The Loving Parent Guidebook by WSO INC. ACA

Author:WSO INC., ACA
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Reparenting, self-love, re-parenting, self-parenting, healing, trauma recovery, dysfunctional families, inner child, inner teenager, inner critic, critical parent, recovery
Publisher: ACA WSO
Published: 2021-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

When our needs aren’t met, some inner family members can become judgmental. We can learn to understand and translate their judgments into identifiable needs. For example, judging someone as “mean” might signal that the person’s behavior doesn’t meet our need for kindness. Our inner child or inner teenager likely needs empathy but has learned to judge rather than say, “Ouch, that hurt.” By translating judgments into needs, we remove the focus from what we’re powerless over to what we need. Doing so moves us into The Solution because we are not powerless over being aware of our feelings and meeting our needs.

Adult children developed dysfunctional strategies, such as self-centeredness, judgment, procrastination, perfectionism, and dishonesty, to address our unmet needs. The Big Red Book describes these as “defects of character.” When seen as attempts to meet our needs, we recognize such “defects” as coping strategies—they are not who we are.

Imagine an 8-year-old growing up with a parent who criticizes them and demands they get good grades. To avoid the parent’s criticism and get their approval, the child’s critical inner parent tries to mold them into a perfect child. Perfectionism becomes a childhood strategy to meet needs for safety, acceptance, and self-worth that the person carries into their adult life.

Through reparenting, we uncover more effective strategies for meeting our needs. We can learn to notice when inner family members become judgmental and connect to their needs, so new strategies emerge. We can also learn to make clear requests of others to better meet our needs.

The critical parent can harshly judge some of the “strategies” listed in the worksheet, so it helps to understand how they were born out of attempts to meet childhood needs. Complete the following worksheet to uncover the needs you were attempting to meet in childhood and to discover new strategies for meeting those needs today.

Worksheet: Identifying the Needs Behind our Behavior

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