How to Reparent Yourself

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, please give us a rating and review, however you listen to us. Reason why is because the more ratings and reviews that we get on those platforms, the more that they show us to people who have never listened to it before, which allows us to impact more people at a deeper level. So if you do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today, we're gonna be talking about how to reparent yourself.

0:37And, you know, what is reparenting in the first place? Maybe you've heard about this before, but I want you to understand this before we dive in. No one in this world is perfect and included in that are parents. No parent is perfect. And if that's the case, that means that no parent could ever give every single child exactly what they needed every single moment. And so reparenting yourself means becoming the loving, supportive, consistent caregiver that you may have not gotten as much as you needed to growing up or as much as you wanted to. And so now if you're listening to this and you don't live with your parents, now it is time for you to be your own caregiver.

1:20And what this means is it's the process of meeting your unmet emotional needs, like feeling safe or validated or loved or accepted. At its core, reparenting is choosing to stop abandoning yourself and to start showing up more for yourself with compassion. Imagine this for a second. Imagine your adult self today walks into a room and sees your younger self maybe curled up in a corner crying or confused or hurt or maybe even angry. And I want you to think back to that child and think to yourself like, what do you say to them? How do you show up for them? What would you do if you walked into a room and you saw that child, which is you and you know it's you?

2:07How would you show up for them? That's basically reparenting. It's not some like little cute concept that you see on Instagram. It's actually a really, really powerful therapy tool. It's a deep process that can completely change your own internal landscape. And so, you know, first let's talk about why this work is necessary in the first place. Here's the deal. Like I said a minute ago, none of us had perfect parents. And that's not, I don't want you to think that's like a dig at your mom or dad. Some of you guys had parents and you're like, yeah, they were completely screwed up. And some of you guys listening are like, my mom and dad were pretty damn good.

2:42And so when I'm saying that no parent is perfect, I'm not putting a dig on anybody's parents here at all. Everybody is always doing the best they can at any moment of their life. That's just real life. And caregivers are humans. And raising children is really, really hard. Like children are professionals at triggering whatever is in you that is not healed. And even the most loving parents can unintentionally pass down wounds that they got from their parents, even though they tried really hard not to. And so your brain growing up, especially in childhood, is just a sponge. And it's constantly looking around and seeing things.

3:22And it's asking itself, you know, am I safe? Am I loved in this situation? If I do this thing, am I loved? But if I do this thing instead, am I loved more? Am I enough? Do they think that I am enough? What do I need to do to get connection? because the child and parental connection is so important to a child that unconsciously children will kind of become chameleons to do what they need to do to feel that connection with their parents. And in turn, that can turn into different behavioral adaptations. And if your needs were not met as a child consistently or maybe securely, your nervous system learned along the way to adapt and be creative sometimes in costly ways.

4:09And like I said, these are called behavioral adaptations. Every child develops behavioral adaptations depending on what they need to adapt to in their environment. And so maybe you grew up and because of the way that your parents were and your environment was, you grew up thinking that love was conditional or maybe believing that resting is lazy. Or maybe you learned to internalize shame every time that you had really big feelings because your parents told you to be quiet and not to cry and big boys don't cry, whatever it might be. So you started shaming yourself every time you had big feelings.

4:50Maybe you learned that the only way to get your parents' love was by achievement. That could be through grades, that could be through sports. Maybe you felt like you had to earn and achieve in order to be worthy. And so if any of these sound familiar, this is why reparenting is definitely necessary. Reparenting is just the process of interrupting those patterns and showing up for yourself the way that you need to show up in those moments, in the way that you needed someone to show up for you when you were a child. It's about becoming the safe, loving, wise adult that your child needed when you were younger, but didn't always get.

5:33And a really big key part to understanding your inner child is understanding that it still exists. It's kind of weird. And I remember I used to think that it sounded weird, like, oh, my inner child, that's odd. That sounds kind of woo wooey. But when you look at it, you didn't lose that little kid that you once were. It's probably just been buried and hidden away and ready to be rediscovered because you had to grow up or you had to go to school or you had to go to college, you had to get a job or you had to be realistic. You had to stop being so creative, right? And so it's like, you kind of like all of us are kind of like throwing the little child in the corner and just throwing stuff on top of it.

6:12And it's like, it's still there. We just need to find them again. And so you need to start treating yourself as if you had that little kid to take care of for the rest of your life. So think of this. Think of yourself at three or five or seven or eight years old and think of yourself as if you're in the room with that little child right now and you now realize as a full-on adult, you're the one in charge of them. You're the one that needs to give them love. You're the one that needs to show up for them. and you have to understand that what happened in your childhood is not your fault but that child now that you're an adult is your responsibility so stop acting like they're not there stop acting they don't need love stop acting they don't need reassurance or safety or to feel like they're worthy and so the real question is like what do they need think about that for a second like if said, what does my inner child need?

7:09What did they need back then? And so what this is all about is rewiring your nervous system and learning how to feel safe being fully you. What ends up happening is because of the fact that we have to move and shift and change ourselves around from our true self in childhood and become a chameleon in many different ways, we abandon our true selves. And so what do you need? And here's what happens when you reparent yourself that's important. You learn to stop abandoning yourself in moments of stress. You learn how to self-soothe without shaming yourself or numbing yourself. You learn how to become a safe space for yourself and then also others as well.

7:55You develop real confidence, right? Real confidence, not confidence that comes off of like achievement. or how much money's in your bank account or what you've done in your life. Real confidence is like, I'm confident in who I am without any achievements necessary. And you learn how to parent yourself better, which in turn, and this is really important for you people that are parents or if you want to have children one day, is as you learn how to parent yourself better, you become a 10 times better parent for your children that you have and a better leader for the people who are around you. and you do it from a healed place instead of a wounded place.

8:35And this is, you know, it's a new level of responsibility for your life. You're no longer outsourcing your emotional needs to your job or your partner or your bank account or anything else. You become your own emotional anchor, which is really foreign for most people is because our emotional anchor very rarely is ourself. We look for other people to do it. We act like we don't feel it. We try to numb in some sort of way. It's like, no, no, no. Home is me. Home is inside of me. I am the emotional anchor. And so let's talk about how you actually do it. Okay. Let's break down a couple powerful, actionable steps that you can do.

9:12So the first thing that you want to do, hey, number one, why don't you meet your inner child? Try this out. Like just, you can do it now. If you're at home and you're just sitting on your couch, listening to me, or if you're just making a bagel in your kitchen. You can do this real quick. You can close your eyes and you can picture little you, maybe five years old, maybe younger. Just think about a moment in your childhood that holds a lot of energy for you. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Like it's one of the ones that first comes up into your mind. Maybe you were scared or maybe you were alone or maybe you were mad or frustrated or maybe you were worried, angry.

9:57Maybe you were lost in some way. Think of that one moment where you just have a whole lot of energy. And then what I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself, as if you're asking this child, how are you feeling? Like ask that kid, go back to that moment because children don't really know how to process emotions. But as an adult, you can come to that child and go, hey, how are you feeling? Like, what are you feeling? and see what comes up. Oh man, I'm just really scared. My parents were supposed to be home two hours ago and they're not home and I can't call them because there aren't cell phones back then and I'm afraid that something happened to them and I feel alone and I don't feel safe and I don't feel taken care of.

10:38Just ask yourself, how are you feeling? And then ask, what do you need from me right now? And think about how adult you, and I understand this sounds very, very foreign. How adult you can show up and speak to that child. You know, if you walked in and you saw a child that even just wasn't you and they're crying and they're in a corner and you walk up, you want to just leave them in the corner. You'd walk up to me like, hey, what's going on? How are you feeling? What's going on? What do you need from me? And then you would try to comfort them in any way. There's no difference between that child and you as a child when you were going through that thing when you are not getting what you needed.

11:19And so here's the hard part. Now we actually need to learn to give ourself that. Maybe it's rest. Maybe it's play. Maybe it's security. Maybe it's love. Maybe it's acceptance. Maybe it's permission to cry without fixing anything. That's what reparenting actually looks like. You listen, you validate, and you show up. So how can I help you feel safe or loved or worthy or happy right now? And then also every single day. Because realize that that's something that holds a lot of energy. And that's why I said, if it holds a lot of energy to you, it's probably something that still exists in the back of your mind and is holding you back in some way.

11:59So that's the first thing is you want to meet that little inner child as much as you can. The second thing is to create emotional safety rituals in your life. You know, you can't really grow in chaos. And so you want to start building little, you know, micro habits that send the message you're safe now. So many times people can't stop working, even when they become successful, they make a$10 million and they still can't stop working. The reason why is because they still don't feel safe within themselves. And so they think, oh my gosh, making more money is going to make me safer. And then they never actually feel safe within themselves.

12:34Or, you know, people outsource their happiness and their love to someone else. So they can't stop going from one relationship to another and thinking that somebody else needs to love me in order for me to feel worthy. And so you create some sort of technique to help you out. Like I teach, obviously, morning mindset priming. That's one of the things that I love to talk about. But maybe you create affirmations in the morning that is like talking to that little inner child that's still there. You know, affirmations like I protect myself now or I choose differently than my parents did or I am safe and I am protected or I am worthy of love without needing to achieve anything.

13:14And what you're doing is you're just basically speaking to yourself in the moment every single morning and you're teaching your nervous system that I'm not going to abandon myself anymore when things get hard. I'm going to be here and I'm always going to be the emotional rock that I needed back then. So that's the second thing. Third thing is to learn to start giving yourself the love or care or support or safety that you didn't get. You know, were you taught that achievement is what made you worthy or that good kids don't cry or that love is earned and it's not unconditional or that you were supposed to be seen and not heard?

13:56If you were learning things like this, what you want to do is you want to start to flip the script and start talking to yourself. Practice saying stuff like, I'm proud of myself just for trying. You know, if you're one of the ones who had to achieve all the time, maybe you tried something and you just screwed it up big time. Hey, I'm proud of myself at least just for trying. Or, you know, my needs are not a burden. Or it's okay to feel sad and still be worthy at the same time. Or, you know, if you're one of the ones that was taught to play smaller to be seen and not heard or to kind of hide from everybody.

14:31Say something like, I'm allowed to take up space. Whatever it is for you. And this is really important. You're not coddling yourself. Coddling says you're fragile. Let me shield you from all of your discomfort. Reparenting says you're capable and worthy even when things are hard. And I will support you through the discomfort, not just try to protect you from it. You're retraining your inner operating system to believe that it's safe to be fully human and to go through emotions. And this is extremely, extremely important. Reparenting yourself actually builds your emotional muscles. When you reparent yourself, you're not avoiding struggle.

15:11What you're doing is you're meeting it differently. You're giving your nervous system what it never had growing up. Safe, consistent, secure, emotional co-regulation. It doesn't mean that you're babying yourself. It means that you're validating your pain so that it doesn't run your life or ruin your life. You're learning how to self-soothe instead of abandon yourself. You're making it safe to feel things instead of just stuffing them down and acting like they're not there. And it creates a more secure, self-aware, and emotionally resilient adult. And this is what a lot of like quote-unquote hard parents don't realize.

15:50They say, I don't want to coddle my child. They say, the world is tough, and so you need to be tough on your kids. But so many studies have shown that secure adults aren't hardened by going through hard things. They're more rooted in themselves, in their emotional attachment to their parents, in their emotional attachment to themselves. A secure adult is somebody who can feel fear and still take action. They can set boundaries with other people and feel absolutely no guilt about it. They don't crumble under stress or lash out at other people when they're triggered. They self-regulate. They recover faster.

16:31They repair better. They're emotionally agile. And that strength, it doesn't come from quote-unquote toughing it out. It comes from healing the parts of you that you thought were only lovable when you were performing or perfect or quiet or needing to protect yourself. And so really what it comes down to is it's not coddling at all. It's like emotional stability, which many, many people that I talk to every single day never had. And so as an adult, it's something that we need to learn. We need to reparent our inner child so that we can become more secure emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, all of that stuff, because then we can become better people, better parents, better leaders, better spouses.

17:16And so reparenting yourself isn't just like some woo-woo like, hey, tell yourself you're okay. It's about radical self-responsibility without self-blame. It's about learning to love parts of you that were shamed, and you might still to this day shame. It's about protecting the parts of you that were neglected. And it's about parenting yourself toward the future that you actually want, not, you know, the one that keeps repeating over and over and over again because you're stuck in the same cycle and you can't figure out why. Because here's the truth, your inner child isn't holding you back. They're waiting for you to come back.

17:56And so what I want you to do is I want you to think about this. You can journal about this. You can do it right now. You can turn this episode off when we get done. You can journal it before you go to bed. is just ask yourself, what did I need most as a child that I didn't consistently receive? And then just ask yourself, how can I give myself that this week? And you know, it's a slow process. It's a deep process. All of these things are often invisible, but it's the kind of work that when you really, really do it can shift everything. So you're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. You're becoming, and that's the real magic behind all of it.

18:30So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories. Tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So if you've ever gotten any value from anything I've ever put out, please do me a favor and share it. I would greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission, make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.