The Way You Wanted to Feel

After we have considered the ways children get or don't get loving care, we will consider adults whose lives lacked or lack healthy care and what they can do to heal themselves. Perhaps the child in you needs extra care and support.

Most of us have unrelenting longings for whatever was missing from our childhood.

Just as children grow up by having their needs met, meeting the previously unmet needs of inner children allows them to mature. Parts of self that revolve around such needs may then fade or dissolve. Other child states come bearing important gifts, qualities that were often cut off and lost in our own childhood which can now be reclaimed. Some of t

It might seem highly patronizing to tell an adult that they need to be reparented. In fact it’s the height of maturity to recognize that the small version of us must, if we’re ever to get better, allow ourselves another chance to experience what it could feel like to matter limitlessly to a kindly companion.

Part of the joy and pain of being a parent is seeing our own parents in ourselves, seeing their good parts and flaws repeated in our voices. The joys and pains also come from seeing ourselves in our kids, and remembering our own happy days and hurtful traumas reflected in their experiences. If we are not completely full of ourselves or too serious,