One of my favorite little people, L, has a hedgehog named Harriet. I’d never been up close and personal with a hedgehog before, and frankly, I won’t need to have this experience often!
Hedgehogs are a lot more like porcupines than anything else.
Porcupines may have needlesharp quills, whereas hedgehogs have quills that are rather like sharpened pencils. Despite the fact that these quills don’t penetrate the skin, they are NOT cuddly creatures.
Harriet is cute though:
Taking these pictures required patience. Harriet doesn’t show her cuteness, only her prickles when she’s nervous. I’m new to her—so she was nervous…could only see her prickles for the longest time…eventually she relaxed enough for me to see her face.
I dared to touch her back (or rather, the quills 2 inches off her back) a few times…she would recoil in panic and chatter nervously. (I can’t say I was a particular fan of touching her, either though–she was a little scary to touch)
It was suggested that L that he turn Harriet over because apparently she has very soft and velvety fur on her belly. L turned her over so I could feel the soft part of Harriet. All I saw was this:
Harriet has the amazing ability to curl up so that absolutely none of that soft belly shows.
I will have to take it on faith that she has a soft furry belly because she just wasn’t going to let me see it or touch it or even know that it exists.
I snapped this picture of Harriet because I had just come from the counselling office and she reminded me of the “prickly factor” that I so often see:
When a creature is frightened, it closes up and protects its soft parts.
When a creature doesn’t trust a person or a situation, it does what it takes to be less vulnerable.
Makes sense, huh?
The challenge is, though, that I genuinely wanted to get to know Harriet. I wanted to stroke her soft belly to see what it was like—and what animal doesn’t love it? However, both of us missed out.
Harriet was safe. But we didn’t connect.
Harriet would rather be safe and possibly wrong about the level of danger, than open and possibly hurt.
I’m not sure I blame Harriet…she weighs a couple of pounds…and well, I, ahem… well…weigh considerably more. She doesn’t know if I’m safe or not…and I have the potential to really hurt her.
This is important people:
What is happening though is that Harriet is responding to me as though I am dangerous…she treats me as dangerous (even though I know I’m not).
I can handle it…Harriet is a hedgehog, and our relationship isn’t really all that meaningful to me.
However, there are Harriet’s in our lives…people who curl up and avoid showing us their tender parts, who actually look fairly prickly. They might even seem hostile—which is confusing when we actually haven’t done anything hurtful (nor intend to, either).But that doesn’t matter, because they would rather be safe and wrong, then dangerously open and vulnerable.
The Harriet’s in our lives have often been previously hurt, and they (often without even realizing it) will ensure they aren’t hurt again and will close off the soft parts, be all prickles, even if we have not done anything hurtful.
It can be confusing, but it is understandable.
It requires compassion and extra gentleness.I have this feeling that if I had tried to get to Harriet’s soft belly against her will, I would have had less success than if I had just hung around her for a while and spoken very gently and moved very softly.
That can be counterintuitive though, when we care for someone and we see them pull away—the natural thing to do is to pursue hard and force the person to open up.
Doesn’t.
Work. Well.
What can work is the soothing/calming approach.
Notice your own Harrietness…are there times when you shut out people based on previous bad experiences that they weren’t even a part of? Are there people in your life that deserve a chance …that you might want to dare open up to, even just a little, to see if it feels safe…even good? Think about it. That’s something that people sometimes come to counselling to work through.
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