Even if you had a 'normal' childhood, you can still carry wounds.
How To Start Reparenting Yourself & Healing Your Inner Child I recently sat down with Nicole LePera, Ph.D., also known as The Holistic Psychologist, to talk about something that affects nearly all of us: the ways our childhood experiences shape who we become as adults.
LePera has built a massive following by helping people understand their patterns and how to change them. Our conversation covered a lot of ground, but one concept kept coming back: reparenting. It's a word that gets thrown around a lot in wellness circles, but LePera's take on it is refreshingly practical. What reparenting actually means LePera is clear that reparenting isn't about blaming your parents. 'I always like to say it's not about fault. It's about understanding,' she told me. 'It's about understanding why we are the way we are.'Reparenting is essentially becoming the parent you needed, for yourself, as an adult. It's learning to give yourself the safety, validation, and support that may have been missing when you were young. And it starts with understanding where your patterns actually come from. 3 behaviors that feel like personality but aren't LePera walked me through three common traits that many of us assume are just 'who we are', but are actually protective adaptations from childhood. What's really happening when you overreact Ever had a reaction that felt way too big for the situation? It may feel like it's a character flaw, but LePera calls this 'emotional flooding.''When we're flooded, we are no longer in our thinking brain,' she explained. We're reacting as a much younger version of ourselves.The key insight here is that your nervous system doesn't know the difference between past and present. When something triggers an old wound, your body responds as if you're back in that original moment. That's why a small comment from your partner or a friend can send you spiraling. It's not about the comment, but what the comment activates. Trauma isn't always what you think One of the most important reframes LePera offered is about trauma itself. We tend to think of trauma as big, obvious events like abuse, neglect, major loss. But LePera defines it differently: 'Trauma is any experience where we didn't have the support to process what happened.'This means you can have a 'normal' childhood and still carry wounds. Maybe your parents were physically present but emotionally checked out. Maybe you were told your feelings were 'too much.' Maybe there was no space for you to be anything other than fine.The point isn't to catastrophize your childhood. It's make sense of your patterns by seeing them as solutions to problems you faced as a kid. Where to get started So how can you use this knowledge in your own life? LePera offered a simple but powerful framework: The takeaway LePera's work shows us that our patterns aren't flaws, they're adaptations. They're creative solutions your younger self came up with to survive. The work now is recognizing when those old strategies no longer serve you, and slowly, patiently, learning new ones.And maybe that's the whole point of reparenting. Not erasing your past, but finally giving yourself what you needed all along.
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