When you’re feeling small…
When you’re feeling small, you may feel a desire to retreat or withdraw, as if the world outside is too loud, too big, too hard to connect with what you need right now. It becomes easier to hide and to confine your gaze to a small, soft space, rather than fight and stretch yourself to compete with forces louder and taller than yours. When you’re feeling small, you may see initial rejections from others as confirmations that you truly are small, echoing experiences you’re familiar with on the inside – a feeling of powerlessness, an inability to affect those around you, a belief that big-ness isn’t for you, and small-ness provides safety.
Small-ness is the antithesis of success in most adult paradigms, so in addition to the above, feeling small may also automatically invite other experiences into your present – the experience of Wrong-ness, the experience of Not good enough, the experience of being Faulty, the experience of being Inadequate. None of these align with how you’d like to feel, so it becomes easier to push all of these thoughts and sensations away when you’re feeling small – and instead, experience tension, feel cynical or blame others.
The Hidden Gift of Feeling Small.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned and want you to know – it’s that each rejected inner experience contains a hidden gift which, once unpacked, can enrich your life in ways you didn’t know you need. Feeling small, while an unpopular guest in most adults’ visions of themselves, is no different. But what if, by inviting the experience of feeling small back into you life, slowly and tenderly – you’d be able to feel less anxious and more safe, less overlooked and more appreciated, less cynical and more compassionate, less critical and more caring and cared for?
For hidden underneath the cloak of rejection feeling small often wears when we encounter it in adulthood, are these core needs we all have: wanting to feel safe, wanting to feel empowered, wanting to be appreciated as and where you are. And somehow, by recognising these needs within you, an automatic process of receiving and caring for them will unfold – along with a quieting of the anxiety that previously characterised this moment.
What do to when you’re feeling small.
Next time you’re feeling small – instead of scolding yourself or losing yourself in thoughts of despair or self-comparison, allow yourself to reconnect with the vulnerable, soft and tender experience of smallness experienced within you in that moment.
An image that may help you, adapted from Amanda Owen’s book The Power of Receiving, is to think of the experience of feeling small as a new and unknown guest at a party you’re organizing in its honour.
What does your experience of ‘feeling small’ look like, as a guest?
What does it need to feel comfortable and welcome?
How does the mood at the party change, once this guest has settled in?
Close your eyes, imagine the party, just for a few minutes and sit with these questions. You may feel a shift in energy, at some point. You may experience this as a shudder, a release in tension somewhere, or something else. When it feels ready, allow your guest to leave your party – and return to your present.
Wishing you tenderness, safety and care – and the experience that, this part of you, too, is valuable…
