“I have a feeling that I have to fight my heart every time I wish to do something for myself. I feel this sense of insecurity, a fear that I will be judged. That maybe somehow, I am not enough and won’t ever be! I have tried speaking all sorts of positive affirmations.”
Says Jay over a chat last week. He complains about his horrid past affecting him till today. He feels no way to get out of it. Digging further, I get to learn that he was a child who grew up in a hostile environment; with abusive parents, who would always fight with each other, lay hands on one another, blame him for their problems, and beat him for minor things!
He comes from a family that deprived him of any emotional support, affection, love and warmth from his parents. He is an adult lacking all these things and now probably living a life where he thinks that love, warmth, and affection are unavailable. He doesn’t feel love for himself.
And just like Jay, many people out there are like that.
How have I helped my clients stuck in their childhood of deprivation? What suggestions have I given to them during their healing?
Self-Parenting- Unlearning things that were normalised despite being problematic, and learning useful things despite doubting their existence.
That includes:
But let’s take a look at self-parenting in detail. Let’s begin to understand the art of self-parenting for healing from your past.
Emotional help is something that every human requires at some point in their lives. And we often crave a shoulder to lean on. Despite having friends, we don’t feel like we can open up to them. We may feel empty, lonely, or perpetually sad. And we may not know what to do about it.
So, the solution has to come from within. People from different spheres may suggest you grow up, be more open to the world’s good things, read books on self-help, and talk to friends. But they may not provide you with long-term solutions. And that’s where self-parenting comes in. It is a wonderful process of developing a mature, compassionate and loving parent out of oneself.
However, I shall still recommend some books on reparenting that may help you gain some insight into the concept and help you. But I shall enlist a more practical approach to how self-parenting can help you heal from within.
Self-parenting is not a skill that develops overnight. Instead, it may take years for you to understand that sometimes it is only you who can heal yourself. Self-parenting is a skill that teaches you to strike a balance between what you want and what works best for you.
It will not only teach you to be helpful to yourself but also to the people around you. Once you learn self-parenting, you will be able to pass it on to your kids too. We can only give others what we have learnt, giving ourselves.
Our parents raised us like they were taught to. They raised us based on their parenting learning or how they deemed it fit to bring up children. In their approach to parenting, they made some wonderful changes that made us who we are today. And in that same approach to parenting, they made some grave mistakes that shaped us into who we are today.
We, as children, soaked all that we were given- mannerisms, attitudes, specific reactions to similar situations, and habits that never left us. The child in us soaked the impressions of the world. Emotionally, we became what we were being shown or what we were seeing.
All those impressions stayed in our unconscious minds, and we grew up with them as our core values and personality. What became our core personality didn’t turn out all that great. They became the symptoms of:
As adults, we gradually begin to understand what may have impacted us and helped us become who we have become. We begin to identify where some things went wrong.
And then sets in reparenting. You identify, understand, accept, and UNLEARN certain parts of your personality as a way of resolving your childhood pain.
But how do you identify what didn’t turn out great in you? How do you feel that something may be leaving you off, or sad or burdened?
The answer to that is- your kids. When you become a parent, you raise your kids the same way you were raised. And when you see your child behaving in a manner that may feel familiar to you, you stop. You stop treating them the way you’ve been doing. You ask yourself: Why am I doing what I am doing?
You meet yourself in your child, and you may want to bring some changes. The next question is: Where do you start?
One of my closest friends has been evaluating her parenting for a while now. She now concludes that she repeats the same habits her parents applied to her.
I told her first to start working on herself. “ How’s that even possible? My childhood is over now.” She said.
Many of us might hold the same belief. We may believe we have moved past our childhood stage, and now as adults, we know what’s best for our child. But the truth is, we don’t. And we cannot until we have made an effort to recognise what we missed as a child and resolve it.
This process is reparenting. Be a parent to yourself. Give yourself what you did not get as a kid.
In this book, Art Martin talks about eight qualities of unconditional love that can help you be a better parent to yourself and your kids.
It talks about repeating the same mistakes that our parents committed and how this pattern is being passed from one generation to another.
The book suggests that you can improve your parent-child relationship only by reparenting yourself.
Authored by Yong Kang Chan, this book teaches you ways to be your own parent.
You are an adult now. You still might be craving for things that you did not get as a child. It’s time to nurture yourself the way you’ve always wanted to.
This book will help you learn-
It is step-by-step guidance offered by recovery therapist Cathryn Taylor to heal all the fears and emotions left unnoticed.
This book consists of a series of written and verbal exercises, journaling, mirror work and many more to change your present, affected by your past.
This amazing book by John K. Pollard focuses on your relationship with your inner parent. It outlines steps to positive self-parenting and describes how your inner child needs to be parented by the parent within you. It teaches you how your relationship with others is the reflection of your relationship with yourself.
As Nancy Colier says in Psychology Today, “In life, the person you spend the most time with is yourself. With even the smallest degree of proper self-parenting, you will start to notice that you feel more relaxed, more loved, that you are more trusting, happier and more alive.”
Being an adult is a daunting task. Work, family, responsibilities, loans, etc., keep you occupied. You may not know how to do ‘adulting’, but you are expected to suddenly grow out of your childhood and unmet needs as a child and act like an adult. You are expected to make money to support your family. You are expected to take care of the kids, bills, family, house, and everything under the sun.
But how are you able to do all of it when the child in you is still longing for parental love? How do you cope with the challenges of being an adult when the inner child is still waiting for someone to hold them, comfort them, give them a pat on the back and say, ‘It’s all right. I am right here. You have done an incredible job!’
Self-parenting is the process of recognising those empty spaces in your heart and filling them with the love that comes from within you. Self-parenting is the art of you becoming your parent and telling yourself, ‘It’s all right. I am right here. You have done an incredible job!’
Let’s go through the steps to self-parenting one by one.
Accessing the parent in you is an exercise in locating and developing the ability to parent. You recognise particular abilities within that require your patience, love, support, presence, and consciousness. You access the conflict between the inner child and the inner parent.
You have to become compassionate with the child within you who grew up in an environment where support wasn’t available. You have to be present with your inner child who experienced the abundance of parental absence.
If you are a parent, think of the time when you were compassionate, conscious, and entirely present for your baby. Think of the time when you weren’t frustrated or stressed. Think of when you looked forward to loving your child, being the parent that you are!
You may require some time to understand the child’s requirements: Do they long for something? What is their age? What is their utmost fear? What makes them happy? What makes them feel safe? How do they think most of the time?
When you access the child’s requirements and the ability of the parent within you, you come close to understanding and easing the conflict between the two.
This will bring out the emotion of healing. Understanding what self-parenting is makes you look for small cues on the face of the inner child. The child inside your heart feels the same emotion as your present self. A sense of safety, comfort, being loved, being heard, or being cared for.
These are things that your inner parent does to the inner child:
The inner child begins to feel negative emotions towards themself or anyone else fade away. They begin to understand the language of love the inner parent is now using. They start to respond to the affection you are providing yourself.
You are aware of your inner child’s needs. You are mindful of what your inner parent has to offer and can offer. The next step is to implement all those learnings.
The key things to give yourself are:
With all of it present, the parental self will know how to cater to the child’s needs. Self-parenting doesn’t mean acting out in any manner you feel like. It means recognising your triggers and allowing yourself the time and patience to let them settle. It will enable you to be in control of your reactions. It teaches you to transform your reactions into responses.
It all doesn’t end here. The practice of self-parenting is constant and consistent. You don’t get results in one day or week. Self-parenting needs to be present at times of your extreme highs and extreme lows.
Self-parenting is not impossible. It’s very much possible, and it’s as practical as it can be. Like any other skill, self-parenting needs to be practised every day, in every moment of despair or happiness.
The parent in you knows what the child in you needs. Self-parenting enables the parental self to provide for the child-self and make them capable.
The concept of self-parenting might appear unnatural to many of you because you are an adult now. But it is a fact that many of us carry the wound of our childhood even as adults.
That’s why it is upon you to parent yourself and give yourself the love that you were deprived of as a child.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
