There is a lengthy process by which an adult survivor becomes able to give themselves what they did not receive in childhood. It has many names in therapeutic settings, but the word reparenting struck a deep chord with me. I assume many who have used these tools felt they were not parented the first time around. The concept of reparenting seems absolutely confounding for someone who wasn’t taught any of the required skills. Working on these aspects of healing helped me to comfort my wounded inner child and learn how to take care of myself with compassion, self-awareness, and self-love.

A common project in therapy for this type of survivor is to contemplate how and why your parents were not able to provide for your emotional and physical needs. This awareness creates compassion, empathy, and the foundation for forgiveness, which are all crucial for an emotionally engaged life. When we know as adults that our parents were not capable of what we needed due to their own unmet needs and unhealed wounds, it helps to release some of our tension and guilt towards the difficulty of maintaining the relationship. The survivor feels much less responsible for the dysfunctional connection when we begin to embody the fact that we were children holding ourselves accountable for the toxic dynamic that developed with an adult who chose not to heal for their own reasons. It becomes something we can change for ourselves without the parents’ knowledge or involvement. 

Some people are comfortable with achieving that level of relationship with their parents. They understand the parents’ actions and neglect, feel compassion for their hardships, and maintain a relationship with boundaries they learned how to enforce in therapy. Some people choose to end relationships because they are unsafe. They feel there is no prospect of healing while the damage is still being done. 

My view tends towards prioritizing self-compassion. It’s important to me to recognize that my parents didn’t have what I needed, through no fault of their own. However, it’s most important to curate a healthy identity and environment for myself in the present. After a few years of therapy, this focus on what is best for me resulted in the end of the relationship with my mother. I was not able to heal and reparent while also continuing to withstand constant abuse. Due to her own unhealed stuff, she had no capacity to perceive me as a person of value outside of our warped bond.

It’s very hard to have child-like parents. The older you get, the less they are able to guide or support you. This is not a healthy parental relationship in which you get what you need from them as a child, you need less from them as you age, and you eventually become independent. The emotional intelligence needed to navigate life is not available to be conveyed to the child. The adult is acting as a child in stunted development. 

My mom and stepdad seemed fun to others, and to me as a child, because they were artistic, creative, and driven by imagination and fantasy. All four of my parents were seen as young, hip, attractive, life-of the-party types. That masked the wounded parts of them and made them socially acceptable. When it came to the difficult tasks of parenting, they were stopped short, and realized they found themselves lacking in skills. They weren’t able to cope with the weight of that lack, and they adjusted by simply not doing those tasks. 

In action, this mostly played out in one of two ways. They would try the task, such as brushing hair or cleaning bodies, and get frustrated. The task ended with the parents screaming and tantruming at the children who would do the same. Or, they would entirely neglect the needs of the children and leave them to figure out how to bathe, wipe, launder, and feed themselves. The parents then had more time for their own self absorptions. 

Both paths involved damaged children acting as parents in adult bodies using substances to salve their broken coping mechanisms. They needed drugs to calm down from their frustrations and dysregulations. This was more than they could manage, but they were also responsible for helping develop the emotional regulation of children. They needed drugs to numb and ignore their inability to accomplish basic parenting. All four of my parents were using substances heavily during my developmental years. Other children were also impacted but those stories are their own. 

Reparenting involves core-shaking work on childhood development stages, attachment issues, and self-acceptance. It requires intentional actions to soothe, reassure, and protect yourself from past traumas and manage new problems. It helps to create what should have been the result of our parenting – the independent and stable adult. 

It’s a long road, but I’ve never felt more like myself.