It might be time to ‘reparent’ yourself. Here’s how to get started

Imagine your dad was a bully. If so, when you were a child, he might have withheld affection and warmth and been quick to be critical if things didn’t go his way. As an adult, you would find yourself being a people pleaser with the men in your life –– afraid to be rejected and emotionally abandoned. The hurt as a child and the impacts carried into adulthood are a good example of when it might be time for some reparenting, said Nicole Johnson, a licensed professional counselor in Boise, Idaho. “So many of us are walking around with childhood wounds that are influencing our relationships, our choices and how we cope and deal with life, and we just haven’t made that connection yet,” she added. That’s where reparenting comes in. You might think it sounds like self-indulgence or an excuse to buy the doll you wanted when you were younger, but reparenting is a therapeutic technique that might help you save yourself and future generations from a lot of pain. People tend to treat themselves and their emotions the way they were treated by their parents, Johnson said. Reparenting is relearning how to respond to yourself better. “Reparenting is a process where you learn how to identify where you need to be raised, where you need to grow yourself up,” she added. “This is cultivating and implementing tools and new beliefs and perspectives for how you’re treating yourself now.” The tools and beliefs are worth the work, said Johnson, author of “Reparenting Your Inner Child: Healing Unresolved Childhood Trauma and Reclaiming Wholeness through Self-Compassion,” which will be released in July. “A lot of us are trying to wade through how to handle older generations that … have hurt us, and then trying to raise new generations to not know that pain,” Johnson said. “A lot of us are trying to figure out how to do that, and reparenting answers all of those questions.” It’s not acting like an infant again Reparenting is not about giving into your every whim. And although it doesn’t mean acting like an infant again, it does require recognizing that many of the thoughts and behaviors you’d like to change come from lingering feelings of childhood traumas or your inner child, said Dr. Avigail Lev, a licensed clinical psychologist at the Bay Area CBT Center in San Francisco. Healing those traumas often means responding to your inner child like a loving, healthy parent, Johnson said. The parents most of us needed in traumatic times were loving and warm with firm boundaries, she said, and that’s who you need for reparenting in adulthood. “So many of us are shaming ourselves or hating on ourselves, and then that shame and hate makes us want to numb out, and then we go self-sabotage and engage in something that is maybe indulging in some way,” Johnson said. “A good, grounded, educated, healthy parent is not going to scream and yell at you for that (but) they’re also not going to allow it.” You wouldn’t scold a child in the bullying dad example for being afraid of upsetting him, but you would guide them to stand up for themselves when they can and learn ways to cope other than just people pleasing. The compassion to yourself comes in validating the feelings your inner child is having –– the stress, fear, anger or sadness — and make adult decisions about the best way to move forward, Lev said. “We’re validating internal experiences,” she added. “It’s not permission to do bad behaviors.” If attending to your childhood wounds and responding with kindness feels selfish, it is important to remember that compassion for oneself often makes people more compassionate to others, Lev said. Signs reparenting might be right for you Trauma and abuse are much broader than only physical violence or neglect, and part of your healing may be realizing that your experiences deserve to be reparented, Johnson said. A parent not being emotionally available might leave a wound on your inner child, said Dr. Brian Razzino, a licensed clinical psychologist in Falls Church, Virginia. Chaos or disorganization at home might do it, too. The way you talk to yourself is a good way to discern if reparenting might be useful to you, he said. Do you feel guilty when you stand up for yourself or say no when you need to? Do you struggle to feel like you are or have done enough? Do you tend to feel very stressed around authority figures? Do you struggle opening up or feeling like you will be abandoned in relationships? Those might be signs you weren’t taught how to handle those situations as a child, and you need to teach yourself now, Razzino said. You can start now Reparenting yourself can start simple. It has two important components— learning how your traumas show up in your life and making changes to heal them, Johnson said. “If you were a little bit kinder to yourself today, or if you gained insight, if you had an ‘Aha’ like, ‘Oh, man, I really do talk to myself the way my mom talked to me,’ or you identify a childhood wound … all of that is a form of reparenting,” she said. If you were the person with the bullying dad, Johnson would recommend identifying what you are feeling now, such as “I’m scared of being rejected or criticized,” and then kindly reassuring yourself. Maybe you practice saying, “I am worthy of love apart from how well I perform. I accept and approve of myself,” Johnson recommends. To go a step further and address your inner child, Johnson advises forming a relationship with your inner child. If you saw a scared or sad child, you wouldn’t just start barking orders at them, right? Sometimes forming a relationship means indulging in the things a younger you would have loved, like running in the rain, watching a movie or making a dish you loved, she added. For some people, it helps to identify the wounded inner child, Johnson said. Some of her clients like to find a picture of themselves from an age when they experienced trauma. Others like to paint an image or assign a song for the child, she said. Then, give that child what they needed when they were hurt. In the example with the bullying dad, you could give your inner child the love and warmth they wanted and didn’t get with your father, Johnson said. In a case like this, Johnson might ask you to imagine sitting with your 9-year-old self on your childhood bed when younger you is crying because your dad yelled at you for missing a soccer goal and then sent you to your room when he saw your tears, she said. She would then ask you to imagine scooping the little you up, holding them and saying something like, “I know it’s confusing and hurtful when dad acts like that … I love you just as you are and am cheering you on all the way.” “This work is deeply emotional and can be really overwhelming,” she said. But if you do the work, it can lead to healing of the trauma as well as more confidence, security and better relationships moving forward, Johnson said. While you can start now, working through reparenting with a therapist can help give you perspective on what traumas you need to work through, tools to help you maintain self-compassion in difficult circumstances and experiences to counteract wounds that your inner child experienced, Lev added.