Re-Parenting: The Art and Practice of Healing Early Emotional Wounds

Re-parenting is the work one can do with themselves to heal deep wounds that result from unmet (emotional) needs in childhood. It is the work of giving yourself now what you needed and didn’t get then.

Humans have very simple but extremely important emotional needs in infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood. If these weren’t met, or if they were stomped on, damage incurred. There was the initial event, which caused pain, and then there was a possible result: it was impossible to develop a sense of feeling safe, connected, wanted, and even loved.

Young humans need to feel wanted, liked, protected by, and loved by their caregivers in order to feel well and have healthy self-esteem. If a child doesn’t get this, it actually causes relational trauma.

In childhood, each of us develops a framework - a lens - through which we view the world. This framework is informed by how we are treated by our parents. Messages we receive from them literally shape how we view ourselves, other people, and the rest of the world.

For example, if your father was in a bad mood every time he came home from work, and if he acted impatiently toward, you might have believed you were annoying or something was wrong with you.

Experiences and interactions we have with our parents lead us to believe that EVERYONE else views us as they do or did.

If our parents treat us like we are wonderful, we feel good about ourselves and develop belief systems based on the basic premise that we will be liked and accepted by other people. People with backgrounds like these often grow up, go into the world with confidence, and pursue things they want to do. 

If parents treat a child like the child is a pain, a hassle, or in the way (it happens, more often than one may think…), there is a good chance the child will have hurt feelings, initially. If the situation doesn’t change, their self-esteem could erode, which could lead to negative beliefs about themselves. This could lead to anxiety around people, which could turn to aggression or into deeper anxiety.

It is important to address unhealthy patterns and beliefs as soon as we become aware of them because they become more entrenched over time.

When a person recognizes that there were unhealthy elements in their early wiring, it’s important to address it. Pain and trauma from childhood don’t just go away - these are injuries, and relief and healing can come through tending to them.

So what is re-parenting work? 

This is the work that can address these injuries. It’s the work of giving yourself what you needed when you were younger that you didn’t get. Sometimes it’s just pieces that are missing, and sometimes it’s bigger.

Re-parenting is a way to address unhealthy messaging (which causes so much damage) and to change it. It is a way to correct early wiring, and then soothe, process, and ease the emotional pain that has been surrounding it. Re-parenting work also includes learning how to do daily life things, such as interacting with people, engaging in intimacy, dealing with conflict, accepting not getting what one wants, and more, in ways that are more inline with the healed you, as opposed to the injured you. This work begins with healing inner wounds, and the relieves problems and struggles in ripple-effect-like ways.

This type of work provides the opportunity to heal emotional wounds and also to free ourselves from patterns that keep leading us into things we don’t want to repeat.

Through re-parenting work, people can find relief from pain that has plagued them their whole lives - and learn how to live in ways that are more authentic, genuine, productive, and successful. Most often, this work brings huge relief and helps people connect with what they actually need and want.