Your views on reparenting in therapy

Lauliza, I think your view is rather extreme. Lots of therapies are based on the ideal that we can do something about what happened in the past. It's ridiculous to assume that someone who never had a parent can be regressed to a week old baby and reparented to perfection, but surely you're not saying that if someone was wounded in the past because of abusive parenting there's absolutely nothing one can do about it but to accept it?

Psychodynamic therapy, behaviorism, transactional analysis, schema therapy, and many kinds of somatic therapies claim, in part, to touch on things from the past and reshape them. Even cognitive therapy might do that in some ways, though in a more distant way, by helping us gain mental control over emotional reactions shaped by our past.

Of course I'm aware of the great dangers of a therapist making reparenting the central part of any kind of therapy, especially if it requires great regression (some people are already so regressed when they go for therapy in the first place). There is great power differential, as you state, and potential for very great damage to person's psyche.

I'm also aware that transactional analysis, like psychodynamic therapy and a number of other therapies, does not have great research support. It's more of an idea, than something operationalized in terms of things that can be measured directly, as in behaviorism.

But having said that, I think there must be some way we can access older emotions, whether they're located in subconscious or inside our body. And be able to influence them and change them for better. I see reparenting as an attempt to do that, yet from a different angle.

Being that my childhood PTSD, body shame, abuse and internalized cruelty are all still making my current life a challenge I don't think it's a stretch to think that my childhood experiences are close enough and real enough to be ...modiifiable...After all I still have flashbacks that are stunningly real of my.mom gagging me until.i.puked at 5 years old because I was too fat....obviously some part of me is "stuck" still.experiemcing those things. When. We work with "little bay" that is the part we are trying to.help.

My God, that's horrible, I'm sorry BayBrony for what you went through, that's just...I don't know what to say.

Of course we can make change and grow through therapy and know that people with very traumatic childhoods can absolutely experience healing. I never said this couldn't happen, its the modality itself that doesn't sit well with me. I admit I know very little about it other than the extreme examples I mentioned (which isn't my opinion - it's a real anecdote). So there are obviously variations on this technique that a lot of people ind helpful, it's just not for me. I'm a straightforward thinker so talking about IFS and child parts is just too "out there" for me for lack of a better term. The controversial attachment therapy with children I mentioned is not commonly used and has a bad name because it's been forced on these clients to some extent. As an adult you can choose it and that is fine, but when used with emotionally disturbed kids in group homes or similar situations it becomes sketchy.

Oh okay thank you for clarifying it for me Lauliza, I agree with you. I appreciate you sharing your views and engaging me in this discussion, especially given your education and training, I usually take a more analytical approach to your views, and learn something in the process.

Thank you. It was ugly though honestly I am still.working a lot on therapy on my alliance with my abuser. I.hAve had an eating disorder as long as I can remember which basically is me allying myself with my mom. I talk a good talk. Walking it is harder. I often have trouble accepting that my body is normal or that food is a biological necessity. But I'm doing a lot better than I was a few years ago when I couldn't see how skewed my view of myself was.

I wouldn't say I'm "against" it. It's a fairly foreign concept to me and not at all what I seek in my own therapy.

OMG... What i wouldn't give for what you alk are talking about. I am over 40 and would pay $1,000 just to have someone care enough to check on me, all about me, and even more to touch me(I won't even go as far as to ask for a real hug, just touch my shoulder or something). Something to think someone on this planet cares about me and not just about how i can take care of them.

I like my t very much as a person but he forgets me all the time and doesn't follow through with things he says. He's not doing it on purpose, it is just an issue he is working on.

Having a t that would check in on me (oh man, whoever said she gets goodnight texts!!! Made me stayto cry) I can't imagine how different my life would be if someone really cared. At this point, yes..... I would gladly pay big bucks to have a therapist that did the re parenting therapy.