So what is reparenting? Reparenting is the act of giving yourself(adult self) what you didn't receive as a child, it basically means learning to give your inner child love that they didn't receive when they were young.

Signs that you have a wounded inner child

  1. Feel ashamed of expressing your emotions
  2. You are a people pleaser and have trouble setting and holding boundaries
  3. You distrust everyone including yourself
  4. You avoid conflict at any chance
  5. You have trouble identifying and expressing your needs and wants
  6. Difficulty regulating your emotions
  7. You feel that something is deeply wrong with you
  8. You are hypersensitive to other people's needs and wants rather than your own
  9. You exhibit constant self criticism (loud inner critic)
  10. You feel inadequacy and "not good enough" Reparenting helps you to reconnect with your inner child.

How to start reparenting

Some ideas of what reparenting could look like;

  • Identifying and meeting our needs and wants - it's common for people who have a wounded inner child to have difficulty identifying and meeting their needs and wants. So you might find that you learned how to meet your needs by meeting other people's needs this is meeting other people's needs and neglecting yours. As a child you learnt that your needs don't matter, that people's needs are more important than your own, having needs is being selfish or you were shamed for voicing your needs well you couldn't do anything about it back then but you can do something about it now. Having needs is okay it's very normal. To meet your needs you need to identify them first, inorder to meet your needs you need to be able evaluate yourself mind, body and life( physical, emotional, social and personal needs). This involves starting to create a new relationship around our needs, the first step is validating your needs this means you no longer gaslight yourself when you have a need.
  • Setting boundaries with yourself and others - setting boundaries is an important and essential form of self care. Boundaries are also a way of communicating our needs to others but also establishing limits for ourselves. Setting boundaries in the beginning is going to feel uncomfortable because you are used to people pleasing or people taking advantage of the fact you don't have boundaries.

Tips to setting and holding boundaries

  1. start small
  2. Know your limits. Identify your physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological limits. What you can tolerate comfortably and what you cannot tolerate and causes you discomfort. Please note that these limits may fluctuate over time and across the lifespan. What you were comfortable with and willing to tolerate at a younger age may look different as you get older
  3. Hold yourself accountable
  4. Avoid making excuses
  5. Be clear on your non negotiables

Practicing self compassion

Having self-compassion means being able to relate to yourself in a way that’s forgiving, accepting, and loving. Compassion heals even the deepest wounds being compassionate with yourself will require you to not judge yourself harshly and acknowledging your pain. You need to move away from tearing ourselves apart to holding ourselves kindly. Well to a wounded inner child criticizing and judging comes to you naturally but compassion for self does not.

How to build compassion towards self

  1. Acknowledging your pain - this is allowing yourself to feel all those emotions without judgement
  2. Responding with kindness - speaking to yourself kindly, moving away from tearing yourself apart
  3. Acceptance - making room for those difficult emotions instead of pushing them away
  4. Validation - Your experience and emotions is valid, this is simply saying they are part of us, being self compassionate is acknowledging one's own pain with kindness.

Learning how to process your emotions

Processing your emotions is all about working to identify, understand, and deal with emotions in a way that’s healthy and productive . Processing your emotions is confronting the emotion rather than pushing it away. It’s so important for us to recognize what we’re feeling on a daily basis, and even more important? That we express what we’re feeling!

Steps to processing emotions

  1. Identify the emotion
  2. Sit with the emotion, get comfortable with it
  3. Pinpoint why you experiencing this emotion for example triggers, unmet needs .etc.
  4. Address the emotion Some simple ways you can process your emotions;
  5. Journaling
  6. Meditation
  7. Mindful body scan

Becoming aware and rewriting our negative internal scripts

Many of our beliefs stem from childhood and past experiences. We need to challenge our negative core beliefs that are holding us back and stop us from achieving our fullest potential, by this you have to master recognizing your thoughts you have to be as honest as possible with what they are and mindfulness is one of the best tools you can use.

Steps to rewriting your beliefs;

  1. Identify the limiting/negative belief
  2. Acknowledging the belief
  3. Reframing
  4. Practice and repeat