Reparenting with Self-Care
NYC Psychotherapist, Heather Coleman LCSW, writes about how to offer yourself reparenting with self-care when coming from an alcoholic or dysfunctional family system.
Self-care is everywhere in the news right now. Take more baths. Put on your favorite perfume everyday. Though, in fact, self-care is nuanced and can actually be quite boring. When is the last time you went to the dentist or doctor? How many hours of sleep are you getting per night? How is your diet and exercise regimen? Are you getting contact regularly with people who “get” and understand you?
When we come from a background of trauma and dysfunction, it doesn’t take much to evaluate your current self-care regimen to see how much the past can be recreated in the present. Most folks coming from dysfunction have suffered some amount of neglect; it can be likened to a slow decay of environment and care, so much so that no one’s needs are properly being met– emotionally, physically, spiritually and otherwise.
The solution? Start re-parenting yourself in the present. Here’s how to begin:
Set a schedule up for yourself like a good parent would do for a small child. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, a proper bed time and a proper wake-up time. Give yourself yearly doctor and dental visits and go when you are actually ill or need a cavity filled. Buy yourself new clothes that fit and don’t have holes in them. Take care of your social anorexia and go on playdates. If you are not able to do these things, this becomes a real curiosity point in your personal work about what is getting re-enacted here. What wounds are being opened up again and unattended to? What feeling states are getting re-enacted here so that they are playing on repeat? Are you “dosing” yourself again and again with feelings of sadness, shame, fear, resentment or guilt? (<— Dr. Nicole LePera shares great information on dealing with Emotional Addiction) Seeking out a therapist who will sit with you in attending to these emotions that are arising can be healing in and of itself. It is an opportunity to sit with the hurt child and allow full expression of all the hurt, blame, shame, fear and anger that may have been bottled up or put on ice for all of these years. Only then might movement towards self-care actually begin to be considered.
Develop an “Inner Loving Parent” voice. Those with a history of neglect, trauma and dysfunction will most likely be familiar with a negative and critical voice inside of themselves that jumps on every opportunity to blow up mistakes and failures and completely glances over and strengths, positives and successes they might encounter. This is because the inner critical parent voice is much stronger than the inner loving one. So the task is to generate an inner loving voice towards one’s self, to pick up on accomplishments and strengths as well as other’s love, care and compliments. If this is difficult to do, you might start with affirmations of kindness towards yourself–such as loving kindness phrases like: “May i be happy” “May i be safe” “May i be at ease.”
Allow yourself some fun. Has everything become about all work and no play? Is there any time that is set aside to just do nothing or do something enjoyable and loving with yourself–like to take a cooking or regular dance class? Of course there will be all the statements and backlash about how expensive it might be or how you have no time or how it might even be a waste– really this is all to keep patterns or neglect, lack of care and starvation in place. It can be the best thing for your health to take your Inner Child on a playdate. What is something you loved doing in your childhood that you are no longer allowed to do? You can then check in with the process of how that feels taking yourself out.
Reparenting and self-care is a process. It is possible to start on your own; however, sometimes old patterns might make it difficult to take those first steps. It’s helpful to have a therapist to talk with about your emotional life, goals and values so that you can explore patterns and experiment with new ways of being.
Heather Coleman, LCSW, is a psychotherapist in practice for the past 12 years. She specializes in working with Adult Children. She also is trauma-informed and takes a mindfulness approach to her work with clients both individually and in group.
Follow Heather on Instagram @themindfulacoa
