Reparent Yourself

A term we often see get thrown around the spiritual/healing/psychological circles is Reparenting. But just what is reparenting? This week in Deeper Thoughts let’s take a look at what reparenting is and some examples of what it can look like.

To simplify, reparenting is the process of providing yourself the unmet needs you had as a child. These unmet needs are the source of many if not all of our childhood trauma that cause fragmentation within us. Keep in mind that not all trauma is intense and earth shattering like we tend to believe. Trauma isn’t just physical/sexual abuse, extreme injury, or loss. While those things are traumatic for sure, there are other traumas society as a whole doesn’t see as “traumatic.” Things like shaming, removal of affection/cold shoulder, being ignored, being invalidated, etc. Most if not all of these things are done to us by our primary caregivers when we’re children in our formative years.

Terry had a helicopter mother who was always hovering over him as a child. She was constantly following him around to make sure he didn’t get hurt when he was little. She wouldn’t let him go too high on the swing, wouldn’t let him get on the monkey bars, and she even wouldn’t take him to swimming lessons because she didn’t trust any instructors with her child.

As he got older, Terry’s mother steered him away from contact sports like football, basketball, and especially martial arts like jiu jitsu and boxing. When it was time to start applying to colleges, his mother pushed him into looking into local colleges instead of ones that were farther off because it was so “dangerous” to be so far away from home. All of this interference cultured a lack of confidence in Terry. It made him resistant to taking risks in his adult life. He fears trying out for that new career, or even a better job in the same career he doesn’t like. Not a chance he’d try starting his own business. He continues to rent because in his mind if something goes wrong at home his landlord is responsible for fixing whatever it is, but if he bought his own house then he’s responsible for figuring out how to make repairs or pay for them himself.

While as a child Terry’s mother didn’t encourage any risky behavior that could instill confidence within himself, he can reparent himself in a manner that can do this for himself. He can encourage himself to take small steps outside of his comfort zone. As an adult he can take those martial arts classes he wanted to when he was a child. This will get him in better shape, allow him to better defend himself in an emergency, teach him better discipline, and increase his confidence in himself. When he does start taking risks that don’t work out the way he hoped he can sit with himself and instead of focusing on what went wrong and drilling that into his subconscious he instead and look at what could have been done differently that would have led to success and take that as a lesson to apply later on down the road. Over time he can nurture his own inner child and give himself the encouragement he needed then to take risks and build confidence that his mother never did.

Sarah grew up in a family where her boundaries were invalidated. Her mother made her wear clothes Sarah didn’t like, but her mother thought “looked pretty,” and in an attempt to spend more time with her Sarah’s father took her fishing with him often even though she hated fishing. She didn’t get along with her cousin at all, but was forced to spend many weekends with her, and when she would complain, Sarah’s parents would guilt trip her into spending time with her cousin. When she would confront her mother about snooping through her things, like her diary, her mother would shame her for keeping secrets. When she voiced concerns about family friends she didn’t feel safe around her parents would gaslight her and say she was overreacting and worrying about things that weren’t true, and that these friends of theirs were perfectly safe to be around, even if in reality they weren’t.

The result of this boundary invalidation turned into, as an adult, Sarah neglected her own boundaries, constantly caving into peer pressure. She would let friends drag her along to parties that she didn’t want to go to, won’t stand up for herself at work and allows her boss and coworkers to walk all over her and make her do the hardest, most time consuming tasks, and stays in relationships that are abusive emotionally as well as even physically.

What Sarah can do as an adult is reparent herself to start asserting those boundaries. She can start taking steps to saying no to things she doesn’t like or want to do, such as saying no when her friends want to go to the bar on a week night and she has to be up early the next day. She can take this a step further and start saying no to things without giving an excuse, which allows room for those people to try and wiggle through this boundary.

This can look like saying, “No thank you, I don’t feel like going out tonight,” and staying firm in that statement with her friends. Or for example at work when a coworker tries passing along an extra task to her Sarah can say, “Unfortunately, I’m already working on ‘X,Y,Z.’” Over time this builds up her resilience to asserting her boundaries as she becomes more comfortable with saying no.

While these are only two examples, there are limitless ways you can reparent yourself. You need to sit with what you’re feeling in the moment about a situation and understand what you needed as a child and find healthy ways to nurture and meet those needs as an adult. Sitting with that pain to understand those needs is uncomfortable, but the more you’re able to reparent your own inner child, your outer adult can begin to thrive, instead of just survive.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you have an enlightening day.