What Does Reparenting Have to Do With Secure Attachment? (And How Do You Do It?)

Reparenting is one of the most powerful tools for building secure attachment as an adult. If your emotions tend to either overwhelm you or go underground, the skill of becoming your own good parent is what lets you self-soothe, reach for help, and finally feel close in your relationships. Here’s what reparenting means, why it matters for attachment, and six practical places to begin.

Becoming Your Own Good Parent

All self-help is about learning to become your own good parent. It’s not that you’re a child and need to treat yourself like a child. You are an adult, and most adults have emotional parts of self that get in the way of living their best life.

These parts are emotionally immature and need help growing up. By “emotionally immature,” I mean managing (or attempting to manage) emotions in ways that harm oneself, others, or their relationships. It stems from low capacity to self-regulate or seek co-regulation when there is an emotional trigger. Emotional maturity isn’t defined by moments when there’s no trigger. It’s defined by one’s ability to cope with emotional challenges.

For whatever reason, these parts didn’t get the right parental guidance they needed during childhood (and this can be true even for people who had loving, good-enough parents).

But the opportunity is never lost. All adults can learn to give themselves the parenting they missed out on back then. This post will focus on learning to reparent one’s own emotions.

Meet Yourself Where You Are

Some people had parents who helped equip them to handle their emotions with health.

Some didn’t. It’s not black or white, all or nothing. Many people had good-enough parents, but still have some gaps to fill. The idea is to meet yourself wherever you are, identify your areas for growth, and go from there.

How Healthy Emotional Development Works

Here’s how it works. A child comes into the world helpless and with big emotions. The emotions communicate needs: the need to rest, eat, and connect.

Their cries are driven by discomfort, fear, loneliness, or anger, and the cries communicate “help me, I can’t do this alone.”

Responsive parents show up and meet the need. They feed, comfort, soothe, and provide connection. (For this post we’re going to stick with the emotional piece.)

With consistent responses, the child begins to INTEGRATE the parenting into themself. This integration allows them to begin meeting their own needs, so they can feel a sense of empowerment over their own life.

The parent outside of them slowly, over time, becomes a parent inside of them.

The Integration Trajectory: From Co-Regulation to Self-Regulation

With time and consistency, the integration trajectory goes like this…

First, the parent provides all the emotional help. The child doesn’t know how to manage its own nervous system or meet its own needs. It only knows to reach for help.

Slowly, the child learns that help will be available when needed. As their nervous system matures, combined with trust in their environment, they learn to wait. Waiting requires self-regulation. This is the beginning of self-parenting.

Eventually the child can do both: self-soothe when needed, and reach for help when needed.

Self-soothing is self-regulation. Getting help from others is co-regulation. It all stems from parenting.

An Example of Secure Emotional Parenting

A child comes home upset about being teased by a classmate. The parent comforts the child, provides a shoulder to cry on, and validates the child for being upset. Later, the parent helps the child make sense of the situation in a way that doesn’t foster shame, and encourages the child to seek people in life who are kind and respectful.

When these kinds of interactions are consistent, the child naturally treats their own painful emotions in the same way. They can feel and sit with the vulnerable feelings, validate themselves by saying “of course that hurt, it always hurts to be teased,” then naturally make sense of the situation: “sometimes people say mean things because they have their own stuff going on. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me or that I deserve that kind of treatment.”

What Happens When a Child Doesn’t Integrate the Parent

If a parent consistently responds with any of the below, the child will learn there’s no predictable help available.

Overwhelm: “I’m going to call the school right now!”

Indifference: “you’ll be fine”

Anger: “can’t you see I’m busy?”

Punishment: “if you can’t stop complaining, go to your room”

Shaming: “what did you say to make him want to tease you in the first place?”

From here, kids tend to go one of two ways….

The Anxious Pattern: Asking Louder

Some get stuck asking louder, hoping that if they can get enough attention, maybe this time they’ll get a response. All their energy goes into seeking co-regulation and trying to build trust that someone will eventually show up for them, so they never spend enough energy learning to self-regulate. They end up needing too much from others (to off-set their difficulty with self-regulation), ask for help in ways that push others away, and in the process create disconnection.

The Avoidant Pattern: No Longer Asking

Others stop asking altogether and rely only on self-regulation: “I’ll deal with this on my own by stuffing the feelings away, pretending I’m not bothered, and finding another way to distract or comfort myself.” The feelings end up coming out anyway indirectly, and they don’t invite others in to help them enough with their feelings….and in the process this creates disconnection.

Lack of Connection, To Self and Others

When our feelings either get overwhelming as a way to scream for attention or go underground as an attempt to no longer need attention, they aren’t being managed in healthy ways, and when they aren’t coming out in healthy ways, they can’t be used for intimacy and bonding.

How to Fix It: Reparenting

Reparenting means giving yourself in the present what you needed and didn’t receive back then. You become the parent to your own emotional parts.

A good parent shows up when a child is struggling. They comfort, they soothe, and they help the child make sense of the experience in a way that doesn’t foster shame. Reparenting means learning to provide that same response to the emotional parts of you that never received it consistently.

A child can’t do this alone, which is the entire reason children need parents. An adult can occupy both positions simultaneously. You can be the one having the emotional experience and the one responding to it with care.

Examples of Emotional Reparenting

This work happens in ordinary moments, usually right when you’re uncomfortable and want the discomfort to go away as quickly as possible.

The question to ask yourself in those moments is “what would a good parent do here?” Then provide that for yourself, as best you can.

Here are six places to start.

Self-Care

Self care is the most basic form of parenting there is…. food, sleep, movement, medical care, and rest.

A good parent feeds a child on a predictable schedule rather than waiting until the child is falling apart.

Many adults treat their own physical needs as optional. They skip lunch, stay up too late, postpone the appointment for another month, and tell themselves they’ll rest once everyone else has been taken care of. Eventually they hit a wall, and by then it’s a crisis.

Reparenting means you feed yourself, rest yourself, and go to the appointment. You do it before it becomes urgent, because you’re a person with legitimate needs.

Self-Comfort

Self comfort is what you offer yourself when the painful feeling is already here.

A good parent comes close to a crying child, provides comfort, and stays present until the feeling passes.

So pay attention to how you speak to yourself in those moments. “What is wrong with you, why are you like this?” sends the emotion underground, where it gets managed indirectly instead of directly. “Of course this hurts, anyone would be hurt by that” validates the experience and allows the feeling to move through you and settle.

Self-Regulation

Self regulation is the space between the emotional trigger and your response.

Your partner says something that lands wrong and your chest tightens. In that moment you can react immediately, or you can notice that you’re flooded and take a breath before you say anything.

That pause is a skill rather than a personality trait, which means the capacity can be developed at any age. Every time you stay with a difficult feeling instead of running from it or handing it to someone else to manage, the capacity grows.

Self regulation works alongside co-regulation. You still get to reach for help when you need it.

Grieving

There is real loss involved here. The parent you needed and didn’t have. The childhood you wanted. The years you spent believing you were too much, or not enough.

Reparenting means allowing yourself to be genuinely sad about that loss, and taking however long the grieving actually requires. A good parent doesn’t inform a child that their sadness has continued for too long.

Grief is how the past finishes happening. Once it finishes, it stops running the present.

Listening to Feelings

Listening to feelings means treating your emotions as information rather than as an inconvenience.

Anger usually means something crossed a line. Sadness usually means something mattered. Anxiety usually means something feels unsafe or unresolved.

A good parent asks a child why they’re upset and stays curious about the answer, even when the answer seems small. Reparenting means offering yourself that same curiosity: “what is this feeling trying to tell me?”

Feelings get louder when they’re ignored, and quieter when they’re heard.

Boundaries

Boundaries are a form of parenting too. A good parent protects a child from what’s harmful, and over time teaches the child that saying no is permitted.

When those interactions aren’t consistent, the child grows into an adult who over-explains, over-gives, and stays in situations long after they’ve started to hurt. Nobody ever modeled how to step in on their own behalf, so the capacity never developed.

Reparenting means becoming the one who steps in. You decide what you’re available for and what you’re not, and you hold that limit with warmth.

How Reparenting Connects Back to Secure Attachment

Anxious attachment: When you have the capacity to soothe yourself, you have options during a trigger. You can settle enough to reach for your partner from a calm place instead of a desperate one, and you can name what you need directly rather than protesting louder or going underground.

This takes an enormous amount of pressure off both people. Your partner stops being your only available source of regulation, and you stop being theirs. (No partner can carry that alone, and it isn’t a failure when they can’t.)

Avoidant attachment: Accessing the feelings and seeking co-regulation gives your partner an opportunity to see you, connect with you, and do their part to help you feel good in the relationship too.

Secure attachment means the need has somewhere to go. Inward toward yourself, and outward toward each other. You self-soothe when needed, and you reach for help when needed. Both.

Key Takeaways

Reparenting means giving yourself in the present what you needed and didn’t receive back then. You become the parent to your own emotional parts.

Emotional maturity is defined by your ability to cope with emotional challenges, not by the calm moments when nothing is triggering you.

The two insecure patterns are asking louder (anxious) or no longer asking (avoidant), and both create disconnection.

The six places to start are self-care, self-comfort, self-regulation, grieving, listening to feelings, and boundaries.

Secure attachment means the need has somewhere to go: inward toward yourself, and outward toward each other. You self-soothe when needed, and you reach for help when needed. Both.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is reparenting?

Reparenting means giving yourself in the present what you needed and didn’t receive back then. You become the parent to your own emotional parts, learning to comfort, soothe, and make sense of your experience in a way that doesn’t foster shame.

How do you reparent yourself?

In ordinary moments of discomfort, ask “what would a good parent do here?” and provide that for yourself. Six practical places to start are self-care, self-comfort, self-regulation, grieving, listening to feelings, and boundaries.

What does reparenting have to do with secure attachment?

Secure attachment means the need has somewhere to go: inward toward yourself and outward toward each other. Reparenting builds the capacity to self-soothe, which lets you reach for a partner from a calm place instead of a desperate one, and to name what you need directly instead of protesting louder or going underground.

Can you develop secure attachment as an adult?

Yes. The pause between a trigger and your response is a skill rather than a personality trait, which means the capacity can be developed at any age. Every time you stay with a difficult feeling instead of running from it, the capacity grows.

What is the difference between self-regulation and co-regulation?

Self-soothing is self-regulation. Getting help from others is co-regulation. Secure attachment uses both. You self-soothe when needed, and you reach for help when needed.