Reparenting Yourself

Bonjour my cutie peacocks.

Hope that you are enjoying the last month of 2020. It feels weird to be now in December. We had quite a catastrophic, crazy, interesting, lonely, sad as fuck, chill, different, epiphanic year. We lost, we gain, we realized, we changed, we evolved, we took risk, we learned, we appreciated, we took decisions, we discovered... Today I wanted to discuss with you about repartenting, because it is one of the main keys of the healing journey. We might have sometimes some neglating or destructive behaviors towards ourselves due to childhood wounds. As mature, adult, reponsible as we are; it happens that the younger version of ourselves reacts immaturaly to some situations. And it is because our Inner-child has been hurt about something we haven't healed from, so an uncontrolled feeling resurfaces, and we are just unable to react as a grown up because the wound is still there, opened and sometimes bloody.

As amazing as our parents has been as parents, mentors, guides, nurturers, providers and so on, they were not perfect (they are Humans). I won't trigger the parents who did not fulfill their roles as parents, because I am not here to judge any situation. I am refering to the parents or parental figures who raised you the best way they could (once again, nobody is perfect) to make you the person that you are today. With all the efforts they put to make you a decent Human Being, they couldn't meet all your expectations. They couldn't satisfy all your need as a child for many different reasons. And it might have happened that they couldn't figure out what was important to you while it wasn't that primordial to them. They did what they could (some people have a very low level of parenting and their max can seem extremely low as well...) It was just too hard for them. It resulted a good amount of negligence at many levels. However, our ultimate goal is to remain alive until our last call. This is why, to move forward in life, we tend to compensate our lacks with something else while denying because we are survival mode.

You might have noticed some of your "issues" but couldn't spot where them came from, and a lot of them are due to some lacks that you experienced during your first years on Earth. I am going to give you a personal example. When I was a child, as much as I love my Mom (to death ok?!), this woman drastically failed me in terms of self care!!! I have a lot of physical issues because, everytime I hurt myself, she never really took me to the dorctor because she said I could do it alone and by myself (wa are not that far from child abuse right?!). So, sometimes I went to the doctor alone, but I never followed up, followed the instructions because it is hard to do so when you are 9 years old! Most of the time I simply gave up at going to the practitian because I didn't really know what to say, what to do, how to behave. Or another case was the fact that she never really care about my hair (she still doesn't know how to do hair... pooor Lya!). This has never been a priority for me and it made me neglating my hairstyles. The results of these neglegences are that as an adult, I really had to force myself to take care of my body and injuries. For my hair, that is another story (especially as a Black woman), I am still fighting with myself to take care of my hair. I am torn between "I don't care" and "OMG! This is super ambarrassing..." When my hair weren't not well done (most of the time), I could feel quite insecured. I am a pretty confident woman but if my hair is not decent, I get pretty insecure (until I don't give 3 shits). As unimportant as it seems, when my hairstyle is bad, it brings me back some negative shameful emotions and feelings that I had as a child, and BOOM: anxiety, poor confidence, curl up... I could spot that discomfort and I decided to reparent myself...

Hummm what in the world does "reparenting" means??? Here is a definition for you my peacocks: "Reparenting is a form of psychotherapy in which the therapist actively assumes the role of a new or surrogate parental figure for the client, in order to treat psychological disturbances caused by defective, even abusive, parenting."

But this practice has been very controversal because it creates dependence from the patient and it messes up the relationship between the professional and the client. I personally see something very toxic in that practice. It is like healing yourself with another drug...

Reparenting yourself is a very healthy practice, because you spot where your parent didn't protect/ carry/ nurture/ take care/ affectionate/ value you the way you expected. It is a very vulnerable step but extremely important. Then you just fullfil the lack! Jajajaja it seems so easy written like that.

Let me detail a little bit more for you: once you identify a "dysfunction" in your childhood, I suggest you to talk to your Inner-child, and/ or write a letter to let him know that you understand how she/ he feels, that you will take care of her/ him and will not let her/ him down. Your Inner-child needs to be comforted, it is very important that she/ he feels safe with you. Then re-learn how to take care of that Inner-child of yours and repair the damages. It seems very easy summarized like that in few sentences but it can be a long and intense process because you have to acknoledge some wounds and feel them. You might have to go where you don't want to go but it is saving and worthy. Like that, you kind of become your own parent and you learn self-care.

But like any parent , no one is perfect and you will need guidance. And as a créative wellness coach, I can help you with my program "RE". I prefer to warn you: I will not be a parent substitute, I do not believe in that method. I believe that you are strong enough to reparent yourself. What I will do is to mentor you, guide you and give you all the tools for reparenting. We will do this together at your pace. I hear a lot of time that parents want to give to their children what they didn't have. What about giving yourself what you didn't have?

That's all for me my sweet peacocks! I have to go bake my pizzaˆˆ

Enjoy your day and the rest of your week. If you want to subscribe to my newsletter: boom !!!! <----- (click on "boom").

Don't forget to take care of yourself, stay warm and healthy. Do something that you love, accept love and keep the energy flowing. Aaaaand drink plenty of water!

Peace n kiss.