By Kate Orson
It is never too late to heal and recover from the past. Doing so can help us to lead happier, healthier, and vibrant lives in the present. Reparenting is defined as the act of giving to yourself what you didn’t receive as a child. Our parents did the best they could with the knowledge and resources they had available at the time, but we all grow up with hurt and wounds from not having all of deepest needs met.
You may have heard the concept that each of us has an ‘inner child’ within our psyche. Janet Philbin is a licensed social worker, hypnotist, and conscious parenting coach. She describes the inner child as something real which exists within our subconscious. Our inner child is a reflection of those unmet needs from childhood.
Philbin says that if we are not aware of our inner child they can end up ‘running the show.’ We end up reacting in ways similar to how we did as a child. For example, using coping skills such as ‘tantrums, becoming a people pleaser, lying, withdrawing, enabling,’ This can be challenging but there are ways we can connect to our inner child and meet their needs, so that we can reparent ourselves.
