, before we could cultivate the flowers.

A more recent example of being forced into the garden were injuries I suffered from playing too much tennis. When I was a child, I played tennis with friends from the ages of 9 to 13 at a local clay court owned by a small church. However, when I went to a private school for high school my parents did not allow me to play tennis. It was never an option. I was ‘forced’ to play cricket because my parents thought it was ‘prestigous’ and as immigrants, they wanted to feel important and like the Australians. But they put their insecurities onto their children, and being one of their children, I played this sport I didn’t like. Of course, after years of deep inner work, I realised that my love for ‘tennis’ had fallen into the unconscious, and it re-emerged randomly at the age of 39. As the Jungian Analyst Robert Johnson says, this was an “unlived life”. It became an emotional and obsessive experience. I was compelled: I had to play this game I loved, this game that was denied to me, I needed to live ‘this unlived life’.

I hired a coach, I played by myself, I played with others, and I even won a local tournament and the prize money of €20. Unfortunately, with all the injuries I incurred, just one physio appointment was €90. However, the key is that although I lived the ‘unlived life’ of the teenager who wanted to play tennis, I also did it in the same way that my teenager self would: with unconscious shame and desires for perfection. This is what led to the overuse injuries that forced me away from the tennis court and back into my garden. You see I literally could not play tennis anymore. So much like an illness or getting fired… I was forced to slow down and see how far I had gone off track.

I note that Carl Jung said there is a benefit to going deep into a complex (e.g. an obsession, an addiction, bad relationship, etc). He said that the deeper one gets into a complex the more they get over it. When you take the wrong path hard enough, it can help you learn from it more, and also engage it more. You learn more about yourself. And sometimes you have to go to the extremes just to see how much in denial or traumatized you are.

What tending to our garden looks like

If we use my tennis experience, tending to the garden may mean not playing tennis for two or three months. Letting the injuries heal. Focusing on other things. And letting the body heal and returning to tennis, not to win games or have the ‘perfect’ technique on your shots, but just accepting the misses and the losses. Playing just a couple times per week and having balance in life to tend not only to the garden but also responsibilities, priorities, relationships, work, finances, etc. Balance. Not dissociation or avoidance of soul, feelings, life.

When you get fired on the other hand, it can really blow your identity and self esteem apart. It can trigger the conditional attachment we were raised with. The hurt. The trauma. IN these circumstances, tending to the garden can simply mean taking time away. Processing the grief, the loss, the shame, and how you sold yourself short just for a pay cheque, a work place, a title, an external validation. How you let that manager disrespect you, or let that thing they did ‘slide’, when in fact it was a deep violation and a public humiliation. You need compassion. Not to rush yourself to the next job and not to shame yourself if you don’t succeed at new job applications.

For busy parents, mothers and fathers, it may mean making some time for yourself. Getting up early in the morning (even at 5 am) and doing NOTHING. Not going to the gym. Not doing extra work. Just simply being. Make that cup of coffee and read the book you never read. Go for a slow walk. Do some yoga. Watch that show you never watched. This is not about the kids, your husband or wife, or anyone else. This is time just for you. DO the thing you don’t normally do. In this modern world, that simply may mean: to do no thing. NOTHING.

If you want to explore individuation, Jungian Analysis, Shadow Work, trauma healing or to repair insecure attachment, book a Free 1:1 Discovery Call with me today: https://calendly.com/harryvenicepsychology/30min

Always Believe. Stay Brave. Never Give Up.

Harry Venice

Attachment, Trauma, and Jungian Therapist

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