Crib Mobiles & Mental Health

Imagine for yourself a baby in a crib.  The baby has been crying, ready to take a nap but needs to be soothed down.  There is a mobile above the crib, right within the baby’s eyesight.  At first, the baby can only look at the mobile, not able to reach it. “What is that strange thing above me? It goes around and around and around………..” The baby is mesmerized, finally lulling to sleep to the sounds and motion of the crib mobile. Fast forward a couple of months. The baby can see further.  He can tell the difference between the objects that are moving around. Even better--- the baby’s arms are long enough to reach the objects. To his delight, he discovers his hands & fingers can reach out, touch, grab those objects! What was “unknown”, a puzzle to him just 3 months before, is now within grasp! The mother now hears the baby giggling, laughing.  She laughs along with him as he grabs one of the objects, pulls down on it, and ALL of the objects move!  They are all disrupted.  Imagine this scene playing over and over. Perhaps you have experienced this with your children. Mental health is much like this child, looking at different areas in your life that may feel unknown, out of grasp.  People may feel they have many areas to work on or are struggling in their lives to juggle.  When one focuses on all of the moving parts, it can be overwhelming. Gratefully, when one area is focused on in treatment, the other areas are affected as well (just like the mobile analogy).  It may take some time to “Grasp” an area of focus, but as we give attention to the one, the others benefit as well. People are holistic. We are many parts, all intertwined together to make a whole.  Each aspect of our lives affects the other.  While we may often consider this to be negative, it can work in our benefit.  Just as the child in the crib grows, learns, adapts, stretches to grab the mobile object, it is in our stretching and beginning to grab onto different areas in treatment that we begin to grow. I invite you to stretch!