Reparenting is a concept that sounds strange for emotional healing. Is it possible to reparent yourself? And what does that look like? Many people have had emotionally neglectful childhoods. They didn’t receive the love, compassion, and nurturing expected from a normal childhood. As a result, they’ve struggled with things like low self-esteem, emotional regulation, and trusting others.
This can be the catalyst needed to feel emotionally stronger and self-assured.
Reparenting Yourself
Reparenting involves making yourself a priorty by giving yourself the attention, compassion, and love that you didn’t receive as a child. It can’t change the past, but it changes how you treat yourself now. It changes the conversation you have with yourself. It doesn’t accept neglect or emotional abusive in any form.
It is giving yourself the compassion, kindness, and self-respect you deserve to achieve emotional healing.
Emotional Neglect
You may not have been physically abused as a child, but emotional scars often last a lifetime, long after bodily bruises have healed. If you were ignored as a child, you weren’t validated and made to feel worthwhile. Not receiving affection, you may feel unlovable or that no one cares. In addition to emotional, trust, and self-worth issues, it can affect your own personal care.
Your childhood is your foundation. It’s your introduction to life and informs how you feel about yourself, others, and the world around you. Childhood emotional neglect can affect your adult relationships, your own parenting, and your career choices. It’s important to replace the emotional neglect you felt as a child with positive factors like self-talk that lead to emotional healing.
How to Begin
To overcome a problem, you must recognize it. Recognize exactly what you’re missing and begin to fill the void; if you’re missing validation, encouragement, or safety, decide how to meet those unmet needs. Reparenting means speaking to yourself compassionately. You may have been spoken to roughly as a child, but to reparent yourself, you must change the narrative.
When you make mistakes, don’t put yourself down. Instead, speak kindly to yourself, telling yourself it’s okay, you have enough time to get things right, and it’s a learning process. Next, set boundaries by not allowing relationships or situations to seep your energy. Practice self-care by getting proper rest and nutrition. Also, enjoy fun, uplifiting activities to create an emotional healing environment.
Seeking Help
Perhaps the emotional scars are so deep and overwelming that you can’t navigate yourself to safety alone. You may need to reach out to someone who can offer wise counsel or guidance to steer you in the right direction. If you need a therapist, it’s okay to contact one for help. PTSD and EDMR therapists are trained to assist people who’ve have painful childhoods. Emotional healing may look differet for some.
Why It Matters
You matter; therefore, your emotional healing matters. Reparenting isn’t succesful without self-compassion. It replaces critical words with kind and understanding ones. You become resilient because you’re able to get through difficult times. And it’s freeing to acknowlege your pain without judgment. This rewiring reframes your internal communication, which creates a safe enviroment for emotional healing.
Turning the Tides
Reparenting is a great tool for women who’ve lost their voice and self-worth because of emotional neglect. It can help you recognize your value and gain the confidence you never thought you had. As a parent, it can ensure that your children will not have to grapple with wounds of neglect from their childhood. You can break the cycle. Your childhood does not have to determine your fate in life.
Final Thoughts
It’s possible to live an emotionally free life that’s not stuck in the pain of childhood emotional neglect. Self-compassion, kindness, boundary setting, and self-care are great tools to overcome your past. You can turn the tides in your favor by finding your voice and contributing to your own emotional healing by reparenting.
