Are you struggling with your relationships with men? Perhaps you have a father wound?

How the wound develops from childhood..

• You had to watch your behaviour around your father
• Your father appeared frightening or intimidating
• Your father was working away a lot and absent
• Your father was unable to show love or affection
• Your father focussed on your failures or mistakes
• Your father was aggressive eg shouting/physical violence
• Your father was sexually abusive
• Your father was emotionally abusive eg gaslighting/insulting/shouting
• Your father was judgemental and disapproving
• You father compared siblings and had favourites
• You craved your father’s love, approval and attention
• Your father had many partners who made you feel unwelcome
• Your father had addiction issues

If you feel any of the above resonate with you it is likely that you have experienced some kind of trauma. Trauma occurs when there is no one to talk to about the upsetting situation/event/environment/occurrence. This trauma is held in both the body and the subconscious mind and can present itself in several ways.

Adult indications of having a father wound…

• Difficulties with intimacy
• Poor relationship with your own body
• Low self-worth and self-criticism
• Feeling others are better than you
• Feeling that men are unavailable and untrustworthy
• Prioritising men’s needs over your own
• Fear and preoccupation of rejection and abandonment
• Easily elated or depressed depending on what is happening in the relationship with a man
• Feeling others are more worthy of love than you
• An attraction of men who remind you of your father (family-arity)
• Deep trust issues
• Co-dependency, anxiety, depression
• Addictions if in family (family-arity)
• Overachieving (success defines self-worth)
• Heavily judgemental of partner (becoming the father)
• Sexual promiscuity which leads to regret

How the wound is formed… 

Let’s imagine the little girl at home with an absent father who is away due to work or some other reason. He returns home and is tired and wants quiet. She is already learning that his needs are more important than hers. Such behaviour would contrast with her instinctual behaviours of a child to learn, seek out knowledge, play, make noise etc thus suppressing and cutting off her curious, confident and playful parts of the self. She begins to operate from survival energy and a segregated sense of who she is.  She may feel disconnected and lost with her dependency on others for happiness and fulfilment increasing.

The father’s emotional unavailability begins to permeate the little girl’s psyche and she starts to believe she is unlovable. She feels abandonment and experiences hurt and suffering. After time this deepens into a belief that somehow, she is flawed and the cause of his behaviour, thus creating a father wound. She grows up into adulthood carrying the wound and struggles with intimacy, boundaries, and low self-esteem. She believes she isn’t enough, that something is wrong with her and men will eventually leave her and she will be alone. The grown up little girl may have worked very hard and be successful in an effort to gain approval however her relationships will be a struggle and she will attract the same man repeatedly in the case of family-arity.  Unconsciously she is trying to repair the initial relationship with her father but she lacks the self-worth and conscious awareness to do so and is stuck in the cycle of the wound.

How do we heal from a father wound?

• Conscious awareness is key!
• Using a body centred approach, listen to the cues of your body and what is held in cellular memory eg where do you feel heaviness perhaps in shoulders; do you slump to avoid being seen? Tension in the jaw from the memory of keeping quiet? A closed sensation in the heart to protect from feelings of rejection and abandonment?
• Use yoga, movement, song or dance to free up old energy in the physical and energetic body.  Rejoice in being in your body and move with abandon and liberation, awakening the divine feminine within.
• Retell the story from the position of a victim to a survivor, the brain will believe whatever you tell it.
• Re write your story from a position of power and compassion. Spell-ing; there is power in words.
• Understanding and compassion for your father releases the emotional suppression upon you.
• Compassion and acceptance for yourself.
• Self-love; become friends with your inner child and your body.
• Honour yourself with positive body affirmations.
• Honour your journey in life and be proud of what you have achieved.
• Reassure your inner child and show them your world through a new lens of love and acceptance.
• Give yourself permission to know there are secure emotionally available men out there
• Know and be comfortable with your boundaries.
• Raise your divine feminine energy with other women and nature eg retreats or yoga events.

Why compassion is key..

If we are critical to ourselves or others for past relationships, then we disempower our authority over our experience. When we feel anger, blame, resentment etc then we have not learnt the lesson presented to us and there will be no motivation to change our own subconscious patterning. If we view the father as a wounded inner child making his way in life the best way he knows how, we can both make positive space for change within ourselves and our ability to create new compassionate, secure and healthy relationships with men in the future.