How to Reparent Yourself: A Starter Guide for Inner Child Healing
What is Reparenting? How Reparenting Helps to Resolve Unmet Childhood Needs and Repair Relationships…
Reparenting is simply learning to love and to meet the unmet needs of our inner child in the present. As such, it is particularly supportive for the process of inner child healing. Our inner child is the psychological part of ourselves, that is holding on to negative emotions as a result of what took place when we were young (especially below the age of 7 years old). Because love, guidance and support could be missing in our younger years, we endeavour to fulfill any unresolved needs now through reparenting.
For this article, I am describing how we can personally reparent the younger part of ourselves. In the past, reparenting is often referred to as a form of healing where the psychotherapist assumes the role of a surrogate parent in order to address any trauma arising from abusive or defective parenting. However, there is more than one way to self-parenting as practised by therapists today. I’d like to adopt the perspective that the ultimate responsibility for healing our inner child lies with us, even though we could be having a therapist or mental health practitioner for guidance.
What Led Me to Learning About Reparenting
For many years, I had not realised how childhood emotional neglect and not having my feelings acknowledged can have an impact on one’s confidence and self-esteem. Not knowing any better, my attempts on addressing any deep insecurity were made mainly via external means. I tried to put myself out there, joined many social activities and challenged myself to move out of my discomfort zone. Yet, on the inside, the feelings of unworthiness and repressed emotions didn’t quite dissipate.
In my journey to get out of the miserable state I was in, I found out that the answers lie in healing. Over the years, I worked on peeling through the emotional layers that were buried deep. My healing journey shifted to the next level when I discovered the benefits of reparenting. Reparenting helped me to grow even more in acceptance, confidence and compassion. The result is increased emotional resilience and improved well-being.
Let’s consider this: Since we can’t change the past of how we were parented, the best that we can do now is to reparent our inner child. When we choose to do so, we are taking responsibility. We release any blame targeted at our parents and instead, direct our attention to healing ourselves. With reparenting, we are connecting with our inner child with assurance, care, and guidance.
How Childhood Experiences Can Adversely Affect Us
As children, we don’t just need food, cloth and shelter. Most importantly, we need love and support. Also, we look to our parents and caregivers for guidance on important life skills. Even if they don’t consciously teach us, they are our role models in terms of managing emotions, how to treat ourselves with love and kindness, make decisions, conflict resolution and so on. Our parents are models for unconditional love and what healthy relationships look like.
In reality, we don’t all have the perfect childhood. Our parents might have emotionally neglected us by being mostly absent, for instance. Thus, we were left to fend for ourselves or forced to grow up quickly. Or it could be that they were not expressive and failed to acknowledge our feelings. As we know now, any absence of emotional connection can impair the healthy growth and development of a child.
When we misbehaved as children, we could have been disciplined. If the punishment meted out was repeatedly and excessively harsh, it wasn’t just the physical pain that we went through. Emotionally, there was one conclusion that we drew: I am unlovable!
One client I know was whipped by her dad with a rattan cane whenever she was deemed to be a naughty child, even though she tried her best to keep out of his way. Another client was often told that she would amount to nothing if she failed her exams. A third client would end up with bruises from being punished for her disobedience.
For the most part, our parents were not perfect models. They could have come from broken homes, suffered from abuse or had addiction problems. Even if they didn’t come from dysfunctional backgrounds, they might not have the proper guidance or great role models when they were children themselves. As a result, they weren’t fully equipped nor have the resources to become better parents. They parented us in the only way they knew how.
So it is that we grew up and not having adequate support, safety and assurance. If our parents were hardly around for us, we have fewer opportunities to develop trust. The result is that we grew up feeling rather insecure.
Many clients reported to feeling numbed but as soon as they were willing to dive deep, they described sensing a gaping hole in the heart. The hole is waiting to be filled. Not surprisingly, experiencing a lack on the inside can drive them to look for ways to fill the gap; such as entering into relationships with partners and hoping that others would complete them. It is how insecure attachment styles are developed, creating problems in their relationships today.
Reparenting Yourself with Love
Indeed, if we are to grow to be healthy adults, we need to learn important social and emotional skills and have the opportunities to practice them. At the core, what we need is love and we will need to find ways to address the lack. Fortunately, the answer lies in reparenting. In fact, as I’ve discovered…
Reparenting is an essential component of a healthy self-love practice.
It happens when we no longer look to others for love and approval by filling the gaps ourselves. Thus, we are likely to be less emotionally triggered by others. Our decisions are driven less by the fear of rejection, neglect, or abandonment. We become more empowered to make wiser choices.
How to Start Reparenting Yourself
Start by giving your inner child the love that she or he needs. You can also practice the butterfly hug for this. Additionally, imagine how an ideal parent-child relationship is like and put yourself in the shoes of the parent for connecting with and guiding your inner child. If you are attending to her or his needs, you are essentially also taking care of your adult self.
Many of our issues today are rooted in childhood. When we heal our inner child, we potentially heal the adult in us. Through reparenting, we heal from the inside-out.
Some ideas of what reparenting could look like…
- Attend to your inner child’s needs for safety by calmly assuring him/her.
- Embrace your inner child for all her imperfections, mistakes and flaws.
- Acknowledge your inner child’s feelings and how sometimes it is okay not to feel okay.
- Commit to being there for your inner child, so that he or she knows that you will always be present.
- Set healthy limits for your inner child and develop positive habits.
- Give your inner child the permission to have fun.
- Let your inner child know that it is okay to be curious and explore.
- Celebrate every progress, wins and accomplishments.
- Guide your inner child in setting healthy boundaries.
- Give your inner child encouragement and engage in positive self-talk.
Hence, draw up a set of guidelines that you wish to instil for reparenting.
If I miss out on something that you believe is essential for healthy and conscious reparenting, feel free to let me know below. I’d be glad to read what you have.
Reparent Yourself for Improved Relationships
Reparenting is to act as a caregiver to yourself and meeting your unmet childhood needs in the now. Fortunately, even though we are now adults, we can still rewrite our past through reparenting. As I have discovered by working with others, reparenting aids in the recovery process. Through using an inside-out approach, we experience a change in our life situation with improved confidence, resilience and strength.
Most importantly, reparenting helps us to nurture a better relationship with ourselves. A healthy and loving relationship on the inside also helps us to improve the relationships we have with others; be it our loved ones, with money or our business. Indeed, reparenting ourselves leads us to becoming better parents for our kids.
By repairing the relationship we have with our inner child through reparenting, the benefits we reap spills over to future generations.
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