{"id":969,"date":"2018-06-18T16:01:27","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T15:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.radicallyopen.test\/?p=969"},"modified":"2018-06-18T16:01:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T15:01:27","slug":"bitterness-revenge-and-fox-gloves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/bitterness-revenge-and-fox-gloves\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitterness, revenge and fox gloves"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the major themes that is covered in RO DBT is that of bitterness.\u00a0 If you say the word out loud, it can sound like it tastes \u2013 harsh.\u00a0 When I say the word out loud, my lip inadvertently curls into a contemptuous social signal.\u00a0 It\u2019s like bitterness and contempt walk hand in hand.\u00a0 For many of our OC clients, bitterness can look like holding grudges \u2013 sometimes for years \u2013 or quiet thwarting of rivals\u2019 progress.\u00a0 For anyone who has attended an RO DBT intensive, Thomas Lynch shares the story of an early client who was so bitterly envious of his neighbour\u2019s roses that he walked along his fence tossing over \u201cspecial ice cubes\u201d (read: water and weed killer) and feigned amazement when the neighbour could not figure out what he had done wrong tending his precious new hobby.\u00a0 I, too, am OC and no stranger to bitterness.\u00a0 I, too, also have a gardening story but this involved growing things in the garden and not killing them.<\/p>\n

Many years ago, my partner and I had the opportunity to re-landscape our front yard. \u00a0My partner is a gardener by trade and I am not – I generally like to stand around in the garden drinking beer and holding a rake so the neighbours think I am helpful.\u00a0 My partner had laboriously removed the poppies and fox gloves that had snuck in via a blanket of compost; most had been eradicated over the season and had been unceremoniously laid out to dry in the late summer sun that hit the garden refuse pile.\u00a0 Now, there was some passionate conversation about these poppies and fox gloves.\u00a0 I pleaded to keep the poppies because they reminded me of a very special place in Canada (Lake Louise) and the fox gloves, well, they just look cool and remind me of Shakespeare for some reason.\u00a0 My partner, on the other hand, insisted that due to their propensity for propagation should go, for good.<\/p>\n

I was quite upset about this, after all, I was told that I had input into \u201cour\u201d garden. Despite having zero gardening expertise, I wanted to get my way, and was pig headed about her ideas which were based on 25 years professional experience. \u00a0So I waited until she went away for a weekend several weeks later.\u00a0 I collected the dried poppy heads and fox glove carcasses, poured myself a glass of beer and hit the yard.\u00a0 It is actually amazing how many hundreds of seeds \u201cfall\u201d out of the dried flower heads and I merrily decorated the yard until both glass and pods were empty.\u00a0 I then put the dried stalks back on the refuse pile, in approximate order of where they had been prior to my partner\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n

Now, like many of my OC clients, I had to wait quite a bit for my revenge to become apparent.\u00a0 After all, these were not Jack\u2019s beans I planted and a bean stalk would not grow overnight.\u00a0 The next spring we were surveying where to plant the veggies and where to move the garlic, when she leaned down and said \u201chuh, that is crazy, there is a poppy growing here!\u201d\u00a0 I feigned ignorance, stating in my most expert gardener voice: \u201cI understand they are quite aggressive and prolific.\u201d\u00a0 She looked sideways at me as I clutched my rake.\u00a0 \u201cSo annoying, I was sure <\/em>I managed to get them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Needless to say, the poppies and fox gloves grew everywhere, dominating the precious real estate for the strawberries and annexing the peas.\u00a0 My partner\u2019s anxiety regarding this take over was a bit much for me to handle, and I finally came clean about my seed party when she was away.\u00a0 So while my revenge was a relatively short wait, her revenge was sweeter; I am still weeding those poppies and foxgloves 8 years later.<\/p>\n

\n


\n<\/em><\/strong>\"\"About the author:\u00a0J. Nicole Little, Ph.D., R.C.C.<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Nicole is a therapist specializing in eating disorders and other conditions of overcontrol in Victoria, B.C., Canada.\u00a0 She has also taught for 13 years at Universities and colleges. Her passions are RO DBT and animal assisted therapy.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the major themes that is covered in RO DBT is that of bitterness.\u00a0 If you say the word out loud, it can sound like it tastes \u2013 harsh.\u00a0 When I say the word out loud, my lip inadvertently curls into a contemptuous social signal.\u00a0 It\u2019s like bitterness and contempt walk hand in hand.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}