How we break emotional cycles—and become the ones we needed
6.1 How We Abandon Ourselves to Survive6.2 Becoming the Caregiver You Always Needed6.3 Bringing the Crying Baby Home6.4 How to Hold Pride Without Shame6.5 Finding the Self Behind the Mask6.6 When You Stop Being Who Others Wanted You to B6.7 Real Love Requires Real Safety6.8 Healing the Lineage - Rebuilding Generational BridgesWe were shaped by what we didn’t get.
By love that came with conditions.
By care that was inconsistent or absent.
By roles we had to play to stay close.
This framework is about coming home to yourself—
not the self you had to become,
but the one who’s been waiting underneath.
You’ll move through eight pages:
- How We Abandon Ourselves to Survive
- Becoming the Caregiver You Always Needed
- Bringing the Crying Baby Home
- How to Hold Pride Without Shame
- Finding the Self Behind the Mask
- When You Stop Being Who Others Wanted You to Be
- Real Love Requires Real Safety
- Healing the Lineage – Rebuilding Generational Bridges
Why disconnection was once a strategy—and how we start to return
A new parenting model that begins with reparenting ourselves
A somatic healing practice to meet the part of you that still hurts
Why taking responsibility can feel like liberation—not self-blame
How to reclaim the real you beneath performance and survival
Why healing often changes your relationships—and how to hold your ground
Love is not a test of endurance—it’s a space where truth can live
The legacy of emotional repair: ending the story of silence and pain
This is where the cycle ends.
And where a new one begins—
based on truth, safety, and the quiet courage to care for yourself.
You’re not alone anymore.
You’re home.
⌗ Comparative Framework Chart
Framework 6 – “Healing the Inner Child & Re-building Ourselves” × Developmental Psychology • Attachment Theory • Somatic-Bodywork
Paretas Phase | Core Task (“What’s Happening”) | Developmental-Psychology Mirror | Attachment‐Lens Translation | Somatic / Neuro-biological Correlate | Key Thinkers / Modalities |
1. Naming the Abandonment<br>(“How we abandon ourselves to survive”) | Recognise childhood emotional neglect & the adaptive false-self. | Erikson’s early crises (Trust vs Mistrust, Autonomy vs Shame) – unmet stages lock in threat schemas. | Internal working-model forms “I’m too much / not enough” → insecure (anxious/avoidant) patterns2. | Limbic alarm → chronic sympathetic tone; implicit memory stores “emotional flashbacks.” | Bowlby, Crittenden, Bruce Perry |
2. Self-Reparenting<br>(“Becoming the caregiver you needed”) | Build an internal secure base that offers attunement, soothing, structure. | Winnicott’s “good-enough mother”; Self-Compassion training. | Induce earned security by offering consistent felt safety to younger parts. | Vagal toning & oxytocin release during self-soothing; strengthens vmPFC ↔ amygdala coupling. | Kristin Neff (self-compassion), IFS “Self energy” |
3. Somatic Retrieval<br>(“Bringing the crying baby home”) | Contact preverbal affect through imagery, breath, touch. | Piaget’s sensorimotor traces; implicit procedural memory. | Repair mis-attunement by co-regulating body states first, words later. | Somatic techniques: grounding, pendulation, therapeutic touch—proven to down-shift autonomic threat4. | Levine (SE), Ogden (SP), Rosenberg (Polyvagal) |
4. Integrative Accountability<br>(“Holding pride without shame”) | Own past survival-based harm withoutcollapsing into toxic shame. | Kohlberg’s post-conventional morality; Erikson’s Integrity vs Despair. | Move from fearful/ambivalent strategies to secure protest + repair. | dlPFC-mediated reflection while staying in ventral vagal safety; prevents shame freeze. | Brene Brown (shame research), Janina Fisher (Parts & Memory) |
5. Unmasking Authentic Self<br>(“Finding the self behind the mask” & role disruption) | Differentiate real needs from learned performance; tolerate relational push-back. | Rogers’ organismic valuing; Marcia’s Identity-Achievement. | Shift from “attachment for survival” to “attachment for growth.” | Increase interoception (insula) → clearer boundary signals; reduce cortisol via authenticity. | Carl Rogers, Gabor Maté |
6. Relational & Lineage Repair<br>(“Real love needs safety” & “Healing the lineage”) | Create new attachment contracts; transmit secure patterns forward. | Trans-generational models (Kerr’s family systems, Schore’s right-brain attachment). | Adult secure base = buffer that rewires child nervous systems → breaks cycle. | Neuroplasticity windows reopen in co-regulation; epigenetic stress markers can reverse with care. | Daniel Siegel (Interpersonal Neuro-biology), Ed Tronick (Still-Face) |
How the Parallels Validate Paretas’ Framework
- The “inner child” concept itself originates with Jung and was later systematised in depth-psychology and modern trauma work, underscoring the Framework’s focus on unmet childhood needs. • Attachment research shows that inconsistent or absent caregiver attunement seeds the very self-abandonment patterns Paretas maps; earned-secure work mirrors her self-reparenting stage. • Somatic therapy literature confirms that body-first methods such as grounding, pendulation and therapeutic touch effectively calm the dysregulated nervous system, enabling the “crying baby” retrieval practice.
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Next-Level Ideas
- Overlay each phase with Polyvagal states (dorsal → sympathetic → ventral) as a quick diagnostic. • Use the Adult Attachment Interview pre- and post-programme to quantify “earned security.” • Group facilitation tip: alternate cognitive psycho-ed (dev-psych) with 90-second somatic drills to keep both cortex and body on the same healing timeline.
This space is for the ones who don't gatekeep. Who learn out loud. Who value emotional safety over performance. We’re not here to be perfect— we’re here to grow, together.
The Emotional Gradient Blueprint (TEG-Blue™) © 2025 by Anna Paretas
Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
This is a living document. Please cite responsibly.
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