Reparenting Yourself: Healing the Inner Child While Navigating Adult Life

You’ve probably heard the term “inner child,” but what does it really mean to reparent yourself as an adult?

In this episode of Shift Happens with Shay, we take a deep dive into what reparenting looks like—why it’s essential for breaking old patterns, building radical self-love, and nurturing the parts of you that didn’t get what they needed growing up. 💜

We explore:
 🌀 What the inner child actually is and how it shows up in your adult life
 🔄 Common wounds we carry from childhood
 ✨ How to start reparenting yourself with compassion and intention
 💬 Real-life practices for offering your inner child the love, validation, and safety you’ve always deserved

If you’ve ever felt stuck in self-sabotage, people-pleasing, or low self-worth—this episode is your invitation to start healing from the inside out.

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & more.

#Reparenting #InnerChildHealing #RadicalSelfLove #EmotionalHealing #ShiftHappensPodcast #HealingJourney #MentalWellness

Continue the conversation with Shay on her Instagram, Facebook page, website, and linkedIn! You can also email Shay at shifthappenswithshay@gmail.com if you are looking for insight about your life, send your stories, or request topics you would like to address.

Please note this podcast is not a substitution for therapy, if you require assistance with exploring trauma, deeper relationship issues, or more please reach out to establish care.

Transcript

0:00

Hey there, and welcome to Shift Happens with Shay. I'm Shay, your host and licensed marriage and family therapist. This podcast is where we dive into all the shift life throws our way, whether it's relationships, mental health, personal growth, or just figuring out this crazy journey of adulting here. We're all about honest conversation, real stories, and a whole lot of laughs as we tackles life's challenges together. This is your space to grow, explore, and feel seen. So grab a cozy spot, maybe a cup of coffee or wine, and let's get ready to shift through it all. Thanks for tuning in, and remember, no matter what life brings us, we're in this together. Hey guys, and welcome back to Shift Happens with Shay. I'm so excited for this next topic that we're about to get into because this is gonna keep going with our Embracing Change and Embracing You series. So last session we talked about soft life versus strong friends. And we all could relate with that, that at some point in time we have either met that strong friend or are the strong friend. And we talked about some ways to release yourself. From that role and to embrace a soft life. We talked about boundaries. We talked about ways to reinforce this new mindset, ways to let go, ways to take care of yourself, what radical self-love was, and we're gonna keep going with that. And along with the radical self-love I mentioned for you guys to do inner child self-reflection work check-ins with yourself. And I do wanna take this moment and for you to take this moment for yourself. How'd you do with that in these past two weeks? Did you find it challenging? Did you find it maybe just a bit still confusing or unclear? And I know that sometimes hearing inner child work is a little bit hard'cause it's just so do I just imagine my younger self or what does that look like? Is what if nothing happened to me at five, and that's okay. It doesn't need to be like that. And. We're gonna go deeper. We're going to really talk about what it means to check in on our inner child, what is an inner child who is an inner child? And we're really gonna be talking about re-parenting ourselves. And you know what that means? Because essentially when you're doing inner child work, you are being the parent that your parent wasn't to you essentially. So we're going to take this time. Um, really think about it. I'll first reflection prompt. When was the last time you felt small or vulnerable in a way that surprised you? Uh, that there was just this time where you were just out and about and somebody said something, somebody did something, and you just were like, whoa, why did I have this adverse reaction? For me personally, those adverse reactions, like physical sensations are usually what I would call chills, like if you were cold, but they're kind of violent in the fact that I could feel it like in my back sometimes, or the pit of my stomach. It's like a violent shake in a sense, and it just surprised you at how much that you know hurt or didn't make you feel good. So think about that time because that actually could be your inner child saying something to you. So we'll get into it by breaking it down about what is an inner child, and in definition, it's a part of your subconscious. That holds childhood memories and beliefs. These are the internal messages that you have heard, you've learned about, and they're sometimes unspoken. Not everything we learned from our parents was told to us. We observed it, we watched it. So how others were treated, how your parents manage their big emotions, how they dealt with conflict, what relationships look like between your parents. It kind of told you these. Unspoken expectations of what life should look like. Thinking a little bit about that, this is where you hold all of that. You're holding all of these memories, these feelings and these beliefs. Childhood is where we take that time to really form who we are. That's when we start to really think about or form our personalities, and we all are living with one. All of us have our own inner child, even if we're not aware of him or her, or they. And this is the part of you that is innocent and it's all about feelings and primal needs like. Pretty much that's that time, because remember, when we're younger, we are looking to feel secure. We're looking to feel loved. We're looking to have our basic needs such as food, your roof over your head, warmth, the bed, all these survival basic needs met because we're not able to do it. It is our most vulnerable time for us as children because we have no choice but to rely on the adults around us to. Fulfill those needs to get it done. And sometimes unfortunately, it doesn't get met. So then we find out that, hey, our childhood experiences are hurtful when we look back on it. And this is where for your inner child, this is where your trauma is stored, where neglect, joys, disappointment that you've experienced as a child. Remember? Your inner child matters because this is where you sh like these experiences shape how you love, trust, and show up as an adult. And these are signs that your inner child is, we'll call it active because sometimes trigger is strong for everybody and not everybody likes that word, so Big T, little T if it should be, we're going to call it active. Here, you're having emotional flashbacks. Those are some, some of those, like you might be thinking about a period in time when you were a. Child or adolescent, or even a young adult where is just heavy feelings. For some reason, this moment in time always comes back when you feel hurt, offended, or any type of reminder. So we're having those flashbacks, we're reliving the experience through your feelings. Your body's going through it again. Sometimes it can look like you're craving approval. This can look like that we're overreacting to certain events or interactions that are happening with us because. We didn't think it was that big of a deal when it was said, but our body said otherwise. So either we're getting really mad or we're feeling really the cha or we might disassociate or we're feeling very, I don't wanna say sensitive, but we're just feeling very hurt. Like for some reason this is taking on a, it's just personal for us. It's taking on a life of its own for us. And also your inner child can be active if you are noticing you're engaging in self-sabotaging patterns. As children, when we do wrong, oftentimes society tells us we need to grow up and put child just things behind us. We should know better, you should do better. And that's not necessarily. The case. It's not always that way. And really as a society, we need to step back from that because we should be allowing children to be children for as long as they can a course while teaching them independence and skills to help them navigate life. Because hey, we get it. They gotta learn to take care of themselves one day. But childhood is so important because this is the time where you get to discover joys and you have the capacity for wonders and innocence and playfulness and. Unfortunately, neglect and trauma and all this other things stifle that. And sometimes it feels hard to even know what joy feels like for us. So let's get into our childhood wounds. Like what are these wounds? And they can look very different, but some common ones for us are abandonment, rejection, neglect, and shame. And at some point in time. We have experienced this, some of us have experienced it in a more severe manner than others, so. But these come up, abandonment like your parents were never there for you, or they withheld their love, revoking it. It always had to be earned. Um, rejection, it's hard to hear rejection because again, I. You didn't feel loved, you didn't feel like you were enough. You didn't feel that like this. It was always accompanied by like, humiliation to feel rejection, felt like an actual pain, like it hurt neglect not getting any of your needs done or met, no matter how much you begged or plead, or then maybe you acted up out of it. It's. That stuff is hard because then well who will do it? And it puts, it forces you to be in a role where you have to grow up faster than you should. And then shame. Shame for things that we love. Shame for our ideas, shame for being different. Shame for going against the, against the grain in our families. And that part just. Sucks. It hurts because all of these can lead to us feeling lonely, emotionally abandoned it. We feel isolated. Sometimes we get stuck in certain patterns, abusive patterns that we may have gone through. It's makes it really difficult for us, think about this, like how these show up in your adult life says a lot because it can show up as people pleasing, it can show up as low self-esteem, low self-worth, relationship problems, you having lack of boundaries, you not knowing how to communicate in a relationship, or maybe feeling. Out of touch with yourself because we don't know how to manage these emotions. Who do these belong to? What are they? I don't even feel comfortable having these or experiencing these. Some of us are blunted where we just don't know how to feel or connect at all with emotions in themselves. But these wounds show up in our adult life in so many ways and. Let's think about which childhood message do you still find yourself believing today? Out of everything that you've gone through as a child, adolescent, young adult, what was the message that you still hold onto that you believe even today? Sometimes these messages are hard. My childhood message that I still have and I fight constantly is that I have to carry it all. I have to protect my family, like my mother and my sister, as if they're not capable of protecting themselves just because of my dad's failure to be there as the protector or the provider in a sense. I still have that and I'm still working through that in my own way and learning that I don't have to have it all figured out that it's okay to have help, that it's okay to trust people. So what are, what is the message that you're still believing today? Okay, so moving on, pretty much to us three reparenting ourselves because we gotta heal ourselves. We gotta get into this time where. We wanna get away from these things like, oh my God, Shay, now I'm thinking about it. And dang, I got a lot of wounds showing up for myself. I got a lot of things like rejection or neglect, oh my God, shame is here, left and right. I feel it when I meet new people and I say my interests. I feel ashamed to even tell people what I love to do or what I'm interested in because I've always been made fun of, or I feel it's hard for me to go out and get the things that I want or. I need things that I wanna do. Maybe I wanna go skydiving, maybe I wanna actually take that promotion, but I'm afraid that I'm gonna be rejected and no one's gonna want me. No one's gonna understand me. They're gonna think everything I say is just dumb. Or I'm afraid to really go further in my relationship because I'm afraid to really open up. I've been abandoned before emotionally. So who's to say it won't happen again? I, it's that feeling of loneliness and feeling that you always tend to push people away. You're emotionally frozen in time when you were pushed away and left behind. So how do we get this together? And that's where reparenting yourself comes in. It's therapeutic.'cause that's when we use in the therapy room, it's, it's a therapeutic approach to reparent our inner child. And this is where you will learn to meet your own needs. Your, your emotionally unmet needs, mental, physical, and any of them. This is where you learn. To help yourself. This is where you take the time to go to your inner child inside of you, taking this moment to check in on them, hear them what they need, soothe them, comfort them, because you know there's a reason why it's feeling really active while it's showing up. During this time when you're reparenting yourself, you're becoming the nurturing, protective, and validating figure you needed at that time. For your inner child, for that moment in time, that always comes up for you, that emotional, well emotionally active time for you, whatever time period that may be, and this is where you'll be shifting from self-criticism to self-compassion. Because reparenting isn't about blaming our parents, it's about claiming our healing. Unfortunately, we're not responsible, of course, we're not responsible for our trauma. We are responsible for our healing, and there are some signs that you may need, some reparenting, like I mentioned before, poor self-esteem, poor boundaries, extremely competitive sometimes. And not in a good way, like you have to be the best in order to be seen and loved and acknowledged. Maybe you have obsessive tendencies because you can't trust others to really follow through. So you obsess over the small details or things that are going on around you because the slightest thing out of whack means you no longer have control. Difficulties, like I mentioned, handling your emotions. Maybe you struggle with addiction, isolation of avoiding people, rebelliousness, just going against people who were trying to be helpful for you, and just being anxious around new experiences because you were never taught how to adapt to change. Because any change that happened meant, oh, no, life's about to get worse. Change means worse, but that's not always the case. So, but re-parenting, there are very different things that we can do over here. This is a time that we're gonna confront any pain or fear from our past and validate all the emotions you felt. Yes, even the not so great ones, we have to acknowledge them because they've been suppressed so long and they show up when you are feeling that you are being violated again by that experience. So this is when we have to recognize our inner child. And sit with them and honor them, and this will take some practice. You're not just going to do this all great. And in the beginning it's different. People think like, oh, inner child work is woo, woo woo, but like woo woo magic. But it's not like this is a time where we're doing internal strategies, like we're learning to become conscious of our inner self and communicate with them. If you're acting up and the child is showing up in the front and it's not your wise adult self that's here, that means your inner child does not trust you and you're taking this time to parent them and teach them how to trust again. To trust you. This is pretty much using you, don't trust you to come through for you, and we're gonna change that. We're gonna be more nurturing, and we're gonna shift from that self-criticism to self-compassion. Ways we can reparent ourselves, the inner child check-ins. This is regularly pretty much sitting with yourself and saying, what does my inner child need right now? Literally just sit there with yourself what am I needing right now? What is, what am I experiencing? What am I lacking? What, what is going on for me? And you do this by not shaming yourself. You are a supportive ally to yourself, and you're acknowledging all those emotional wounds because sometimes, okay, if you're emotional wound of abandonment is showing up, why am I feeling that? If I'm feeling lonely, then that must mean I need comfort. But where am I seeking comfort from? What has caused me to feel abandoned, left behind, neglected? We're taking that time for ourselves, and it's very important that you communicate with yourself as you would a child during that time and keep contact with yourself daily throughout the day. As you're going through this you need to regularly ask yourself this. Okay, so remember, what does my inner child need right now? This can also look like affirmations. I know there's a cringe, but they are so vital. They're needed, they're really good for you. Think about it. Sometimes we have to reassure ourselves and teach ourselves to accept comforting, nurturing, protective tones from our own voice. We gotta get comfortable with protecting ourselves, protecting our hearts, and filling it. With love and nurture and all the ooey, ooey, giness that we didn't get from before, and it's so powerful hearing it from you, your voice, becoming the new narrative and overriding the inner critic. So saying things to yourself such as you are safe, your feelings matter. I'm here for you. We have to. Take control of that. We gotta instill more of that for us and reassure ourselves that we're truly here for ourselves at this time. Nurturing rituals. So think about your favorite childhood comforts or whatnot. It could be a blanket, it could be music, a playlist.'cause I mean, let's, let's be real like we love ourselves. Some music as millennials, music takes you back to a certain time and you could recall all the details that was coming on from when that song was there. Like you don't even necessarily need to know the year the song came out, but as soon as it comes on, you're taken back immediately. Music can take us to a time where we felt comfort, where we felt we needed this. Embrace more music is just a way of embracing. So I love me some music. So I mean, definitely get your childhood playlist home creative play, just allowing yourself to be free with that. I don't care if you're out here dancing in the rain or playing with slime, building Legos. Painting, dancing, have this for yourself so that when you're feeling active and you're feeling unsafe or you just need a little bit of reassurance, you know, your go-to to help you. This is gonna be so important because that empowers you and you no longer feel out of control. And you're teaching your inner child and you're pretty much that they can trust. You can trust you. And you're gonna give them the tools that they need whenever they're feeling this way. Boundaries, they always will come up. So there are boundaries with reparenting. You have to teach yourself. It's okay to say no and to protect your peace. I'm always about saying, no, no, no, no. If it's not for you, no. If it doesn't help you grow. No. If it doesn't take you to your next level, no. It's just no to all of it. And there's no point in saying yes to something that's not gonna benefit you. I get we wanna help everybody and from time to time, that's okay, but if helping causes us to be in pain, we don't want it. Such as if you need to suspend contact with people who caused you the pain in your childhood, young adulthood, whoever caused the pain to your inner child, that's fine. You can do that because I. Liberation from unhealthy roles and relationships starts from within us. We get to choose who we wanna be around, how much we wanna give, and we get to set those limits. There's nothing selfish about it. Boundaries are not selfish. It is an act of self-love. So regardless of how those people feel, unfortunately we really don't care at this point because we're taking time to actually care about our feelings this time'cause so for so long it's been overlooked. You're doing this to help yourself. This helps you develop discernment. This helps you recognize what's unhealthy or maybe what's just non-existent with your boundaries. These really just help you with where you're at and give you the safety that you're needing and your adult self. The wise adult side here. Needs to be clear with internal boundaries and what is healthy in all areas of our lives. We're teaching ourselves our child that this is not right, and this is why. And when we put the boundaries, these boundaries are here to protect us. So when you're making your boundary statements, they're not to be like unfeeling or uncaring, like saying oh, you shouldn't have did that. You need to just stop talking to people like. No, we don't give a fuck about people. We kind of don't to a degree, but it can still sound, connecting to your full self because you wanna fully, well, actually, if it sounds like that to you, I don't know, whatever uncaring to you or unfeeling do what's best for you. If it feels warm, fuzzy, ooey gooey, say it in that way that it makes you feel those feelings. If it's not making you feel that it's not caring is all I'm saying, but teach yourself to say, no. Protect your peace. This is why we're here. Journaling, it helps. I'm not saying you gotta do it every day, but. It helps. If you could say anything to your younger self, what would it be? Write letters to that self. Give the words that you wanted to hear at that time. Go ahead and fill yourself with that. That is cathartic. I love that. And instead of calling like a journal prom, I mean like, it is more, hmm. Letter writing. I mean, I guess journaling is that, but you're sending this to yourself, and I think it's important when we write to ourselves because we know the words we needed to hear because we wanted to hear them. We prayed and begged and hoped one day somebody would say it to us. Sometimes we were just waiting for ourselves to be that person. So be the person who finally says the words you needed at that time in your life. Where you felt most alone? Most hurt, most unseen. Write to yourself, dear Younger self. Dear little, you dear little me. Hey Shehe, whatnot. Take that time to say anything that you younger self wanted to hear or needs to hear. Another one is mirror work. Mirror work. Allows you to pretty much look at you, really see yourself for the first time, you'll look yourself in the eyes and give yourself an encouraging message, such as, I love you. I've got you. You're the most beautiful thing here. You are so precious. You are such a gift. You are I not just saying that just because I am like your, girly best friend or bestie or therapist or whatnot, but because you truly are a gift, you are. So mirror work also can feel like affirmations where it just feels cringe. But we feel discomfort because no one has truly seen us, looked at us that deeply or loved us that deeply sometimes, and it's. Intimidating to do so. It's so intimate mirror work. So try it out maybe like once a week at least, to look yourself in the eye and build up on that afterwards. Do it about like twice, maybe once in the morning and once at night. So when you wake up, you say something beautiful to yourself and when you lay down, you end the day on a beautiful note with yourself. It's nice. We wanna be nice to ourselves. Yeah, so I say definitely do it. Do it. So of course there are some challenges with everything. Like I mentioned, sometimes it just feels weird at first and it's okay. Anything new is weird. Anything new. Sometimes it's scary, but you're teaching your younger self, it's okay. New doesn't always mean bad. And new in this regards is actually really great for us. And you may have a lot of emotions. You may find yourself that you might be crying a lot, maybe you're a little bit suen, but we're releasing these feelings, these emotions, these thoughts that have been clinging to us for so long that are no longer ours. We don't wanna carry them anymore because they were others. People's reflections of us, and we never gave ourselves a chance to truly see who we are. You might find unexpected grief because we're grieving possibly a childhood. That at first we didn't even realize it was that bad until we looked back. So we're grieving what we used to think what we had. We're grieving apart of our history, our story. So don't limit yourself. Let yourself grieve for letting go of these things and. There may be some difficulties when navigating family dynamics while you're healing because you might feel a bit active a lot from certain things when they show up. Certain wordings, phrases maybe body languages and cues that used to set you off. Take time for yourself. Be easy, be compassionate, be kind. You're allowed to take a break, you're allowed to step back. Just know. Just because you react to something doesn't mean that you threw away your whole healing or that, oh my God, my inner child, I didn't do better to protect my little me. It's okay. It's a learning experience. We are literally reparenting ourselves. Give yourself grace, okay? Healing is not linear. Every step is worthy. So I am getting close to closing this out with you and. With all this being said, I just want you to know you deserve the love, you deserve the protection and validation you're learning to give yourself. You truly deserve all of that. And I'm sorry that once again, it feels like you have to be the trailblazer. I'm sorry that this pain was. Given to you. I'm sorry, that little you felt that they had to carry that pain for you because it was so unfair. You didn't have to grow up fast. You just needed to be loved and nurtured. You just needed to be encouraged to grow and to blossom into the beautiful flower you are now. And this way, even though it can't come from mom or dad or whomever you were raised by or what, whoever lets you down at whatever age your inner child is. This is the time for you to be that person for you, and you were always able to be that person. She was always here. You are the one who could give yourself what you need the best, better than anybody else. It was always within you. So I invite you this week and next, and hopefully the rest of your life, whenever you need it. Do small inner child check-ins this week. Check in with your little mini me, and I would say even before doing that, take time to describe your inner child. I've mentioned before my inner child is my 21 22 self. It's not like my ity bity younger self. maybe with some of the revelations I've had about my upbringing, maybe they might be my 7-year-old self, both, but, um, 7-year-old self. But the one who shows up most is really my 21 and 22-year-old self, because that's when I felt my dad failed me by calling me disrespectful when I was expressing myself. Mind you, my expression was not the cleanest and clearest as it is now, but I was a angry child and it just came out and I didn't realize how angry I was and who knows, maybe that was my little seven, 7-year-old self or whatnot. But it's very clear at 21, 22, I was hurting the most is when I felt abandoned and shamed about my feelings and what I was going through. And the two male figures in my life, being my ex I was with for four years. And my father just kind of leaving me and that hurts clearly. So just spiraling and I do have to check in with her from time to time and I notice whenever I wanna play video games a little bit more or I'm feeling a creative spark, that's my younger self saying she wants to release. And instead of raging, she wants to make something that's fun or exciting or just something soft. And I do take time for her because she deserves it and she's so worthy of it. And, she comes up every now and then as you can, uh, kind of, probably can hear it in my voice. Um, it's hard work, but it's so. Necessary, and I invite you guys to really do it. Do this work for you, and don't be hard on yourself. Some of it's gonna be really hard. So really take that time to think about who is your inner child? What's their name? What were you feeling that day? Do they wanna play? How old were you? What do they need? What didn't you like? What did you like most? When did you feel most alone? What are your most favorite things to do? Reacquaint yourself with you no longer suppress them. I will be sharing. Some of the reparenting practices we talked about here. I'll put them up on my ig so that you guys can see them and tag me and let me know which ones were helpful for you. Which ones spoke out to you the most? Which ones felt a little fear, let's share about it. We'll share one reparenting practice that's working for us and it's always good to share, because you're helping somebody in need, someone who probably didn't know. Yeah. So if you felt like this was a good one, share with your friends. Share with your sisters, your family, all your loved ones, coworkers, whoever share, everybody needs to do some inner child work from time to time. Nothing wrong with that. So I leave you guys with this. I hold space. For all parts of me with love, patience, and care. Okay. Hold all the space for all the parts of me with love, patience, and care. I hope you hold some space for yourself and you're a little kinder to yourself as you continue to do your inner child work.'cause it's really powerful realizing what has been holding us back. What's been in control of us and realizing we do have the power and always have to take back control in a more helpful, nurturing way than what was before. At this point, you're not teaching your younger inner self to grow up. You're teaching them, it's okay. You're allowed to be hard. I love you guys and I can't wait to chat with you guys again. I'll see you on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, wherever you follow me. Wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're just jumping off for the first time, go ahead and start from the beginning or. Start from wherever you want, wherever your heart calls you to, whatever title. Happy to have you here. And if you need a friend, go ahead. Reach out to me on Instagram and my dms. Happy to hear from you all. I love you. If you ever need a friend, I am here. All right, love you guys. Bye.