A
female
age
26-29,
anonymous
writes:What to people mean by reparenting and how do you go about doing that? I am a 24 year old female still living in my parents home. Growing up, my father was an alcoholic and verbally abused me and my mother. My mother was also belittling me. There have been weird transitions of being mean and being nice to me. My parents are in their 60s now. I have older siblings. I feel like as my parents got older, they have become even more verbally abusive towards me. I have gone through therapy over the years but I still get anxious around them when they start being cruel. I am pushing myself to move out as soon as I can, but I am financially suffering. I have heard of reparenting the inner child or more likely your present self but I don't exactly know what that is?
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reader, anonymous, writes (9 October 2020): Forget about technical jargon and all this therapy stuff. In cases like this it is a bit like taking an pain killer to help you get rid of a headache for a while until it returns. Great in the short term but in the long run maybe just a waste of time and money. Despite being a therapist myself I know this. The chances of you finding someone who wants to reparent you and can do it well are a million to one, and at your age even less. You are almost an adult, now it is time to grow into an adult and leave behind all of those child like ideas.Spend your time on learning skills, getting an education, saving up money, working hard.I was in the same boat as you at your age. I could have let it carry on but I chose to get educated - no help and no support with this. All on my own. I chose to learn skills, pass exams and in the meantime I worked almost every evening and weekend so that I could save up and leave. It is easier and lazier to continue in the same situation but then years later you are still a child, a child pretending to be an adult, and still miserable.Take control of your life and change it to what you want it to be. It will be hard, it will be time consuming, but it is that or continuing to be miserable.
A
female
reader, linmuir  +, writes (9 October 2020):
Another way of thinking about this is to think of yourself as you would a very best friend and treat yourself as that best friend. I had abusive parents and, at 52 and several stints of counselling and years of figuring out why my parents did what they did, I still find the idea of 'reparenting' or 'parenting one's self' a bit too confusing to take on; it can be confusing because it suggests that you have to simultaneously regress to a childlike state and be a great parent to yourself. Doing both at once feels impossible to me and being a great parent to yourself can feel pretty impossible if you've never had a great parent!I prefer to try to be kind to myself and try to think of myself as I would a best friend. And I increasingly try to avoid people who treat me as 'less than' and who only want me to serve their needs. There are plenty of people like this in the world, and far fewer people who are decent and have your best interests at heart. I'm not being cynical, it's just the way that humanity works - we're like a flawed species, otherwise why would we be destroying the planet right now? Treating myself like a best friend, and learning to be kind to myself instead of critical, has taken practice, over years, and I admit some days I can't always do it - mainly this is due to money worries, which I am still trying to address on a practical level. Money worries can really affect your mental health and sense of wellbeing, and make it harder to be kind to yourself. But, it is possible to improve your relationship to yourself and eventually (when you feel better) learn to practice gratitude, can be really powerful. It can also be helpful to realise that 'parents' is a term that means 'flawed people' rather than 'God-like, flawless beings'.
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male
reader, MuchosTacosyChurros  +, writes (7 October 2020):
I have never heard the term "reparenting" but there's a very simple thing you can do: start working harder and saving more money and move out of there as soon as possible. Start looking for roommates: rents nowadays are crazy and unless you earn good money having one or more roommates is mandatory. It may be a good idea to ask on the job if you can change your workhours: for example if your parents mistreat you at dinner, ask for the evening/late shift. If you want to cut your interactions to a minimum, look for a job with a graveyard shift available, so you can sleep while they are around. Don't be afraid to put on overtime: it's more money for you and more time away from them, and when you are at a home you can just say you are exhausted and head straight to bed. Know you are not alone: my father left us (mother, younger brother and me) for long periods of time to go and live with other women, then he got tired of them or got kicked out and my mother always took him back to get through the same cycle of fights (my father fought with everybody, including his own parents who helped support us and gave him plenty of moolah), paternal abandon and assorted stuff until one day my mother kicked him out for good. I know how it feels not to want to see your own father anymore: I was only a child but when he was away I just wished for him to stay away and never come back. I don't even know if he's alive anymore but to be honest if I saw him on the street these days I'd probably turn the other way to avoid ruining my day even further. I know all this nice stuff is what has been causing me heaps of relationship troubles (and when I was younger I really really wanted to have children so it really tortured me) but ultimately a really good therapist will tell you that he/she can only give you a nudge out of the door but it's you who must do the walking.
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reader, anonymous, writes (7 October 2020): Reparenting is finding a parent to do what the real parents hadn't done. You can do it for yourself or you can pay a therapist to do it for you. Google it.You parents have been wounded in the same or similar ways and they either couldn't or wouldn't change. They have transmitted the "disease" to their children. It's no use playing the blaming game, because it never ends. Who was the first monster in your family history? Who started it all? It's a great thing that you are doing the work. Therapy, looking for better ways. You are young and you have already done so much. Now you need to become financially independent and move out, but before you do you need to protect yourself. I would continue with therapy, practice mindfulness, try reparenting and save up.
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female
reader, Honeypie + ♥, writes (7 October 2020):
 I think the best thing is for you to find a new counselor and talk this through with her/him. They will have the education and skills to figure out of that can be helpful to you.
The "inner child" is the part of us who has unresolved issues.
In short though, it means to be GOOD to yourself. Start putting yourself first, find your own boundaries and find who you want to be. To not let what OTHERS have done and said to you, define you.
I think it's pretty normal to feel anxious around people who have not treated you well in the past.
Did your therapist help you with what you can DO when your parents become cruel? To protect yourself?
And yes, I think your best bet is to figure out HOW to move out and away from them asap.
There are plenty of things that pop up when you google reparenting.
https://cptsdfoundation.org/2020/07/27/reparenting-to-heal-the-wounded-inner-child/
https://jessicadimas.com/easily-heal-your-inner-child-through-reparenting-yourself/#:~:text=%20How%20do%20I%20reparent%20my%20inner%20child%3F,and%20my%20inner%20child%20was%20soaring.%20More%20
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