What is Reparenting?

Reparenting is the process of giving yourself the love, care, and support you may not have received as a child. It’s about healing your inner child—the part of you that still holds onto the pain, fears, and unmet needs from your past. By reparenting yourself, you can address those wounds, fill those gaps, and create a more secure, loving foundation within yourself.

Understanding Mother Hunger

Mother hunger, a concept coined by Kelly McDaniel, refers to the longing for the emotional and physical nurturing that a child should receive from their mother but may not have, due to various reasons—whether your mother was emotionally unavailable, overwhelmed, coping with substance abuse, mental health challenges or dealing with her own unresolved issues. This lack of nurturing can manifest in adulthood as feelings of emptiness, anxiety, or difficulty in forming healthy relationships.

In this episode, we’re diving deep into the concept of reparenting and how it can help you heal from mother hunger. We’ll explore practical steps you can take to nurture your inner child, build self-compassion, and create the emotional security that might have been missing in your early years.

Cybele and I dive into:

✅ What Reparenting Really Means: How to identify the unmet needs of your inner child and start the process of giving yourself what you need.

✅ Recognizing Mother Hunger: Understanding the signs of mother hunger and how it might be impacting your relationships, self-esteem, and emotional well-being today.

✅ Steps to Reparent Yourself: Simple, actionable strategies to start nurturing your inner child, including setting boundaries, practicing self-care, and cultivating self-compassion.

✅ Overcoming the Challenges: The emotional hurdles that often come with reparenting and how to navigate them with kindness and patience.

Why This Matters

Reparenting isn’t just about healing the past—it’s about empowering your future. By addressing the wounds of your inner child, you can break free from patterns of self-doubt, insecurity, and emotional dependency. You’ll learn how to be the loving, supportive parent to yourself that you may have never had, and in doing so, create a stronger, more resilient version of you.

Tune In and Take the First Step

If you’ve ever felt that lingering sense of emptiness or struggled with feelings of inadequacy, this episode is for you. Reparenting offers a powerful path to healing and wholeness, helping you reclaim the love and security that every child—and every adult—deserves.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

💕 How to learn to care for your own needs as an adult, in the way a loving parent would

💕 Why unmet needs for maternal love, nurturing, and emotional support in childhood can lead to a pervasive sense of longing and emptiness

💕 How to recognize mother hunger and heal without blame or feeling guilty for betraying your caregivers

💕 Why self-doubt, fear and difficulty setting boundaries and communicating your needs can signal the need to do this work

💕 How to recognize and heal from emotionally immature parents without seeking validation and support they’re unwilling or unable to give

💕 Practical techniques for cultivating joy and self-compassion to begin the work of reparenting

💕 How to heal anxiety, low self-esteem and attachment issues through reparenting and inner child work

🎉 “Sober in the City” Seattle Event on September 6th – 8th, 2024 🎉

Want to read the full transcript of this podcast episode? Scroll down on this page.

READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS PODCAST INTERVIEW

Reparenting 101: Healing Your Inner Child From Mother Hunger with Cybele Botran

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

love, people, feel, experiencing, drinking, inner child, mother, parents, good, hunger, child, coach, lack, idea, met, resonated, soothing, women, curious, young, SHE RECOVERS®, healing, mother, reparenting, modality, recovery, taking care of yourself, taking care of your own needs, maternal care, protection, nurturance, guidance, caregiver, childhood, coping mechanism, attachment, self-soothing, adult children, mother and daughter, emotionally immature, self-doubt, self-care, self-compassion, journey

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Cybele Botran

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a buzz, how to sit with your emotions when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hi there. Today, we are talking about

Reparenting and how to heal your inner child from mother hunger.

My guest is Cybele Botran.

She’s an International Coaching Federation, professionally certified Coach, a SHE RECOVERS® Coach, a mother hunger trained facilitator, and she holds a master’s degree in education. She coaches self-identified women and non-binary people who identify with women’s communities.

She runs workshops and courses on mother, hunger, inner child, work and reparenting.

Thank you for being here.

Cybele Botran  01:58

Absolutely. Casey, I was so excited. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Casey McGuire Davidson  02:02

Yeah, and I mentioned before we got on that this is a topic I really wanted to talk about, because I know so many women who struggle with alcohol also had issues in their childhood or issues with the parenting they received, and it’s a really important topic before we jump on.

I just want to say that we actually have met each other in person a bunch of different times, but the first time that we really got to connect was at a retreat on Salt Spring Island, B.C. I remember taking the ferry over with you.

Cybele Botran  02:39

Yeah. Yes, we vet inside of our Facebook group, and then got to meet, actually, in Seattle. And then, again, through SHE RECOVERS®. So, we have a lot of Venn diagram circles where we meet up.

Casey McGuire Davidson  02:52

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So, as we jump on this, what is reparenting and inner child work?

Cybele Botran  03:01

I love that question.

So, reparenting, it’s a healing modality. If you think about your patchwork of recovery, or any way that you were trying to take good care of yourself, get to know yourself better. It’s just one other way that you can do this. And it’s the idea is that you, as now an adult, you have unmet needs that are showing up in your adult life from your childhood, and you get to now be your own inner loving parent and take care of your own needs. So, you’re reparenting yourself. You’re taking care of yourself just like a loving parent would.

So, it’s really not about blaming our you know, staying stuck kind of in, in really blaming your primary caregivers, although, of course, anger and work, grief, work and all that is, can be part of it. But it’s really about just kind of taking responsibility today for taking care of your own needs so that you’re not relying on other people, perhaps your partner, your spouse, people at work, your children, or even your own primary caregivers, if they’re still around. Not kind of blaming them for not taking care of your own needs but taking care of your own needs in the most loving way. And the cool part about it is you know yourself better than anybody else.

Casey McGuire Davidson  04:16

Yeah, so I guess we should back up and talk about sort of the terms, right?

Mother hunger.

I actually don’t know what the correct definition of that is or where it originated, right?

Cybele Botran  04:31

So, I trained with Kelly McDaniel, who is a licensed therapist, who wrote the book, Mother Hunger.

I actually found out about her through a mental health Monday, through SHE RECOVERS®, and she originally wrote a book more on love and sex addiction and food addictions ready to heal. And in that, she mentioned the term mother hunger, and it resonated so much. She started to receive a lot of clients who wanted to know about this term.

So, Mother hunger, essentially, is a primary attachment wound.

The idea is that there are 3 pillars of maternal care: that’s protection, nurturance and guidance. So ideally, and if you think about any animal mother or human mother or primary caregiver, if they’re going to be nurturing a young child, they’re going to be protecting them, and then later on, when the child gets older, they’re going to be guiding them. So, if any of those were missing from someone’s childhood, they might experience later on in life, this mother hunger, meaning they figure out coping mechanisms to take care of that kind of loneliness inside, that lack of attachment and so that might show up as drinking too much, or, you know, any type of ways that we’re self-soothing so we’re trying to mitigate the pain of this lack of maternal care. Yeah.

Casey McGuire Davidson  05:59

Yeah. What attracted you to this work originally, is it something that you personally had experienced and overcome? Absolutely, yes, attractive.

Cybele Botran  06:09

I asked you that question, right? You know, I think the term mother hunger, it either resonates or it doesn’t right. So, they say, you know, scientists and people say that about 50% of us have secure attachments.

Kelly McDaniel actually thinks that summer is pretty high, and the rest of the population experiences insecure attachment, which can show up in different degrees. And so, either it resonates when you hear the term mother hunger, you kind of get it in, you know, a somatic level or not.

So, I was attracted to it. Like, I wanted to find out more. And as I said, I listened to her mental health Monday, and I was very curious. And so, then I read her book, and then she had this opportunity for therapists and head coaches to train with her. And that’s what I did.

Casey McGuire Davidson  06:59

And does it apply specifically to mothers, or it could be any parent that isn’t necessarily there for you? Would you say in terms of protection, in terms of nurturing and guidance?

Cybele Botran  07:14

Well, absolutely. She, you know, Kelly McDaniel’s work is primarily, is specifically for mothers and daughters, right? But that’s not to say there isn’t father hunger. She’s always saying someone who needs to write the book. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect sons or people who identify, you know, male and female. But this work is really about adult daughters.

What she started to notice was that she had read a book and was familiar with the work, a book called, motherless daughters. About women who experience actually with their mothers die at a young, youngish age. In their 20s, let’s say. And they were showing certain symptoms of that loss. And so, she was very curious, because she was seeing this in her clients with women whose mothers were still alive. And so, this idea of kind of experiencing a real grief for not having kind of had that connection that you needed when you were younger, while this person is actually still in your life.

And so, the idea around mother hunger isn’t about blaming or is recognizing that many of many mothers had mother hunger themselves, and this is really about more of a societal situation with patriarchy, with lack of support, you know, like so there’s many different reasons that someone can be experiencing mother hunger.

That has to really do with more of the circumstances of the family situation. Perhaps there’s many siblings around and there’s just not a lot of attention. Maybe there’s a substance use situation. Maybe there’s undiagnosed mental illness or neurodiversity. I mean, there’s many different reasons that a child isn’t receiving all that adequate kind of connection and repair and care. And this is not about perfectionism.

You know, Kelly McDaniel says, Please don’t read this book as a mother. Read it as a daughter, so we’re not as, yeah, right, because it’s not about beating ourselves up, like, oh my gosh, I didn’t do this. I didn’t do that. If that’s hard not to do it’s hard not to do this work and feel a sense of guilt. But that’s not what this work is about. This is really about just identifying how is this affecting me today, and what can I do about it?

09:34

That’s really interesting to me, because I, you know, have done a little bit of re parenting work and inner child work, both when going through coaching school, but more specifically, when I went to therapy after I stopped drinking. And the reason I went to therapy was just this sort of undercurrent of anxiety and a little bit of panic.

Cybele Botran  15:00

Means too, yeah.

Casey McGuire Davidson  15:01

I mean, one thing that I found was interesting when I went through that process was I didn’t feel like I should be having issues with whatever was happening, like when I was growing up. It was the idea we were in third world countries, and my parents work was very important, you know, and that was the priority. So, it was the idea of you should not, like, it’s self-indulgent to get upset about the things you were getting upset about, because you have it so much better than all these other people who have actual problems in terms of like survival and safety and everything else.

And so, yeah, when I was at my therapist, I was like, crying. I was like, I don’t cry. Nothing is wrong. Why am I crying? This is not a big deal. And that was really interesting for her to be like, That’s neglect. Like, even if it’s not that they didn’t love you and you had financial security and XYZ, like you didn’t have that emotional, safe place to fall, and felt very much like you were on your own. And that’s a lot of pressure for a 7 year old, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Cybele Botran  16:12

That’s exactly, yeah, exactly. So yeah. Again, it’s not about saying these are bad people at all. And you know, everybody has a different situation as far as their home life, their family life, their birth family or their home family life, and where they’re at as far as their relationships today. But the idea, again, is just to really look squarely at like what happened. And I love that you compare it to because I did the exact same thing when I got sober and started doing all of this inner work, I would constantly say, like, well, this isn’t real, you know, trauma or this isn’t, you know, comparing myself to somebody else.

Casey McGuire Davidson  16:50

I never had any actual trauma. Like, that’s the idea, right, yeah.

Cybele Botran  16:55

And today, I compare it to, you know, remember when we stopped drinking, and we were like, well, I couldn’t really have a problem with alcohol, because I am not, you know, experiencing homelessness and living under a bridge, right? Like, I have this home and this job and this life, so we’ll drink like I do. So, there’s nothing to see, right?

I feel like it’s the same thing right now is that people are kind of waking up to actually what trauma is. In fact, there was a really good New York Times article just recently about going no contact and someone I love and following. Patrick Tien does really good work. He kind of, he had a rebuttal I just listened to, but he the idea someone else said the threshold for trauma has lowered, and as if that’s kind of a bad thing, like we’re all saying we have traumas like a buzzword right now. But I think, actually the fact that the threshold has lowered is a good thing, because then we can actually not tell ourselves like that was no big deal, because that, anytime that voice is coming in is using the word “should”. We know, again, that that’s the inner critic. The inner critic loves to use the word “should”? Loves to minimize us, to keep us small. And really, the whole point isn’t about that. The whole point is that we’re really receiving ourselves and loving ourselves in a new way so that we could thrive, so we can, you know, enjoy the rest of our lives.

Casey McGuire Davidson  18:24

Yeah, yeah. And I think that. Looking at your children, if you have children, or imagining yourself as a young child, it is kind of amazing how different you might want to react to your own children. I mean, depending on where you are, like, my favorite thing in the entire world was watching my kids fall asleep really quickly and sleeping peacefully through the night. And just I loved that they felt that way, that they didn’t feel that anxiety that I felt growing up, or that fear, you know, like just putting them to bed every night, and you know it, everyone is different.

One thing that was interesting, in terms of you were talking about, like, shame. I mean, I quit drinking when my son was 8 and my daughter was 2. I quit for a year, and we actually knew each other when my son was 5, and then I went back to drinking.

So, Cybele reminded me that we actually met before I stopped drinking for good. She was like, Oh no, we met, and then you went back to drinking. I was like, Oh yeah, I forgot about that. But the funny thing is, is that when I was drinking, even then and afterwards, I was like, Well, I’m only hurting myself, right? Like, I’m still taking care of my kids. I’m still doing all the work stuff. So, I don’t feel shame about like, my kids and what happened. I feel shame about like, how I treated myself and maybe some embarrassing things that I did, but I definitely hurt myself, like, physically, emotionally, certainly mentally, you know, over and over and over again. And I think the whole time it was like, I want to turn my brain off, like I would work, work, work, and then, like, immediately knock myself unconscious so I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore, which I’m sure was the underlying anxiety from it all.

Cybele Botran  20:27

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I always describe it as like, I got everything done, and by 5 o’clock, my shoulders were up to my ears, and there’s no way that was the quickest and easiest way to self-regulate and to kind of calm down. It’s like, Who has time for bubble ass and yoga classes? Is what I used to say.

Yeah, you know, when it’s like, all in a in a glass of red wine or 2 or 3 or 4. And so, so and so, it’s like, and of course, it’s addictive, and, you know, so then drinking does what it does, right? It does exactly. And this is 2011 or whatever, you know, time for you. But around that time, when we just didn’t even have as much information, and it was very glamorized and normalized. So, I was now. I think it was like, Look how clever I was. You know, I found the most glamorized, easily accessible drug that was around, and use that because, you know, we’re doing too much, right? We don’t have the support that we need. There’s all so many factors that go into it.

Casey McGuire Davidson  21:36

And yeah, I, you know, I want to ask you about like, solutions, so and also how, if you’re not sure if you’re struggling with this, what symptoms you might have or what you could look for. But before that, you mentioned that you had worked on, had done some work around the adult children of emotionally immature parents. Can you tell me a little bit about that and sort of how you also classify emotionally immature parents?

Cybele Botran  22:09

Oh, this is the work of Lindsay Gibson, and I just finished a 3 month course with her. Her work is fascinating. She’s written a few books, so the one that I have right in front of me is Adult Children Of Emotionally Immature Parents: How To Heal From Distant, Rejecting Or Self-Involved Parents. Lindsay Gibson and she has several books. She also has tons of podcast interviews and resources. Free resources out there, and her work involves, so you know, as a therapist, she studied child psychology, and then she started working with adults who were taught coming in and talking about either their partners or their bosses or their own parents and describing their behavior. And she thought, you know, that’s really similar to how a young child acts, temper tantrum, self-centeredness, lack of empathy for others.

And so, she started to do more and more work in this area. And so specifically, it’s about, well, what do you do when you have a relationship with an emotionally immature person or emotionally immature parent, which she calls EIPs, what do you do?

And so, the idea that I find so fascinating and helpful is to no longer have expectations that this person is going to interact with you as a fully kind of functioning adult. You know, lack of words fully you know where the brain has fully developed. So, this could be a person that’s highly developed in one area. They might be a CEO. They might be, you know, somebody who’s highly functioning in the outside world, and yet they have childlike tendencies and behaviors. And so, if you have an expectation that this person was going to be interested in you or willing to work on the relationship, or, you know, acting like another functioning adult, or want, you know, have a willingness to repair and they’re not, you can be left feeling very disappointed in that relationship.

So, the idea is to kind of really recognize, like, oh, this person doesn’t actually have the mental capacity to meet my needs. And so, then you go back to the solution is reparenting, just like it is with mother hunger.

Casey McGuire Davidson 

Hi there. If you’re listening to this episode, and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit.

 

The Sobriety Starter Kit is an online self study sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step by step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one on one coaching. And the sobriety starter kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it. And when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time.

This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step by step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking, from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better. You’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach, you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course 

Casey McGuire Davidson  24:41

Yeah, and I, I know I’ve worked with clients who you know it is not unusual to struggle with your parents, with your mother, especially if you turn out that you drink a lot like often, that is a difficult relationship. And then there’s the guilt that comes in. Right? Like every time I’m with this person, it’s a major trigger, or they hurt me, or they disappoint me, or why don’t they love me in the way that I deserve or that other people do, but it’s my mother. Can I’m a horrible person if I don’t visit her, talk to her, invite her for the holidays or take care of her. She’s ill. What do you what do you say to that? Like, what’s the strategy there so you don’t continually be hurt over and over again, right?

Cybele Botran  25:33

So, the guilt is a really good indicator that there is an unmet need inside of you. You know, no child, even if you are in a 50 year old body, you know you’re an adult child, right? That your child’s still living in you and in your relationship with your mom or with you know your primary caregiver, your parent, is that of a parent and a child, and always will be, no matter how old we all are, right? You will feel guilty speaking out about your parent to your coach or your therapist or your friends. You’ll experience kind of like a shame head or a vulnerability hangover. Once you speak out and do begin this work, and this always happens in my groups, people will come and they’re like, they feel bad for even signing up for reparenting. They feel that they’re being disloyal. So, there’s this almost sense that you’re going to orphan yourself if you begin to do this work, right? And so, if we were raised with enmeshment or codependency inside that system, there is an underlying, a kind of unspoken sense that you need to stay loyal and not speak out against the system, right? If there was somebody in your family that kind of took up all that emotional energy in the room, and they their emotions swayed or dictated the kind of vibe in the household, there’s going to be this, you know, system set in place where you’re not really supposed to be talking about these things, right? Or you’re supposed to stay in denial to keep that system cohesive.

So, once you begin to do this work, it’s going to feel very scary to begin to do this work. And so, that’s where the reparenting part comes in.

So, I would say to a client, it was feeling a lot of guilt. Is like, like your therapist said, right is, what would your inner child, what does your inner child be to say right now? So, it’s really about slowing it way down and getting to those feelings. You know, this is the work that we’re doing is feeling our feelings, right? So that maybe the inner child is, you know, you’re journaling from the perspective of the inner child, what does she want to say and what does she need to hear, right? So, this could be an inner child meditation.

Your teen is going to come out, and she’s going to sound really different than the inner child. The inner child is going to sound like a young child who’s hiding behind a sofa or just thinks things are gross, or is, you know, wants to cling to you, and the inner teen is going to come out and probably be swearing and probably really be pissed off, and like, you know, have the patriarchy and all that. That’s how my what my inner teen sounds like, and she gets also to be nurtured, right? So, you can think about where you were developmentally, what was happening, you know, mine was starting to go to keg parties, you know, not my inner team me when I was a teenager, and kind of was lacking that guidance and that protection. So, I really want to nurture her in a specific way, like, you know, now she gets to do a lot of artwork. She runs. She does all my Canva work for my coaching business, you know. So, it’s this idea of really nurturing these parts of you, getting to explore and know, your inner world.

Lindsay Gibson’s very clear about this is like, when we’re working, you know, when you’re interacting with emotionally immature people, you just kind of got to expect that you’re not going to get your needs met from them any longer. And this is really about turning inwards. Why is this so important? If you were with parents who are, were not curious about your inner world, who were not if you were, you know, kind of sent away, like, don’t have these big feelings, you have to, you know, figure them out on your own, or their feelings kind of dominated the situation, and they weren’t really curious about what was going on with you, because they feel overwhelmed by your child emotions. Then this is a time in your life that you get to go in and really explore your inner world. What do you like? What brings joy to you, right? So that’s part of the journey is in re parenting, is really kind of getting excited about getting to know yourself in a whole new way. And that’s interesting, because that’s also the work you do after you stop drinking, right?

Casey McGuire Davidson  29:58

You know, I remember. My coach asking me, in early sobriety, what do you love more than wine? And my mind was like, like, literally could not think of anything. I was like, Yeah, I love my spouse and my friends and my kids and these activities, but they were always paired with alcohol. So, I’m like, do I like them more than drinking? And so that was part of the work. And thinking about, okay, when I was 16, what did I love to do, and what are all the things that I always said I was going to do but never did because I was drinking. So, I love that idea of going back and discovering what you like to do and what brings you joy, but what about you know, also dealing with those attachment issues and need for emotional support and nurturing. Are there if someone’s listening to this and they’re resonating with a lot of it? I mean, I’m sure therapy and coaching help a lot, but there is there any exercises that they could use starting today?

Cybele Botran  31:12

Oh, absolutely right. So, I just also want to say, like, this isn’t about becoming so isolated that you don’t need other people. Like, we live in a community. We live in community. We need community. Humans need to feel attached. It doesn’t mean that you don’t, you know, ask your partner, your spouse, or, you know, a good friend, to help. You know this is what you want, but it means that you don’t have such high expectations of other people, that you’re angry with them, that they’re not kind of meeting all of your needs.

So, where I like to think of it is like I have my own planetary system that is fully healthy, and then the people I interact with, I trust that they also have their own planetary system that they are taking care of. And together, we kind of can form really healthy relationships. But something that you could start with just today, that would be really fun. Things that I suggest are, of course, finding old photographs of yourself, if that’s not, you know, too activating or triggering for you, sometimes that’s too painful for people, depending on their childhood experiences. But if it isn’t, you know, getting those photographs of yourself when you’re younger and putting them in special places, you know, maybe create a special bookshelf up there. That’s just all for little Cybele. You know, has my ceramics that I made when I was younger, and other things that are important to me. Perhaps creating a place in your home that has a weighted blanket, it has some essential oils that you love the smell of creating playlists on, you know, Spotify that get your inner team really excited, or maybe, you know, getting out into nature in a new way, walking barefoot on the grass depending on the time of the year, or playing in the snow, looking up at the sky, things that help you feel more connected. You know that slowing down, getting quiet, another fun thing to do is, like, go back to what were the top 100 songs when you were in fifth grade, or whatever it was when you started to discover music and listen to them, maybe even go onto YouTube and find the cartoons that you used to love and, you know, watch them thinking about like the games that you used to play, or maybe that you always wanted to play. Maybe you always want to go to a water park. Or maybe you, you know, there’s you or do a hula hoop and you didn’t get to and that’s what you want to do. Or maybe you play Twister and you loved it. You could do that again.

Casey McGuire Davidson  33:49

And like, you were talking about, like, what did I like to do when I was 16? And, like, I know, didn’t you play the guitar and you, yeah, stage, like, that’s a good example of a loud stream that I actually didn’t start till I was 28 but I loved the guitar. There was a lead. I went backpacking, and there was a very good, lucky, hot, 23 year old who I was fully in love with, that like was one of the leaders of this and he played guitar, and I just all the songs in GUITAR MUSIC I absolutely loved. And this was when I was 1516, and so when I was 28 My husband was like, All right, you’re not going to date someone who plays guitar.

Cybele Botran  34:25

So here, why don’t you learn yourself, which was great, but  it was funny, and then you performed it recently.

Casey McGuire Davidson  34:29

So, I played from when I was 28 to 32 I took lessons, and my teacher had this, like coffee shop Guitar Jam, and I participated in it three times, and then my son was born, and a full decade went by where I just didn’t, didn’t play. And of course, I was also drinking a lot, so in the evenings, that’s what I did. And once I stopped drinking, I started taking lessons again, and I’ve heard 4. On stage twice, and when you’re talking about inner child, this last performance, I got my best friend from when I was 16, my roommate in boarding school. We loved Billy Joel when we were 16, and I got her on stage with me, and we sang, Only The Good Die Young, and we felt like we were little kids, like it was just so fun. And I sucked our entire family to, like, watch us and our teenage kids. It was kind of funny.

Cybele Botran  35:28

Yeah, it was. I saw that.

I think that’s such a good example of how reparenting work can be really fun.

It’s like that idea of remembering, kind of the lost dreams, remembering the things that you are into and having patience with yourself, because this is a slow process, whether that’s like, you know, the artist way going on a date with yourself, or whatever it is. So, it could be something that you did do, that you never did when you’re younger, that you always wanted to but as you start to notice and think about things that bring you joy. Memories will bubble up. I, you know, things that you’re attracted it’s you’re absolutely right.

Like, when we first come into this, and we stopped doing, you know, come into recovery, whatever. You know, our journey is with this. A lot of times we don’t know, like, you know, we just, what do you like to do? It’s all about what other you know, doing things with other people. But what do we want to do? What brings us joy? Joy and following that? Or, you know, maybe we have been isolated. We’re only thinking ourselves. And what brings us joy now is maybe making those little connections with other people. So, we get to follow the lead from what’s coming what’s our own truth, what’s coming up from for us in the from the inside,

Casey McGuire Davidson  36:45

this is interesting to me, because I thought that inner child work was more on providing yourself Self Compassion and self-soothing techniques when you’re experiencing anxiety, anger, loneliness, fears, whatever they are. But it sounds like it is either also or instead of that about cultivating childhood joy. What? How do those two intersect?

Cybele Botran  37:16

Oh, it’s it, yeah, it’s 100% the first part what you said. So, a good example I can give on how I do inner child work, which is it like I take an hour a day, and this is like something I have to do, and doesn’t feel like it’s literally takes about 20 seconds for me to do, but it’s just getting in touch with my inner child when she is experiencing fear. So, perfect example, for me, is going through TSA at the airport. Why? Because the rules always change. So, that feels really like, I’m hyper vigilant, and that feels scary, because I don’t know the rules, right? So, you know, shoes on, shoes off, laptop in out, in the tray, the you know, all the rules are changing. A lot of times there’s someone who’s screaming and yelling loud people, there might be weapons around, you know, uniforms, you know, authority figures. And for a long time, you know, I just went through the TSA tents, and then when I realized that my inner child was really scared. I will do. I’m very proactive about it, so I’ll put my hand on my heart. I begin to take a deep breath. I’ll speak to my inner child and say, angry people scare you because I’m interpreting someone yelling as anger. And that’s how I get through TSA. And I will say, after now, I’ve been doing this for over 6 years. The last time I flew was just a week ago. I was like, Oh, I’m not experiencing that hyper vigilance and fear anymore.

So, over time, I’m changing my brain, right? So, the neuroplasticity, I’m creating new neural pathways that I’m going to be safe no matter what my inner loving parent’s going to be taking care of me and is in charge and I don’t have to fend for myself.

Casey McGuire Davidson  39:23

Yeah, yeah. And I love that you said that you put your hand on your heart and do some breathing and sort of like self-regulate that nervous system that’s being triggered. Yeah, yeah, that’s it. You know, there’s so many great ways that we can do that.

Yeah, absolutely, and just sort of self-soothing. I assume that a lot of this is having more self-compassion, right? You can only self soothe if you allow yourself to be soothed, which you have to remove the judgment of, why do you even need this? Like, you shouldn’t need self-soothing in this situation. Is that right? Like you have to be, like, it’s okay that you feel this way?

Cybele Botran  39:50

Yeah. I mean, I think if I were working with somebody who was very much identifying with the place of, I don’t need this. Is, you know, where we were talking about, before I could get your act together, part of yourself, I would probably start working with that part of myself, rather than kind of pushing that part away and saying, like, No, we’re doing it wrong. We need to be totally about self-compassion. We’re not going to get to the self-compassion until we really listen to that part who’s just trying to protect us. It’s a protective part that is saying, like, we don’t need we that, who has time for that, right?

So, you know, just to say, like, when I teach my inner child class, one of the you know slides that I’m showing is, like, if you hear, you know, the you know. Hear about inner child work, or you hear the term inner child or inner child work, or inner child healing. And you, if you experience you know, it grosses you out. It confuses you. It makes you feel afraid. It makes you feel you’re angry.

Yeah, it makes you roll your eyes. It makes you feel angry. All of that is normal, you know, I’m assuming that people, if they’re they come to my class, are probably a little bit curious too. But all I’ve heard it all like people have literally said to me, like every time you bring up, inner child works about it makes me furious, or it makes me so gross out. So, all of that super normal, because those are all defense mechanisms of like, don’t, you know, don’t be such a baby. Don’t be if you’re saying that stuff to yourself, you are probably your inner teen is tired babysitting the baby, right? And so, that’s where you really want to come in and listen to all the parts and again, no parts are bad. Everyone gets a voice. Everyone gets to express themselves.

So, if you’re stuck in the place of like, oh, who has time for this, then you’re really going to want to listen to that part of you that believes that. You know how we talk about limit limiting beliefs in poaching a lot. So that would be a limiting belief.

Casey McGuire Davidson  42:01

Yeah, and every time you feel a strong emotion towards something, you know, like, oh, that’s self-indulgent, that’s so annoying, that’s so whatever, with strong judgment, it is usually triggering something in yourself, some reason that you want To push that away, or something is going on there.

Cybele Botran  42:24

Yep, yep. They just, you know, the way that, if we’re dredging other people, are we noticing? Like, who the Zoom calls is really bothering me? Who am I muting? All of that is just information that’s like data gathering for you to figure kind of get to know your inner world even more.

Casey McGuire Davidson  42:41

Yeah, well, tell me how this might manifest if you’re sort of navigating like what sort of emotions would give you a heads up that maybe you need to do some re parenting work or some inner child work.

Cybele Botran  42:58

Yeah, I love that question. I actually have a free class that I offer once a month called three easy ways to reparent yourself. And so, in that, what I talk about is, you know, just there’s probably, you know, you could list hundreds of white reasons or kind of indications that you could use reparenting, but I break it down to three, and one of them is, if you experience a lot of self-doubt, like you find yourself really looking to the outside for approval. Of course, we love to hear, you know, good job, and it’s great to have other people’s encouragement, but if we find that it’s impossible for us to make a decision, kind of on our own, where we really need, you know, 70 people’s opinions, that would be a sign, because then we’re kind of lacking in self-trust.

And I love the word confidence, because confidence is really means, like with trust, or with, you know, like Fidelity, finance, it’s like trusting yourself. So really, a lot of reparenting work is about becoming your own inner, loving, trustworthy parent, and so trusting yourself by listening to all your different parts. Another would be if you’re just experiencing a lot of different forms of fear, and we know that fear shows up in so many different ways.

You know, if we’re snapping at people, if we are judging other people, or feeling a lot of guilt or blame, all of these kind of things that are weighing us down, you know, that’s a good sign that we could really be, you know, practicing a lot of self-love, you know, and that would be coming to us anything around boundaries and communication, like it’s hard for us to stand up for ourselves, to use our own voice, we find ourselves really afraid to use our own voice, like we don’t even actually know what we want to say, or we’re afraid like that’s going to make someone else mad. That would be a good indication that reparenting would help us support ourselves. So that you know. Know, it’s okay to say what your needs are and get your needs met.

Casey McGuire Davidson  45:04

Yeah, that’s really interesting, because I love those concrete examples that you give and, and there were definitely some that I was like, Oh yeah, for sure. The primary one you mentioned was looking for approval that, you know, from others, wanting the kudos, wanting the good job, that definitely resonated with me as something that I’m getting much, much better at. But it’s beyond it’s different and similar to people pleasing, but it’s like people pleasing in order to get the pat on the head, like I used to call myself a Gold Star Girl, and my husband was like, Oh my God, you have a daddy complex with every boss you’ve ever had, and he’s including the women in that, right? Like, I just wanted to be the Gold Star Girl. So, they loved me so much. And so, when you were saying looking for approval, I was like, oh yes, that’s me.

Cybele Botran  46:00

And I love that you say, Gold Star Girl. Got such a cute name, and doesn’t mean we have to get rid of her, right? Gold Star Girl still gets to be Gold Star Girl. That’s definitely part of you, like you could have adventure girl who loves to travel, or you could have, you know, Mystery Girl Who Loves true crime or whatever it is. These parts of ourselves still get a voice, and they still get recognition. It’s just that we’re, we move away from getting other people to recognize them, and we get to recognize them. So, be fun to play with Gold Star Girl, that idea and see, you know, she still gets her gold stars. It’s just that you’re, you’re the one giving them to her.

Casey McGuire Davidson  46:40

That is great. Like, you know, your inner trust, not looking to others for approval. You know, looking for your own approval. I love that idea.

So, what else, if someone’s listening to this?

What else did we touch on that you would love people to know about how to heal your inner child from mother hunger, about reparenting. Is there anything we’d miss?

Cybele Botran  47:07

I feel like what I’d love listeners to know is that this is a journey. It takes time. If you are at all curious about it, just follow that curiosity. There are so many resources out there that can help you, but really it’s your inner guide that’s going to tell you kind of where to go next.

Casey McGuire Davidson  47:29

That sounds perfect. You do so much great work around this topic. You are so expert in all the different aspects of this where can people find you and follow up and learn more?

Cybele Botran  47:43

I’m over on Instagram. You can find me there. I’m also on Facebook, and people can go to my website to see what my offers are. I love hearing from people. I’m absolutely open to emails even text messages. I love connecting with people and hearing about their journeys and what they’re curious about.

Casey McGuire Davidson  48:08

Wonderful. So, your website. I will link all of this in the show notes, but it’s Cybele Botran, so cybelebotran.com

Cybele Botran  48:22

That’s right. And if you’re international, I’m also on WhatsApp.

Casey McGuire Davidson  48:27

Perfect. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here. I thought this was a great conversation, and I know a lot of people are going to resonate with what you said and look into this work.

Cybele Botran  48:38

This was so much fun. Casey, I felt just a great conversation that we’ve just had. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Hello Someday podcast.

If you’re interested in learning more about me, the work I do, and access free resources and guides to help you build a life you love without alcohol. Please visit hellosomedaycoaching.com. And I would be so grateful if you would take a few minutes to rate and review this podcast so that more women can find it. And join the conversation about drinking less and living more.