And no, it doesn’t mean pretending to become your own parent.
The idea of an “inner child” can sound a little strange.
For some people, it immediately makes sense.
For others, it sounds like therapy language they’d rather avoid.
I understand both reactions.
When I talk about the inner child, I’m not suggesting there’s literally a little child living somewhere inside you.
I’m interested in something much more ordinary.
We grow up.
But we don’t necessarily leave behind everything we learned while growing up.
The child who learned not to cry can become the adult who apologises for getting emotional.
The child who learned that love depended upon achievement can become the adult who never feels they’ve done enough.
The child who kept everybody happy can become the adult who feels guilty saying no. This can become part of inner child healing for people pleasing patterns, particularly when keeping other people happy once felt necessary for safety or connection.
The circumstances have changed.
But sometimes the relationship we developed with ourselves hasn’t.
Inner child reparenting is one way of beginning to change that relationship.
What is inner child reparenting?
Inner child reparenting is a way of recognising emotional needs, beliefs and protective patterns that developed earlier in life, and learning to respond to ourselves differently in the present.
In simple terms, we begin noticing:
How do I treat myself when I’m frightened, ashamed, angry, needy, unsuccessful or vulnerable?
Because very often, we discover something interesting.
We speak to ourselves in ways that feel strangely familiar.
“Stop being ridiculous.”
“Get over it.”
“You’re too sensitive.”
“Don’t make a fuss.”
“Nobody wants to hear this.”
“You should be able to handle this yourself.”
Perhaps nobody is saying those things to us anymore.
We’ve learned to do it for them.
We internalise relationships
As children, we don’t only learn things about other people.
We also learn how to relate to ourselves.
If our feelings are met with curiosity, we may gradually learn that feelings can be tolerated.
If mistakes are met with patience, perhaps we learn that getting something wrong doesn’t threaten the relationship.
But if sadness is mocked, anger punished, vulnerability ignored or achievement constantly demanded, we may internalise something very different.
We begin doing to ourselves what was once done around us.
This is where reparenting becomes interesting.
We’re not rewriting history.
We’re becoming aware of how that history may still be repeating inside the relationship we have with ourselves.
What is the inner child?
I tend to think of the inner child less as a thing and more as a useful way of understanding parts of our experience.
Sometimes something happens in the present and our reaction feels much bigger than the situation seems to warrant.
Someone criticises us and suddenly we feel tiny.
A partner withdraws and we’re terrified they’re leaving.
We make a mistake and experience overwhelming shame.
Someone is angry and our immediate response is to freeze, apologise or make them happy.
The adult part of us may know:
“I’m safe.”
“This isn’t the end of the world.”
“They’re allowed to be disappointed.”
But another part of us seems unconvinced.
Sometimes that younger experience deserves to be listened to rather than argued with.
What does reparenting actually look like?
This is where the idea can become misunderstood.
Reparenting isn’t necessarily standing in front of a mirror every morning telling your inner five-year-old that they’re wonderful.
You can do that if it’s meaningful to you.
But I think the deeper work often happens in ordinary life.
You make a mistake.
What happens next?
You need rest.
Do you allow yourself to stop?
Someone asks something of you that you don’t want to give.
Can you say no?
You’re upset.
Do you become curious about what’s happening, or immediately tell yourself you shouldn’t feel this way?
You need another person.
Can you ask?
Reparenting may look like • taking your feelings seriously • allowing yourself to have needs • setting boundaries • resting without earning it first • responding differently to mistakes • noticing shame without immediately believing it • asking for support • allowing yourself to be angry • protecting yourself when something doesn’t feel right.
These aren’t dramatic acts.
But they can challenge some very old rules.
“But my childhood wasn’t that bad”
You don’t need a catastrophic childhood to find this kind of work useful.
Sometimes people say:
“My parents loved me.”
I’m sure many of them did.
But love and emotional attunement aren’t always the same thing.
A parent can love a child enormously and still struggle with emotion.
They may have been anxious.
Busy.
Overwhelmed.
Emotionally unavailable.
Or simply repeating what they learned from their own parents.
For some people, reparenting yourself after emotional neglect begins with recognising how those early experiences shaped the way you respond to your own needs, emotions and boundaries today.
Understanding that doesn’t require blaming them.
But neither does understanding our parents require pretending we received everything we needed.
Both can be true.
Reparenting isn’t about blaming your parents
I think this is important.
Therapy can become simplistic when every difficulty in adulthood is traced back to something our parents did wrong.
Our parents were human beings too.
They had histories.
Limitations.
Traumas.
Blind spots.
Perhaps they genuinely did the best they knew how to do.
But there’s a difference between blame and responsibility.
I don’t need to spend the rest of my life blaming someone for what I didn’t receive.
But as an adult, I may have to take responsibility for learning how to provide some of it now.
That’s not always fair.
But it can be freeing.
Shame is often where the younger part appears
One place I find this work particularly meaningful is shame.
For some people, this shame is connected to religious or spiritual experiences from childhood. Healing the inner child from religious trauma shame can involve recognising the beliefs, fear and self-judgement that were learned early in life, while developing a different relationship with yourself in the present.
Shame doesn’t simply say:
“I did something wrong.”
It can feel more like:
“There is something wrong with me.”
And shame can make us feel very young, very quickly.
A criticism.
A mistake.
Someone’s disappointment.
Suddenly the adult perspective disappears and we’re inside something much older.
Our instinct may be to • apologise immediately • explain ourselves • disappear • attack ourselves • become defensive • make the other person happy as quickly as possible.
Instead of immediately following that impulse, we can slow things down.
What happened?
What are you feeling?
What are you afraid this means about you?
What do you expect will happen next?
Sometimes the response makes much more sense once we understand the history underneath it.
Inner child work and the body
This isn’t only intellectual work. Somatic exercises for inner child healing can help you become more aware of what happens in your body when old emotional patterns are activated.
You might know perfectly well that you’re allowed to say no and still feel sick when you do it.
You might understand that somebody’s disappointment isn’t dangerous while your body reacts as though it is.
You might know that you deserve rest and still become restless the moment you stop working.
So inner-child work can also involve becoming curious about what’s happening physically.
Where do you feel the fear?
What happens when you imagine setting the boundary?
What does your body want to do?
Move towards?
Move away?
Hide?
Fight?
Freeze?
Sometimes a younger experience becomes visible through the body before we have words for it.
Understanding how the pattern once made sense
One aspect of Gestalt thinking that influences my work is the idea that our ways of coping develop in relationship with our environment.
Rather than looking at a behaviour and immediately asking how to get rid of it, we can ask:
“How did this make sense then?”
Maybe pleasing people helped you stay connected.
Perhaps becoming invisible reduced conflict.
Maybe perfectionism brought approval.
Perhaps not needing anyone protected you from disappointment.
These weren’t stupid choices made by a child who should have known better.
They were adaptations.
The question now becomes:
“Do I still need to organise myself this way?”
Reparenting doesn’t mean becoming completely self-sufficient
There’s another trap here.
The idea of reparenting can accidentally become:
“I should learn to meet all my own needs.”
I don’t think that’s the goal.
We’re relational beings.
Adults still need other people.
We need friendship.
Care.
Affection.
Support.
To be understood.
To matter to somebody.
Reparenting isn’t learning never to need anyone.
Sometimes it’s learning that you’re allowed to need people without abandoning yourself in order to keep them.
The therapist doesn’t become your new parent
Therapy can provide a different relational experience, but your therapist isn’t there to become the parent you didn’t have.
Something subtler can happen.
Perhaps you tell me you’re angry and discover I don’t disappear.
You disagree with me.
You tell me something I said didn’t feel right.
You become emotional without needing to apologise.
You ask for something.
You say no.
These moments can matter because we’re not simply discussing a new way of relating.
We’re experiencing one.
Sometimes healing happens through experiencing something different with another person.
Becoming someone you can stay with
I think this may be the part of reparenting that matters most.
Can I remain with myself when I’m struggling?
Not only when I’m productive.
Kind.
Successful.
Calm.
Useful.
Easy to love.
But when I’m frightened.
Ashamed.
Confused.
Angry.
Needy.
Or when I’ve made a mess of something.
Perhaps reparenting is partly about developing the kind of relationship with ourselves that doesn’t disappear precisely when we need it most.
Not endless self-indulgence.
Not pretending everything we do is okay.
But something closer to:
I can hold myself accountable without abandoning myself.
That’s very different from either attacking ourselves or pretending nothing matters.
Can inner child reparenting help?
Inner-child work may be worth exploring if you notice patterns such as • harsh self-criticism • people pleasing • perfectionism • difficulty setting boundaries • fear of abandonment • shame • difficulty knowing what you need • feeling responsible for other people’s emotions • struggling to ask for help.
It isn’t about finding another label for yourself.
And it isn’t about proving your childhood was bad enough.
It’s about becoming curious about the relationship between what you learned then and how you live now.
Perhaps the question isn’t:
“How do I finally get rid of this part of myself?”
Perhaps it’s:
“What happens if I stop battling it and begin listening?”
Inner Child Reparenting Therapy in Brisbane
I offer inner child and reparenting work in Brisbane as part of a somatic and relational approach to therapy.
We can explore what you learned about yourself and relationships, how those patterns continue in your life now, and what it might mean to respond differently.
You don’t need to force yourself to “love your inner child.”
You don’t even have to like the phrase.
Curiosity is enough to begin.
If you’d like to explore this further, you can read about my Inner Reparenting Therapy Brisbane service or book a free 30-minute consultation.