Developmental Trauma and Re-parenting

Developmental Trauma: Meeting your parent-self towards healing.

Unprocessed, unrecognized developmental trauma during childhood or adolescence comes back as a problem when we are an adult. When we talk about developmental trauma, I usually hear family members approach me first to ask help for their loved one. When I talk with the loved one who is an adult now, directly, first they express their happiness where they are in their life. If they show up to therapy, they realize how dysfunctional habits they may have trying to compensate for their emotional struggles in their daily life. Depending on the age span of the neglect during the childhood, dysfunctionality may show up in different flavors and contexts, such as low self esteem, addictions, problems in relationships, isolation, feelings of disconnect from self and others, not achieving what they want professionally, neglecting self and others, lack of self care, and anger, frustration. Overall not feeling the joy of life.

Then, how to help this adult self while during all that childhood their emotions not heard, acknowledged or attended?

Re-parenting? How to meet your parent-self? Or should we reframe the parent-self as the “holistic self” who has been always with us since we started the journey of life but along the way “self” needed to hide, isolate, compartmentalize our emotions, thoughts to survive or disguise because of the struggles we had as a child. Bullying at school, emotionally unavailable parents, busy, professionally unavailable parents, changing schools often, emotional, physical abuse are some of the causes of developmental trauma. So, this is really -not always- the fault of our parents yet is part of our soul journey. Generally speaking, parent’s or family members would not choose to suffer this much either… Moreover, an essential step to complete this journey for healing is also to connect to our parents emotionally, possibly through forgiveness or letting go.

But first things first, how to meet the parent-self towards healing?

• Awareness of the problem: asking what is dysfunctional in a day to day life, and how it is affecting the adult self, work, relationships?

• Accepting the problem(s)-if possible make a list of problems you observe

• Action towards manifesting new self:

  Action items:

1.Compassion to self: communicate kindly to self instead of echoing other’s frustrations, or negativity

2.Focus on positive feedback or praise instead of contempt or condemnation.

3.Find ways to reward yourself for things that you feel good about

4. Forgive yourself for the things you cannot, do not be afraid of messing up. No punishment for messing up, remember messing up is not real it is only in perception, and your positivity, creativity always wins

5. Trust yourself, your own journey and embrace anything and everything with courage

6. Notice negative self talk- and say “no” to negative self talk

7. reframe past experiences and perspectives through a lens of trust and truth, rather than how others tell you

8. hold your own hand metaphorically and physically and follow you breath with each inhale and exhale notice how it travels in the depths of your body- notice how your body is responding to it

9. practice reassuring rituals for relaxation, breath, visualization

10. ask yourself guiding questions when making a decision

11. eat healthy, nourishing meals that bring you joy

12. rest and have fun without justification and no explanation

13. protect yourself the way you would have wanted your parents to protect you