The image of a bug enjoying a walk in the forest. It was a very difficult image to capture especially due to the dark background and of course the bug was happily walking along minding its own business.
Sometimes it feels the same for us as well. As humans walking around, minding our own business and all of a sudden the lights go on, we are in the spotlight expected to perform. In my day job, I work with a lot of clients who would like to be in the spotlight but at the same time struggle when the attention is all on them.
There’s difficulty with being in the spotlight and it can be for number of reasons. The most prevalent one of all, is how we grew up as children.
Many parents are of the belief that children can get on with it, and some parents think that children require minimal fuss, minimal intervention, minimal attention and they will be fine. In actual fact dependent on how often our parent picked us up when we were in distress as a baby, dependent on how much our main caregiver showed positive emotions when he or she interacted with us, whether our bottom was changed at regular intervals, whether we were fed when we were hungry, cuddled when we were perhaps frightened or just generally smiled at by our caregiver, is how as adults, we encode the world.
It’s interesting how we go about in the world as adults minding your own business of course, but actually the child within is who’s actually interacting with the world. Have you ever noticed certain situations making you’re comfortable and you did not know why? Have you noticed that perhaps when you’re a bit cold you just cannot get warm enough? Have you noticed that perhaps there’s an insatiable hunger that you could never quench? Have you noticed how sometimes a hug can be too much or not enough? Have you noticed being in the spotlight it’s not OK but not seen is not OK either. Many of these difficulties and feelings of being uncomfortable can actually be traced back to how your main caregivers were interacting with you.
So what does our interaction with the world at large got to do with the bug on the floor of the forest? I guess we are almost like little creatures walking around on the floor of the forest called the world and sometimes we go right and sometimes we go left and sometimes we get lost. And there are moments when we get lost, and the world becomes that much larger, it becomes that much more frightening or it can become paradise. The way we see the world is unique to how we experienced the world in the very first years of our existence. The adult of today it is the child of yesterday and perhaps it is time to write a letter to that child and explain that the world perhaps is different to how it imagined it and perhaps the world is OK.
If there was any advice that you would give your baby self, what would it be? How would you make your baby self feel safe in the world? What do you think your baby self would need to know for he or she to feel safe? Perhaps it is time to let your baby self know the answers, so that the adult can roam the world in safety.
As always join in the conversation in a comment, or journal your thoughts. We are ready to evolve, join us on the journey of discovery.
