Why Parents Need Healing and Therapy, Too
Parents are often great at advocating for their child and getting them the help that they need. However, it can be harder to recognize and accept that they need help and support for themselves too.
Parenting is both beautiful and incredibly hard. It’s a role that is so meaningful and emotionally demanding. Every parent wants to show up with patience, compassion, and wisdom, yet children have a natural ability to surface our deepest insecurities and unhealed experiences. It’s not because they’re doing anything wrong, it’s because parenting touches every part of who we are, including our unhealed and wounded parts.
Children Reflect Our Unhealed Parts
Children are mirrors.
The moments that challenge us most often reveal where we’re still growing. This can look like your toddler’s meltdown that can trigger a fear of losing control, or your teenager’s push for independence that may bring up abandonment wounds. Without support and awareness, these reactions can shape the way we parent.
When we do our own work in therapy we get to look at our reactions and triggers and gain insight about what drives it. With this information parents notice that they can:
Respond instead of react
Lead with understanding instead of fear
Separate a child’s needs from their own triggers
Our Past Influences Our Parenting — Even When We Don’t Notice
Our own upbringing shapes the way we comfort, discipline, communicate, and show love. Some of those patterns support connection. Others may create distance or harm.
Therapy offers a reflective space to ask:
What did I learn that I want to continue?
What patterns need to end with me?
What new tools do I want to give my children?
This is not about blaming our parents. It’s about evolving what they gave us.
Regulation Begins with the Adult
It's tempting to think, “if only my child didn’t act that way, I wouldn’t…”
However, children learn how to calm their bodies by watching the adults around them. They borrow our nervous systems before they can manage their own.
A dysregulated parent cannot regulate a dysregulated child.
Through therapy, parents can build:
Self-awareness of stress triggers
Skills to stay present during conflict
Healthy coping strategies
Emotional modeling that supports secure attachment
When we learn to stay steady, we become a safe place for our children to land.
Parents Deserve Support, Too
So many parents carry silent burdens:
Chronic stress and exhaustion
Grief from losses never processed
Trauma from their own childhood
The pressure to perform “perfect” parenting
Fear of doing harm
Trying to raise emotionally healthy children while ignoring our own pain is not sustainable. Parents need spaces where their feelings are allowed to matter — where they can be supported, guided, and cared for.
When Parents Heal, Families Heal
Healing isn’t isolated. When one person grows, the entire system shifts.
As parents heal:
Home becomes calmer
Communication becomes clearer
Relationships deepen
Children feel more secure
You don’t need to be a flawless parent to raise healthy children. You just need to be a healing one.
The Courage to Choose Growth
Choosing therapy as a parent isn’t admitting failure — it’s practicing love.
It says: I want better — for them, and for me.
I refuse to let old pain write my family’s future.
I believe healing is possible, even for me.
Safiya Tormo, LMFT, RPT, has been serving families since 2017. Before starting her private practice she worked in community mental health as an outpatient therapist in Long Beach and as a mental health consultant for Educare Head Start Program. She is especially passionate about working with children and their caregivers to address trauma and promote secure attachments. She served as the President for the Los Angeles Chapter for Play Therapy in 2022 and uses play in her work to help families connect, heal, and grow. Safiya’s experience also includes working with survivors of domestic violence at both an outpatient setting and residential shelter and as a community-based therapist where she provided services to children living on, and around, the Skid Row area of Downtown Los Angeles. Tormo earned a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy in 2019 at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
