If you’ve ever felt like something was missing in your emotional development, struggled with self-worth, or found yourself repeating unhealthy patterns in relationships, you might need reparenting. In this episode, we’re diving deep into what reparenting is, my top six signs that you need to work on this, and my two-step guide to making it happen. Today, you’ll walk away with a ton of actionable strategies to start reparenting yourself, because it’s never too late to give yourself the care and validation you deserve.
11-minute read
What is Reparenting?
Reparenting is the process of giving yourself the love, guidance, and care that you may not have received as a child. It allows you to meet your unmet emotional needs, build self-worth, and create a more nurturing relationship with yourself. This practice involves recognizing what those unmet needs were (a lot of us are fish who don’t know they’re wet), and actively working to fulfill them now, so you can truly heal and move forward.
Top Six Signs You May Benefit from Reparenting
Recognizing the need for reparenting is the first step toward healing. Here are some indicators that you might need to do some reparenting.
- Difficulty Regulating Your Emotions: You may struggle to manage emotions like anger, sadness, or anxiety, often feeling overwhelmed or reacting more intensely than the situation calls for. For example, you may find yourself crying uncontrollably over minor inconveniences or feeling disproportionately enraged at perceived slights.
- Persistent Negative Self-Talk: If your inner dialogue is dominated by harsh self-criticism or feelings of unworthiness, it may be a sign that your inner kid never received the validation needed to develop healthy self-esteem. You may catch yourself thinking, “I’m not good enough,” or “No one will ever truly love me.” and
- Challenges in Relationships: If you frequently find yourself in toxic or unfulfilling relationships (or chasing unavailable partners), it could be a sign that your early attachments were insecure. You may struggle with codependency, attracting emotionally unavailable partners, or fearing intimacy and vulnerability.
- Fear of Abandonment or Rejection: A deep fear of being left or not accepted by others can stem from childhood experiences of neglect or inconsistent caregiving. This often manifests as clinginess in your relationships, a constant need for reassurance, or difficulty trusting that people will stay.
- Perfectionism: If you feel the need to be perfect to earn love or avoid criticism, it could be a response to early experiences where affection and approval were conditional. This might show up as overworking, people-pleasing, or an intense fear of failure.
- Difficulty Trusting Others: If you grew up in an environment where caregivers were unreliable, critical, or emotionally absent, you may have learned to rely only on yourself. As a result, you may struggle to open up, accept help, or believe that others have good intentions.
Abby’s Two-Step Guide to Reparenting Yourself
There are two main steps you need to follow but each step has a lot of different ways you can go. So, let’s get to the nitty gritty.
Step 1: Identifying Your Unmet Childhood Needs
Before you can begin reparenting yourself, it’s important to recognize what was missing in your childhood. Unmet childhood needs are the fundamental emotional, physical, and psychological requirements that weren’t adequately fulfilled during your early development. These can include the need for safety, stability, unconditional love, validation, and emotional support. When these needs go unmet, they can lead to dysfunctional patterns of insecurity, low self-esteem, difficulties in relationships, and emotional dysregulation in adulthood.
Identifying your gaps is essential because it helps you understand why you do what you do, allowing you to consciously work toward meeting those needs now. Recognizing what you lacked as a kid empowers you to make healthier choices, develop self-compassion, and break free from negative cycles.
It would be helpful to reflect on the following questions:
- As a child, I needed more ____________ (e.g., affection, encouragement, stability, validation).
- When I was upset as a child, my caregivers reacted by ____________.
- As a kid, I was made to feel that my emotions were ____________.
- One thing I needed to hear but never did was ____________.
- I can see that I still struggle with ____________ because of my unmet childhood needs.
Action Step: Write a letter to your younger self validating the pain of not having these needs met. This letter is from you, as the wise and nurturing adult you are now, to your younger you who didn’t have the information you have now. Start by acknowledging their struggles and the emotions they felt growing up. Use compassionate and reassuring language, just as a loving parent would.
Consider including:
- A validation of their feelings (“I see how hurt and lonely you felt, and it makes sense why you struggled.”).
- Reassurance that they weren’t to blame for the things that happened (“You deserved to be loved and supported, and it was never your fault that you didn’t receive that.”).
- Encouraging words about how you’re now here to take care of them (“I’m here for you now, and I will protect and nurture you in the way you always needed.”)
Take your time writing this letter. Allow yourself to connect emotionally with your younger self. You may find it helpful to read it aloud or keep it somewhere safe to return to when you need a reminder of your self-worth and resilience.
Step 2: Follow the Two Key Practices for Reparenting: Emotional Regulation and Self-Acceptance
Now that you’ve identified what was missing, you can begin filling those gaps with conscious self-care and emotional support. Imagine yourself as a wise and supportive mentor to your younger self, someone who understands, nurtures, and guides your younger self with compassion and patience. Reparenting involves adopting the role of the loving, stable caregiver you may not have had, and providing yourself with the emotional and psychological support needed to heal and grow.
The First Key to Reparenting: Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation is the ability to recognize, manage, and respond to your emotions in a healthy and constructive way. It involves understanding your feelings, controlling impulsive reactions, and adapting to emotional experiences without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.
The Fundamental Components of Emotional Regulation include:
- Self-Awareness which means you know yourself as fully as possible and have very few blind spots. It means you can recognize your strengths and limitations. When you add mindfulness to self-awareness, it means you recognize and name your emotions as they arise.
- Impulse Control which means you can pause before reacting impulsively to emotions.
- Cognitive Reframing which occurs when you take on a new perspective and reframe your thoughts to change how you feel about a person or situation.
- Emotional Acceptance which translates to you allowing yourself to feel emotions without judgment or suppression.
- Self-Regulation which requires using techniques like deep breathing, mindfulness, or physical activity to regulate your emotions.
- Effective Expression which means you’re communicating your emotions appropriately rather than bottling them up or exploding.
Why Emotional Regulation Matters
The research shows that emotional regulation matters because:
- It helps maintain healthy relationships by reducing reactive or defensive behavior.
- It improves mental health, reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.
- It enhances decision-making by preventing your emotions from clouding your judgment.
- It fosters resilience, allowing you to navigate challenges without being consumed by emotions.
- It promotes self-compassion, helping you respond to your own emotions with kindness.
You know you have signs of poor emotional regulation when you have/are:
- Frequent emotional outbursts or shutting down.
- Difficulty calming down after a stressful event.
- Impulsive reactions without thinking.
- Feeling emotionally overwhelmed and unable to cope.
- Using unhealthy coping mechanisms like avoidance, substance use, or aggression.
If you’re ready to get in charge of your feelings, learn the two main ways our brains respond to stress and my top tips for how to manage your emotions for each of those ways.
The good news is that the research shows many effective ways to improve your emotional regulation:
- You can practice mindfulness.
- You also want to develop a more specific emotional vocabulary. Naming all your emotions (and getting to the ones under the resentment and frustration) helps reduce their intensity. Because I love you, you can download my free feelings list to better help you have more specific words for all that you might be feeling.
- Challenge negative thoughts and reframe situations in a more balanced way.
- Use deep breathing or grounding techniques to calm your nervous system. Yes, you know I still love you so you can download a free list of grounding techniques.
- Practice pausing before responding to give yourself space to respond thoughtfully rather than reactively (to act, not react).
Grab my Feelings List and Grounding Techniques
When you feel triggered, pause and ask yourself, “What would a kind and supportive mentor say to me right now?” Or (depending on your age) “What would my 80-year-old self say to me right now or think of what I’m going through?” Practice self-soothing techniques like deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, or visualizing a comforting place. And, yes, I’ll keep harping on it. I really want you to check out my episode on my step-by-step guide to managing your emotions.
A full body scan is already available to my Patreon members but, you know I love you too, so you can also listen to my shorter, Golden Light Body Scan to get an idea of how helpful they are.
The Second Key to Reparenting: Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is the foundation of emotional healing and reparenting. It allows you to meet yourself with understanding instead of criticism, helping you cultivate self-worth and resilience. Many people who grew up in invalidating or neglectful environments developed an internal voice that is harsh, dismissive, or perfectionistic. Replacing this self-judgment with kindness is crucial for healing.
The research shows that self-compassion matters because:
- It reduces feelings of shame and self-judgment, making it easier to process difficult emotions.
- It helps you recover from setbacks by fostering a growth mindset instead of self-punishment.
- It rewires negative thought patterns that stem from early childhood conditioning.
- It improves self-worth and emotional resilience, leading to healthier relationships.
Again, I want you to keep coming back to speaking to yourself with the same warmth and encouragement you’d offer a best friend or child in your life. Instead of harsh self-judgment, practice self-kindness by acknowledging your efforts and progress. If you make a mistake, remind yourself that imperfection is part of being human, and growth comes from learning, not from punishment. I’ve done episodes on specifics for learning self-compassion, but here are a few right now:
- Affirmations: Replace self-criticism with gentle encouragement, such as I’m growing every day, and I’m worthy of kindness. Write down or say affirmations aloud daily to reinforce a positive mindset.
- Reframing Negative Self-Talk: When you notice self-judgment creeping in, ask yourself, Would I say this to a close friend/my kid/my partner? If not, reframe the thought into something more compassionate, like I’m doing the best I can with the tools I have.
- Self-Care as Self-Compassion: Show yourself kindness through action like taking breaks when needed, nourishing your body with good food, or doing something that brings you joy (no, drugs and alcohol don’t bring you joy. They bring you relief and help you ignore issues. Reach for true joy). Remember, happiness is always for a reason. Joy is happiness for no reason.
- Visualizing a Supportive Figure: If self-compassion feels difficult, imagine a wise and loving mentor, caregiver or your future self speaking kindly to you. What would they say? Try embodying that supportive voice in your own self-talk.
- Meeting Your Needs: Identify what you lacked growing up and find ways to provide it for yourself now. If you needed more emotional safety, practice setting healthy boundaries. If you needed encouragement, celebrate your small wins and accomplishments daily.
- Build Healthy Habits. Create a sacred, consistent routine that fosters your well-being, including regular self-care activities like journaling, mindfulness, movement, or spending time in nature. I highly recommend you follow my step-by-step guide to starting your day right.
- Healing Through Connection: Surround yourself with people who respect and uplift you. If past experiences made trusting others difficult, take gradual steps to build safe, meaningful relationships.
- Listen to a Loving Kindness Meditation at least twice per week.
I know this is a lot, so I’d like you to choose one of these practices and focus on really making it a habit, then seeing how you feel.
Final Thoughts
Reparenting is a powerful way to break free from the past and step into the self-loving, self-nurturing person you were always meant to be. Every small step you take is a step toward emotional freedom and healing. By nurturing your younger self and addressing past hurts, you can create a more fulfilling and authentic life, right now.
Free to all listeners:
- Journaling Prompts to help deepen the reparenting journey
- A Daily Reparenting Checklist
- A worksheet to help you reparent yourself, which includes how to identify your unmet childhood needs and more on developing self-compassion and strengthening emotional regulation
- And a Guided Audio Exercise (yes, my soothing voice coming at you even more)
- A Healthy Household Checklist
Patreon – Bundle for $7.99 includes:
- Everything listed above plus the blog post
Resources for Reclaiming Yourself: A Step-by-Step Guide to Self-Healing and Reparenting Yourself
The Secret to Managing Your Emotions: A-Step-By-Step Guide
Overcoming Insecurity and Silencing Your Inner Critic
Eight Ways to Build Your Confidence and Self-Esteem
Why People Chase Toxic Relationships and Unavailable Partners
How Your Attachment Style Affects Your Personal Relationships
Codependency, Counter-Dependency and Narcissism, Oh My!
How to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection and Abandonment
How to Stop Being a Perfectionist So You Can Start Being Happy
Four Ways to Be More Self-Aware
5 Research-Backed Ways to Have More Self-Discipline and Self-Control
How to Stop Overthinking and Let Things Go that Bother You
How to Heal Yourself Emotionally: Mastering Self-Regulation For a Happier Life
How to Make Mindfulness a Habit
The Four Ways to Be More Resilient So You Can Be Happier in All Your Relationships
Is Self-Compassion The Secret to a Happy Relationship?
Abby’s Step-By-Step Guide to Starting Your Day Right
Lovingkindness Guided Meditation
Research
Inwood, E. and Ferrari, M. (2018), Mechanisms of Change in the Relationship between Self-Compassion, Emotion Regulation, and Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Appl Psychol Health Well-Being, 10: 215-235. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12127
