How To Reparent Your Inner Child
Being the parent figure you needed could help you heal
There’s a child sitting in the corner of the room. I am not in the room, the room is in my head, and I am painfully aware that none of this is real. It feels stupid, pointless and sad, to imagine myself floating back through time and standing, as a fully-grown adult, in the bedroom I used to share with my sister, staring down at the little girl with a glazed look in her giant eyes as she holds a Barbie doll in her hands, simply wanting to escape to one of the worlds in her books, but no one will let her because they keep mocking her for playing with something she’s too old to play with. I’m the only person in the world who knows why she likes to hold the dolls, be absorbed in one of the worlds she’s created inside her head, and cut the dolls’ hair.
The child says nothing. I know she wouldn’t, even if she recognized me, because she was painfully shy, and accustom to adults and even older children laughing at her. She’s used to being perceived as thick because no one sees how fast the cogs are turning behind the glazed look in her eyes. She’s actually incredibly switched on, but dissociation due to trauma has affected her memory, and she will be criticized and mocked for this throughout her life. And as you and I both know, it’s human nature to, at some point, start…
