Re-parent.

Re-parenting begins once you make the choice to move from loyalty to respect. While still living in loyalty to your actual parents it is impossible to become your own parent which is the basic concept of re-parenting. From my experience, re-parenting is an act of love for self. Becoming something for yourself that you wanted or needed but did not receive from your actual parents.

Something I think is important to consider the true essence of relationships before detailing with it means to re-parent self. Would you consider that we never are in relationships with other people, but rather in relationship with ourselves through other people? Meaning, the people in our lives are here to teach us things about ourselves which we wouldn’t be able to learn otherwise. How much differently do you experience yourself when you’re with your parent(s) versus your sibling(s)? Now think about the difference between when you're with your siblings versus your friends. Now what about your friends versus a romantic partner, and so on. In each instance I’m sure you can see that a different part of you comes to the surface, which is why relationships are so important. Maybe you don’t agree with what I’ve offered here, and I respect that, but if you can understand this concept you can start to see how important our experience of our parent(s) becomes.

Whether you like, love, or hate someone they are your teacher. People in our lives are here to show us parts of ourselves we haven’t mastered, show us what triggers parts of us, show us what we like or don’t like, what we want or don’t want, etc. How we experience our parents growing up (or lack there of) not only informs our ego parts but shows us how we do and don’t want to parent ourselves. Respecting and accepting your “parents' way” frees you into being able to create your own way. And so, any family dysfunction we experience actually becomes maybe our single greatest teacher; giving our pain, purpose.

Re-parenting is energetically becoming your own mom and dad. It’s (1) Becoming aware of how you were programmed as a child, (2) Taking ownership of your own experience, (3) Using invitational verbage with yourself (“parts of self”, “consider”, “are you open to…”, etc.), (4) Developing the ability to inspire, accept, and validate yourself. Is this a straight forward process? No. If something was programmed to be a certain way for 20, 30, 40 some odd years, wouldn’t you think it’d take a while to break that program? Consider that sometimes you may fall back into your programming, and that’s OK. When re-parenting self, consider noticing when familial programming comes up, and then, acknowledge how parts of you feel, allow yourself to feel, and accept yourself fully for who you are and where you’re at on your journey. By doing this you’re aligning your head with your heart, and re-visiting younger versions of yourself that maybe didn’t receive what they needed, which is one of the greatest acts of love and kindness one can gift themselves.

Also consider the 4 levels of healing and how they work hand in hand with the process of re-parenting self.

  1. Literal - The physical event that you experienced.

  2. Metaphoric - What does your literal story mean/represent to you? What does it feel like emotionally?

  3. Paradox - What did that experience teach you? If you could go back, what would you change? How will you live your life differently as a result?

  4. Creative - Would you consider you’ve created every experience in your life? Knowing this how would you like to experience what happened next time? What reality would you like to create?

If any of this resonated with you and you’d like to further participate in your own journey, you are invited to schedule an appointment to see if I can be of assistance.