I spent the morning walking in the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. It’s a museum of spiky spiny plants of all shapes and sizes: Saguaro, Prickly Pear, Organ Pipe, Golden Barrel. These are plants you would think twice about touching. These aren’t plants you want to hug, or you want to hold. They scream: Survival! Back away! Not too close!

These are plants that guard their limited resources with all they have. They are the poster children for protection—for defenses. These particular plants developed to survive in this particular environment over the course of time. Their protections are called ‘adaptations.’ Most cacti gave up true leaves, trading soft leaves for hard spikes—the better to protect themselves from water loss and protect themselves from being eaten. And while the 104-degree heat had me searching for shade and water—these plants are succulents—able to hold water inside their flesh, bracing at drought. Cacti are beautiful, sculptural—they are protection or defense made art—made beauty.

And then I begin to think of our human protections: isolation, shutting down, aggression, cynicism, avoidance, mistrust—I think about all the ways people who have been hurt try to keep themselves safe—especially safe from the intrusions or judgments or disappointments of other people. I’ve worked with and known plenty of people who also grew up in deserts—emotional deserts—and they too had prickly, spiky personalities—designed to conserve any resource they had—and keep anyone from getting too close. Their words and behavior had sharp edges to them—and these sharp edges gave them protected space. These protections were also created in particular environments over the course of time. These protections were also ‘adaptations.’

Until today I had never pondered protections as beauty: maybe it takes seeing cacti in their natural habitat—and not in some airless cacti room in a greenhouse. Seeing them against the bright blue sky. Maybe it takes seeing them in bloom in great numbers—all prickly and beautiful near one another. But mostly I think it takes slowing down and getting to look at them over the course of hours. Getting to notice the shapes, sizes, colors and differences among them. Being in their elements of dry land and oppressive heat where they looked happy and I doubted my ability to last long. Being in their element allowed me to appreciate their protections—protections for the environment we were in—protections I didn’t share.

The problem with most human defenses is that we don’t see them in the environment that created them. We see them in different contexts—often years later—where the old defense no longer makes sense. We see the Golden Barrel cactus trying to make it in an English perennial border. It’s spikes looking unnecessary in the temperate weather—and awfully aggressive compared to the geranium or petunia next to it.

Where are your soft easy leaves? Why are you turning pale with all that water and nourishment?

I’ve often explained that the trauma that most people experience is repeated relational trauma: the trauma of child abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, racial violence, war. These are the harsh, desert conditions that have people develop their protections and defenses. And repeated trauma is really three forms of trauma: what did happen (the traumatic events that happened); what aided survival (the protections and defenses you use to survive trauma) and what didn’t happen (the growth and development that doesn’t happen while trauma is occurring.

And the reason that healing from trauma is so difficult—is that our culture loves to focus on the first form of trauma—what did happen. We are a culture obsessed with trauma stories—believing that the story alone is the cure.

And the story of your trauma is necessary for healing, but it is not sufficient. Because you also have to sort through the protections you created to survive and decide what is still serving you and what is getting in your way. And once your protections are more adaptive to the present—you can begin to work on the growth and development you missed while the trauma was happening.

Working with your protections is the core of healing and working with your protections is really hard. It’s hard to give up your spikes. It’s hard to stop seeing the world through the lens of deprivation. Working with your protection is the slow, repetitive, tedious part of healing, It takes a long time. And it both wildly underestimated and under-celebrated.

In many ways shifting your protections to match the garden that you are in is exactly what healing from trauma is: gradually letting go of your spikes. Letting yourself grow leaves. It’s true that I have appreciated that defenses are useful. Indeed we can’t live without any—they are crucial for our mental health. But today I understood how much you have to appreciate the protections first. How much you need to see them in context —how much you also need to seen in them their beauty.