How to Start Reparenting Yourself

A Trauma-Informed Guide for Healing Your Inner Child

14-week Rewired Healing Series- Week 5

The Reparenting Process

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⚠️ Trauma-Informed Reminder

Some of what’s shared here might bring up strong emotions or old memories. Please go at your own pace.

✔️ Pause or step away if you feel overwhelmed — that awareness is part of healing.

✔️ Use grounding tools if your body feels tense (a few deep breaths, stretching, or orienting can help).

✔️ Skip this entirely if it doesn’t feel safe for you today. Your emotional safety comes first — always.

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📚 Summary

If you’ve ever tried inner child work and thought, “This feels awkward,” you’re not alone. Reparenting can feel unfamiliar at first —as you learn how to show up for the parts of you that never got what they needed, one small moment at a time.

In this post, we go beyond the concept and explore what reparenting actually looks like in everyday life.

Inside, you’ll find:

✨ Real-life examples of my everyday reparenting moments
🧠 Why it can feel fake at first — and why that’s actually a sign of healing

✅ 5 gentle reparenting practices you can try this week.
✍️ A gentle, trauma-informed worksheet to help you meet your unmet needs
💛 A build-your-own nervous system support plan — rooted in compassion, not shame

This is about learning to respond to yourself with love, even when your default is criticism or shutdown. And over time, these micro-moments add up — and your brain begins to believe: It’s safe to be me now.

👉 Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss a single post in the Rewired Healing Series.

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After everything I’d learned about trauma, survival patterns, and Complex PTSD...I still couldn’t figure out why some of the most basic healing practices felt so awkward & unnatural.

Telling myself, “You’re doing your best”?
Believing I’m still worthy of kindness — even when I mess up?
Catching a shame spiral and choosing compassion instead of criticism?

Every part of it felt fake.

I thought: This shouldn’t feel this hard.

But here’s what I’ve learned since then:

Of course it felt strange —
because I was doing something I had never been taught to do.

My adult self was trying to show up with love,
while my inner child was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It wasn’t fake.
It was just unfamiliar.

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🧠 Why Reparenting Feels So Unnatural at First

When your brain develops in survival mode — constantly on edge, hyper-aware of others’ needs, disconnected from your own — it wires itself for protection, not for nurturing.

So later in life, even when you want to speak kindly to yourself…
Even when you know what you “should” say or do…

Your nervous system doesn’t recognize it as normal — because it’s new.

Reparenting is about giving your brain new data.
But like any new pathway, it feels clunky at first.

You’re not failing.
You’re learning something your brain never got a chance to practice.

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❤️‍🩹 What Reparenting Looks Like in Real Life