Understanding How To Reparent Yourself: Where To Begin
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Reparenting is a journey of self-discovery and self-compassion. It often involves acknowledging and nurturing your inner child. You may have experienced moments in your past when your emotional needs were not met. These moments can have the potential to have a lasting impact on emotional well-being and life skills.
Whether you're seeking strategies to overcome past traumas or aiming to enhance your emotional intelligence, it can be crucial to lay the groundwork for your journey. Reparenting may not be about blaming or dwelling on the past but understanding and nurturing your inner self. It can involve giving yourself the love and care you deserve to grow into an independent and self-sustainable version of yourself.
The role of the inner child
Understanding and addressing the inner child can be a starting point in one’s growth and development into adulthood. Your initial experiences growing up can imprint your psychological makeup and be critical determinants of your thinking patterns, defense mechanisms, boundaries, and the lens through which you see the world.
The concept of the “inner child”
The concept of the “inner child” refers to an individual's childlike aspects, experiences, and memories, including everything learned and experienced as a child before puberty. This inner child carries learned patterns of behavior, one’s deepest feelings, longings, creative expressions, and experiences with trauma and joy. However, in your journey toward adulthood, you may neglect this inner child, focusing more on fitting into societal norms and expectations, potentially suppressing the truth of your inner experiences.
Reparenting yourself and addressing inner child trauma
Neglect of one’s inner child, particularly for those who have experienced childhood trauma, may have profound implications on mental and emotional health. Unaddressed emotional needs and unresolved traumas from childhood can manifest as anxiety, depression, relationship issues, and a general disconnect with one’s authentic self in adulthood. Therefore, some people may find it helpful to “reparent” themselves to revisit, understand, and nurture the wounded inner child, giving them the love, care, and attention to heal and integrate fully into their adult personality. This process may not only involve self-discovery but also self-creation and transformation.
Self-individuation and its role in self-reparenting
One of the pioneers of this type of thinking was Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung’s concept of self-individuation underscores the value of becoming a whole, unique individual, which he believed could be achieved through integrating the conscious and unconscious aspects of our psyche, including the “inner child” and other archetypes.
Self-individuation involves acknowledging and nurturing the inner child to meet its emotional needs. This process promotes self-validation, self-love, and self-acceptance, leading to an increased sense of self-worth and emotional well-being. In the context of reparenting oneself, self-individuation aligns seamlessly as it encourages individuals to become their own nurturing parent to their inner child, thus fostering healthier mental and emotional states.
Tips on how to reparent yourself
According to a study from the Journal of Developmental Psychology, healthy parent or caregiver relationships:
- Are open, empathetic, and gentle
- Include appropriate boundaries
- Involve open discussions on rules for behavior from both sides
In the study, researchers also state how healthy dynamics are associated with higher self-confidence, better academic performance, and a reduced risk of depression or substance use in children and teenagers.
The role of the caregiver
Caregiver relationships impact social, cognitive, emotional, and mental health. An unmet childhood need for unconditional love and safety may result in various adaptation mechanisms that lead to a risk of mental health symptoms. Children’s personalities and behaviors are often shaped in the early years of their lives by the caregivers who surround them at that time. Children who experience trauma may have triggers, trauma responses, and self-defense practices that persist into adulthood. Meeting with your inner child can be a way to work through these wounds.
Caring for your inner child
The concept of the “inner child” can be a powerful component in one’s mental health journey. It represents the childlike aspect within each individual, embodying one’s capacity for innocence, wonder, joy, vulnerability, and creativity. This inner child can also carry accumulated childhood hurts, traumas, fears, neglect, or thoughts of being unloved. For a holistic approach to mental health, recognizing, validating, and nurturing this inner child can be crucial.
Validate your inner child
Validating your inner child can entail acknowledging its existence and understanding its significant influence on your adult life. Your emotional reactions, habits, dreams, and fears can all be traced back to your inner child. Developing a nurturing relationship with this facet of yourself may heal past wounds, leading to healthier emotional control and a stronger sense of self-compassion.
Nurture your inner child
Nurturing the inner child can involve practicing self-care and self-discipline, setting boundaries, and offering yourself the love, acceptance, and self-compassion your inner child may have craved. For example, you might start a dialogue with your inner child by journaling or writing to them.
Consider writing in a journal and speaking directly to your inner child in whatever manner is natural for your situation. Additionally, engaging in hobbies or activities that brought you joy as a child may help your inner child surface, enabling you to reconnect with childhood's natural joys and lightness.
Create and maintain healthy boundaries
Establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries can be critical to self-reparenting and emotional control. Boundaries clearly delineate what is acceptable and what isn’t, cultivating an environment where personal values, rights, and emotional needs are respected. They aid in recognizing self-worth, setting realistic expectations, and promoting positive self-esteem. Through these well-defined limits, one may achieve a balance in interpersonal relationships while preserving one's psychological well-being.
Boundaries are essential for managing emotions and behaviors as you mature into adulthood. They represent a commitment to self-care and self-respect, reinforcing the importance of prioritizing one's needs and well-being compared to the outside world's expectations.
By setting these guidelines, individuals can empower themselves to be responsible for their lives and their experiences. Boundaries may help individuals avoid situations that may cause emotional distress or compromise their mental health. In addition, boundaries can facilitate self-soothing strategies, providing a safe space for individuals to relieve stress, reflect, and recuperate.
Address emotional trauma
Addressing emotional trauma from childhood can be a pivotal step in the self-reparenting process. Unresolved trauma, particularly resulting from experiences with your own parents, may manifest in various ways in adulthood and negatively impact one’s ability to form healthy relationships, maintain emotional stability, and meet their own emotional needs. Recognizing these past wounds, acknowledging their impact, and working actively to heal from them can be crucial for emotional freedom and wellness.
In one study, researchers conducted an extensive review of the science behind the effects of childhood trauma and its impact on mental health into adulthood. In their study, their team found a significant association between childhood trauma and neglect and the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions later in life.
Specifically, they noted that exposure to the following conditions had a substantial impact on the development of adult mental disorders:
- Bullying
- Emotional abuse
- Physical neglect
- Parental loss
- General trauma exposure
This study demonstrates that trauma can take many forms in childhood. It also highlights the importance of seeking healing and professional assistance in working toward healing the wounds that may have been inflicted in childhood. Each person’s mental health impacts based on childhood experiences can vary, which may require personalized mental health treatment plans and motivated self-inquiry to effectively address.
Identify your unique emotional needs
Understanding and catering to your unique emotional needs can be pivotal in the process of cultivating self-belief. Often, in a family setting, individual needs may be overshadowed by the family's group identity. However, each person's emotional requirements are unique and, when unmet, may lead to dissatisfaction and emotional distress. Identifying and validating your own needs separate from the family construct may be valuable to cultivate a sense of emotional wellness and authentic life satisfaction.
Talk to a professional
Therapy can play a significant role in healing and your self-discovery process. A professional therapist can provide a safe, empathetic environment to unpack past traumas, delve into personal emotional requirements, and develop effective self-soothing strategies. Therapists can guide individuals through the process of self-reparenting, enabling them to build a nurturing internal environment and foster a healthier relationship with themselves.
Learn how to reparent yourself with online therapy
For individuals who may experience anxiety, depression, or apprehension in confronting emotions relating to their childhood, online therapy through a platform like BetterHelp may offer a more approachable manner for participating in therapy. Online therapy enables individuals to interact with a licensed therapist from their homes, providing an opportunity to engage in the healing process safely and comfortably.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) can be a highly effective, evidence-based form of treatment for various mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With the advent of technology, online CBT has emerged as a viable alternative to traditional face-to-face therapy sessions.
Research has demonstrated that online CBT is as effective as its in-person counterpart. In one study, researchers looked into the efficacy of online CBT compared to in-person sessions. They found that it was able to provide significant relief for conditions such as depression and anxiety related to childhood traumas.
Takeaway
If you’re struggling, seeking support on your journey may be advantageous. Professional therapists can guide you through this process and provide compassionate guidance on your unique healing journey. You are capable and deserving of love, understanding, and compassion, especially from yourself.
What does it mean to reparent yourself?
The idea behind “reparenting yourself” is to give yourself the emotional support, positive self-talk, and guidance that you may have needed but not fully gotten when you were a child. Even if you had a relatively easy childhood, you may still have had unmet needs that you carried with you into adulthood—such as a need for self-trust or self-acceptance. By treating yourself the way a loving parent would, you may be able to learn new skills, such as better emotional regulation, and address lingering pain from childhood.
Where can I find support while reparenting myself?
Because reparenting is a therapeutic technique, you may find it helpful to consult a therapist if you’re looking for support on your reparenting journey. If you’re reparenting yourself as part of a treatment plan for a specific mental health challenge, finding a support group in your community may also help you connect with others who have had similar experiences.
What is an inner child?
The inner child is a psychological term for the aspects of you that are influenced by your childhood experiences. It can help to think of the inner child as a “younger self” that still exists in your subconscious mind and remembers all the vulnerabilities and challenges you faced as a child. For instance, if as a child you were always taught that emotions were a sign of weakness, your adult self might feel shame when you cry or get angry. This is an example of how your inner child might carry a wound that lasts into adulthood.
How do I meet my inner child’s emotional needs as an adult?
Learning to meet your inner child’s needs as an adult can be a key aspect of the reparenting process. By connecting with your inner child and treating them like a supportive and loving parent would, you may be able to break free of unhealthy patterns and negative self-talk. To start nurturing your inner child, consider the following steps:
- Recognize that you may still be holding onto fears, wounds, and unmet needs from when you were little.
- Notice moments of vulnerability, fear, insecurity, or other strong negative emotions that come up in your daily life.
- Ask yourself what those moments might be telling you about your unmet emotional needs. For example, if you often people-please or avoid conflict, that may be a sign that your inner child doesn’t feel safe to assert themselves or express negative emotions. Perhaps as a child you were given the message that you weren’t allowed to speak up for yourself.
- Give yourself what you need by talking to yourself like a loving parent would. For example, you might remind yourself, “It’s okay to get upset. Standing up for yourself doesn’t make you less worthy of love.”
- Work to change your daily behaviors and reactions based on the new self-talk you’ve been practicing. This might look like setting boundaries, trusting yourself to make decisions, or giving yourself permission to express what you’re feeling.
- Consider talking to a mental health professional for guidance through this process.
How to begin reparenting yourself?
Reparenting can be a transformative journey toward inner strength, improved self-esteem, and healthier relationships. If you’d like to start reparenting yourself but aren’t sure where to begin, the following tips may help:
- Develop a sense of curiosity about your feelings—especially feelings of self-doubt, fear, and insecurity.
- Reflect on your early life and think about any needs you had as a child that weren’t met. Consider how these unmet needs might be affecting your thoughts and reactions as an adult.
- Practice talking to yourself the way a loving parent would talk to a child, especially in moments of distress.
- Consider taking up journaling or meditation to build greater self-awareness and better understand the needs of your inner child.
- Remember that reparenting yourself is a process, not a quick fix.
- Consider seeking professional support to enhance the benefits of reparenting.
What are the four pillars of reparenting?
Reparenting typically includes four main pillars:
- Discipline: The practice of boundary-setting, routine-building, and learning self-control
- Joy: The process of reconnecting with your sense of playfulness, happiness, wonder, and creativity
- Emotional regulation: The practice of identifying and understanding your emotions (and learning to manage them and express them in healthy ways)
- Self-care: Caring for your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing through intentional daily habits
What is an example of reparenting?
One example of reparenting is learning emotional expression. If you grew up being told, explicitly or subconsciously, that your emotions didn’t matter, then you might struggle to express what you feel in adulthood. You might intentionally silence yourself, hold back from voicing your needs, or avoid speaking up when someone violates your boundaries. In this example, reparenting yourself might include:
- Acknowledging that you have an unmet need (permission to express yourself) that you’ve carried with you from childhood
- Noticing when you’re silencing your emotions
- Encouraging yourself to express what you’re feeling during challenging moments, the way a supportive parent would
- Learning how to set and enforce appropriate boundaries, either on your own or with the help of a therapist
- Shifting your self-talk from “My feelings aren’t worth bringing up” to “I deserve to express myself and be honest about what I’m feeling”
These are a few examples of what reparenting might look like in this scenario. However, this process could look different depending on your needs and the recommendations of your therapist.
How do therapists reparent?
While some people might use reparenting strategies on themselves, reparenting is traditionally used in a patient-therapist relationship to help clients heal their inner child. While specific methods may vary, the reparenting approach used by therapists often includes:
- Analyzing patients’ fears, anxieties, and traumas to understand the role their childhood experiences played in shaping them
- Identifying and correcting childhood beliefs that may be affecting patients’ present-day lives
- Teaching patients to manage their emotions, soothe themselves, set healthy boundaries, and accept themselves as a loving parent would
Traditional reparenting involves a therapist regressing the patient to a more “child-like” state and taking on the role of a surrogate parent. While this practice may help patients reframe their childhood experiences, it is controversial and less widely used than the techniques above.
How do I open up to my parents?
If you’re working on reparenting yourself, you may have already identified moments in your childhood when your parents didn’t fully meet your needs. If these moments have affected you in adulthood, you may wonder how to discuss them with your parents. Some tips for approaching this conversation include:
- Reflect on the goal of the conversation, such as forgiveness, resolution, self-expression, or boundary-setting.
- Use “I feel” statements, rather than making accusations or assigning blame.
- Explain the reparenting process you’ve been going through and elaborate on why you’re doing it.
- Use communication strategies like active listening to create a dialogue.
- Listen to your therapist’s recommendations (if applicable).
How can I practice being a parent?
If you’ve previously had to go through the process of reparenting yourself, practicing healthy parenting can help you set your own adult children up for better social and emotional wellness. Whether you already have children or you’re planning to have them in the future, the following practices may help you become a more conscious, nurturing parent:
- Work on reparenting yourself, either on your own or with a therapist, to address any old wounds or past trauma.
- Educate yourself on attachment styles and research how to help your child develop a healthy sense of attachment.
- Rehearse common challenging scenarios in parenting and practice handling them with empathy and awareness.
- Get in the habit of taking responsibility for your own needs, rather than relying on others (like your children).
- Research common parenting pitfalls that can contribute to low self-worth, unhealthy relationships, and other emotional challenges, and make a plan to avoid them.
- Practice journaling, mindfulness, or grounding, especially in moments of stress.
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