TEST TEST When I gave birth to Gabriela four and a half years ago, I was plummeted into the greatest path of self-discovery I ever could have imagined. In many ways, all the things I did for and with Gabriela in the name of parenting, I ended up trying on myself first.
I realized that to nurture Gabriela, I had to learn to nurture myself.
I realized that to be kind to Gabriela, I had to get good at being kind to myself.
I realized that to teach Gabriela about values and integrity, I had to connect with my own values and let them lead.
As I began to parent this being that existed outside my body in the real world, I was also being asked to connect to the child that still lived energetically inside of me—something we call reparenting.
Reparenting is the practice of giving to our inner child that which we did not get from our caregivers when we were younger.
Literally, it is a chance to parent ourselves now, in the way we needed then.
In many ways, this is like filling the gap* between what we truly and deeply needed from our parents and caregivers as children and what we actually got.
Now what creates the gap? Traumatic experiences.
And I don’t just mean accidents, natural disasters, war and abuse—although those are important types of trauma; I also mean the ways in which we felt alone and unseen as children while we were experiencing something overwhelming or chaotic.
An overwhelming experience becomes registered as trauma when we do not have a kind, caring and attuned witness to help us process the overwhelm. As Dr. Peter Levine, renowned somatic trauma therapist has said: “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”
Developmentally traumatic experiences include:
- Caregivers with insecure attachment
- Abuse of any kind
- Physical or Emotional neglect
- Unhealed caregivers who project onto us without repairing (also known as narcissism)
- Emotionally immature caregivers (also on the spectrum of narcissism)
- Systemic and contextual factors that created environments that made parenting challenging: immigration, displacement, war, poverty, an ill family member, a significant family death or loss etc…
When trauma becomes stored in the body, the inner child is the gatekeeper of that pain. Soothing the inner child helps to soften the walls and move us from a child-like, powerless view of the world towards greater adulthood and wholeness. Along our childhood, if we did not receive adequate mirroring, attunement, reassurance, acceptance and celebration of who we were, we are now not able to fully express ourselves and mature emotionally.
Our childhood may be over but, inside of us, we still have all our young selves seeing and feeling the world through their lenses. The inner child, which can encompass many of our ages and stages as children, is literally inside of us looking for the empathetic witness they never had.
In reparenting practices, you become that empathetic witness that you never had.
Everyone’s inner child is unique in the traumatic wounds they hold and protect and what they need to help soothe those wounds.
Some inner child needs include:
- Routine and predictability
- A sense of acceptance ond belonging for who they are as-is
- Validation of whatever is being felt in the present moment
- Space and permission to freely play
- Space and permission to create and make art
- Time to rest
- Physical touch
- Time outdoors to regulate in nature
- Someone to listen patiently and non-judgementally
- Acceptance of anger
- Space to express rage and aggression
- Curiosity about one’s experience
- Approval of their thoughts, ideas and feelings
- Movement
- Boundaries and limits
How do you know if you need reparenting?
My belief is that everyone benefits from reparenting. We can think of reparenting as a deep, soul-level type of self-care. We all need this type of self-care because we have all experienced an imperfect childhood and so we all have some parenting gap that needs tending.
To connect with your own parenting gap, you can look at the above list of inner child needs and engage in gentle inquiry:
- Which needs bring up tenderness or activation in your body?
- How often do you think these needs were met when you were a child? How often did they go unmet?
- Can you identify places in your life where you ask that these needs be met by others? (partners, friends, employers, parents etc.)
- Are there ways in which you avoid meeting these needs for yourself?
Where our inner child needs were not regularly met, we develop a parenting gap. The gap will be different sizes for everyone and the larger the gap, the more filling needed.
But the depth and breadth of the gap is less important than simply being aware of the gap and having a willingness to tend to it.
Tending to that gap through reparenting practices, is literally a process of feeling and releasing our pain and rewiring our nervous system toward greater safety and wholeness. In order to compensate for the pain of experiencing trauma and not having our needs met, our inner child learns ways to get her needs met that may look effective and even feel mature but are, in actuality, still ways to cope from a very young place. From a neurological perspective, without a consistent empathetic witness, we do not get the chance to develop the connections between the most primitive part of our brain (the brainstem) and the mare mature part of our brain (the prefrontal cortex). The prefrontal cortex is the like the adult or wise brain. Only a soothed and relaxed inner child can allow the adult or wise brain to develop.
We act out our childlike views when we are “triggered” (aka emotionally reactive or feeling emotionally overwhelmed). In those moments, the oldest and most primitive part of our brain takes over and moves into fight, flight or freeze. Alternatively, we can also go into another developmentally immature response called fawning. Fawning encompasses people pleasing behaviour wherein we try to keep the peace and accommodate others while sacrificing ourselves (something also known as codependency).
At its core, the goal of reparenting is to create new connections between our primitive brain and our wise mind.
In order to do this, we need to learn to observe the signs in our body of emotional overwhelm and then cultivate a space to soothe ourselves.
As Viktor Frankl, fellow highly sensitive soul, has famously said: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
But before we can begin to feel our capacity to choose between reactions and responses, in reparenting, we first need to meet our inner child exactly where they’re at. For many of us, that means deepening our connection to the experience of our body. I say this, because we feel with our bodies.
Trauma is stored in the body and so inner child healing happens at the body level because rewiring our nervous system is a somatic experience.
Remember how trauma is what happens inside our bodies when we experienced something overwhelming without an empathetic witness? The key thing about empathy is that it is a felt sense. Empathetic witnessing is a link that is formed between two different people’s limbic system, the emotional part of our nervous system. So in order to meet our inner child where they’re at, we begin by getting curious about our needs, at the body level. Consider these questions:
- How often am I aware of and responsive to my hunger and thirst? My needs to move and rest?
- What are the signs in my body that I’m “pushing through” and overriding my body’s needs for rest?
- What are the signs in my body that I might be scared and am avoiding doing or saying something?
- What are the sensations that come up in my body when I feel emotionally overwhelmed (or triggered)?
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of accurately attuning to and accepting whatever is true for us in the moment. That type of aware presence is where true intimacy is formed—intimacy with ourselves, with our children and with other adults.
And so how might we cultivate intimacy with ourselves? It helps to start by nurturing relaxed states in our nervous system. Once we have more experience being regulated, we will find more ease addressing our reactivity. Choose activities and practices that make you feel deeply cared for.
Places to start:
- Time in nature
- Play
- Movement or dancing
- Making something without an agenda
- Providing soothing touch to yourself
- Meditation/mindfulness
- Journaling
- Dancing or other movement
- Therapy
- Solitude
- Being in community
- Snuggling with pet
- Tending to plants or a project you enjoy
Beginning to reparent yourself is the beginning of a relationship with the parts of you that were abandoned and neglected. Relationships take time, energy, patience and dedication. Be kind, gentle and as consistent as you can as you begin your own reparenting journey.
In it with you.
For more personalized support, book a call with me.
*The term parenting gap was influenced by Bethany Webster’s term, the Mother Gap which she writes about on her website and in her pivotal book, The Mother Wound.
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