Wrap Your World in a Blanket
Is it your job to save the world? It can seem like it.
Everything from pollution to injustices to culture wars can gnaw at the tenderness in your heart and call up righteous indignation. The harsh realities of these problems are hard to escape. They are in your face round the clock on all types of media. And they may even be at your own doorstep, affecting your everyday life.
Feeling Like Too Much To Manage?
Don’t you just wish sometimes that you could wrap the world in a blanket and make it all better?
Too often though, this drive to cure the problems of the world can feel like an overwhelming burden. You may feel disheartened, frightened, and even paralyzed. You may feel at a loss: How can I manage?!
How indeed can you keep yourself – and the world -- together when everything around you seems to be falling apart?
When you’re at your best, you know exactly what to do. You check out relevant information. You work with other people on causes you care about. You take action, drawing on your highest capacities.
But in the days -- or weeks or months -- when it all feels like too much to manage, what then?
Try a Little Tenderness
Maybe that’s the time to wrap yourself in a blanket -- to tend to the well-being of your inner child. As children, most of us missed out on some of the essential guidance and care we needed to become confident, competent adults. We carry the residual effects of this psychic wounding into adulthood.
Perhaps as a child, you were expected to “save the world” by making your parents happy (when they weren’t) or in other ways by rescuing people in trouble. Perhaps you were ridiculed, called stupid, or told some other lie that left your psyche wounded. As the troubles of the world mount around us, they can activate remnant feelings of unworthiness and powerlessness in your wounded child. You can feel lost, lacking confidence.
These difficult feelings of your inner child show up as sensations in your body – perhaps as tension, sleeplessness, or digestive problems, and almost always as a sense of fight-flight-or-freeze.
What does your inner child want? Attention and care. If you neglect the pleas of this child within you, they will get more pronounced. Also, a child in this needy state won’t be much good at saving the world. First things first.
Here are some ways you can “wrap a blanket” around your inner child:
Rock back and forth or side to side. Rocking soothes your nervous system.
Ask the child part of you what she is feeling and wanting.Offer words that convey you are listening: “I can imagine how scared you feel. That must be hard.”
Dance or use other movements, first as the child expressing herself, then as the grown-up you expressing your understanding and love for her.
Use crayons or other artistic tools in a similar way.
Literally wrap your body in a blanket, or put your hands on your heart, or use gentle touch on your body wherever it feels good.
Once your inner child feels heard and cared for, give her some time to “play” -- to renew herself and connect with her creative, confident, courageous resilience.
When you eventually return your attention to the big societal problems that concern you, your body, mind, and spirit, you will feel more at ease. You will have greater readiness and range to address them. You will be able to wrap a blanket around the world.