Re-Parenting
But what happened to all of us? All human beings are raised by parents that do not know what they’re doing. Now I’d say all, maybe some, get through. I don’t think so because of the fall of Adam. But the reality to the whole situation is that what has really transpired is that our parents for whatever reason, usually it’s because of their unresolved emotional issues and we talked about that in Successful Parenting. You cannot be a successful parent if you have unresolved emotional issues cause you’ll take them out on your kids just like our parents did to us.
But back to the subject. What happened to all of us is that we were raised by parents who abused us, either physically, psychologically and sad to say some were even abused sexually. molested, other things happened. Satan doesn’t play fair. If that didn’t happen to you, there was no abuse at all, what happens then often times is there’s neglect. You have a parent that’s not emotionally connected and so what happens is that there’s neglect and there’s no emotional connection.
Well what is a child, a little infant and toddler to do with their emotions when there’s nobody to connect to? What are they to do for bonding? When parents are too busy to get the bottle quickly or too busy to change the diapers. There’s bonding.
Kevin talked about bonding in Successful Parenting. Without bonding, there’s no trust. Without trust you can’t have an emotional connection. I don’t want to go too deeply into that but I do want you to know that we didn’t get what we needed.
Now, if you say “Well I had a perfect childhood,” well I beg to differ with you. I have council ed as a pastor, I’ve council ed and council ed numerous people. We have people in our church that have said, “Well, gee. I didn’t have anything happen wrong to me.” And usually what ends up happening is they just don’t remember because they repressed it. It was so hard for them because they repressed it.
What happens is is that we didn’t get what we needed. What didn’t we get? We didn’t get the bonding we needed. We didn’t get the attachment that we needed. We didn’t get the emotional connection. How do we learn how to handle emotions if we have no place to process them? They have no parents to listen to us and tell us what we’re doing. What do we do about those emotions? Well we can’t do anything about them so we stuff them. When we stuff them it causes us to at that point in time, whenever we stuff them, we stop growing emotionally.
The other thing that happens that’s really, really important is to realize that not only do we stuff emotions, but we become people that we were never created by God to be. That’s hard because that’s what happens. We become people we were never created to be. The true self in us never really gets known and the reason it never really gets known is because our parents demanded of us that we shut up or they tried to fix us. They tried to make our pain go away. All this other things. We were not accepted for who we were. We were only accepted and given attention – attention is not love, by the way. It’s just attention – for what we did, not who we were.
That’s the picture, and that picture is a very real picture. I’ve dealt with it for years and there has to be a solution. Well guess what? There is a solution! Isn’t that great? Isn’t that great that there’s a solution? Oh my gosh, where would we be without a solution? Well we stumbled into this solution. God let us through the … I’ve many times said that God gives us a destination and hides the map. Is that true for you? I don’t know, but it’s true for us.
Anyway, we stumbled around and we finally came up with what we call the re-parenting process. The re-parenting process is that we have a way, all of the people that come to Joy Stones have a way – and some of the people that we work with outside – have a way to be re-parented.
What is re-parenting? Well, re-parenting is this: we have to have a safe place like we were supposed to have when we were children to share our deepest feelings and know that we’re not going to be fixed. We’re not going to be told what to do. We’re not going to be judged. No! We are going to only be listened to and mirrored and validated. That’s what’s supposed to have happened! It didn’t happen and most parents don’t have time to listen to their kids. Bad mistake, but they just don’t do it.
The reality to this is, is we need a redo. Well do you think God knew that Satan would be incredibly affective being the God of this world. Even after we become Christians. We accept Jesus Christ as Lord and he said all power both in heaven and the earth has been given to me. Matthew 28:18.
We’re supposed to deal wisely. We’re supposed to take care of demons. We’re supposed to
What we have done is we’ve said okay, we have a way to be able to set up a structure. Now, see, you’ve got to have a structure. This can’t be done at a Bible study. It’s not going to be done in a Bible study. It has to be done in a very intentional group and we do this in our church every Sunday. We do it in every meeting that we have, and the reason we do it is because what we’ve found out is that most people have never been listen to. They’ve never had a chance to ever share their emotions. Many times they don’t even know what their emotions are they bury them so deep.
We gently share our … We go deep in sharing what we’ve been through and they go “Oh, well if you can share then I can share.” It’s just like bursting a dam. What happens is all these emotions start to come out or they come out very slowly. I’ve had people that came to group for the groups that we do. I’ve had them be there for 6 months before they ever said a word, and that’s okay.
We’re not in this, we’re not doing this, I’m not doing this video to try to convince you of anything. I don’t want anything from you. All I want is basically for you to know that you have a solution and the solution is to find a safe place where you can share your emotions, you can be listened to. Do you know what listening does for adults that are wounded in childhood? It makes them feel more valuable.
Have you ever been in a conversation and you’re just one party to the conversation. The other person’s not connected with you at all. I have. It’s very … Who wants to have that kind of a conversation? That’s no fun. But what do is we are so needy that we just want to be listened to. Wives just want to be listened to by husbands but husbands want to watch football, or read the paper or do whatever they do. You know?
And vice versa sometimes, but the reality to it: we all just want to be listened to because we feel more valuable and important and worthy. Well, not only do we listen we then hold up a mirror. See, our parents were supposed to mirror back to us what they heard us say because that make an emotional connection. If nobody is listening, you’re not going to have any emotional connections and most kids are raising themselves.
Yes, their parents are providing for them food, shelter and those kinds of things. But emotionally, most children are raising themselves. It’s a war zone out there and the reason it is is because parents don’t know what to do. Well, we’re not talking about just parents. We’re talking about you. You, you adults! And me, and the people at Joy Stones, and the people that are looking at our website.
What we’re saying is there’s a way. There’s a solution. Jesus said if the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he’s annoyed at me to heal the broken hearted. Well, I got a revelation one day that what we’re really dealing with is Jesus with skin on. All of us in the group are Jesus with skin.
We don’t judge and we don’t criticise and we don’t condemn and we don’t tell anybody what to do. There’s always a leader called a facilitator and that facilitator facilitates. What do they do? Well they’re just like the people except they keep order. They make sure nobody gets out of line so it’s safe. It’s got to be safe. If it’s not safe, and most Christian events and church and everything else, it’s not safe. If you tell somebody how you’re really doing, they’ll fix you. They’ll tell you, “Well, you didn’t read your Bible enough. You didn’t do this enough. You must be in sin cause you have depression.”
Well, I’m going to tell you something. Those are all symptoms. The real root is what we believe about ourselves, but I don’t want to go into that right now. That’s for another time.
What we do is we hold a premier. We say, “That sounds like you are really going through a tough time.” And we say it with an emotional tone that we can connect to the person. Well guess what? What we’ve discovered and what behavioral scientists tell us: the heart, my heart, will open up when I am listened to and mirrored and somebody’s really listening to me.
Then, we don’t stop there. We shove it into the person’s heart through words like Jesus does. We validate the person. We accept them. We approve of them. Not for what they do, but for who they are. And who we are is what we feel in the moment.
Now, there’s a lot of teaching out there that says we don’t walk by feelings, we walk by faith. Well, let me tell you something. We are what we feel in the moment. There’s no way around it. That’s the truth, so the truth of the matter is we’ve got to be validated for who we are in the moment. That’s what you can do with your kids. That’s what you can do with your husband. That’s what you can do with your boss. That’s what you can do with your fellow workers.
This is called re-parenting, and the key to re-parenting is to get what we didn’t get in a safe place. If you can’t find one, just come to the website, leave your email and tell us you want more information about re-parenting. It’s in the menu and if you want more information, leave us your email address and we will send you information about re-parenting. We have done this and we have lots of testimonies of people whose lives have been changed forever.
If you’re not on the website, you’re looking at Vimeo or you’re looking at YouTube, please come to JoyStones.org. It’s still under construction but we’re getting there and we’ll have solutions for you. Re-parenting is a way to get what we didn’t get the first time around.
We want to walk with you. We know what we’re doing. We’re experts in this and we have results to prove it. We’ll continue to look forward to seeing you come to the website and leave your email address.