One day, Heidi Bruce was walking through Target when her favorite song came on.
The 27-year-old recalls feeling the urge to start dancing right away. It was scary at first. What would people think if they saw a grown woman dancing on Target? If I do, will something bad happen to her?
According to Bruce, those fears made it clear what she needed to do. Inside the “Target,” they face their anxiety head-on, become liberated, and try to dance. As it turns out, it actually wasn’t she Anyway, at least she’s not an adult. It is her inner child, she says, the childlike version that still lives within the psyche of each of us.
“That part of you that lived your childhood is still within you,” Bruce says. “Whether we had a terrible childhood or a great childhood, it’s now our job to take care of ourselves.”
Bruce is part of an online community of people who are trying to “re-nurture” themselves. As Bruce explains, parenting means talking directly to the childish part of you, listening to its needs, and being the same loving parent you were when you were growing up and when you weren’t. Bruce himself has been documenting his parenting journey and sharing videos online that are going viral. In one of them, she jumps into the air to celebrate the achievements of her inner child. In another photo, she channels her inner child in a car.
Some of her videos feature Bruce doing unconventional things to make his inner child happy. For example, wearing a cape and crown and dancing in the aisles of Target.
“You’re allowed to dance here,” Bruce says in one of Target’s videos, which has been viewed 6.9 million times on TikTok. “My body is safe. Even if it feels weird, even if I’m scared, it’s safe to express myself. And I’m still safe.”
Parenting is a topic of much discussion online. Some commenters are supportive, others are not. No matter what people say, Bruce believes that by sharing his journey, others can develop a healthier relationship with their inner child. And mental health experts say she and other caregivers may actually have something going on.
“It’s important to have fun and know that nothing bad can happen if you wait for the other shoe to drop,” says Stephanie Serkis, a psychotherapist who specializes in ADHD and anxiety. “The more people practice this, the more they tend to feel like their authentic selves.”
What is reparenting?
Bruce says he was an anxious child when he was young.
She hated going to school. She had great anxiety about sleep. She started treatment at an early age, but it didn’t help much. From her teens to her early 20s, she said she suffered from depression.
Later, as an adult, Bruce began reading books about physical therapy and the inner child. In particular, she says the book by therapist Richard Schwartz, “There’s No Bad Part: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Family Systems Model,” really resonated with her and started her parenting journey.
For Bruce, parenting began with an interest in the emotions that arise in daily life. She says that by getting in touch with herself, she was able to find out how her inner child was feeling. Eventually, these check-ins gave way to full-fledged conversations with her inner child.
When Bruce started this process, she realized how terrible her monologue was. You are so awkward, why did you say that? , this doesn’t suit It plays often in her head. All of these phrases boil down to one message, she says. It’s not enough for you.
“I realized I was speaking to myself with a lot of self-criticism,” Bruce says. “I don’t talk to kids like that.”
Now, when Bruce has those feelings, she listens to her inner child and asks what she needs.
“From there, it’s like, ‘Oh, I need to take a deep breath. I need a hug. I need to call a friend. I want to go outside. I want to dance,'” Bruce says. “I personally love dancing. For me, dancing is very soothing and therapeutic.”
Controversial Target Video
According to Serkis, the inner child as a psychological concept is nothing new, and reparenting has been an important topic in the adult children of alcoholism and dysfunctional families community for some time. The goal of parenting, Serkis says, is to replace negative self-talk with a loving parent’s voice.
But loving parents don’t tolerate every whim of their child, Serkis added. Sometimes love looks like saying “no” to a child. The same holds true when raising children, she says.
“A loving parent’s voice doesn’t necessarily say, ‘Good luck, you’re great,'” Serkis says. “It’s also about saying, ‘Hey, that gallon of ice cream, maybe you should stop eating that right now.'”
Bruce says that in the first six months of posting his parenting videos, feedback has been mostly positive. Then, as more people found her page, more haters started pouring into her comments section. Target’s dance video in particular caused a lot of ridicule.
At first, I was scared that there were so many people online who would ridicule her. But for Bruce, the response proves she’s hitting some kind of chord, and it’s what motivates her to keep posting, no matter what others think.
“I literally thought, ‘Either I’m going to delete the video and pretend it never happened, or I’m going to go to Target, level up with the cape and crown, and jump into this game,'” she says. “I remember that choice point, and literally the next day I decided to put on the cape and crown. Level up.”
When Bruce dances at Target, he says he tries to stay out of the way of other customers and remains respectful of employees. As of now, he has no plans to return and dance again, but he hasn’t ruled out the possibility.
“If I’m at Target and I like the song, I’ll dance in the face of fear again,” she says.
No matter how idyllic your upbringing, the reality is that no one makes it through childhood completely unscathed. Psychological and emotional scars from childhood can be activated at any time, whether it’s walking to a target or just before getting on the phone with a reporter. Before his interview with USA TODAY, Bruce admitted that he checked in with his inner child and had an easy parenting experience.
“Yes, I totally thought so,” she says. “I thought, ‘It’s okay.’ You’re nervous, and I can keep you nervous. Just because you’re nervous doesn’t mean I’m nervous. I can handle it all.” So I thought, sure. ”
