The child who learned to disappear is still running your adult relationships | Nicole LePera

Dr. Nicole LePera, The Holistic Psychologist, introduces the concept of childhood trauma, its impact on daily life, and the transformative process of reparenting. She emphasizes that present-day struggles, such as anxiety, conflict, or self-doubt, are often strategies formed in childhood when emotional safety and being seen were inconsistent. LePera shares her own childhood experience of stress and tension, where conversations about feelings were rare, and conflict vanished into silence, leaving her in a constant state of alert and bracing for danger. This led her to understand trauma not just as dramatic events, but as subtle moments of a lack of emotional regulation, attunement, and repair, which have significant consequences. Trauma, LePera explains, is not solely about what happened, but about the support available to process experiences. She illustrates this with the example of divorce: a child with a supportive parent to process their grief will have a vastly different experience than one left to process it alone. Similarly, a child whose emotions are dismissed by a distracted parent may learn to be hyper-independent, expecting no one to be present in moments of vulnerability. LePera also highlights that trauma can be intergenerational, passed down through epigenetics, affecting future generations mentally, emotionally, and physically. She argues that trauma is pervasive, as most individuals were not raised with the emotional attunement needed to cope with life's events. Many symptoms perceived as dysfunction are, in fact, adaptive strategies formed in childhood to cope with the environment. While these survival habits can be rewired, a lack of awareness keeps individuals repeating patterns, mistaking them for personality. Unresolved childhood trauma manifests in adult habits, such as shutting down during conflict or appeasing others, which were once protective but now sabotage relationships and authenticity. LePera identifies six common archetypes of childhood trauma: 1. **Parent who denies your reality:** Growing up where sharing perspectives or emotions was dismissed (e.g., being told to "stop overreacting"). This leads to doubting instincts and tolerating unacceptable behavior in adulthood. Healing involves reconnecting with instincts and self-advocacy. 2. **Parent who doesn't see or hear you:** Physically present but emotionally absent parents. This fosters feelings of invisibility and insignificance, leading to difficulty speaking up or feeling heard in adulthood. Healing requires self-validation and seeking relationships where one's perspective is valued. 3. **Parent who vicariously lives through you or molds and shapes you:** Childhood pressure to perform, where love is conditional on achievement. This translates to overwork, perfectionism, and fear of criticism in adulthood. Healing involves embracing imperfections and disconnecting self-worth from performance. 4. **Parent who doesn't model boundaries:** Violations of physical or emotional space, or parents relying on children for emotional support. This teaches that love means caring for others, leading to overextension and guilt about personal needs in adulthood. Healing involves setting and honoring boundaries. 5. **Parent who is overly focused on appearance:** Households where physical or family appearance mattered more than emotional connection. This leads to tying self-worth to appearance, excessive focus on looks, and pursuing appearance-based goals. Healing involves separating value from external appearance and understanding inherent worth. 6. **Parent who can't regulate their emotions:** Erratic, unpredictable parents whose emotional volatility teaches that emotions are dangerous. This results in hypervigilance and an inability to navigate one's own emotional reactions in adulthood. Healing involves understanding physiological flooding, pausing, and calming the body to respond intentionally. The most common archetypes are parents who don't see or hear their children, or who can't regulate their own emotions, often because they themselves lacked these tools in their own childhood. Maladaptive coping skills developed in childhood, such as hyper-independence (learning to deal with problems alone) and people-pleasing (deferring to others' needs), often sabotage adult relationships. These strategies, while once protective, now create disconnection. Coping is about getting through the moment, while healing involves rewiring the nervous system to experience moments differently and make new choices. For example, coping with conflict might mean shutting down, whereas healing involves noticing physical reactions, regulating breathing, and teaching oneself that conflict doesn't necessarily mean disconnection. LePera emphasizes that most wounds are formed in relationships, so true healing often requires safe, supportive relationships with professionals or loved ones where vulnerability is possible. She addresses parents with compassion, acknowledging the immense task of raising children and the impact of their own childhoods. She encourages parents to practice new choices and seek support outside of high-stress moments to regulate themselves, enabling them to be a grounded presence for their children. Self-care, including adequate sleep and stress outlets, is crucial for parents. Chapter 2 delves into the "inner child," describing it not as an abstract concept, but as body-based, implicit emotional memory formed before logic and language. This explains why logical understanding often doesn't translate into changed action; the body's emotional responses override the rational mind. The inner child manifests in adult reactions, habits, and identities, which are often mistaken for personality. Overachieving, hyper-independence, and heightened sensitivity can all be rooted in childhood survival strategies. Inner child reactions are characterized by their "big, overwhelming, all-consuming, all-or-nothing" nature, indicating a re-enactment of past experiences where support was lacking. These reactions are physiologically intense due to emotional flooding, where cortisol surges and the amygdala is overactivated, while the prefrontal cortex is underactivated. This makes it difficult to respond reasonably. Understanding human development helps reframe these "dysfunctional" behaviors as intelligent adaptations. Children adapt based on whether reaching for connection was consistently available. Consistent connection leads to secure attachment, while unpredictable or unavailable connection leads to clinging or avoidance. These learned expectations form attachment styles and roles (e.g., underachiever, overachiever, caretaker) to secure connection and belonging. Ignoring the inner child's unmet needs perpetuates these patterns, making them seem like inherent personality traits. Awareness of the inner child is the first step towards change, but it must be paired with action and new lived experiences to rewire the nervous system. LePera suggests looking at old photographs to foster compassion and empathy for the inner child, or using sensory recall to revisit childhood spaces and ask, "What did I need then?" This practice of empathy helps integrate the inner child into daily life. Chapter 3 focuses on "reparenting for lasting transformation." Reparenting means stepping in as the compassionate adult one may not have had. It's particularly relevant in modern society where many childhood coping mechanisms (e.g., overachieving, being "low-maintenance") are rewarded but are unhealthy. The most practical starting point for reparenting is the present moment, focusing on "what is happening" rather than "what happened." A foundational practice is daily conscious check-ins: pausing to notice bodily sensations, breathing, muscle tension, and thoughts. This builds awareness outside of reactive moments, creating a bridge to show up differently during stress. Reparenting is about learning to meet deeper, unmet needs in a new way, unlike coping, which only manages discomfort without addressing underlying patterns. An example is handling delayed text responses: coping might involve anxious overthinking and firing off texts, while reparenting involves noticing the urgency, regulating the body, and pausing to teach oneself that distance doesn't mean rejection. Misconceptions about reparenting include viewing it as blaming parents or dwelling on the past. Instead, it acknowledges the past's impact and updates old programs for a new future. It's not immediate; lasting transformation takes consistent, new choices over time. Reparenting increases capacity to handle stress, fosters resilience, and expands awareness of all parts of oneself, including the inner child, which also holds creativity and joy. Key reparenting practices include reminding oneself of present safety by observing neutral or comforting objects in the environment, and slowing breathing and movement to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Acknowledging reactions without shame, understanding them as old patterns, fosters a compassionate state. The journey leads to increased capacity for stressful moments, resilience, and a deeper understanding of oneself. Emotionally and relationally, individuals become calmer, more grounded, and authentic, communicating needs directly. They shift from caretaker roles to focusing on authentic connection. Discussing these learnings with parents can be challenging. While validation is desired, parents, being human, may react defensively. It's crucial to manage expectations and prioritize self-validation, speaking one's truth even if parents cannot fully receive it. LePera advises compassion for those, including parents, who struggle with change, as the nervous system prefers familiar, even unhelpful, patterns for a false sense of security. Change is uncomfortable and requires breaking intentions into small, accessible daily promises, anticipating discomfort, and consistently showing up without self-shame when falling back into old habits. The ultimate takeaway is awareness of one's origins and current patterns. This awareness, regardless of age, is a readiness for change and the foundation for building a new future.