How are you Feeling?

When asked this everyday question, do you respond, "Fine" ? Most people do. But Dr. Anita Phillips in her book, “The Garden Within” Where the War with your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins explores how you really feel.

When this book first came across my radar last Spring, I have to admit I was skeptical. “Your most powerful life” is not the kind of self-help book I would pick up off the shelf. ‘War with emotions’ that’s not my problem. I do love gardening and the book was suggested by my Zoom reading group that focuses on faith, so I reluctantly agreed.

And let me tell you, this book is blowing my rational mind.

It’s helping me to pay attention to feelings: the kind of attention I paid when I was fourteen and inspired to write poetry while walking in the rain.

You see, Dr. Phillips is a trauma psychiatrist that has found herself uniquely positioned between the world of Christian religion and secular counseling. She grew up in a household where the sister she shared a room with suffered from mental illness. Few resources were available to treat mental health back then. Though raised in a devout family, they were not able to offer her sister much that helped her. This led Dr. Phillips on a lifelong journey to get answers.

Not a gardener by choice, she had just enough rudimentary experience germinating a bean seed in fifth grade and watching it develop to make a connection as an adult pursuing her Masters and studying the building block of the nervous system. She writes: “I was a serious student hoping to ultimately pursue public health research. It’s one thing to study spirituality generally as a path to meaning and connection. It’s a whole other thing to start applying spiritual information to neurons! I would risk being dismissed by the academic and professional communities I so wanted to be a part of. But I was staring at a neuron – the basic building block of the mind – alongside Scripture and a plant” (see page 7 below). “What might I find out if I choose to believe that I really am seeing a God-thing?”

With her discovery that seedlings look almost exactly like neurons, Dr. Phillips then chose to question what other complex similarities might exist between the wellness of a plant and that of a person. If, like a plant, the soil is critical to growth, could it be that the “heart” grounds the mind and holds the seeds (thoughts and words) that come in contact with a person?

She first had to deconstruct the Western understanding that the mind is at the center of a person– often seen as an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other – both competing for attention. This trope can be traced all the way back to ancient Greece, and the belief that people have divided souls. In Plato’s Phaedrus, he provides a vivid metaphor of the human soul as a charioteer driven by two winged horses, one of noble breed, represented by a white horse and one of common breed, represented by a dark horse. Rationality is key to not going all “pure” or all “dark.” And that makes sense, but the take-away is that the rational mind rules the day and takes precedence over emotion.

Many of us were raised this way: “mind over matter,” “suck it up,” “don’t get your panties in a wad.” And I have consciously or unconsciously agreed. Mental strength is admirable; desirable even. But we human beings do not simply perceive information through our minds. Through her research and counseling experience, Dr. Phillips presents a different approach in this 3-Part book. She holds that to dismiss your heart and only listen to reason is to cast yourself in a battle. “The creator designed your heart to be a garden, not a war zone,” she states. “A truly powerful life isn’t won. It’s cultivated. This book will take you on that journey.”

In the first section, she compares the importance of soil in the garden to the heart. She draws analogies to the various “conditions” much like the parable of the “seed” in the book of Matthew (stony, thorny or good). But think about it? If words and thoughts are seeds, can you see how you feel about being told something like – ‘you’re fat’ - will grow into a plant and eventually the fruit of your life? Rational or not, we are more than what we think. We are complex systems, not unlike the roots of trees. Much of how healthy (emotionally, spiritually, physically) we are depends on understanding how we feel. And how that effects our decisions.

Here’s an interesting exercise she asks you to do in Ch. 5: How Does Your Garden Grow:

Think about a time you recently got (mildly) upset. How did it feel? Where (in your body) did you experience it? What did you do or feel like doing?

After reading that I felt kinda proud I hadn’t had any recent upsetting events. Then a friend texted and canceled our plans abruptly. Let’s just say, it gave me a chance to process my feelings. For me ‘rejection’ at first leads to a conversation in my head where I say how “wrong” the other person is. It quickly turns into counter-rejection in my heart. Without even consciously processing it, my physical body will go into protect mode. I don't want to feel bad, so I think of something to do that will make me feel better. In this case, I made a tee time.

It's not bad or wrong to make a tee time when your schedule gets suddenly freed up, but having just read about the consequences of anger (which she deals with much more deeply later in the book), I let myself feel the sadness, then let it go. (And played 9 holes without dwelling on the other person.)

In that same section, she asks the same thing about a pleasant or joyful experience. Again, I was challenged, feeling like I am generally “joyful.” So I had to make a conscious decision to ask myself why and what contributes to that. The next day I was driving our new/old jeep to Boot Camp with the doors off, the wind blowing through my hair and some 80s music blaring, when I realized: I feel great. This makes me happy. Simple things, for me, are really the best joy-producers. I shared that with my husband and he’s of the same mind. He loves driving the jeep (don’t ask me why we waited 35 years to get one…) As easy as it sounds to do, you have to think about how you feel. And thinking about it can help connect random dots. It allows you to feel again. Sometimes as adults, we just go into automatic mode and we start living for other's happiness. We've learned delayed gratification to the point that we can stuff or turn-off our feelings all together.

There are other exercises sprinkled throughout the book that help address and bring awareness to situations while offering sound advice. She touches on depression, PTSD, bipolar disorders and others. She mentions various treatments and points out that people do get healed of mental illness. Ultimately, she points out that Jesus, the son of God, felt just as we do – and this makes him uniquely familiar with emotions, he embodied them. And so do we.

I will be reading this book again and again. There are so many great take-aways that I would highly recommend it, especially for gardeners and nature lovers. The analogies of our nervous system to a plant’s root and growth system tap into a holistic approach to well-being.

One of my favorite Scriptures, the one I actually came to saving faith is Proverbs 3:5. It starts with “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” This was and still is the turning point for me. Will I trust what I think or will I put my faith in God? Yes, it’s a one-time decision. But it is also a daily decision. And now, in a way that circles me back to my very first seeds of faith, when I was just a little girl, I am reminded that it is not some decision I make as the “charioteer” of my own life, but it is a feeling. It is a feeling of love that exists in and to and through me. It is a feeling of safety and place and home. It’s already in my heart, because God planted it there.

He is the Master gardener.

If you want to read more about Dr. Anita Phillips, click here.