Reparenting is the process of giving yourself the emotional care, validation, and structure you may not have consistently received as a child.
It is about meeting the unmet emotional needs of your younger self—your inner child.
Does reparenting sound like a spiritual retreat run by people who own too many crystals? I can see how.
But is reparenting helpful? Yes!
If you are a Black adult who arrived at adulthood in their childhood. Who learned to tend to their siblings when they should have been out doing little kid things?
Who needed to leave their inner child behind just to build a personality that was more acceptable—not too needy and correctly behaved?
Who, as a result of unmet childhood needs, now struggle to make decisions that truly align with their values.
Then reparenting therapy isn’t just helpful—reparenting therapy may be the most practical self-care you’ll ever practice.
In this definitive guide on reparenting that my fellow Calgary-based therapists at Ashay Therapy and I have put together, we help you get down to the real business of what reparenting your inner child is, what the reparenting exercise might stir up, how to start reparenting without accidentally traumatizing yourself again, and when it’s worth getting support.
Dive in! Your inner child has waited long enough.
In this reparenting guide:
How Do You Know You Need To Reparent Your Inner Child
Get it; here are the telling signs that you may have inner child trauma and you desperately need to reparent yourself:
- You’d drop everything for a friend’s crisis but power through your own with coffee and denial
- You struggle to believe you’re worthy unless you’re helping
- You look successful on LinkedIn but secretly feel like an impostor
- You feel chronically unsupported or overly self-reliant
- You often feel like your emotions are “too much” or “not valid.”
- You’re harsh with yourself when you make mistakes
- You take pride in being “low maintenance”—even when it costs you
If this sounds like you, these are symptoms that your inner child is wounded, and it makes sense.
Your needs were met with punishment, neglect, or dismissal, so you learned to disconnect from them.
Reparenting means reconnecting with those needs—and treating them as valid, even when it feels unfamiliar or “too much.”
Practical Ways to Reparent Your Inner Child
Here’s what reparenting yourself as a BIPOC adult might really involve in your day-to-day life:
- Eating when you’re hungry (even if your anxiety says you don’t “deserve” it yet)
- Setting boundaries before you burn out
- Being more proactive instead of reactive with your emotional and mental wellbeing
- Listening to your emotional flashbacks without brushing them off
- Learning how to say “I’m hurting” before you explode or implode
- Talking to yourself with kindness when you mess up.
- Saying no to a family obligation and not feeling guilty about it.
These moments might seem small, but they’re revolutionary for someone who learned early that their needs didn’t matter.
Emotional Shifts to Expect When Reparenting Yourself
Before you start reparenting yourself or start reparenting therapy, there are some things to expect when reparenting yourself:
- You may grieve. A lot. Once you realized what and how much you missed
- You might feel disoriented realizing you are both the one who was hurt and the one now holding the responsibility to heal.
- You may notice that caregivers who let you down then still aren’t capable of showing up now.
- It may be painful to realize that the care you needed wasn’t there—and that the job falls to you now.
Whatever feeling rushes at you as you start reparenting, I need you to remember these are normal phenomena, and you are allowed to feel the weight of them.
Reparenting yourself is not only a healing practice rooted in self-compassion and boundary-setting, but it’s also deeply practical. It helps you be more present—especially in the moments when your younger self would have been left alone, punished, or emotionally ignored.
How to Start Reparenting Yourself As A BIPOC Adult
Once you arrive at the place where you have familiarized yourself with the potential hurt that comes with realizing that you need reparenting, here are two steps to start reparenting yourself effectively:
1. Noticing the Pattern
Most people start reparenting when they realize something keeps hurting in the same way.
You might be 30 and realizing you’re still dealing with issues that began at 11.
You might keep ending up in the same friendships or burnout cycles.
The first step isn’t fixing it. It’s recognizing it without judgment.
2. Create a Felt Sense of Safety
Before diving into the “healing work” of reparenting yourself, start with supporting your nervous system. This could be e.g., by eating consistently or making your space feel comforting.
Healing from emotional neglect can be destabilizing, but you can create a sense of stability for yourself.
Self Reparenting Vs Reparenting Therapy
Self-reparenting can work well for many people, but reparenting therapy offers distinct advantages.
Before you roll your eyes 🙄at the therapist suggesting therapy (I see you), consider this:
Without emotional regulation tools or therapeutic support, it’s easy to accidentally retraumatize yourself.
You might enter vivid childhood memories, sob through them, and think you’ve healed-but often whereas you are only just experiencing temporary emotional exhaustion.
You should 100% consider reparenting therapy if not just to avoid retraumatizing yourself but also when you notice that you keep getting stuck in guilt or are afraid of what you might uncover.
How Does Inner Child Therapy Work?
In professional settings, there are two main approaches to inner child or reparenting therapy:
- Traditional reparenting, where the therapist temporarily takes on aspects of a healthy parental figure
As your therapist, I might say, “I notice you apologize when you’re sad, as if your feelings are inconvenient. In this space, your emotions are welcome—all of them.”
This creates a new experience that gradually rewrites your internal operating system.
OR (2) Limited reparenting: This is the reparenting technique where we create a therapeutic relationship that partially fulfills your needs within professional boundaries
As therapists trained and licensed in inner child work, we understand that being told inner child work is important can itself be triggering-especially when you had to ignore your own feelings as a child just to survive.
That’s why our approach includes developing coping skills before diving into emotionally intense work.
This way you can feel safer getting in touch with your true self and others. Common modalities we use at Ashay Therapy include having you write letters to your inner child or rewriting your memory scripts or even staging a left-hand vs. right-hand dialogue where you write with your non-dominant hand to access deeper parts of yourself.
With Nisha, one of our Calgary-based therapists, we also bring in tools from DBT, Narrative and ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy). You don’t need to memorize those names. What matters is this: our approaches are designed to help you build the capacity to stay present with yourself—so you don’t re-traumatize yourself.
How Long Does Reparenting Therapy Take?
I wish I could give you a tidy timeline about how long it will take you to reparent your inner child, but healing doesn’t work that way.
Some aspects of reparenting click quickly—like learning to speak to yourself with basic kindness.
Others take months or even years.
But every moment you offer yourself something you never received—validation, rest, protection—you’re making progress.
And it gets easier.
Over time, most people start to feel more grounded, emotionally connected, and more like themselves-not the version of themselves they had to become just to survive.
Regarding the cost of reparenting therapy as a Calgary resident, many of our clients use extended health benefits or HSAs to offset costs, and we’re happy to guide you through those options.
Free mental health supports exist — like Alberta Health Services’ crisis lines or community counseling centers—and they provide vital support and can be a helpful first step when trying to reparent yourself. However, reparenting therapy requires a sustained, trauma-informed, and personalized approach that free services may not always offer.
That’s why your first 20-minute consultation is on us!
You should have been protected. You should have been soothed, guided, and celebrated. And while we can’t change that, we can stop pretending it didn’t matter.
Your needs were valid then, and they’re valid now.
We don’t blame your caregivers—they likely did the best they could with what they had.
But right now, it is your responsibility to heal and be the parent you needed, and our reparenting therapists at Ashay Therapy are ready to support you in Calgary or around Canada.
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