The Art of Reparenting
A brief look into inner child healing
By: Hannah Lundquist
As we approach the leveling out of the pandemic, I have been reflecting on some social media trends. Specifically, I have been paying attention to the therapy movement on social media, led by psychologists, therapists, and those sharing their experiences throughout their mental health journeys. In this therapy movement, there has been a large emphasis on healing the inner child and tips and tricks on how to reparent yourself.
Healing your inner child and reparenting yourself are important work, both in and out of therapy. They can address childhood wounds and allow you to rework problems and challenges you faced in younger years. Key signs that reparenting and inner child work are necessary can be growing up in an emotionally invalidating environment or experiencing things like neglect and abuse. However, you don’t need to have had a traumatic childhood to feel the need to heal your inner child. Reparenting and healing your inner child are for everyone. It is hard for any parental figure to meet all of the needs of their children or those they are responsible for. While trauma can intensify the need for healing, it is not a requirement for those wanting to do this type of work on themselves.
Typically, when your needs are not met as a child, you will either learn to fill those needs yourself or fill them elsewhere as you get older. Trying to fill these needs elsewhere can be challenging and can lead to unhealthy partnerships or dependence on others. This is where seeing someone such as a therapist or psychologist can be helpful.
During these last few years, I started taking a deeper look at my relationships, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic. I found myself questioning why I had past partnerships and friendships that seemed to end abruptly and why I felt like my world was ending when this occurred. I came to the conclusion that most of my problems stemmed from me looking for things in others that they could not give me. Through therapy, I found a pattern that occurred in all of my relationships that was related to my childhood. I tended to look for things that I was missing as a child. This led to me becoming emotionally attached and dependent on other people. This was dangerous for me because I would depend on other people to meet my needs, and depending on another person to meet your needs will result in hurt, as no one can meet all of your needs.
Unintentionally, I had been seeking out what I desperately needed and yearned for as a child, and that was emotional validation and stability. I was willing to go to great lengths to receive this from others, as I wasn’t sure how else to meet my needs. This is where therapy became life changing for me. I no longer wanted to have relationships end due to an inner child wound on my part, and I have found that through therapy, I am able to have my feelings validated while feeling the support that I missed at times throughout my childhood. In therapy, I am able to work on healing my inner child, which has allowed me to implement reparenting into my own life. I repeat phrases and words that I needed to hear as a child, do my best to meet my own needs, and set boundaries in new partnerships and friendships to lessen my dependence on them. This work is done inside and outside of therapy and has been extremely beneficial in navigating new relationships and friendships.
The pandemic gave me an opportunity to sit with my thoughts, reflect, and seek out the help that I needed. By continuing to reparent myself and heal my inner child, I am headed down a path of healthy healing and healthy relationships, and that is truly a beautiful feeling.