What happens when the parts of us that never felt safe finally get the chance to be heard?
Most of us carry an inner chorus of voices, some kind, and some critical. You should’ve known better. Be easy, be useful, be fine. These voices often echo how care showed up…and where it didn’t.
In the Reimagining Inner Parenting class from the Inner Compass Academy, Taunē reminded us that developmental trauma is, at its core, disconnection: from Self (our felt center and inner compass), from others (secure relationship and co-regulation), and from soul (meaning, imagination, and what makes life feel alive). To survive disconnection, we develop “adaptive selves”, brilliant strategies that kept us safe when the world didn’t. Over time, though, those same strategies can harden into patterns that leave us anxious, numb, resentful, or looping the same relational dynamic on repeat.
So, what if the work now is less about “fixing” who we are and more about re-meeting who had to disappear?
Reparenting isn’t about blaming our parents, it’s about recognizing that parts of us are still waiting to be met. Depth psychology teaches that insight alone is not integration. We can know something with our minds (“I deserve care”), and yet our bodies still brace, bargain, or shut down. Moving from cognitive knowing to felt knowing asks us to include the body and the imaginal, where the unconscious speaks in sensation, image, and symbol.
Here’s one way in: place a hand on your heart and recall a moment you longed for comfort. Now, imagine receiving it. Steady eyes, a grounded voice, a warm hand on your back, the words, “I’m here.” Let the scene gain texture: light in the room, the pace of breath, the weight in your shoulders shifting. Notice what changes in your body. Is there more space in the chest? A longer exhale? Softening in the jaw? This is more than fantasy; it’s rehearsal. The psyche is practicing a new template of safety and beginning to weave threads of care through places once organized around neglect.
Reparenting is slow. But each time we meet ourselves with presence rather than performance, we’re rewriting the pathways of belonging. And as we practice, belonging stops being something we chase and becomes something we cultivate from within.