What is reparenting in therapy?

I don't doubt that a secure relationship with a therapist later in life can have a "positive effect" and make actual "changes" within the brain.

But it can't UNDO the damage that was done. Not even close.

My thoughts on this topic:

1) Limited reparenting is an intrinsic part of any long-term relational psychotherapy (person-centered, psychonalytic, ect). This involves teaching stuff in the relationship via experience - emotion recognitition, emotional regulation, trust, setting boundaries, self-reflection etc etc. Essentially all the things that parents teach their children via just having a parent-child relationship with them without perhaps ever explicitly talking about this teaching taking place. These same things also happen in every long-term relational therapy (and don't get started about psychoanalysis - I don't believe that you will find an unrelational analyst knowadays), without just calling it a fancy name.

2) So where does the fancy name come from? I would guess that from schema therapy. Schema therapy is one of the so called third wave cognitive therapies (the first wabe being the biheivioral therapy, the second wave is the CBT), which expands the standard CBT with "new" principles and methods which are essentially just things that other therapist (person-centered, psychoanalysts, gestalt therapists) have known and adopted for decades. My guess is that these approaches are given fancy names because they contrast to the standard CBT where the therapeutic relationship is assumed but otherwise not paid much attention to (i.e if the patient is not able to form a productive therapeutic relationship to do the cognitive work then the patient is simply not ready for therapy).

That opinion is of course a bit too unfair regarding to some cognitive therapists who, aside for working with cognitive restructuring and all the related techniques, quite naturally also adopt all this relationship business in their work, without perhaps even realising that what they are doing is not so much different from what a person-centered therapist or a psychoanalyst is doing.

3) But yeah, I agree what one of the posters said - what some therapies call reparenting or limited reparenting, is in fact the core therapy work of long-term relational therapies and has been like this for decades, just without a fancy name. All the skill-based stuff is of course nice, but I personally wouldn't call it a psychotherapy. Sure, it can be some kind of therapy, such as there are physiotherapy, speech therapy etc. So it could be psychological skill therapy or something like that. But to my mind real psychotherapy is something that aims to reach deeply into the persons psyche in order to help to learn new ways of relating to self and others and to my mind the only effective way for doing that is via the experience embedded in the relationship.

As someone with solid real parenting relationships, I personally find the idea of "reparenting" cringe-worthy at best, but I can see how the idea of getting that kind of affirmation and guidance and acceptance from someone eventually in life can be healing and would not at all say it is not helpful for someone else.

My husband's real parents were horrific. He eventually learned what "real" parenting was from his saint of a grandmother and eventually from solid relationships with me and my family. I don't think he'd say his therapy had anything to do with that, although he made other gains through his own therapy.

The fortunate thing about therapy is there is not just one approach for it. People and their issues and needs are as varied as the stars, so it makes sense that therapy modalities are also varied. For people to say that "their" therapy is the right one, or that some other therapy isn't really therapy is just not kind or terribly aware (that's the safest way I have of saying that.)

Scarlet, I hope your continued therapy continues to work well for you and that you can gain more understanding of the approach your therapist is taking. You've come a long way over the last few years.

I love Alan Shore.

Amyjay - interesting points. I agree with much of what you say. My synapses were pruned, there is no unpruning possible. But you start from where you are, and who is to say where you end up?

I am kind of with Amyjay, developmentally speaking you cannot reparent an adult. There is no do over. But I agree about healing and learning things in adulthood. I don’t think we need to be stuck at all.

I think it is mostly just a term that is used for modeling a trustworthy, solid and healing relationship between a therapist and a client. And therapy can definitely influence and change the brain but to call it re-parenting, I don't know. I would not want to have myself "reparented" even if there is no doubt my therapy contained elements that some might call that.

I once read a novel, where the therapist was really into this and he brought the client to the pool for a staged birth experience. That was definitely cringeworthy! And he spoke the client being a newborn, toddler, teen. She'll come undone was the name of the book.

I am uncomfortable with the idea and do not understand it so I did some research and wanted to share some points:

Quote:

Reparenting was a controversial form of psychotherapy in which the therapist actively assumes the role of a new or surrogate parental figure for the client, in order to treat psychological disturbances caused by defective, even abusive, parenting. The underlying assumption is that all mental illness results principally from such parenting, even including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Despite the therapy's association with the theory and practice of transactional analysis in the field of psychology, there is not much empirical evidence for its effectiveness, and some significant suggestions that it can in fact be harmful; most mental health practitioners do not regard reparenting as a legitimate form of therapy.

Quote:

Terminology and Definitions Although reparenting is widely practiced, there is no set system of terminology among practitioners. In addition, the definitions of commonly used terms differ in definition among practitioners. The vagueness produced by these two weaknesses present danger of miscommunication between the therapist and the patient during treatment. The patient may also not fully understand the information shared with them when contracting or terminating treatment.[12][13] Therapist-Patient Relationship The nature of reparenting often requires the therapist to develop a close relationship with the client. There is no protocol to provide the boundary as to what the therapist can or cannot do. Often, it is up to the therapist to determine the plan of action to take when faced with a dilemma during treatment. As a result, there is risk of the therapist becoming too extreme in their methods, which can endanger the client and lead to new psychological problems.[12] Due to the dominant role of the therapist in the relationship, the therapist has greater power over the client, which may lead to them abusing this authority and exploiting the client. There is also risk toward the therapist in that he or she may become too attached to the client, which can hinder professional judgement.[13][14] Frame of Reference There is no way to objectively determine the success in completely replacing the client's parent ego state after reparenting therapy. The therapist can only rely on the client's subjective statement, which may conflict with the therapist's account of the results.[12] This conflicts leads to questioning whether the therapy actually succeeded in reforming the Parent ego state. Monitoring This problem is especially true for total regression reparenting. Clients in therapy are totally immersed in an environment that promotes regression into the child ego state. However, during this time at which the client may spend months or years, the client is left at the mercy of the therapist and the institution. There is no higher authority to monitor the actions of the therapist as well as the well being of the client. The client is left to trust his or her therapist throughout therapy.[12] Scientific Efficacy Although some studies have been done to prove the efficacy of reparenting, the amount of statistically powerful studies available are few. Few studies try to confirm the mechanism or isolate moderating variables of reparenting. The transactional analysis theory in which reparenting theory is based on is already a heavily debated topic. As a result, most of the scientific community gives little support for reparenting theory.[12][13]

Umm, I don't see anyone arguing that this 'reparenting' miraculously undoes all childhood damage, but surely if it repairs more of it than alternative approaches, or even if it just makes the same degree of repair accessible to more people, then I'm all for it.

I can see this being the case, but I think the fancy name has more substance than this implies. My understanding is that it covers a willingness to display outwardly parent-ish behaviour, even if it's at the expense of 'neutrality', which is traditionally frowned upon by the psychodynamic folks. Like, sure, maybe the 'blank slate' PD style will lead in some roundabout way to effectively being 'reparented' for those whom it works for (and I have no idea about psychoanalysis), but an actual parent acting that way would only end up raising future therapy clients..

Admittedly, I don't have a solid enough idea of the current and historical development of psychotherapeutic schools, but it seems to me that there's some value in making this specific approach a thing, though maybe the terminology could be clearer (and less cringe-worthy).

For example, my ex-T is psychodynamic/analytically oriented, but due to some combination of her personality and previous experience (and maybe counter-transference, sometimes?) she does a lot of this instinctively. And when she's in a good place, she does it well, and despite my ultimately negative experience, and a lack of clarity about what went wrong, I suspect she's altogether a reasonably competent T at least. However, towards the end of my therapy, she pretty much lost her footing, and ... well, one of the Ts I tried out afterwards was a schema therapist, and she was like 'well if [exT] knew schema therapy then she would have reacted in the way you needed' ... and that's an over-simplistic take on it I think, but maybe if 'reparenting' as a valid approach and a set of techniques were part of her practice, maybe that'd have played into her strengths more and shored up her weaknesses better.

Maybe I just don’t see my t as more knowledgeable or wiser than me or having any authority over me. I see my t as my equal in all aspects of life, that’s why concepts of reparenting is just foreign for me. She can’t reparent me same as I can’t reparent her. We are in the same place in life

I talked to L today. She explained that what she does is psychodynamic therapy that focuses on attachment. The "birthing" thing in therapy is attachment therapy, which she doesn't do. Also, she said the reparenting she does is mostly emotional attunement.

I like an idea of emotional atunement, is it something that could be done by a loving partner or a good friend too? It’s mutually attuned in those relationships (if they are healthy).

Is it mutual with a therapist? Like should you be attuned to therapist’s feelings too? Or it’s one way?

I find this topic very interesting.

That's precisely the reason why I think that putting a fancy name to certain qualities in healing human relationships is problematic. As evident in this thread, the word 'reparenting' itself creates a sense that someone is going to force something unwanted and inappropriate down one's throat whereas it is absolutely not the case. I don't think for something that can be gathered under the term "re-parenting" necessarily assumes the T having authority over the patient. At the same time, I don't see that it can be substantially reciprocal because the participants in therapy have clear roles - one is in need of help and the other one is providing that. But I absolutely agree that performing these functions is not exclusively the role of the therapist - other people can do that too.

Also, this "attachment therapy" thing is according to my knowledge not really a thing anymore. What people consider as "limited reparenting" in schema therapy has nothing to do with these outrageously infantilizing activities adopted by some therapists in 70s and 80s (and perhaps also 90s). I'm pretty sure that noone who claims to cultivate this type of therapy nowadays is able to keep their professional license. Thus, the meaning of the "reparenting" in therapy really refers to the methods used in schema therapy and thus to just a lot of sensible things that therapists do with their long term patients according to the patient's needs, and not the literal activities as meant in the context of this historical "attachment therapy".

The main reason I personally would prefer not to give these things the name "reparenting" is precisely although some people would need these functions to be performed to them by their therapist (emotion co-regulation, boundary setting, whatever), the term might sound infantilazing to the person although the particular functions, if tailored to the patient's needs, clearly aren't.

From what I understand, yes it can come from any relationship and in those relationship it can be mutual. Even with the therapist it can be mutual (again from what I understand. L says it's important she does this with me because my feelings were usually invalidated growing up. Even ex-T invalidated my feelings.

She quoted this in her email:

I think that it is because the attunement is one way, that it falls more under an umbrella of reparenting than other relationships that the attunement (and healthiness of the relationship) is two way.

I read through several of the posts on this topic. I would say that the reparenting that has and is going on in my therapy is critical in relearning how I talk to myself; to replace me using the words my parents used to words my T uses.

This past weekend my T told me in an email that 'self attack is not allowed because where is the kindness in that'. I am positive she wouldn't have been able to make such a statement 4 yrs ago. I would have had a world of resistance and blockages. That statement is the key to what's been going on in my head for the last 18-24 months. My inner world has become much quieter and I am not nearly as aggressive towards myself as I used to be... in fact I am hardly ever aggressive towards myself. I don't know how I should be yet - I don't have words/vocabulary/actions to replace the ones I learnt from my parents and I think that's also a part of the concept of reparenting for some - the unlearning what we were taught so we can be taught something else.

For what it is worth, I am in my 50's and yet most the time with my T I barely feel like I'm older than I'd say 10 and that's a growth from when I first started and felt most the time like I was 4 or I would just dissociate when stressed. In my day to day, I had personas/parts and rules that I helped me get through my days - work and so on (and no not DID). And like many, I hid (I hide) behind masks of these personas not sharing who I really am with anyone. I didn't/don't want to be like that... so, one way and I believe the one of the only ways for me to get there is through experiencing it so that the heart can learn what the logic mind knows.

So maybe one element of the concept of reparenting is learning some of the same stuff but through an experiential method rather than a cognitive method. For me, most the time, I don't see or know the reparenting is happening until I experience one of those moments and it feels just special, for lack of a better way to explain it. It's not that I feel special to T or T to me, it's the experience/the moment... and maybe it is just the moment that certain neurochemicals are released as if I was an infant/child. I honestly don't know. I do think that we each have our own needs and maybe you don't have that need in your journey so it's harder to wrap your head around what it feels like. I know it's really hard for me to describe because it feels like there's no real vocabulary for it.

I saw a blurb today that self-compassion is more important than self-esteem.

I can relate to this. Esteem - im like, what does that even mean? Compassion is a word i know.

My therapist spent the first 7ish years of my therapy reparenting me. Basically modeling a healthy adult and healthy parent part for me internalize and use as a coping skill and a tool for parenting my own child parts within