What's Reparenting And How To Practice It ?
In my previous post, I wrote about the Inner Child and how it’s important to reconnect with them in order to free ourselves from our past and live a more conscious life.
To go further, I’ll explore today the concept of Reparenting, another term to describe the inner child healing process.
A healthy child development relies on having their physical, emotional, spiritual needs met consistently.
The primary needs of every child are to be seen, heard and be able to express themselves authentically.
When children's legitimate feelings don't find an compassionate and kind response, they become frozen deep in their being.
It becomes buried traumas that open up in certain situations and sometimes cause us to react disproportionately.
These emotions, stuck in our body and subconscious are waiting to be found, released and validated.
This is the job of re-parenting.
Re-parenting is the first step to being a better parent for your children.
It's about grieving what we didn't receive as children and giving it to ourselves today.
How to do that ?
In action, it requires behaving with yourself as you would with a child: with patience, compassion and kindness.
It involves adopting a kind dialogue with yourself instead of constantly criticizing or judging yourself.
One of the pillar of reparenting is to learn to recognize and validate your emotions, by staying present and welcoming them.
All emotion exists for evolutionary reasons and has enabled our survival as a species.
Even those labeled "negative" or undesirable.
Fear, surprise, disgust serve our survival by alarming us of potential dangers.
Others, such as jealousy, guilt, shame, which appeared later in evolution, also exist to ensure our survival as a social species.
How do we concretely welcome and digest our emotions?
It often comes down to re-learning to listen to your body.
Because an emotion is no more and no less than a stimuli in your body which manifests itself in the form of different physical sensations and which has a lifespan of 90 seconds.
An emotion often arises from a thought or a story that your mind tells itself, based on your past experiences and your beliefs about yourself and the world.
Many of us are afraid of our emotions and have learned to ignore them using distractions such as food, alcohol, cigarettes, TV etc.
We can think this is enough to make them disappear.
This is not the case.
On the contrary, these unassimilated emotions remain frozen in our body, in the belly, pelvis, nervous system, throat etc.
This stagnation of energy can, over time, manifest as back pain, heartburn, trouble sleeping, cancer, phobias, depression etc.
Our overall level of well-being is directly reflected in how we process our emotions.
Activities such as yoga, meditation or martial arts allow us to "come back to the body", and stop the "mental noise" for a while.
The more we practice, the more we become aware of what's going on in our mind / body and the more we have the possibility of choosing how we want to feel.
This whole process is neither easy nor pleasant.
It often comes with painful realizations.
It takes courage, time, and consistency.
A lot of times, I thought "what's the point? it's an endless work".
But then I see how my relationship with my parents has evolved since I started.
I see how the way I see the world and how I see myself has evolved.
I see more compassion, self-love, self-confidence.
More trust in others, in life and more resilience.
Le† me know your thoughts in the comments !