How to Parent Yourself

We cannot change the parents we had – but there is always an option, in later life, to learn to care for ourselves in new and perhaps better ways. In other words, there are opportunities to learn how to reparent ourselves.

FURTHER READING

“All of us were parented. For many of us, it went well. We were loved, our views were respected, our needs were tended to. It helped to make us the more or less sane people we are now.

For others among us, things went really rather badly wrong. Perhaps there was unreliability, anger, humiliation, violence or worse…”

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CREDITS

Produced in collaboration with:

Oliver Trace

[rea]

When re-parenting yourself the main thing is to have your best interest at heart and not just do the opposite of what your parents used to do. To not give yourself everything you want but instead try to give everything you need in order to live a better, more fulfilled life. Because sometimes we want things that are bad for us, but if we want the best for our child (which we are) we don't give him things that are potentially harmful.
I think this is the hardest thing about parenting yourself--keeping the balance between both extremes.

[mikell.]

Sometimes am a bad self-parent, but then i say that i was self-adopted.

[Handsap]

Yes, i have done this, i have raised myself, gone places neither of my parents would have dared. I have proven myself to be a better parent than they were. And it is the most satisfying thing in the world. For me to simply say, i know better.

[Theracingattorney]

I literally pat myself on the back when I’m proud of myself

[jordeecakes]

“One’s future depends on how one looks at the past”

[rva]

I'm 30 and am still parenting myself.

[DecodeChannel]

Here is summary of key ideas:

1. How our parents behaved will have laid down a template in our minds. But we have an ability to parent ourselves

2. To do that we should comfort ourselves at moments of difficulty with imagination

3. Encourage ourselves in the face of anxiety

4. Reaasure fragile parts of us by drawing upon our experience

[vicld]

I did it for years when my parents were absent BUT my biggest mistake and what holds me back is expecting/ waiting for my parents to parent me one day... And it's not gonna happen. Time went by and I'm still missing something I never had but it's time to let it go, I never ever will have that but that's okay: I'm already a parent to myself and I am here for MYSELF and that's all that matters.

[mentafe]

I really appreciated this video, but it also made me extremely sad. It's still hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I need to "parent myself". I think that a part of me knew even as a child that I couldn't rely on my parents, yet when I looked around me and saw what it was like for the other kids I kind of started ignoring the truth. Now i'm in my 20s and it's hard to accept that i need to be a parent for my own parents, accept that i'm an adult and at the same time still parent the little kid deep inside me. But i have my whole life to learn from my and other people's mistakes and become a better person. I want to believe that I'll "raise myself" well.

[anabonn]

Beautiful, so comforting. My aunt died at 88 and until then she was sad about her parents neglection when she was a child. Pain doesn't go away by itself with time, so parenting yourself is the way to go

[rektchord]

I'm from a single parent home and was unfortunately neglected. This has caused all sorts of problems, from excessive drinking social anxiety to depersonalization disorder and hopeless relationships. Through therapy I learnt this idea of how to re connect to my inner child and change my beliefs about who I am. I'm certainly not perfect but this technique is so crucial to the process.

[abhishekchavan]

Thank you for giving me the term 'reparenting'.
I didn't know, why I was criticizing myself and making myself work harder, better. To work on myself. Today, due to the effortless work of your team and you, I got to know one of the motive consciously in my life .
That is to become a man of value, trust and happiness.

[jordeecakes]

This video was deeply comforting. I have been parenting myself due to my narcissistic parents

[beans]

It is sort of sad because then we grow up and tend to distance ourselves from our parents because of this reason and then they tend to grow filled with resentment and don't understand why we don't exactly want to be around them. Sometimes they'll be a victim and get angry at us for now wanting to be around them when we were the ones neglected in the first place, but without self reflection on their part we just look like spoiled brats to them and demand attention claiming our childhoods we're grew. How do you know? Have you ever asked us and listened? Or did you make a better version up inside your head to feel better about yourself?

[kittykat]

this really hit me deep. the first 14 years of my life were parentless, because the person who “raised” me was most certainly not a parent, not a caregiver, honestly i could say no “raising” was even done. ran away from that awful violent neglectful unsafe home, and for the last 7 years have been trying to learn all the things i was never taught, trying to give myself the love and gentleness i was never given. it’s a very difficult and long process.

[kimberly]

I've always thought of parenting myself, but thought it was weird. Now that you've presented it, it isn't weird anymore.

[jahdequartz]

I'm 19 going on 20, and this video articulated what I'm doing right now. I tell myself to calm down, to not say such bad things about myself, tell myself I'm okay and deserve to be. Good shit.

[BD]

I had inadequate parents growing up and when I got to high school, I started this "Parenting yourself" process. It's not finished yet, 14 years of bad and unsatisfactory parenting is going to take a long time to completely fix. Now, 4 years later I've fixed most of my problems but I still am craving more healing. I was left starving for lessons from my parents, that I started looking for lessons in their mistakes instead.

[ChaniceRich]

I am 25 and still learning to parent myself

[liafaithfetalvero]

"Dont depend on your teachers or anyone, because they might not want to help you."

--my dad