When Your Inner Child Is Activated in Parenting

Introduction and Welcome

Britta: Hello folks, and welcome to Transformed by Birth, a podcast about the rite of passage of pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. I'm your host, Britta Bushnell, author, mythologist, childbirth educator and all around deep diver with a side of goofball. I'm so glad you're here today. We're talking about inner child activation in parenthood. So grab your comfy beverage of choice you might want to today, or take us along for a walk as we connect with holistic psychologist and author of Reparenting Your Inner Child, Dr. Nicole LePera.

Britta: Before we begin, we start the way we always do by lighting a candle. If you want to join me, please do or just take a breath as I light mine. Today's candle is with tenderness for our inner child. I remember losing it in early parenthood, as many parents do. I would suddenly find myself in a puddle of tears or raging at the world, or closing down and blocking everyone out, my usual go-to form of losing it. Frankly, I'd be activated by something seemingly small, but my response was outsized, and frankly, really young. In those moments, my adult parent self sort of left my body, and little girl Britta was in charge. She was feeling unseen and unheard, or like I didn't matter, which are old and very tender wounds from a long time ago that still live in my present life, especially in parenthood.

Britta: I don't think I'm alone in seeing younger versions of myself while parenting. We don't talk about that part very often. You think you're signing up to raise a child, but you're also going to come face to face with your own childhood. Its lingering wounds and more suddenly — the anxiety, the perfectionism, the patterns you swore you'd never repeat — they're all right there, louder than ever, usually at the most inopportune times, or when our go-to nervous system regulation tools have failed. Where we're going today feels juicy, AF, folks, because our old wounds profoundly impact how we parent, and parenthood also offers us an unprecedented opportunity. We can reparent ourselves while we're parenting our kids. We can give our inner child the care that we've always needed, while also showing up in new ways for our children. And this isn't easy work. There are liabilities and opportunities in understanding how childhood shapes your nervous system, recognizing your core wounds, and building safety in your body can transform not only your parenting, but your entire life.

Introducing Dr. Nicole LePera

Britta: So who's going to help us have this conversation? My guest today is Dr. Nicole LePera, a holistic psychologist trained at Cornell University, the New School for Social Research, and the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis. She's the founder of the global Self Healers Circle community and the author of three New York Times bestsellers: How to Do the Work, How to Meet Yourself, and How to Be the Love You Seek. Her brand new book, Reparenting the Inner Child: The New Science of Our Oldest Wounds and How to Heal Them, helps you connect with the child who always deserved love and helps you integrate reparenting practices into everyday choices so that you can live with more freedom and authenticity. Welcome, Nicole. I'm so grateful you're here. I want to jump right in — anything you want to respond to from my intro?

Dr. Nicole LePera: I just want to thank you first, wholeheartedly, for the work that you do in supporting so many new parents. No job, in my opinion, is as impactful as to show up in care of another human. So I'm super excited to dive into all of these different conversations — from what you've begun to describe, these moments where we're acting out of character, sometimes repeating painful patterns of our own past, sometimes overcompensating and creating all new pain for our future generations. And I'm super excited to hopefully share some impactful awareness, understanding, and, of course, tools to help all of the listeners out there.

What Is the Inner Child?

Britta: I love that. Let's do that. So your book — and in my intro I used the term "inner child," and in the title you have the inner child. So I kind of feel like we've got to start there. What are we talking about? What do we mean when we say inner child?

Dr. Nicole LePera: 100%. I'm happy we're starting there, because thankfully I'm not the first person to have coined the term "inner child." Many people have spoken on it, though I do think that there's a bit of a misunderstanding — where, admittedly, when I first was introduced to the topic, it sounded a bit abstract, mythical. What the heck is this? What does it really mean in my daily life? And does it even matter?

Dr. Nicole LePera: So the inner child, so that we're all working with the same definition, is a part of us that learned how to cope beginning in our earliest life — of course, our childhood. It learned how to handle unpredictability, handle conflict, navigate our unmet needs. In psychological terms, this part is so real. It is known as implicit emotional memory that is quite literally stored in our body. Why is that? Because all of these experiences happen for most of us at a time before we had language, before we had insight, before we had the mature logic that many of us gain as we grow. And so therefore these experiences were actually encoded in our body as sensations and as survival-driven responses — all of which, in my opinion, were perfectly brilliant adaptations that were designed to protect, to connect, or to survive. But the issue happens when we don't let go of those strategies. They end up — over time we repeat them so much — they become habits and patterns that our body remembers and repeats decades later, even if we have new insight, new awareness, new tools. We repeat them, believing that they're still so necessary.

Dr. Nicole LePera: Which is even the way you describe these moments, right? Of bigger reactions, overreactions. And many parents meet their inner child right when they have children — when we become activated, when our baby cries or our toddler refuses to listen, and suddenly we're having an overreaction, or maybe sometimes an under-reaction, where we're completely disconnected or shut down. And again, I hope that one of the takeaways for any listener is: there's nothing shameful, wrong, or broken about you in those moments. Your nervous system is quite literally reacting not to what's happening now, but to what once happened, and what you're repeating. And those over or under reactions — habits and patterns that aren't serving you or your children — were at one time the best thing, the early adaptation, the only thing in many instances that you could do to keep yourself safe when safety depended on connection with those around you.

Britta: I love that because it's very compassionate. I love how you said it served a purpose, that the way it came out was the tool that made sense at the time. And so I think there's something powerful in starting in the place of compassion, of understanding. And I love that. So what makes parenting our own children such a ripe moment — or it's not a single moment, many ripe moments — to connect and visit these childhood wounds, these coping strategies that maybe are not updated, an old operating system that was great at the time but is now outdated. Why is it that parenting gives us an opportunity to visit that?

Why Parenthood Activates Our Wounds

Dr. Nicole LePera: If I were to speak directly, bluntly and simply — it is when you become a parent that you enter the most emotionally loaded and difficult time that exists for any of us, which is the time in which there's another being that is completely dependent on you for everything. And that's the space where all of our own wounds, when we were completely dependent on our parents, began and were formed. So it makes complete sense that now in the position — of course while the tables are turned, though for some of us it wasn't, because some of us were actually parentified in our own childhood, where we were made to put in operational control of the household, care of our siblings, emotional support for our parents.

Dr. Nicole LePera: So we go back again to this emotionally loaded time where we are needed to quite literally be the world for a small being. So it activates all of those parts of us, all of our own experiences, where the reality for most of us — parent or not — is that we didn't have our needs met. So it makes complete sense that when, say, your toddler is throwing a tantrum and you feel an overwhelming and shocking rage — you feel angry — that perhaps for you, in your own childhood, you didn't have connection. The anger could be covering grief that in your childhood you couldn't get upset in that way. You had no one to support you. You were taught that your rage or your anger was something to be avoided. Or — as was very much in my own relationship with my mother — say your baby is crying and you feel numb, you feel shut down. For you, perhaps that is the result of a nervous system that learned, because you didn't have the consistent support that you needed, that when you were overwhelmed and no one came, the most adaptive thing to do was to shut down your emotions.

Dr. Nicole LePera: So in all of the reactions where we're not showing up to be the parent that we want to be — it's again because we are in this vulnerable place. We need to show up in service of someone else. And the reality of it is very few of us as adults are even aware of how to meet our own needs, let alone how to meet the needs of a little dependent creature.

Britta: Yeah. I mean, I would imagine that it's also such a time of giant change that that creates a kind of general instability. Does that play a role in it as well?

Change, Neuroplasticity, and the Rite of Passage of Parenthood

Dr. Nicole LePera: Change in and of itself — while we are capable of incredible change, we now know through neuroplasticity, our nervous system is so threatened by newness. You're talking change not only perhaps in the structural operation of a household, the fact that there's a new being in the household — there could be identity-based change. How many parents shift out of maybe professional identities to begin to now have the identity of a parent? So there is so much newness. And on the other side of that newness, very interestingly, scientifically, there are two periods of the greatest possibility for change, when our brain is, so to speak, the most neuroplastic — and they are in our own childhood, and also when we become new parents, not even biologically, if we've given birth, but when we are in care again of a new, developing creature. So with change and the possibility to wire all these new networks, it doesn't mean it comes easy. We have to walk into the unknown over and over again. And it can be incredibly destabilizing, from our daily routines to our foundational identities.

Britta: It's a total and complete rite of passage — the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, the societal, because there's even a re-identification of who you are in society. There's not a part that gets untouched.

Dr. Nicole LePera: I know. It is a very comprehensive overhaul.

Britta: An overhaul. And overhaul means often ouch.

Dr. Nicole LePera: Before we even get to the extremity of overhauling, change — any change — is again possible but drastically uncomfortable. And again, very few of us have the stress resilience, the ability to walk into discomfort, even welcome discomfort. So I'm sure even some listeners, well — I wanted a kid. I prepared for it my whole life, and now it's here. Shouldn't I have expected this change? Our body prefers the familiar above anything and everything else, even something we desperately want.

Reparenting Ourselves While Parenting Our Children

Britta: Right. Yeah. Oh boy. So you talk about reparenting the inner child — that's the title of your book. And we're talking directly to folks who are parenting children, like real human children. How do you do both? How does that actually work, and does it work to be reparenting ourselves while we're actively parenting?

Dr. Nicole LePera: Yeah. I mean, that is the reality in terms of the task at hand, right? Because your ability to show up as co-regulated, as attuned, in order to meet someone else's needs — it assumes that you have all of those capacities yourself. And of course, understanding that most of our inner child carries wounds, carries unmet needs, we are in a reparenting journey. The reality then is we can't separate our own reparenting journey from the parenting that we're now tasked to do every moment of every day. Simply speaking, they happen in the same moment, and usually it's a difficult moment.

Dr. Nicole LePera: Your toddler throws food at you, your chest tightens, your heart starts to race, your fists clench, and everything in you wants to scream and yell. So in that moment, just practically speaking, reparenting looks like noticing that elevation, the desire to kind of erupt outwardly — noticing your chest tightening, probably your heart racing, your fists clenching — pausing, not instinctually reacting in the way that you've learned. Taking a few slow, deep breaths, elongating your exhale. This is reparenting of yourself. Maybe even in your mind's eye, affirming to yourself that you're okay, that you're safe. You might be activated, reminding yourself — kind of bringing yourself now into real time as the parent — maybe looking around, orienting yourself to your toddler's room, reminding you that this is a three-year-old that threw the food, which is quite a natural thing for a three-year-old to do. And even reminding yourself that you can handle this, that you can show up differently in this moment. You don't have to yell to get your point across.

Dr. Nicole LePera: And then, once we've done that, hopefully our body has calmed enough that we have a little bit of space where we can begin to respond from a calmer place instead of that flooded one. So right in that moment, two things have now happened — simple, small moment, difficult of course. You've tended to yourself. You've not made your reaction wrong — there's a reason that activation and explosion outward, for many of us, was the only thing that created safety in childhood. Sometimes it just comes from the sheer aspect of being overwhelmed. And when emotions have nowhere to go, they go outward, even if it's someone you love deeply, like your child. And at the same time, you giving yourself enough space to change the outcome — you're not going to yell and end up being shameful, feeling bad, possibly hurting your child's feelings. You're going to now show up differently as an attuned caregiver who can see a child even in the action of throwing something as coming from their own dysregulated place. So now you can show up as that secure space of safety and actually use your calming body to calm down your child.

Britta: Yeah, with that co-regulation, which can be so incredibly powerful, especially with children. I mean, with everybody, but children are just like co-regulation magnets. So I'm curious, because I'm remembering some of my own parenting moments. I remember when I would get activated with my kids, and Rahr would come out, and then the second arrow would come in, and I'd beat myself up for the Rahr, which was not very helpful. And then what I started doing was — because I was having a hard time inserting the deeper breath prior to the explosion — I started paying attention to when the explosion happened, and repairing with my child and with myself. I started with the place of saying, "Oh, wow, Britta, hand on heart, wow, that was big. Ooh, ouch." And forgiving myself first. And it was interesting, because that actually started to help me change the behavior where I could then insert the exhale, then insert the pause before the activation, because I couldn't go straight from the activation to the deeper breath and doing it differently without starting by just noticing it had happened. Does that make sense?

Book-Ending: Repairing After Activation

Dr. Nicole LePera: Oh, 100%. Because in a real way, as stress amplifies, we revert to very instinctual, emotion-driven reactions. Quite literally, we lose access to insight, to awareness, to this beautiful conversation that you want to remember — we don't even remember until our body has calmed down after. So we can even talk about book-ending. And to speak to the wisdom that you shared — thank you for using yourself as an example — for many of us, it starts after. And it for maybe the first time teaches your own inner child what repair looks like. I mean, very few of us had healthy models of conflict resolution and repair, where we came back and addressed and heard, calmly worked through something, and compromised. We didn't see that. So now we're teaching our inner child something new. And we're also teaching our child something new where we can acknowledge, "Hey, you know that reaction might have felt directed at you. Maybe I even said it was directed at you, but now here I am to tell you that had nothing to do with you at all." And that is so important because a child's brain can't understand nuance — other factors that play into someone's response. So they will, from a very egocentric state, assume it is them.

Dr. Nicole LePera: So just quickly talking about the other book-end — we can begin with beginning to observe and learn our body's increasing stress responses. Noticing that as a couple of days go by with limited sleep, with limited nutrition, not moving our body — noticing that, oh my God, I'm getting tenser and tenser, I'm carrying so much stress. Because again, those are the moments when stress is too high that we're not going to be able to, physiologically in our mind, create that new action in real time. So from the front end, really learning your habits in terms of how stress loads your body consistently. Are certain factors changing in your daily life that are increasing your amount of stress, therefore increasing the likelihood? So can we intervene preemptively? Giving myself a moment to calm down if it's a very bad day at work and you know you have to open the door and your child is having their own tantrum — maybe taking an extra beat to do some grounding before you go in, trying to just slightly dial down your stress from a nine to an eight so that maybe you don't go overboard. And then on the back end as well, because so many of us are like, "Oh, in real time I need to change now," and then feel terrible when we don't do that.

Britta: And it — I want to just ground it in the truth of parenting, because we love high-end thinking about how things can happen, and it's like, "Oh, I'm gonna do that. I have such great positive intentions." And then reality hits. And it's like, oh boy, oh mama. That was a little intense. Especially because — and I want to ask you about this — often the need to respond to something that our child does might actually be connected to their behavior, in that there is a behavior that we want to be parenting around, but the response isn't actually directly connected to that thing. It seems outsized. And that outsized part — that's the inner child, right? It's not that we're saying just be permissive with your children. Boundaries are actually part of what you work with, right?

Parenting Archetypes: Balancing Boundaries and Emotional Safety

Dr. Nicole LePera: I actually would go as far to say, and I have a whole archetype of parenting that's called the over-permissive parent. Because again, I think those of us who grew up in authoritarian, over-controlled homes, or maybe even had no boundaries ourselves, sometimes kind of go to the farther extreme, right? I was so controlled I'm gonna let them do anything. Or, I discovered that emotions are important, so now I'm going to be so over-permissive, I'm gonna be their best friend. Very well-intentioned. Though the reality of it is we need limits. Actions and reactions come with consequences. So yes, to be clear, we have to strike that balance where we can also separate the child's action from their worth. "You've done this does not make you a bad kid." And now we're starting to get into the difference between guilt and shame. Shame gets baked into our experience when reactions have made us feel — or we maybe hear out of our parents' mouths — that it is you. So it is so important to teach a child: yes, there are limits. Your actions come with perhaps very appropriate consequences. Though nowhere are you hearing me say or communicate that your actions are reflective of your worth.

Britta: Yeah. Okay. That makes so much sense — that we want to be parenting our child's inner child, and we want to love that inner child while holding the essence of who they are with tenderness and love, and behaviors with clarity and boundaries and rules and consequences that hold them — because they actually need that.

Dr. Nicole LePera: And I think — yeah. Sometimes I do hear this idea of, well, they're just being who they are. And who they are is just inappropriate, explosive, hurting another person in that way. So again, it's striking a balance. Of course we always want a child — and that's the thing. In childhood, emotions don't have logic or reason. They don't have the filter to pause. They just often become their emotions, which then very naturally — not to shame any parent who's maybe struggling with a child, a toddler, that's acting out — many times that's their only way to communicate overwhelming feelings that they don't have words or language for.

Breaking Cycles and Intergenerational Patterns

Britta: Yeah. And when you were speaking about those archetypes — which are in the book — the different parenting archetypes, and that possibility of swinging really far from the way you were parented to a different way of parenting in response to how you were parented — I hear that a lot in my childbirth classes when I'm working and mentoring parents on the threshold of parenthood. And one of the things I hear over and over again comes in kind of one of two flavors: "I don't want to repeat the patterns of my parents," or "I hope to be as good a parent as my parent is." And it sounds connected, but there's a challenge in there that makes my heart tender. How do you speak to parents about the part of wanting to break cycles, or carry the threads that they want from their own childhood while breaking cycles of what they don't want? And where does the inner child work show up in that regard?

Dr. Nicole LePera: Well, the first thing I want to say is I want to normalize the reality of the kind of intergenerational transmission — whatever word you want to use — a passing down of these cycles. That is the human condition, and it's again grounded in science. It's grounded in now we understand epigenetics, which is that even down to our biology, we are reacting to the world around us, and we are passing those changes on to future generations. Because very beautifully, our body thinks that that's the most evolutionarily sound thing to do, assuming that future generations are going to be born into the same environment — which was the case decades ago for all of our ancestors, where we didn't have airplanes and fly away, and we pretty much did live in the same situation. And so if there was food scarcity in one generation, chances are not much would have changed, and it would probably be in the next generation. So all of those changes help us.

Dr. Nicole LePera: So I would 100% normalize that, even if your parents were so great and you want to be exactly like them, or they really weren't great at all and you want to be nothing like them — chances are, we're talking about impact not just in beliefs, habits, rituals — everything that we see and can say, "Oh, it's the same." We're actually talking about all the behind-the-scenes stuff wired into our biology. The way that we are actually living and embodied in the world. So change will begin, in my opinion, with becoming aware. What are the habits, whether they're grounded in repeating or not repeating the past? What is it that we're doing in real time, in action? What are we modeling? How attuned are we? What are we showing our children?

Britta: Yeah, yeah. We're not even talking about this as one thing if you have more than one child.

Dr. Nicole LePera: So unique, right? And that's very challenging for parents. Your perfect parenting that worked really great for you in childhood might not translate to the unique snowflake that you've now given birth to. They might have completely different needs. And again, you throw a couple siblings in the mix, and it gets really confusing. So the level of attunement — you really have to, first and foremost, understand if you're projecting ideas or beliefs. Your child looks like you, so you think they're going to be like you. But they're their own person. And that can feel very out of control, can feel very threatening, very challenging — though that's the reality. So can I create space and curiosity? Can I be okay with not knowing who you are and discovering who you are in real time, alongside of you? So again, with awareness — with understanding maybe what's driving the habits and patterns, some of which might be working, some of which aren't — we can begin to change whatever it is that we want to at any time, through insight, intention, shifting choices, and then creating new habits.

Britta: Yeah, starting with awareness. Am I hearing that right?

Dr. Nicole LePera: Starting with awareness. I mean, again, we will always be driven on blind autopilot — for many reasons it's the way our nervous system prefers. We love to be prediction machines. We love to know exactly what we do next. We want to decrease even the energetic load that it takes to show up by having to fire up our very powerful prefrontal cortex to do something new. So talk about a time where you don't have energy to change — it's parenthood. Of course, autopilot becomes survival for so many of us. So without insight and awareness, there is no possibility to change. We really do need to resource ourselves to see what we're doing in action, because autopilot is what we all kind of naturally are going to gravitate toward, especially as stress — which is inherent in the parenting experience — amplifies.

Perfectionism and the Inner Child

Britta: Okay, which all of this is bringing me to think about perfectionism, because as we're talking about that innate kind of desire to do well, that wanting, that longing to do well, that wanting to change and break cycles, or the wanting to be good at this, the wanting to show up for our child, whoever they are, as they're evolving and changing through their lives — I mean, I remember even actually to this day that I don't know who my child is every single day. Every day they might be a different person. Because also, I wake up and I'm not sure who I am some days, right? Because I change on the regular. We're all change machines. But when it means so much to us — and I do think that for most people, parenting feels so important — that little insidious place of perfectionism often drops in. And in new parenthood it's like it often compounds the challenges. When we've got perfectionism on board, what's the relationship between perfectionism and the inner child? Can you unpack that?

Dr. Nicole LePera: In addition to the very beautiful point you're making — which is, it's so natural to be well-intentioned, to want to do good by your child, to give them a good childhood, and make them become a good standing citizen, successful, and all the things that we might want for our kids — the expectation goes into the level of what one might say is unrealistic, perfect. And we hold ourselves up to that standard. And complicating it even more, the large majority of us, myself included, grew up in a childhood where love and connection depended on performance.

Dr. Nicole LePera: So if praise and attention and connection and validation only came when we did something well — as was the case for me, and it was very clear I did two things very well very early on, which was academics and athletics. And so those were the moments where I was celebrated and where I got the limited attention that my mom was able to give, because she too was so disconnected — well, overwhelmed by stress in our family, her own childhood — that it was only in those moments where I secured her attention, her validation. So our nervous system then learns that worth must be earned. So if and when in childhood we only felt love and connection when we succeeded, it's so natural then to grow into an adult who puts unrealistic expectations of perfection on themselves, who believes mistakes mean failure, who struggles to do things imperfectly, to rest, to give themselves a break. Because again, perfectionism is quite literally for some of us our inner child's best attempt at staying safe, at avoiding even mild criticism, mild feedback from anyone who sees us being less than perfect. Because that was the only way, again in childhood, that we felt that safety and that security.

Britta: Okay, so that one was touching home. Both you and I have PhDs after our names. There might be a connection there.

Dr. Nicole LePera: I mean, even to this day, I struggle with — I have to breathe through and teach myself in many moments that when someone's giving me feedback, they're not telling me I'm a terrible person, or that I'm doing things so poorly I should stop. Because the part of my head hears that, and to deal with it, I don't want to grow. I don't want to take the feedback, incorporate it, and get better at what I'm doing. I want to run away and never do it again. And sometimes I want to yell at you, "How dare you give me that feedback." And again, it comes from that wounded space of that little child. The first time I did not get an A on a paper — I remember it to this day. I was at an age where we had to have our tests signed by our parents, and I brought home a 78. I was so afraid to show my mom that it wasn't 100 — because if it was a 99, she'd say, "Why didn't you get 100?" — that I plagiarized the paper so badly that I know my teacher probably knew, because it was like erased to the point there was no paper left. But again, that little child is still here. So when I hear feedback, I hear, "Why isn't it perfect, Nicole?" — just like, "Why isn't it that 100?"

Britta: Which, if we bring it down into feedback in parenthood — feedback in parenthood can come from our children. It sure can. Our children can be like, "No, I don't like the way you're doing this." And so that can then activate some of that, where it's like, "Wait a minute, I'm doing the best that I can, and it's not working."

Dr. Nicole LePera: They're attuned, they're vocal, they'll say it. And the thing is, that's such a critical moment. What a celebration that a child is able to acknowledge, "Hey, this doesn't feel good. I don't like this." That's beautiful. That's what we want to instill. But when our inner child is involved, we will much more likely not react with a welcome embrace. We'll shame, we'll yell, we'll do all these other things, and we'll kind of counter what it is that we really, truly want — which is to foster the ability in children to be intuitive, to understand when something doesn't feel good, and to say it. Even if the outcome is still the same thing — you have to do it right — which is sometimes the case. We still want to teach our children that it's safe for them, and that their intuition is something to tune into, and it's okay for them to express their discomfort, even if the outcome is: you still have to deal with the discomfort.

Parentification and Emotional Enmeshment

Britta: Yeah. And there's this piece where it's like, if they're giving feedback on the parenting, and then the parent is taking that personally, that can parentify the child — the child tries to take care of us in our wound, activating our feeling of, "Ah wait a minute. You're giving me feedback. I'm doing the best I can. You don't like what I'm doing?" That can be — I would imagine — a response that can come from that inner child place.

Dr. Nicole LePera: 100%. I mean, there are so many indirect ways. More often than not, it's indirect, these communications. It's not so clear what's happening. You're not aware. More often than not, guilt is coming out. I mean, I can't remember how many times I would — or my mom would say to me — if I was doing or saying or being some way that she didn't want, she'd say, in an obviously crying, pleading voice, "Oh please, Nicole, would you just... or just stop for me, or I'm gonna cry." So all of this kind of merger of emotion — the more consistently that happens, the more responsible we begin to feel for someone else's emotional experience. And again, as compassionate, caring humans — which all of us, our children included, are — we'll begin to modify.

Dr. Nicole LePera: So before long, I turned into a secretive child who never told mom anything, and then I was made wrong for that. But in reality, that was the best scenario for me, because every time I tried to tell mom something, I had more stress. I needed her support, or she was seeing me go through something stressful — and now I had compounded my stress with her stress and the upset that I'd created. So before long, the safer approach for me was just to hide things. That's a version of parentification that I think is really important to talk about. It's not just needing to show up and take care of the house in an operational way, care for siblings, or even sometimes physically care for our parents. It's these more indirect moments where children are given a kind of emotional responsibility, or even just shared mature content. How many parents inadvertently talk about the other parent, share things, kind of rely on a child as if they're in the same emotional age — and they're not.

Dr. Nicole LePera: And again, this goes back to something we were talking about earlier. Sometimes that's the overcompensation from a childhood where you felt completely alone. I couldn't go to my mom for anything, for all the reasons I describe. So my overcompensation might be, "Well, I'm gonna be my child's best friend now." But I'm blurring boundaries, sharing inappropriate developmental information that is well beyond my child's years.

Britta: You're touching on something I remember from my childhood. My parents divorced when I was very young, and my parents — I don't frankly know how they were ever married to each other, they're so radically different — and I kind of feel like I have two inner voices in my head, because my parents were so different that I kind of did this switching of personality based on who I was around, and I can still sense that inside of me. And one of the things that happened a lot when I was a little kid — and in some ways to this day — is the parent who wants to talk about the other parent and dish, whatever about the other parent. I mean, they tried. I got to give them a lot of credit for trying. But every now and then it was very inadvertently or overtly dissing the other parent to me or my siblings.

Dr. Nicole LePera: That's what's so difficult. Often, parents are humans. Sadly, boundaries get blurred. Emotional needs do get projected outward. So to some extent, it is so natural. I think a relationship with a child is still a relationship — so all of our own dynamics and patterns can so easily bleed into that. And especially when there's divorce and there's very real hurt and conflict between you and the co-parent. And especially the reality that many of us are living in a society that greatly lacks support. So for some parents, the only support they really have are the children around them. Very naturally, these things get talked about within the relationship, in front of the children, in a way that just isn't helpful.

Dr. Nicole LePera: In addition to the fact that very few of us learn boundaries in general. Of course, we're talking more about emotional boundaries here, but boundaries in general are not — they're not even. I didn't have the word "boundaries" in my vocabulary. Even as a clinical psychologist, it took me until I realized I had none, to really backtrack — like, well, what are boundaries? And why do I have none? And how can I create some? It was not something that was readily taught to me in school. And I think the large majority of us as adults weren't modeled healthy boundaries. So we repeat all of these more unhealthy, dysfunctional boundaries within our relationships with our children.

Boundaries in Parenting: Why They Feel Like Life or Death

Britta: Yeah, can we talk about boundaries a little bit? Can we go there? Because I do think that there's a real push-pull relationship with boundaries as parents — that element of wanting to set boundaries, feeling guilty about setting boundaries, fear of setting a boundary and having our children reject us, reject us not the boundary. So how do we do boundaries in a different way?

Dr. Nicole LePera: So it's important to understand: boundaries are intended to create space, to protect our safety, energy, respect, collaboration, authenticity, and relationships. So they're very healthy and very important. And again, something that very few of us have had modeled to us. So if in early childhood — and by "we" I'm also not just talking about our very powerful, insightful mind, I'm actually talking about the body — we didn't learn separation safety and separation limits, modeled by parents who gave us a little bit of freedom to venture out but also a limit to how far we could venture, and then created a safe home base for us to return to, so that later we could venture a little farther out and then learn our own boundaries around our body and our emotions and our mind and everything in between — so when that didn't happen, which it didn't happen for very many of us, a lot of us learned that the "no" that often comes with the setting of a boundary — a lot of us have learned that that could threaten connection.

Dr. Nicole LePera: Because in homes where we weren't modeled healthy boundaries or healthy limits, the message directly or indirectly communicated for a lot of us is that love means having no boundaries, being ever-available, keeping the peace, kind of betraying ourselves, overstepping our own boundaries, putting other people's needs first. I could even go down a rabbit hole of sometimes that's what parenthood is kind of proclaimed to be — selflessly, always putting yourself last and making sure that your child comes first. And to some extent, yes, you need to care for your child. But to care for your child, you need to make sure that you're cared for too.

Britta: Hard to remember that part.

Dr. Nicole LePera: And to practice. Because again, when we go back to boundaries, they're not just uncomfortable — it's not just something like, "Oh, I'd rather not do it. It's a little bit uncomfortable." It is wired in. It can feel like life or death, like we're risking the relationship, like we're being rejected or abandoned again. So all of this — again, this is body-based learning. We could logically come off a conversation like this, understand that yes, boundaries are important, but then the next time our child is crying, we completely rush in immediately. We don't give a minute to calm if we don't have the ability to be calm and regulate once we're on the other side of the door. Or when they — in toddlerhood, which they do often — protest, we say immediately, "Okay, whatever you want." Maybe because their protest is even overwhelming you. So we give in. Or even a self-boundary — we don't take any time for ourselves, we completely remove ourselves of having needs, and we become in selfless service of everyone else. And before long, we have no capacity. We're either erupting or we're shutting down, or we're growing resentful — even of our children. "How dare you need something else of me? I have nothing left."

Britta: If you have nothing left, you've got a boundaries issue.

Dr. Nicole LePera: You've got a boundaries issue. And the reality of it is it takes practice — not just logically knowing.

Britta: You can't just turn on a dime and suddenly have boundaries.

Dr. Nicole LePera: You have to practice it. You have to feel the discomfort. You have to lovingly and calmly say "no." You have to feel how uncomfortable it is. You have to worry that your kid's gonna hate you and not want a relationship with you. And then you have to stay long enough to notice that that doesn't happen, that the relationship stays intact, and then you teach your body that connection can handle limits, distance, space, that you can come back and repair. Even if you needed a moment for yourself at an inopportune time, you can come back and have the beautiful conversation: "I understand you needed me there, and mom needed a second, and now Mom's here."

Modeling Self-Care: The Parent Time-Out

Britta: It's making me think of something that I did kind of just intuitively when my kids were little — I would give myself time-outs. I didn't give my kids time-outs. I don't know why. That wasn't really my thing. But I gave myself time-outs regularly. I would say, "Guys, mom needs a time-out," and I would take a timeout to just take a moment with myself. I remember one moment when my kids were — my youngest was a toddler, so maybe 18 months old, and my older one was probably three and a half or four — and they were just completely melting down in a morning moment, the get-dressed, get-ready kind of morning moment. Just a complete meltdown. And we were upstairs. The gate was closed to the stairs. Everything was safe. Our space was well set up. But they were losing it, and I was starting to lose it too, because it is catching. We are a bundle of mirror neurons. So I was like, "Guys, mom needs a time-out." And I started walking down the hallway. Well, these two wound-up bundles of nerves started following me. And I was like, "Oh no, no, no. I need a time-out." So I started moving a little fast, which then they started running. So we ended up being this train of me kind of running away from them and them running after me because I needed a break — to the point where I ended up in my closet with the door shut, my fingers in my ears, going "La la la la la" while they were on the other side of the door banging on it. And I laugh about it now, but I came out from that closet, and one, I felt terrible, and two, I felt like I needed to do so much repair with my kids, to be like, "Guys, I just needed a break, and I'm sorry that it felt like I was running away from you. I actually was running away." But I had to firmly hold that boundary, and it was really hard but incredibly essential in that moment, because I don't know what losing it would have looked like if I had stayed.

Dr. Nicole LePera: And that's the reality. Thank you for sharing this. I think you're actually onto something — the parent time-out. I think you should go running with that conceptually. There's something really great there. But that aside, that's the reality. Sometimes separation not only prevents a far worse explosion — something far greater that we can still repair later — but it models something else more important. Needs are a two-way street. So imagine now a child who had that model, that even if it was an inopportune time and they really wanted or needed you in that moment, they see that Mama has needs. The more consistently they learn that mom has needs, the more likely they are to create space for someone else's needs in a relationship when they're older. And that is such a powerful, powerful teaching. Because the reality is: sometimes you might be disappointed. You might desperately want or need someone to show up for you in a given way, and they can't. Or you might be that person and you just can't. But it doesn't mean you love them any less. So learning to say, "I love you, and the answer is still no. I love you and I can't right now. It doesn't make me love you less."

Britta: Oh, you're reparenting me right now. My inner child is hearing you. I just about got teary as you were speaking about that. And my children are adults now. My firstborn is getting married and is in a very thriving relationship, and is able to show up for his partner really beautifully. And, wow — wait, did I help model that for him? You know, I don't know. But I'm not going to take full...

Dr. Nicole LePera: He got it from somewhere. You can take a little credit there.

Britta: Thank you. Okay, well, we're going into taking care of Britta's therapy session today. Thank you so much, Nicole.

Dr. Nicole LePera: It is my pleasure. And I speak again from my own challenges quite often, but I do think there's —

Britta: I know that I'm not alone in those moments where we can be upset with ourselves for getting to a point where we're out of capacity, and yet still finding a way to tend to ourselves in that moment is really important. And that's the boundary piece that you're speaking to.

Dr. Nicole LePera: Yeah, and that is the reality. I think the large majority — as I continue to reiterate — is that we don't feel worthy, deserving of love. We develop all of these beautifully wise adaptations of who we had to be or how we have to show up, sometimes overextending ourselves, to try so desperately to allow ourselves to be worthy. So again, to really understand that you are beautifully imperfect and wise and worthy, just exactly as you are. And even if in your own childhood that wasn't modeled to you, you can show up now, creating change in action — of course, again, with awareness, kind of book-ending like we were talking about earlier — but through small daily shifts and practices.

Dr. Nicole LePera: And also something I want to speak to, because we're kind of indirectly talking about it — how beautiful to have an imperfect moment, right? To say and do something that we don't mean, and to come back, and to model — for all of us perfectionists out there — to have a parent say, "Hey, I showed up less than ideally. I don't love how I acted. And I love you, and I'm sorry." How far that will go to teach a child that humanity is beautifully imperfect at all times. And to then create compassionate space for their own moments — because even with perfect parenting, even though that's not possible, life still happens, and there still might be moments where they find themselves overwhelmed, overreacting, under-reacting. So how beautiful then for them to have this modeling and teaching, and knowing that you know what — you can do things that aren't something you're proud of, and it doesn't minimize your worth. It doesn't actually mean anything about you. It means you were overwhelmed, and you maybe could use a new tool, gain some new support, some new resources, and try again next time.

Practical Tools: Starting in the Body

Britta: Yeah. So where do you recommend parents start? Do you have a tool or a practice you recommend? Like you said, awareness at one point. What would be a place to start? If someone's often triggered or activated by their child, and they're feeling like a failure, and yet they're starting to recognize that these are likely their wounds being expressed — where do they begin?

Dr. Nicole LePera: Change originates in the body. So the more connected we can become to our physical body — all of those moments of shifts of elevation that indicate we're becoming more stressed and more likely to do the things that are going to have us acting out of character: our heart beginning to race, our breath beginning to quicken, or us beginning to hold our breath, brace, tense, clench — all of the things, on all of the body parts — noticing. Because those are the moments: the more stress amplifies, the more dysregulated we become, the less attuned and the less able we are to then show up in care of someone else. Because quite literally we go into our own survival mode where it's not our kid that we're yelling at — we kind of erase the child that is them, and we are just reacting in protection.

Dr. Nicole LePera: So what I mean when I say that — if we want to get really practical about it — in addition to noticing your breath, noticing your heart rate, noticing the tension that you might be carrying in your muscles: as you're noticing heart's starting to race, breathing starting to quicken, tension starting to build — noticing, "I am becoming stressed and likely to perhaps have a reaction that's dysregulated" — we can begin to slow our breath, elongate our exhale, which just means making our exhale a little longer than our inhale. We can feel our feet. You even took us through that — to feel our feet on the ground, or our body supported by the chair or the bed or the ground beneath us. If it feels comfortable, we can place a hand on our heart and remind ourselves that we're physically present, maybe even offering ourselves a reminder: "I'm safe."

Britta: That one's so good for me. Hand on heart is such a moment.

Dr. Nicole LePera: It's very grounding for me, and kind of reminding of where I want to be connected to always, which is my present-moment space. Those are a lot of kind of body-based. So I want to give one because I know for a lot of us, if we have a lot of trauma in our body, tuning into those things might not feel safe just yet. So we can even just use the environment around us, looking around, scanning, naming five neutral things — one color. These seem like so silly, simple practices, but they add up. Because the more aware we can become, the more present we can become in this moment in time, the more physiologically we can down-shift our energy — the more we help, quite literally, our body physiologically shift over into that parasympathetic state where we do regain access to choice, to logic, to how we really want to be. Even if how we want to be is so new from how we've been, so it feels unfamiliar — we have to resource our body to walk into the stress of change.

Resources and Where to Find Dr. Nicole LePera

Britta: Love that. Start in the body. And I love that it's simple practices. I'm going to guess you have some resources you can share with folks who want to go deeper in this. So where — if people want to learn more, I know there's some of this in your book — give us a little bit about your book and about where folks can reach you, see more about your work and your offerings.

Dr. Nicole LePera: 100%. So first I'll talk about the newest book, Reparenting the Inner Child. All of my books really have a ton of practical exercises, but I think out of all of them, this one has the most, so to speak. Every chapter ends with kind of translatable — I tried to make these practices as, I like to call them, "back pocket" as possible. Understanding that, especially with parenting, life is busy, your attention is a million places. We have to set ourselves up to succeed by having something that feels accessible, doable, possible in a moment. So every chapter ends with exercises around the chapter's content. We talk about attachment style and stress and even kind of our ancestors and habits and patterns passed through our lineage. So every chapter you'll be able to do or think about yourself in a new way. An entire chapter is dedicated to the reparenting journey, so it'll kind of take you through in a very sequential way how to get started, what to do now and what to do next.

Dr. Nicole LePera: Though I really want to make sure that everyone is hearing this: you don't have to spend a dime on this book, because a lot of what I talk about is really across all the social media platforms. The holistic psychologist — we really prioritize making sure that these conversations and these tools and resources are happening. And so even if you don't have the finances or a dime to want to invest in things like a book or my membership, the Self Healers Circle, come and find me across any of the social media platforms, because I'm talking about this, I'm sharing quick somatic practices — again, back pocket tools that you can take away with you. And perhaps most importantly, there are other people that are struggling in the same way, sharing their journey. That is why not only did I take to social media, however many years ago that it was, but I've transitioned the way that I work outside of individual work into community, because I know so many of us secretly fear that we are so alone in everything that we're struggling with. So please just come find the work, have the conversation, get the support, find me on social media, and allow me to be a resource. And of course, if you want to purchase this or any of my other books, you can find them wherever books are sold. It's also on Audible and Kindle as well.

Britta: And your social media handles one more time?

Dr. Nicole LePera: The Holistic Psychologist — that's me on all the things. It's some version of that on TikTok, depending on how many characters I got. But yes, The Holistic Psychologist — you'll find me.

Closing: One Thing for New and Expectant Parents to Know

Britta: I love that. So I like to end with one question, and it's always the same every week, so that we kind of get to feel the continuity through it. And that question is: What's one thing that you feel passionately about that you want new or expectant parents to see, hear, feel, or know during this profound period of their lives?

Dr. Nicole LePera: What I want new parents to know is that with awareness, anything is possible. The moment you notice a habit, a pattern, even something that you wish wasn't the case — that is the moment that quite literally you give yourself the opportunity to make a different choice. The minute you give yourself an opportunity to pause instead of reacting, to another theme we've been revisiting together, Britta — to repair after mistakes, or even to ask for support. And mostly, I want everyone to hear: children don't need a perfect parent. It's impossible to be a perfect parent. What they need is a parent who shows up, who repairs, who keeps taking accountability, responsibility, growing, and modeling everything that we've talked about. Because quite literally, again, every moment gives the possibility of a new choice. The more consistently we create patterns in the choices that we're making, we're literally breaking the cycle.

Closing and Outro

Britta: Thank you so much for joining. That's a beautiful note to end on. Thank you, Nicole. And thank you listeners for sharing this time with us. If something shared today impacted, supported, or moved you, please share this episode with a friend. I produce this podcast myself, and your support makes it possible. To show a little love for the podcast and these conversations, please follow, rate, and review. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please join us on Instagram at Transformed by Birth. I look forward to being with you again on the next episode of Transformed by Birth. Now let's gather what we want to take away from this episode — with an inhale, and with our exhale, I'll blow out our candle. Until next time, bye friends.