How to Parent Yourself
Roots and Truth
Before I became an adult, and a parent, I didn’t know how critical it was to receive validation from our care-givers in the early years of our lives.
I have been developing the process of understanding what I needed as a child. I believe that you can develop this skill as well! This blog post is full of researched information to guide you!
This blog post shares the need to understand what we learned in early childhood. It also defines what proper parenting is.
I even include a FREE PRINTABLE at the end, so you can begin working through the skill of re-parenting yourself.
Remembering
Remembering where and how our interactions and brains were formed is the point of why I started writing on this blog in the first place. I wrote my memory of how I wanted to honor myself, by becoming a writer. I recorded this story from my memories as a second grader: “An Introduction to The Why”
If you don’t believe that your formative years matter now, (because they are in the past), I invite you to explore this concept shared by Bruce Lipton in the Honey Moon Effect. Dr. Lipton compares a young brain to an empty hard drive in a brand new computer. Before the child is born, a little information is downloaded onto this hard drive. After birth, the brain is in a state of constant download until the age of six or seven. This is where so much of our personal beliefs are developed as we are observing and listening to everything in our original surroundings.
But as children, we don’t yet have the capacity to sort the information, and choose which data pieces we should keep.
“For the first six years of life…[children are in a] programmable theta state. [In this state] children record vast amounts of information they need to survive in their environment, but they do not have the capacity to consciously evaluate the information while it is being downloaded. Anyone who doubts the sophistication of this downloading should think about the first time your child blurted out a curse word picked up from you. I’m sure you noted its sophistication, correct pronunciation, nuanced style, and context carrying your signature.
“This ingeniously designed behavior-download system can be hijacked by hypercritical parents (and I’m not talking about the occasional swear word). Most of us grew up in families where we downloaded criticism from our parents: “You don’t deserve that… [Be quiet, you’re not allowed to talk.] …you’re such a sickly child…Most often parents don’t mean to say that their child is unlovable; they’re acting like a coach who uses negative criticism to goad his players into trying harder.
“Such parental coaching efforts require that children have the consciousness to interpret the positive logic behind their parents’ negative critiques. But a child’s brain predominantly operates below consciousness…in the first six to seven years of life. During those years, a child is unable to intellectually understand that verbal barbs are not true; the parent’s negative assessments are downloaded as truth just as surely as bits and bytes are downloaded to the hard drive of your desktop computer. Critical parents have no idea that in their effort to help, [by being the tough-love coach] they’re actually sentencing their child to go through life feeling unworthy.” 1
So curious, after reading this research recorded by Dr. Lipton and other neuroscientist…
Do you believe that the way you act is residual reactive patterns from your childhood?
Are you ready to explore what your behavior might look like if you weren’t properly kept safe in your early years of life?
If you are willing to explore, can you see that the ways you are currently reacting may be a reason for you to start parenting yourself—no matter what your age?
Ways You Might See Yourself Needing “Self-Parenting”
- You catch yourself throwing a tantrum in front of your children
- You notice yourself complaining often
- You are in debt because you feel like you need to buy the next item–that may be a leisure toy, or another designer handbag
- You have found that you feel “picked on” or “bullied” at work and you are always wondering why your boss, client, or coworker is out to get you
In order to understand how to play a role of being our OWN parent while navigating these difficult emotional experiences, one must understand what a “healthy” parent’s role is.
If a parent was trained, with a specific-functional job description, what would that job description look like?
What is a Parent’s Job?
The following is one of the clearest descriptions of “good parenting” quoted fro Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy.
“A parent’s job is to keep their child safe, physically and psychologically. Keeping a child safe allows a child to “build the emotion regulation skills they need to grow into a healthy adult.” 2 The way that these safety standard are met are through:
- Setting Boundaries
- Validating Experiences
- Showing and Displaying Empathy
Correct boundary setting should be happen when a child should be removed from a harmful situation. Whether the harm be emotional or physical.
Validating a feeling comes when we see a specific view point more clearly. Not judging whether it is right or wrong. It needs to be viewed and named.
Empathy is an ability to relate to the feelings of another person. It is important that the person that we have just given validation to knows that we can feel into what they are going through.
Steps to Begin the Journey of “Self Parenting”
- The first key to “Self Parenting” is awareness of our inner dialog.
Much of this inner dialog may even escape our mouth in the form of extreme apologies, or dramatic story telling.
Become curious. What are you actually saying as you dump a story out on your partner?
What are you actually needing as you buy one more piece of artwork for your home?
- Begin to validate yourself through deeply listening to the information you have been gathering.
Listen to the words you are thinking in your head. This is your self talk.
Then remember what behaviors are coming out?
Are you complaining often?
Are you yelling at your kids on a regular basis?
Knowing that there is a root cause to these behaviors, is critical. You are doing it for a reason! Remember so many of the ways that we translate and behave through life was picked up in our early childhood?
What is the reason you have for acting this way?
Then ask: “If I could validate the way I feel, what would that validation sound like?”
Let me be clear. Buying more items for your home doesn’t give you value. Yelling at your kids doesn’t add to your value. But you are searching for inner value in the ways you are behaving! There are reasons why you do these things!
Validating ourselves creates inner value and we may be lacking. It may be a missing link of what we needed in our childhood and what we are missing to feel complete and put together in our current situations.
The question is: Why are we really doing what we are doing?
- Learn to see yourself as someone who needs comforted.
A huge piece of empathy is seeing and feeling what another might need, and spend time with them through that need. If you could see yourself in need of comforting, what would you give to yourself?
If you saw another who needed a hug, or a listening ear how would you respond to them?
Could you flip that response back on yourself, how would you respond? What would you say?
My Own Personal Experience With “Self Parenting”
A couple of years ago I wrote a story and included my thought process as I waved through the emotion of anger that I was experiencing. I believe these strong reactions are trauma responses. In this post I include quotes from trauma specialists that I include in my explanation.
A Free Printable Guide
I have created a personal worksheet to print out and write in your own words your observations. Awareness is the first key to “Self-Parenting”.
When we begin by writing our our thoughts, it brings awareness to them.
A Fair Warning
Knowing how to display empathy may be lacking in your personal inner “computer” software or original download! (I’m playing off the analogy made by Dr. Lipton.)
If you find that you are lacking of the skill of empathizing with another it may be helpful to read a book on the subject!
One I might recommend is : Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman
A warning on setting and keeping boundaries to keep us safe:
If we are leaving always situations to keep our body safe, this may be a panic response. It is a part of the response of “fight or flight”. Flight is leaving to escape conflict. This is an adaptive response that may have shown up in our patterns in the past. We may be avoiding what we really need to take a look at!!
The Most Important Step of the Process
If we are the only ones validating our experiences, then we may be very narrow-minded and be caught up in our behavior, because we simply can not see the perspectives of other. It is very important that as adults we hire a guidance counselor, a therapist or a trauma informed coach to help us validate our perspectives. The information shared here around “Self-Parenting” is intended as a tool to use everyday because none of us have a therapist or a coach following us through each day. But the truth is, we need BOTH! We need self care and empathy and directed self talk to care for ourselves. We also need a removed perspective, and not from our spouse or the care-taker that raised us.
If you are looking for a therapist of a coach to review these observations with I have created a page with links to directories here:
Becoming aware of the way that you are acting and reacting throughout your life is such a brave step to be taking. I am aware of your bravery!
If you are willing, the awareness that you are creating in your life is a wonderful step to self-care and healing.
I’d love to hear more of your story.
Sincerely,
Hello Friend,
My name is Cami. I am the creator of this blog. I welcome you and am so happy that you are here! I started blogging in 2022 in order to work through some of my own emotional struggles.
This is a blog written around whole body, mind and spiritual healing. In each post you will read spiritual themes interwoven through my writing. I am both a human being and a spiritual entity and I allude to both through my healing process.
