Reparenting
Giving yourself, as an adult, the care and limits you didn't get as a child.
Origin
The clinical concept (Jacqui Schiff in the 1970s, working with transactional analysis) was once a literal in-house therapy where therapists acted as substitute parents — a controversial method that fell out of professional favor. The term survived and got a second life on Instagram and TikTok in the late 2010s as 'self-reparenting': consciously offering yourself, in the present, the soothing, structure, and validation a wounded [[inner-child]] never received. Practices range from daily affirmations to setting your own bedtime.
Modern usage
Standard in therapy-literate online discourse. 'I'm reparenting myself this year' is a normal sentence on wellness TikTok. Sometimes mocked as a way of dodging adult responsibility; defended as the prerequisite for actually taking it.
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