Pete Walker describes the process of reparenting your Self beautifully in his excellent book, which is in my suggested reading list, ‘The Tao of Fully Feeling.’ Feeling your feelings is central to healing. Walker also wrote the must-read book ‘Complex PTSD,’ which I have written three articles about so far:
Walker calls the process of reparenting your Self ‘Self-compassionate reparenting.’ When we practice Self-compassionate reparenting, we identify and provide for the unmet needs of our childhood so that we can grow into more complete, life-loving human beings. This has been a key focus of my own healing from my childhood trauma these last four years and has brought significant benefits in my recovery and healing. Let's dive in...
Reparenting your Self
The father pf psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, wrote that “The real value of psychoanalysis is to improve parenting.” Carl Jung, the psychiatrist and psychotherapist who was also a spiritual Master, wrote that “In every adult there lurks a child – an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the human personality which wants to develop and become whole.” This is the process of recovery and healing from the fracturing of our psyche that occurred as a direct result of our childhood trauma, and a breaking open of the enveloping protective shell that inevitably formed around our hearts.
Self-reparenting rescues us from being needlessly frozen in old childhood fear and deprivation. We can turn our fear into assertive anger. When we understand how childhood abuse, dysfunctional parenting, and neglect left us developmentally arrested, empathy naturally arises and motivates us to care for and protect ourselves. As this occurs, we commonly discover that our maturation process was suspended at various different stages of development, and that we have a number of inner children awaiting our kindness and protection. These include are the inner infant, inner toddler, inner preschooler, and the school child. These distinctions are important because children have different needs at different developmental stages, and these correspond with a variety of different reparenting tasks.
According to Walker, many childhood trauma survivors are uncomfortable with the concept of the inner child because they were forced at an early age to become miniature adults and to hate their childlike characteristics as much as their parents did. Survivors who do not like their inner children, or children in general for that matter, are often those who were not loved as children themselves.
Many of us were so traumatised for being and acting childlike that we had to move from toddlerhood to adulthood in astoundingly brief periods of time. Various combinations of shame, punishment, and abandonment forced us to forfeit childhood and to act like grown-ups even before we were ready for school. We even had to parent our own parents as they were incapable of being adults due to their own childhood traumas. I certainly know that I had to for my mother.
Perhaps the most universally disowned self in our so-called ‘civilised’ world is the vulnerable child. Yet this vulnerable child may be our most precious subpersonality – the closest to our true essence, our soul – who enables us to become truly intimate, to fully experience others, and to love unconditionally.
When a child is not allowed to be a child, she or he abandons her or his child-self and banishes it to her or his unconscious and tries to behave like an adult. Many of us find it difficult to get an authentic sense of our inner child because that part of ourselves is still hiding somewhere out of awareness, much like the actual child who had to hide to escape verbal or physical abuse. The child-self often stays sequestered in the unconscious because the adult survivor, like his biological parents, reviles it, rather than embracing it, whenever it emerges into awareness seeking help or attention. Inner children everywhere languish in the unconscious, awaiting our compassion for their terrible plight. Self-compassionate reparenting begins with the decision to unconditionally love our inner children and protect them from self-abuse through our inner critic (I threw my inner critic into a bush a couple of years ago in a beautiful forest).
For the purposes of becoming more fully feeling, Walker focuses primarily on the emotional tasks of the reparenter. These constellate around two crucial goals: The recovery and ongoing development of our inborn sense of Self-acceptance, and the reestablishment and strengthening of our instinctive sense of Self-protection. Walker labels these two tasks as self-mothering and self-fathering, respectively. Walker gives two reasons for this. The first reason is that this somewhat specious distinction helps clarify the differences between the two key processes of emotional caretaking: Unconditional love and unrelenting Self-protection (which has its roots in the emotion of anger – a healthy positive emotion when expressed assertively). He states that the second reason is that the inner child often expects to receive these two different types of emotional support along traditional gender lines. He acknowledges that although these distinctions are sexist and false, the inner child is often not capable of being politically correct about them. Walker writes that the inner child often dreams of having a mother who is tender and a father who stands up for him. As these characteristics fit with concepts of Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine that are essentially the 'Yin and Yang' of every one of us, regardless of gender, we will go along with it simply for conceptual reasons. You can become your own key source of both loving tenderness and fierce protectiveness, regardless of your gender. Men can imagine themselves rocking and cuddling their inner infant just as women can imagine themselves fighting off anyone who is threatening to their inner child. This is similar to what occurs in a real functional family. Both biological parents share in both the ‘mothering’ and ‘fathering’ of their children, and both move easily and flexibly between the roles of tenderness and strength. I am happy and heartened to see many of my friends who are parents showing both of these traits in both parents.
Reparenting begins with forgiving the inner child
It sometimes seems outlandish to me that we need to forgive the children in us who were so innocent and undeserving of blame. What a cruel irony that we need to forgive the blameless, yet we must let our inner children know that we forgive them because, like our parents, we have been blaming them since time immemorial through our inner critical parent. Real forgiveness begins with the Self. Forgiving our inner children is a powerful avenue into self-forgiveness.
In the words of self-esteem guru Nathaniel Branden “When we learn to forgive the child we once were for what he or she didn’t know, or couldn’t do, or couldn’t cope with, or felt or didn’t feel; when we understand and accept that child was struggling to survive the best way he or she could – then the adult self is no longer in adversarial relationship to the child-self. One part is not at war with another part.” Our inner child had to run our lives even as adults as we ourselves had not become present yet, remaining asleep and unconscious without knowing it was a protective mechanism against our unfelt emotional pain.
Our inner child’s heart, broken by a dearth of compassionate mothering, begins to heal when we turn inward with unconditional love and forgiveness. We add substance to this self-mothering by offering the child ongoing tenderness, listening, affection, and unconditional love. Consistency in such practice is what allows our inner child to feel truly forgiven. We also enhance forgiveness by championing our inner child in a father-like way. We do this by using healthy assertive anger and our newly-found voice to fight off internal or external aggression. Such actions prove to the child that she is not only forgiven, but also no longer subject to unfair, unwarranted blame.
The efficacy of our reparenting is further enhanced by providing our inner children the verbal, spiritual, and emotional nurturance outlined below. When we give our inner children love, understanding, and protection consistently over time, they begin to shed their unbearable burdens of fear, shame, and emptiness.
An outline of healthy parenting practises and skills
Verbal nurturance: Eager participation in conversation. Generous amounts of praise and positive feedback. Willingness to entertain all questions. Teaching, reading stories, providing resources for ongoing verbal development.
Spiritual nurturance: Seeing and reflecting back to the child his or her essential good and loving nature. Engendering experiences of joy, fun, and unconditional love to maintain child’s sense that life is a gift. Spiritual or philosophical guidance to help the inner child integrate painful aspects of life. Nurturing the inner child’s creative self-expression. Frequent exposure to Nature. I now go on daily walks with my dogs in Nature.
Emotional nurturance: Welcoming and valuing of full emotional expression. Modelling non-abusive expression of emotions. Teaching safe ways to release anger that don’t hurt the Self. Demonstrating unconditional love, warmth, tenderness, and compassion. Honouring tears as a way of releasing hurt. Being a safe refuge. Humour.
Physical nurturance: Healthy diet and sleep schedule. Helping child develop hobbies, outside interests, and own sense of personal style. Helping child to balance rest, play, and work.
As we become more successful in resisting the shaming and terrorising attacks of our internalised critical parents, our inner children begin to feel safe enough to come forth in all their vital wonder and beauty. Normal qualities of human existence like joy, energy, creativity, vitality, peacefulness, friendliness, spontaneity, and playfulness naturally begin to re-emerge as we master the practice of reparenting.
My inner child is now free to reward me liberally with his childlike exuberance because of consistent support these last four years that I have given him during the difficult and painful times that has convinced him that I am truly there for him at all times. One of the most precious gifts I received from my inner child came through dialoguing with him about the past, once I had completed my full course of EMDR trauma therapy with a trauma specialist psychotherapist. My inner child’s vivid recollections of the joyousness of time spent in Nature, gazing at the stars, and in playing games inspired me to re-elevate these godsends of my youth into high priorities in my life. Nathaniel Brandon testifies to the attainability of this type of experience, writing that “Recognised, accepted, embraced, and thereby integrated, a child-self can be a magnificent resource that enriches our lives, with its potential for spontaneity, playfulness, and imaginativeness.”
Talking to and for the inner child
Robert Stein wrote that “The way I treat my inner child is the way I am going to treat my outer child.“
We heal ourselves with self-fathering when we use our anger to challenge inner messages of shame and self-hate. Speaking up in a protective way for the inner child makes it safe enough for her or him to once again inhabit consciousness and be fully present. Toxic shame often erupts with no warning. I try to father and defend my child at such times by rejecting these echoes of my mother’s constantly shaming messages, calling me a ‘loser’, despite my many successes, and threatening to have me adopted. I explain to him that my mother had no right to talk to him that way. If I have numbly repeated the lies and shamings of old authority figures, I apologise to him and recommit to eliminating this old self-destructive habit.
I usually supplement my self-fathering with the kind of self-mothering that feeds self-esteem with positive and supportive statements. I imagine my inner child sitting on my lap or resting in my heart. I remind him that he is absolutely and eminently lovable just as he is. And then I soothe him with words of this nature:
“I love to have you near me, Olly. You are such a joy to me. I love it when you talk to me and tell me how it is for you. I want to hear everything you have to say. I want to be the one person you can always come to whenever you need help. You can come to me when you are hurting, or ashamed, or scared, when you just want company, or when you want to play. You are always welcome. You are a delight to my eyes, and I always enjoy having you around. You are a good boy, very special and absolutely worthy of love, respect, and all good things. I am so proud of you and so glad that you are alive. I will help you in any way that I can. I want to be the loving mother and father that you were so unfairly deprived of, and that you so much deserve. And I want you to know that I have an especially loving place in my heart for you when you are scared or sad or mad or ashamed. You can always come to me and tell me about such feelings, and I will be with you and soothe you until those feelings run their natural course. I want to become your best friend and I will always try to protect you from unfairness and humiliation. I will also seek friends for you who genuinely like you and who are truly on your side. We will only befriend people who are fair, who treat us with equality and respect, who listen to us as much as we listen to them, who are not just fair-weather friends, and who love us unconditonally. I will protect you from toxic people and those who don’t know how to love unconditionally. I want to help you learn that it really is good to have needs and desires. It’s wonderful that you have feelings. It’s healthy to be mad and sad and scared and depressed at times. It’s natural to make mistakes. And it’s okay to feel good too, and even to have more fun than our parents did.”
At other times when my heart opens to my inner child I tell him how much I wish I could have saved him from the constant yelling, screaming, and aggression. I remind him that I feel especially tender towards him when he cries or gets angry about how much he got picked on and knocked around by the adults that had power over him.
I also remind him of my patience and empathy for his fear around new unknown adults. How could he not sometimes flashback in fear – afraid of being suddenly criticised and screamed at by them? I reassure him that I will never allow anyone to abuse him again. No one will be allowed to slap him with words. I remind him that I have a healthy anger now that can be summoned up to distance us from, ward off, or “write off,” toxic, conditionally loving abusers.
When we consistently give our inner children this kind of support, we suffer less and less paralysis from toxic shame and fear. We become skilled at transforming the inverted anger of self-hatred into a defence against the inner critical parent and the outer critical parent of others. Inner critical parental rulership of our psyches gradually dissipates, and we are able to treat normal mistakes as learning experiences rather than as proof of our defectiveness. The demon of perfectionism loses its grip on our psyches, and we begin to cherish our differences and imperfections as the unique treasures of character and being they are.
I have been so healed through this process that I now value many things about myself that were formerly perpetual sources of shame and self-abandonment. This includes my childhood need for considerable introversion, which used to be my all-time greatest defect, has now become the much appreciated matrix of my rich inner life, feeling safe to be extroverted and to express myself authentically and vulnerably: To use my voice, especially in healing others from similar childhood wounds as their Enlightened Witness. I know how you feel. I hear you.
Even my feelings of inferiority about my appearance have almost totally vanished. I now really like the imperfections that for many years made me feel so ugly that I wouldn’t dare approach the opposite sex. I have grown to love my freckles, my dimples, my wrinkles when I smile (pretty big step as a plastic surgeon!) And perhaps best of all, I now frequently hear a voice that automatically says “I love you” instead of “You are so clumsy” whenever I accidentally drop or bump into something.
I have also noticed that since my inner critic lost its job as boss of my consciousness, since I threw him into a bush, I am far less critical and perfectionistically expectant of others. I believe this has made me more comfortable to be around. Others seem to be able to be much more authentic and vulnerable with me. This in turn creates a mutuality of safety and authenticity that allows me to make new friends and connections on an ongoing basis. My vulnerability, openness, and authenticity are my new superpowers. They will be yours too.
As new friends come into my life, my sense of belonging increases and now begins to feel like something comfortingly tribal. I have a new tribe. I feel as though the enormous loneliness of my loveless youth is largely dissipated. And it continually decreases as my social network expands through meeting “good” people from all walks of life. Formerly limited to only engaging with those who closely mirrored my beliefs and values, I now find myself enjoying an ever-enlarging sample of people. How fascinating our diversity in responding to the complexities of human existence!
One of my greatest delights in being a Transformative Life Coach (TLC) is witnessing my clients making similar gains in their lives. Many develop trustworthy relationships for the first time in their lives. Many awake from years of stagnation to become wholeheartedly excited about new endeavours or old reclaimed enthusiasms. How wonderful it is when a client comes in proudly reporting their new gains!
Self-mothering
Marion Woodman wrote that “If we have lived behind a mask all our lives, sooner or later – if we are lucky – that mask will be smashed . . . Perhaps we will look into the terrified eyes of our own tiny child, that child who has never known love and who now beseeches us to respond.”
Jean Houston wrote that “The violation of the natural weakness and simplicity of the young child – these wounds may be redeemed through the natural simplicity of loving; indeed, they may offer the gateway through which love may enter.”
The most essential task of self-mothering is restoring the individual to a deeply felt sense that he is lovable and deserves to be loved. Self-mothering is the practice of actively and passively unconditionally loving the inner child in all his mental, emotional, spiritual, and energetic states.
Self-mothering is based on the precept that unconditional love is every child’s birthright. As mother to myself, I am eternally committed to relating to myself from a compassionate point of view. I strive to give my inner child an experience of a completely non-defended relationship with another human being.
Self-mothering proceeds most effectively from the realisation that self-punishment is counterproductive. Self-mothering is a hardy refusal to indulge self-hatred or hatred by others. Understanding and gentle guidance are more effective than self-rejection.
We enhance our self-mothering skills by imaginatively creating a safe place in our hearts where our inner children are always welcome. This may help the inner child discover for the first time that it is possible to have a relationship with another that is not either empty, toxic, drama-filled, or dangerous.
Self-mothering can be enhanced through the use of the healing affirmations below. These are designed to satisfy the child’s needs at the various stages of her development. Self-reparenters benefit from using these affirmations like prayers or mantras. Ongoing frequent repetition of these affirmations empowers them to gradually replace the self-criticisms that have been silently ingrained in our psyches by years of rote repetition, emulating our parents. These affirmations are made even more potent when they are accompanied by visualisations of tenderly holding and comforting the inner child. With enough practice, these affirmations become as automatic as the old atrophying self-criticisms.
Affirmations for reparenting the inner child
Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote “Thoughts – just mere thoughts – are as powerful as electric batteries – as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison.”
Infant
Welcome to the world.
I am so glad you were born.
You are absolutely perfect just as you are.
You are a delight to behold.
You are a gift to the world.
I love who you are.
Toddler
All of your feelings are okay with me.
You can be interested in everything.
I love to watch you explore.
I am always glad to see you.
You can do things as many times as you like.
You can like what you like and want what you want.
I like it when you say no.
I like it when you let me know if I hurt your feelings.
You can go off on your own or be with me as much as you like.
It’s okay for you to be angry, and I won’t let you hurt yourself or others when you are.
I love who you are.
Pre-schooler
I love how you speak and I love to listen to you.
I love how you sing and dance.
I like how you think for your Self.
You can think and feel at the same time.
You can make mistakes – they are your teachers.
You can know what you need and ask for help.
You can ask as many questions as you like.
You can have your own preferences and tastes.
You are a delight to my eyes.I love who you are.
School child
It is always a joy to see you and be with you.
It is wonderful to speak with you.
You can trust your intuition to help you make choices.
I love how you have your own ideas and opinions.
You can choose your own values.
I love how you ask for what you want and need.
You can pick your own friends, and you don’t have to like everyone.
You can learn when and how to disagree.
You can be fair with your Self and others.
You can sometimes feel confused and ambivalent, and not know all the answers.
I am very proud of you.
I love who you are.
Another essential task of self-mothering involves offering the inner child the opportunity to speak unashamedly about any and all aspects of her experience. Walker invites readers to initiate this process with a written exercise in which you ask your inner child to write a message to you with your non-dominant hand. He states that you can further elicit her by writing something supportive back to her with your dominant hand. As Walker says, if you do this a few times a week for twenty minutes or so, it will not be long before you have established a therapeutic dialogue with your inner child. With practice, nurturing conversations can then take place anywhere, anytime, in the privacy and safety of your own psyche.
In early self-mothering, the inner child commonly comes into consciousness with a dire need to express her unreleased reservoir of pain.
She will not come forth on the condition that she behave only like a nice, pleasant little girl; that was the prohibition that banished her to the unconscious in the first place.
Most inner children initially need to spend significant amounts of time going over and grieving the detailed memories of their abuse and abandonment. They usually need a great deal of permission to complain, cry, and to get angry. When inner children are not shamed or rejected for catharting, they eventually feel safe enough to talk about other lost aspects of themselves, such as their dreams, needs, desires, joys, and enthusiasms.
Walker states that most of us inevitably slip back into treating our inner children as poorly as our parents did. This happens quite frequently in early recovery, but is usually remediable through an apologising process. Because every child is born with tremendous emotional flexibility, sincere and effective apologies usually restore their trust on those occasions when unconscious repetitions of parents’ harsh judgements have forced them back into hiding.
Self-fathering
Sandra Rau wrote that “Ultimately, love is self-approval.”
Scott Peck wrote that “Children, abandoned either psychologically or in actuality, enter adulthood lacking any deep sense that the world is a safe and protective place.”
You will not live fully until your inner child feels that it is safe to take up permanent residence in your psyche and your fully integrated life.
While self-mothering focuses primarily on healing the wounds of neglect, self-fathering heals the wounds of abuse. Self-fathering gestates assertiveness and self-protection. It includes confronting external or internal abuse, and standing up for the adult child’s rights as outlined below, adapted and expanded from the “Bill of Assertive Human Rights” in Manuel J. Smith’s ‘When I Say No, I Feel Guilty,’ and the bill of rights in Gravitz and Bowden’s ‘Recovery: A Guide for Adult Children of Alcoholics.’
The human bill of rights of Self-expression
1. I have the right to be listened to with respect.
2. I have the right to say no, to set limits, and to determine my own boundaries.
3. I have the right to make mistakes.
4. I have the right to have my own needs, feelings, opinions, beliefs, interests and preferences. I have the right to like what I like and want what I want.
5. I have the right to change my mind. I have the right to decide on a different course of action.
6. I have the right to negotiate for change.
7. I have the right to ask for emotional support or help, accepting that
there are limits to how much I can expect from anyone except myself.
8. I have the right to feel angry, and to express it in non-abusive ways.
9. I have the right to protest sarcasm, destructive criticism, and unfair treatment.
10. I have the right to refuse to become involved in another’ problems.
11. I have the right to feel ambivalent and to sometimes think or act paradoxically.
12. I have the right to sometimes do nothing, to waste time, and to refuse to be governed by the pressure to always be productive.
13. I have the right to be illogical in safe ways.
14. I have the right to play and to occasionally be childlike and immature.
15. I have the right to complain – about my own troubles and about the existential unfairness of life.
16. I have the right to make my own decisions, and to refuse unsolicited advice.
17. I have the right to move at a relaxed pace whenever practical.
18. I have the right to succeed, and to be proud of my accomplishments.
19. I have the right to like myself and value my uniqueness.
20. I have the right to say “I don’t know,” “I don’t understand,” or “I don’t care.”
21. I have the right to follow or disregard these suggestions.
One of my favourite self-fathering exercises is the time machine rescue operation. Walker has used it many times to fight off the impending paralysis of emotional flashbacks. At such times, he tells his inner child that, if time travel is ever possible, that he will travel back into the past and put a stop to his parents’ abusiveness. He will muffle them with a gag so they can’t scream at him or even mumble their criticisms.
It never ceases to amaze me how such imagery usually provides an exit out of fear and shame, and sometimes even makes my inner child laugh in delight.
Walker sometimes finishes this exercise by telling his inner child that he would also report his parents to the authorities so they would be sent to counselling to become better parents. Or, that, if he could, he would take his inner child back to live with him in the future before all those horrible things could have happened to him. He reminds him that he, in fact, lives in the present with him now, where he will always do his best to protect him.
When you consistently show your inner child that she is really safe and fully welcome in every aspect of her BEing, she will become more and more alive and self-expressive. As she experiences you consistently rising to her defence, she will feel free enough to reclaim the emotionality that fuels her innate spiritedness, playfulness, curiosity, and flexibility. How different this approach to fathering is when compared to the traditional approach.
Reparenting and forgiving the inner child fosters authentic experiences of Self-forgiveness. Once we understand how terribly abandoned the child was, we cannot help but have compassion for him or her. This compassion sometimes moves us to wonder about our parents’ childhoods. As we understand the hardships of their upbringing, we sometimes feel like their childhood travails are extenuating circumstances that allow us to feel forgiveness toward them. My mother’s father used to chase her around the kitchen threatening to beat her. I forgive her for doing the same to me as she was spiritually sick and unconscious. It is up to each of us to break the intergenerational cycle of trauma in our own families. Childhood trauma ran in your family until it ran into you. The Universe says “You’ve been anointed to break the cycle: Generational curses stop with you.” Good luck with your cycle breaking.
I hear you. You are a cycle breaker.
Namaste.
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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for four years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.