66: The Father Wound (or Daddy Issues): How to Heal from Absent Fathers and Emotionally Unavailable Fathers (& Fatherly Caregivers)

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Jun 7

The Father wound consists of unresolved feelings, pain, and wounding caused by your relationship with your father or a fatherly caregiver. Informally known as “Daddy Issues”, people downplay its impact on mental health for sons and daughters. In this episode, I explore the father wound, identify the root causes and symptoms of the father wound, and how it can impact your adult relationships.

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My mission for this episode is to help you bring awareness to your relationship with your father or father figure and teach you how to start healing your wound so that you stop playing out unhealthy patterns in your current relationships. I also answer a question from a listener whose father was absent and a question from a listener healing from an emotionally distant father after a divorce.

Journal Prompts 🖊️

What is your current relationship with your father? Allow yourself to free-write about this relationship. This could be about your past or current relationship. Do not filter yourself, be honest about how you truly feel about your father?
Has your relationship with your father changed over time? If so, why? How does this make you feel?
What is your father’s role in your family’s dynamic? Is he the breadwinner? The disciplinarian? The caretaker?
Download the full list of FREE journal prompts!

Free Resources 📑

Recommended Episodes 🎙️

Book Recommendations

It Wasn’t Your Fault: Freeing Yourself from the Shame of Childhood Abuse with the Power of Self-Compassion by Beverly Engel
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson PsyD
How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self by Dr. Nicole LePera

Learn More About About the Father Wound (Episode Research) 🔗

Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction 0:00
What is the father wound? 3:34
Signs You May Have a Father Wound 12:40
Symptoms of the Father Wound 14:11
How to Heal from the Father Wound? 16:54
Question 1 - Absent Father 23:40
Question 2 - Emotionally Unavailable Father 34:14

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:00]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hi there beautiful souls. My name is Amanda and this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. It's not my intention to give you all the answers. I believe you have all the answers. You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. Today we will be discussing the father wound. And the father wound consists of unresolved feelings, pain and wound caused by your relationship with your father or a fatherly caregiver. So I don't think many people use the term father wound in everyday life, but I do think the phrase daddy issues is thrown around in pop culture. And I think that many people have heard the phrase daddy issues, but they don't take the time to think about what it takes to heal daddy issues and where these daddy issues may have originated from. So I think some of you listening to today's episode are very aware of how your father has impacted you. And I think other people may be curious. And I think that this episode is great for people who aren't even aware if their father left an impact. But I think this episode will be helpful for really anybody who had a father. Because I think that along the healing journey, most people will have to heal from the mother wound and the father wound. And this isn't a judgment of our parents. So this episode is not about blaming our parents for where we are blaming our parents for all the horrible things they did. This episode is about bringing awareness to how our parents actions, consciously or unconsciously, may have affected us, right? So when we were children, we looked to our parents for safety and for love and they weren't always able to meet these needs. And some of us experienced abuse and that could be physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. And other people may not identify with abuse, but their parents still likely left an impact because no human is perfect. And as children, we look to our parents for this kind of unrealistic expectation, right? So as children, we view our parents on these pedestals and like, they're perfect and they're often not able to meet that perfect standard. And so wounding can happen. And so along the healing journey, it's important to heal these relationships with our parents and to take them off those pedestals and to view them as the humans they are. So I think this episode will be helpful for people who are highly aware of their father wound and also people who are just becoming aware or may not even be aware of that they have a father wound. So in today's episode, you'll learn about what the father wound is, some of the root causes of the father wound, and the symptoms that can impact your adult relationships, including romantic relationships. I'll also be answering two listener questions, one from somebody who felt abandoned by their father, and one from somebody who is healing from an emotionally unavailable father. And my mission for today's episode is to help you bring awareness to your relationship with your father or your father figure, and to teach you how to start healing your father wound so that you can stop playing out unhealthy patterns in your current relationships and you can start living from that authentic, truthful place rather than from a wounded place. So before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to mention that I will have journal prompts to go along with this episode on my website, and you'll be able to find those at newviewadvice.com/66. I will also have links to all the resources mentioned in today's episode there as well. Let's jump on into talking about the father wound.
Amanda Durocher What is the father wound? [00:03:34]
So what is the father wound? As we discussed in the intro, the father wound consists of unresolved feelings, pain, and wounding caused by your relationship with your father or a fatherly caregiver. And I believe that most of our parents were not healing, and so they were not aware of why they did what they did, and they weren't aware of how their actions were impacting other people in their lives, including children, including you and I. And so because of this, many of their unconscious actions left wounding and effects on us. And that is part of the father wound. It's how our father's unconscious actions can actually have devastating effects. For example, if you had an emotionally distant father who was unable to be emotionally there for you and to hold space for your feelings, that isn't because your father consciously didn't want to hold space for you. It's very much that he just didn't have the capacity and wasn't thinking about how his inability to not be able to hold emotions would affect you. A lot of this father wounding is wounding that happened unconsciously by those in our lives, and it can feel so personal when we're healing the father wound. I know for me, it took a long time for me to really see that so many of my father's actions weren't personal. It wasn't me, I didn't do anything wrong. It was that he had the inability and didn't have the capacity for what I needed growing up. And I just wanted to take a moment to mention here too, that as I mentioned in the intro, daddy issues and the father wound go hand in hand. And I think that people really throw around this phrase daddy issues, without really thinking about what it means to have daddy issues about how devastating it is that the impact of our father can leave these devastating effects on us. So I just wanted to honor that because I think that there's a lot of actual pain and hurt behind having daddy issues. And in today's society it can be used as a derogatory term or as a term kind of to make fun of somebody. So if somebody has said you have daddy issues, I know that I used to identify with having daddy issues and we're here to honor that and to heal that. I also want to mention that when it comes to the father wound, it can impact every gender. There is no one specific gender that is impacted by the father wound over another. I think that it goes back to the individual child themselves and how they interpreted their father's actions and how their father's actions left those painful feelings and wounding. So it can really impact all different genders because I think that it's very hard for our parents to meet all our needs as children. And because of this, there's often that pain and those limiting beliefs and hard feelings that we experience that aren't always able to be processed when we're children, that we have to heal as we grow up. So I also wanted to touch on some root causes of the father wound. There are many causes and that's everybody's personal healing journey, but a few I wanted to mention here is that if you had an abusive father that can leave a father wound, so abusive behavior from a father or father figure could look like yelling, criticism, hitting, physical abuse or sexual abuse. I also think a big father wound in today's society is having an absent father. So the absent father is also very common. And this includes more than just a physically absent father. Many people have fathers who are physically present, still experience feeling abandoned by their father because their fathers are emotionally absent or completely checked out throughout their life. So for absent fathers, this could be that physically absent. So maybe you didn't grow up with a father, maybe your father died, maybe you didn't have a close relationship with your father, maybe your parents were divorced. But as I mentioned, this can also include people like myself who had a father who worked more than he was home and who was very absent emotionally. Even when he was there, he wasn't really there. I can't remember having any close conversations with my father growing up. He was very distant and so that created that feeling of abandonment within me as a child. Another example of the father wound I wanted to mention is that for people who had a very abusive mother, say your mother was very critical, was emotionally abusive or physically abusive. A lot of times these children form an attachment to their father, but as they're growing up, they actually have to heal their own father wound, because what starts to come up through healing that relationship with their abusive mother is that they had a father who allowed that abuse to happen. They had a father who didn't leave that mother. They had a father who didn't protect them from that abuse. And that can create a father wound as well, because it's very harmful for the child to be in that environment at all. So, as I mentioned, for me in my life, I felt very much like my father was absent. He worked a lot, which made me feel like he was physically absent, and then when he was there, he was emotionally absent. I don't think my father ever asked me how I was. He never asked me how school was. I don't think he ever asked me how my friends were doing. I don't think my father really ever took the time to get to know me. I know that this is something I've had to heal while growing up, is that I wound change myself to try and fit what I thought my father wanted me to be. I would take up his interests. I was always buying for his attention. I always wanted him to see me. And I felt very unseen by my father growing up, and it's taken me a long time to accept him as he is and that our relationship will never be what I had desired as a child. But though I feel very much at peace with my father, it was a challenging process to get here. It involved me feeling a lot of feelings. So I just want to honor you wherever you're at on your journey, because the father wound is deep. It's really, really deep, and it leaves a very big impact on us the way that we were raised by both our parents. I also wanted to mention a Ted Talk that I watched when doing research for this episode. The Ted Talk was by Otto Kelly, who is a pastor and an executive director at a crisis pregnancy center. And he's really witnessed the impact of what he calls fatherlessness on people. So a lot of people he's worked with had physically absent fathers, but he's also noticed that the impact of not having strong male figures in people's lives leaves an impact. So what I found was really interesting about his Ted Talk is that he mentioned that children wish they had from their father four things protection, provision, presence, and praise. This really struck me because it resonated as so true for me. I think so many people want to feel protected by their fathers. They want to feel provided for. They want to feel praised, and they want to feel the presence of a strong male figure in their lives. And unfortunately, I don't think many people get all four from their father. I know for me, my father definitely provided for us financially. I knew that I could see that, and honestly, I was very much guilted. If I felt anything other than grateful towards my father, which created a lot of resistance to me healing my father wound. I had an immense amount of guilt even admitting that my father had a negative impact on me. And again, this isn't to blame my father. This isn't to blame your father to heal and to come back to ourselves.We just have to acknowledge the real pain we experience. It's not about blaming and hating and shaming. It's about really honoring that. And for a moment in time, I did hate my father when I was healing this. That was real feelings I had, real hatred that I had to move through and experience. But at this point, as I mentioned, I feel very much at peace about this. But it's only because I took the time to feel all of little Amanda's feelings and even adult Amanda's feelings. I know for me, when I went sober, that was really hard for me because of my relationship with my father. My father and I had about one thing in common, and that was our love of wine. And I was so afraid if I gave up drinking, I would lose the little relationship I had with my father. And truthfully, I feel like I did. I feel like when I gave up drinking, my father and I don't have much else to bond over. But it was important for me to make that decision for myself. And there's been a lot of grieving with my relationship with my father over and over again. The more I peel back the layers, the more I just have to grieve that he's not who I wanted him to be. And he's never going to be who I expected him to be, because he's who he is. I put all these false expectations on my father of who he should be because of who I thought he should be. And the truth is, he's just who he is. He can't help that. He can't change it. It's not personal. The way he reacts to me is the same way he reacts to other people. It's never been personal. But our relationships with our parents, of course, feel very personal. It feels intimately personal. And so healing the father wound just involved a lot of honoring ourselves, honoring our parents, and allowing ourselves to feel all those hard feelings.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:40]
So I also wanted to discuss some signs that you may have a father wound. And please note that the following list is not every reason why you may have a father wound and every situation. This is just a few examples of why you may have a father wound and an experience you may have had that left you wounded by your father. So some examples include you were afraid of your father growing up. Your father was physically or emotionally absent. And examples of this are you grew up without a father. Your father worked a lot and was never around. Your father died when you were young or later on in your life. Your father was absent from your life. He may have been around but was never present with you. Your father never had time for you. Your parents got divorced. You never knew your father. More examples include your father was emotionally unavailable. Your father was emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive. Your father was highly critical of you your father disapproved of your actions, choices, and behaviors your father withheld food, love, or other essentials as a form of punishment. Your father used harsh discipline. Your father had painfully high expectations for you. You never felt loved by your father. You never felt as though you were good enough for your father. You may have tried to impress him or to gain his attention, but it never felt as though you did enough and your father yelled at you. Those can all leave an impact on us and continue to affect us and our relationships, including our romantic partnerships today.
Amanda Durocher Symptoms of the Father Wound [00:14:11]:
So now that we've identified some of the signs and situations that could lead to a father wound, I wanted to talk about how you may see this father wound manifesting in your adult life and how you may see it playing out in your adult relationships. So some examples of how you may see this father wound impacting you today could be having low self confidence, low self esteem, and low self worth. Fathers especially have a way of impacting our confidence and our belief in ourselves. Some examples of this could include the fear of trying new things, the fear of vulnerability, the fear of failure, and looking outside yourself for external validation. Another way this could be impacting you is if you are conscious that you have anger or a lot of hard feelings towards your father. Another way that I've seen this manifest in people, including myself, is that you can be attracting people who reflect your father. So meaning if you had a father who is emotionally unavailable, you may continue to play out that cycle because you're looking for healing. There's a part of you looking to heal that pattern of being around emotionally unavailable men. Another example could be that you act out in relationships the way your father acted in relationships. I know this was true for me that I used to yell a lot when I was in my early twenty s I used to yell a lot at my partner and every time I would start yelling, I would say to myself, oh my God, I'm turning into my father. Oh my God, I can't believe I'm being my father. And so that was a sign for my awareness that that was part of my father wound. That I was playing out my father's reactions in relationships and I was playing out his emotional immaturity. Because that's what I had witnessed growing up and that's what I had learned was how to react in relationships. So that was something I had to heal along my healing journey. Other symptoms could include mental health problems. So this could be depression, anxiety, having insecurities. Another symptom of the father wound is having too poor of boundaries or having too rigid of boundaries. So you could be really controlling, or you could have zero boundaries at all depending on your upbringing. And as I already mentioned a bit, but having a history of unhealthy romantic relationships, including attracting men who are emotionally distant, playing out unrequited love, cheating in relationships, craving male attention, rejecting all male attention, and being absent in your own relationships can all route back to your father wound. And as I mentioned, these are just a few examples, but this will be different for everyone. After this episode, I invite you to take some time to explore some ways in which your father wound may be impacting your life, whether conscious or unconscious. And as I mentioned, I'll have some journal prompts on my website to assist with that process.
Amanda Durocher How to Heal Father Wound? [00:16:54]
So how do we heal from the father wound? This is a long process.
It's not an easy fix. There's no pill I can give you for you to just heal your father wound. I wish there was. I wish there was a magical cure. But really, healing the father wound involves bringing awareness to how your father did. Wound, you beginning to get to know your inner child. So that part of you that was wounded, that's part of that awareness, it's connecting back to your child self, and it is feeling all the hard feelings. So as you start to begin to bring awareness, you could start by seeing if anything said so far has stood out to you. Is there anything you want to explore more? Are there any feelings that arise when you think of your father? But bringing awareness is really just starting to admit to yourself that your father may have had more of an impact on you than you realized, or admitting that you need to heal this relationship. Because what I also find happens very often is that people who had abusive parents or parents that they're very highly aware impacted them, just want to move forward. They're like, I just want to move on. I get it. My father was abusive. I'm done with him. He's out of my life. I'm cutting this cord, like, done. And I wish it was that simple. But many times, even when we cut them out of our lives, we still have to heal the past. We still have to honor ourselves. That's really what it is. Because I don't think we want to live in the past. I don't think we want to just stay there and ruminate about it. But we do need to revisit these moments in time that left an impact on us, that deserve our own witnessing, that deserve ourselves to honor it. And that's where we get into the inner child work, where I believe that your inner child deserves for you to witness their pain. Your inner child deserves for you to take the time to sit with the hard feelings that they were unable to process because it likely wasn't safe for them to process it at the time. Or they were guilted or shamed for having a lot of hard feelings and they were made to feel crazy, or they were made to feel overdramatic or overly sensitive. You are not overly sensitive. There were hard things that happened in your life that you deserve to honor and witness. And as we grow up and we take responsibility for our healing and we take responsibility for our own happiness, it is our responsibility to honor and witness that. And so many of us wish that somebody else could give us that external validation. And I think going to therapy or doing one on one coaching can really assist in that process. Having somebody there to witness you witnessing yourself. But the truth is that healing comes when you witness you, when you honor your own heart, because nobody knows how difficult these experiences were or how real your feelings were more than you. Healing is about getting to know yourself. It's about getting to know those parts of you you may have put on a shelf. And it's about honoring everything you've experienced. And for anybody who's new to inner child work, I do want to mention real quick what the inner child is. I do have the podcast episode, episode five, where I really go into the inner child. But a quick summation of the inner child is that the inner child is a representation of yourself at different ages and events in your childhood. And really, because of this, we have inner children. You may witness yourself at age seven, at age 14, then age three. I always view it as having inner children. Each age for me, really has its own personality, and our inner child holds many of our best qualities, so including our enthusiasm, creativity and our playful nature. But the inner child can also hold wounding from trauma and experiences that left us feeling unloved, unseen, unheard and unsafe. And if we have a father wound, which most people do, our inner child is often holding on to beliefs about the world that were created from the difficult experiences with our father. Many of these beliefs created at the time are untrue, but were created as a way for our child selves to feel safe and to feel loved. And many of us are still playing out these beliefs in the present, which is why beginning to heal, witness and honor your inner child is important. I have resources on my website which will also be linked in the show notes to assist you in connecting back with your inner child, if any of that resonates, and could be helpful for you on your journey. And the third thing I had mentioned is that it's important for you to feel those feelings. So as you're bringing awareness. As you're connecting with your inner child, it's important for you to feel all those difficult feelings that you may have not wanted to feel. You may have been shoving down some of these feelings, some of that anger, some of that sadness, that betrayal, that disappointment, that devastation, all those feelings are very real. And in order for us to heal, we have to begin to feel the feelings. We have to begin to allow them up. And your feelings will not last forever. I can promise you that. I have had feelings that I thought would last forever, but I promise they move. And your feelings have information for you. And when you feel your feelings, it also brings freedom to you. Because any feeling that arises in relation to your father, especially from the past, is a feeling that you already have right now. So it's somewhere within you and it's something that wants to move out of you. It wants to be felt. And when you feel it and you allow it up, it moves and you are free. So that's why it is so important for us to feel our feelings. Some tools that I recommend to assist you in this awareness, this inner child work, and the feeling your healing is to journal. As I mentioned, I'll have journal prompts on my website, but really just beginning a journaling practice and learning how to write down what you're healing, what you're thinking, maybe if any memories arise, jotting those down and allowing yourself to explore anything that arises as that memory is arising. I also think meditation and breath work is helpful. Therapy one on one sessions and really having patience and compassion for yourself. I think that healing the father wound takes time. It's a very layered experience. Many times our relationships with our parents get intertwined with so much in our life. So it takes time to see how much our parents have impacted us and how these beliefs we created when we were younger really can get intertwined in all aspects of our life. So healing is a journey of learning to be kind to yourself and learning to witness yourself and honor yourself and learning that you're perfect just as you are. You've always been enough. You've always been worthy, no matter what other people have said. Healing is a journey back home to self and remembering your magnificence. So now I'm going to answer two questions where we discuss and dive deeper into how to heal and beginning to heal the father wound.
Amanda Durocher question 1 [00:23:40]
Recently, I realized how hurt I was by my father's absence growing up. I never realized how much this affected me until starting therapy recently, and I began diving into some patterns I've been playing out in relationships. I'm now seeing how much this has hurt me throughout my life and contributed to my pattern of dating emotionally unavailable men. Do you have any advice on how to heal this pain of having an absent father. Thank you for this question. I'm so sorry for this pain you're feeling and that you've experienced. But I do want to honor the awareness you have around this. And I think it's a great first step to be beginning to notice how your relationship with your father is impacting you today. As we discussed earlier, I think that awareness is really the first step. You can't heal something if you're unaware there's something to heal. So I think that it's a great first step to be bringing this awareness, and I just wanted to honor the work that you're doing. I really love this question too, because I really relate to this question, and I think so many people can relate to this question. I know for me, my father worked a lot, and that had a big impact on me, the fact that he was never around. My parents have been married for over 30 years, but my father was absent. I feel like for most of my childhood, he wasn't there on all the special occasions. He didn't prioritize family. It was very much work comes first. And I internalized a lot of beliefs around that. I internalized a lot of reasons why he was never around. And when I was a child, I internalized that he worked a lot because he didn't love me, because I wasn't good enough, because I was unworthy of his love. None of that is true, but I internalize that as children, we create many beliefs as if we're the center of the world. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's a child's mindset. A child sees the world from their point of view. A child feels responsible for everything happening in their life. They don't understand that not everything does with them. So they internalize a lot, especially before age seven. Everything really just sinks into the subconscious. So children tend to look at what's happening in the world and think it's their fault. Which is a reason why for some people who have a great relationship with their father, they might be like, I don't have a father wound. But you may have interpreted certain things that happened throughout your childhood as if they were your fault, creating some wounding that you may be playing out now. I'm not sure that's everybody's personal journey, but I found that with my journey that I had internalized a lot about my father never being around and about his inability to be with my emotions. So I was also a very emotional child, and my father could not handle my emotions. My father could not be present for them. So if I felt difficult emotions, my father would often leave the room if he was around. But the truth is, he wasn't around a lot. So I internalized a lot of things about how I pushed my father away, how I was responsible for our lack of relationship, how I wasn't good enough for him, how if I changed. Myself, he wound finally love me again. None of these were true, but they were beliefs that as I was healing, I had to start peeling back layer by layer. And as I said, many of these beliefs we created weren't true. Right? My father didn't work a lot because I wasn't good enough. My father worked a lot for his own reasons. It wasn't about me. It was his own things. And it wasn't until I was an adult that I was able to begin to see him in a new light, in more of an adult lens, and to understand that much of what I had internalized wasn't personal. And I mentioned this here because I think that it's part of healing from an absent father is beginning to see what beliefs you may have internalized about why your father was absent and how you may be still playing this out in relationships. You may be looking for somebody who's emotionally unavailable to be available. And there's a part of you that may think that if that person just becomes available, it'll mean something about you. It'll mean you're finally worthy. It'll mean you're finally enough. So you're attracting people in your life to help you to heal this pattern and to bring this pattern to light that is connected back to your father wound. I hope that makes sense. I think another part of healing this father wound for many people is accepting our parents for who they are. It's accepting them as humans, it's accepting them as imperfect, and it's accepting that they're not going to change. And I bring this up because I think that when we have absent father, we can internalize a lot around that, and when we can just accept them for who they are and can accept that that absenteeism wasn't personal, it can be helpful and healing for us along the way. So my advice for you is to continue to bring awareness to your father wound. I think it's great that you're noticing that your relationships are impacted by your relationship with your father. And that's not rare. I think it's extremely common, and I talk about this on many episodes about how our childhood wounds often come back in romantic partnerships. So a few questions you could begin to ask yourself to assist you in healing would be how do you feel when you think about your relationship with your father? Sometimes we tell ourselves one thing but feel another. So be honest with yourself about the feelings that arise when reflecting on your father. Another question you could reflect on is what are similarities that you see between your father and the people in your romantic relationships? And what beliefs do you have about yourself based off this relationship with your father? This could be I have to change myself for men to like me, or I'm not enough as I am, or no one is going to stick around, or people are always leaving me. Allow yourself to explore these beliefs that may be connected to your father. This is going to be different for everybody. So just begin to notice those words that you use and the language you use when thinking about your father. So my next piece of advice would be to begin to know your inner child. And as I mentioned, I have a podcast episode, episode five, where I really talk about the inner child. But I suggest that you begin to form a relationship with your inner child. And I have a lot of resources on my website, including meditations and journal prompts and healing exercises to connect to your inner child. But really getting to know that aspect of yourself that is still holding on to this wounding and is still holding on to this pain will assist you in honoring yourself and healing this father wound. As you bring awareness and do this inner child work, I invite you to feel those feelings, feel the hard feelings that are arising. It's not easy to do this work. It's not easy to see the pain we experience in our childhood. It's not easy to see how our parents didn't meet all our needs and to see how many times their own wounding created wounding in us. That is such a devastating reality. And we're not going to talk about it too much today. But I did just want to mention that generational trauma is when trauma is passed down through the family line, so from one generation to the next. So for example, maybe your father was absent, but maybe his father was absent, and maybe his father's father was absent. And maybe this is a pattern that has been passed down through your family line and this pain can really stop with us, and this wounding can stop with us. But it takes courage and heart to heal. So I just want to honor you for being here. I wanted to mention generational trauma, we're not going to dive into it today. I can do another episode about that. But I did want to mention that that can be one of the reasons why our fathers show up the way they do in our family life. And I wanted to mention that as you feel the hard feelings, as you begin to honor yourself, you'll begin to find the balance of seeing your father for the human he is and honoring your own experience. I think many people bring their adult mind to healing and that is helpful. But you also have to feel your feelings, even if they don't make logical sense in the moment. Many people want to rush to how hard our parents lives were without acknowledging their own pain. Your pain was real too. And it's important to feel all your feelings. And as you do, that balance will be created of feeling your feelings. So honoring yourself and then being able to truly honor your father and his experience as well. But you can't skip the healing your feelings part, because if you do, then resentment will build. Another piece of advice I have for you, in case you are interested in continuing to learn about how this wound may have affected you, is to read a book. So I have three recommendations, but I invite you to look into different books that may resonate with you or may relate directly to what you are healing. But three book recommendations I have are adult children of emotionally immature parents. This is very, very helpful when Healing from a Mother Wound or a Father Wound It's by Lindsay C. Gibson, and she does an amazing job of really outlining how our parents emotional immaturity affects us, how it shows up in our lives today, and how to heal it. So I highly recommend that book. How to do the Work by Dr. Nicola Pera is also a helpful book in beginning to look at family relationships. She talks a lot about her relationship with her family throughout the book and how that was something she had to heal as she began healing herself. And another book recommendation I have is It Wasn't your Fault freeing Yourself from the Shame of Childhood Abuse with the Power of Self Compassion by Beverly Engel. If you feel like your father was abusive emotionally, physically or sexually, this is a great book and she gives a lot of examples. I remember reading this book and over and over again being like, this book is validating my experience. This book is validating the abuse I experienced. This book is so validating. So I highly recommend that if you find that that title resonates for you. And I wanted to mention that I know how painful it is to heal the father wound. And you really deserved a father who was there for you, who supported you, who showed you how much they loved you, who cheered you on. You deserved a father who was there. And I'm so sorry that you are now cleaning up the pieces of what it was like to have a father who wasn't there. And throughout your healing journey, my hope for you is that you begin to parent yourself and give yourself the things you wished you received from your father. This is such an important part of healing for me, is that healing is learning to parent ourselves. It's learning to be the mother and the father that we wish we had, that we deserved.And you deserve to have so much support and love in your life. And I hope that this episode was helpful for you along your own healing journey. So thank you for this question.
Amanda Durocher Question 2 [00:34:14]
My parents got divorced when I was twelve. I lived with my father and saw my dad on the weekends. My dad was still heavily involved in my life, but he was never emotionally available. I'm not sure my dad has ever told me he loved me and I definitely don't feel comfortable telling him anything going on in my life. I also always felt like my siblings and I were too much for him.
He often snapped at us, but I know it was because he was really stressed. But I feel like his snapping left me with anxiety around him. I'd like to change our relationship, but I don't know if it's possible. It makes me really sad that I can't be deep with my dad. Any advice? Thank you so much for this question. I'm so sorry for the pain you're experiencing. I definitely know you are not alone, and unfortunately, I think it's all too normal to feel distant from our fathers and to not feel that emotional intimacy so many of us are looking for. I want to mention up front that I have done an episode on adult children of divorce which you might find helpful on your healing journey as well. So I did want to mention that here that's episode 45, so you can check that out if you think that could be helpful for you. So as I mentioned in the last question, my first piece of advice is to continue to bring this awareness to this father wound and to your relationship with your father. I think you're doing a great job becoming aware of your relationship, and I think it sounds like you're really beginning to dive into this and to peel back the layers, because that's really the first step. So many of us want this just to be over with, but really it's that layer by layer, awareness by awareness, feeling by healing. It's really just a process of unraveling. So the healing journey is like an onion. Each layer of the onion brings us closer to the core, and that's what healing is. You're peeling back those layers, of bringing the awareness and the feelings and connecting back to yourself. So I think you're doing really great work already with this question. So from your question, I think your father being emotionally distant and snapping at you sounds like he was emotionally immature and may still be emotionally immature. And that's not a judgment, it's really just an observation. Because I think that when we're healing and starting to become aware, we want to observe our relationships, not judge them. Awareness is about beginning to take a step back and seeing all the pieces of a puzzle without attaching to any of the puzzle, if that makes sense. If you make a puzzle, you can get really zoomed in on one section of the puzzle, trying to fit the pieces, but you can see the whole thing when you zoom out. So I think for you, healing will likely involve grieving the relationship you wish you had with your father. As mentioned in the previous question, I think a book that would be really helpful for you would be Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I think that a teaching from this book that could really help you is that you want to learn to release all expectations you've put on your father. So it's not that you didn't deserve all the things you wanted, but when we grow up, we have to release the expectations because when we do, we're able to heal and to move forward with more freedom. So your father may be unable to give you this deep intimate relationship that you're craving. And as long as you're playing out this childhood pattern, he will not be able to meet this need of yours. And it's not personal. It's likely he's emotionally distant in most of his relationships. And it's not just you. And much of the pain that exists within these relationships with our fathers is the expectations of who we think they should have been. And we have pain because of how we wish they showed up. For many of our fathers, they are truly incapable of the love we desire. And so part of healing is letting go of that expectation. And now, with that said, is that easy? No. It'll likely involve you grieving who you wish he was and who you truly deserved your father to be. I think it's heartbreaking that we live in a world where adults don't prioritize their mental and emotional health. But there are many reasons for this too. So many of these things we're talking about are really big issues that we need to begin to deal with. And there wasn't a lot of education about trauma, father wounds, mother wounds, 2030, 40, 50 years ago. So a lot of this information that's coming to light that makes it easier for us all to heal was not even available when our parents were raising us. Some questions that I think can help you to continue to become aware are what was your relationship like with both your parents during the time of the divorce? The reason I mentioned that divorce podcast episode at the beginning is because divorce can really leave an impact on children. Because as I mentioned in the previous question, so many children see the world through a singular lens, see the world through their eyes, see the world as if everything that happens to them is their fault and has a correlation to them, good and bad. And so when divorce happens, many children do take it on as if it's their fault, or they can put a lot of blame on their parents for tearing the family apart. So divorce can have reverberating effects on children and on entire families. So it's an important wound to dive into. I think that as a society, especially here in America, we've really normalized divorce and there's no judgment about getting divorced. This isn't about judging the choice to get divorced. But I do think that there are effects of divorce. There are consequences, right? Every decision has a consequence. When I decide to set a boundary, it can have a consequence, it can hurt somebody's feelings. There's no judgment. We have to do what's best for us, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't have an effect on other people. And it's important for us to dive into those effects that other people's choices may have had on us or that our choices have on other people. Part of the healing is just acknowledging that the choices we make can affect others. And so many times we just try to shove everything under the rugs. Especially emotionally distant parents, they don't talk about the effects of their actions like the snapping. My guess is your father likely didn't apologize very often for his snapping. I know my father never apologized for his yelling. We pretended it didn't happen. Anytime my father had an angry outburst, it was like it didn't happen. And I've never been one who's like to shove things under the rug. So I would try to bring it up and I would get smacked a second time by my mother or my brother for even bringing up what happened. A lot of times I would get kind of a response like, you deserved it. And I don't believe children ever deserve to be yelled at. But I internalized a lot because of all the stuff that was shoved under the rug and all the stuff that went unsaid because of my father's behavior. I was left to figure out on my own why my father acted the way he did, why he had angry outbursts, why he was absent, why he was never there, why money was prioritized in my family structure above what I felt like was love. I was so confused as a child, and I was left to figure all that out on my own. And I created a lot of unhealthy beliefs because of it, because I had a small mindset, because I was a child, I didn't understand the world. So I created a lot of beliefs about myself because of other people's actions. So I just wanted to mention that with divorce, because I think that children can create a lot of beliefs about the world based off of divorce, which you may know are untrue as an adult, but they may still be living within you and be intertwined with the way you're living today. I also wanted to mention the anxiety you said you get because of your father's snapping. I think that fathers who yell or become agitated, irritated and harsh with their words is also very common. And I'm sorry you grew up with that because I think that that's great awareness to notice that you become anxious around your father. I also wonder if you're anxious in other situations and that if the root cause could be your father's snapping. I know for me, I used to have a fear of authority figures, so my father's yelling created this fear of adult men. So I wound become very small in certain situations. As I was healing, I began to realize that these authority figures, I feared such as police officers, professors, even cab drivers. I had this immense fear of people who I felt like were in authority. And it stemmed back to how my father used to yell. And I couldn't create a reason for his yelling. So, so many times I didn't understand what I did wrong to cause him to yell. And the truth is, many times there was nothing I did wrong. My father was just stressed and in his own feelings, and he was reacting. So his yelling wasn't always expected. And these outbursts that felt like they came out of nowhere created a deep fear in me that the world was unsafe and that anything I could do could set somebody off. And so I mentioned this because I saw throughout my healing how my father's yelling didn't just correlate to my fear of my father, which I have had to heal. It also correlated to my fear of other men or authority figures throughout my life. And in order to heal this, I had to begin creating my own safety and prioritizing myself and my well being and honoring myself. When I felt this anxiety arise with either my father or authority figures, I had to begin to witness it, I had to become aware of it. And then I had to really sit with those feelings that were arising. And it was oftentimes a scared little girl who was so afraid of being yelled at because it was so hurtful when she was yelled at and she didn't understand what she did wrong. None of that's easy. So I just want to honor you and this experience that you're navigating, because healing the father wound isn't easy. I have found it liberating in my own life. I have found that by healing my father wound and continuing to heal my father wound brings me back to my power. I think a lot of us give our power away to our parents, and by healing these wounds, we begin to anchor into the power of who we truly are. So I invite you to be kind and gentle with yourself as you continue to dive into this. There's no rush with healing these wounds, right? If you're not already, I invite you to look into therapy, or I offer one on one sessions. But finding somebody to hold space for you as you dive deeper into these wounds, I think that they're really deep rooted, and it can be really helpful to look at these parental wound in a safe space. So I invite you to be gentle and kind with yourself and to lean into self care. If you have a new awareness, come up while listening to this episode and you're like, Oof, that hurts. I invite you to, after this, do something kind for yourself or to allow yourself to feel those feelings, but really beginning to lean into self care, leaning into what you need. Because many times when we're healing these child wounds, there's a part of us that wants to feel safe. So we want to balance the hard feelings with the fun of life, the play of life, the relaxing of life. We want to create a balance while we're healing in order to create safety within us. That's what that balance does. It allows us to continue healing and to know that it's safe to continue healing because we're honoring all our needs. And our needs include more than just feeling hard feelings. They include enjoying life and living in the present moment. And before I wrap up this question, I did want to mention that for some people, it may be an option to have a discussion with your father. I think that this isn't an option for everybody. I know this isn't an option in my life, I have tried this, and it did not go well. But through trying it, it allowed me to really grieve a part of this relationship with my father. I was holding on to an expectation I was holding on to, and it was quite freeing for me to even attempt a conversation. So you may find that as you're healing, you want to maybe try talking to your dad about some of this stuff. What I say about those conversations is really about going in with no expectation. If you decide to have it, it's because you want to speak your truth or you're looking to invite him into this conversation with you. You, and only you will know your relationship with your father. And if that's an option for you, I don't think that everybody needs to have this difficult conversation with their father. I think that it's right for some people. It's not right for everybody. You know your relationship with your father, and you know if that would be helpful for you on your healing journey. I invite you to heal first, because I don't think that when you go into this conversation, you want this wound to be really raw, because you may not get the answer you're hoping for. And that's why it's important to go in with no expectations and really to go in from a place of curiosity and an honoring of yourself. So when you're going in, it's about honoring yourself and honoring your relationship with your father, not about looking for something, because you cannot control other people. So you will likely not get what you're looking for. I invite you to explore if that's an option for you. But as I said, that's not going to be an option for everybody. But I did want to mention that here. So thank you so much for this question. I invite you to be kind to yourself. You deserve to be loved, seen, and to feel safe in relationships. I truly believe that as you heal this, you will begin to love yourself and see yourself more deeply, and that will create more safety and love within you. Thank you for this question. I'm honoring you and sending you so much love as you continue to heal.
Amanda Durocher Outro [00:47:06]
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode about the father wound. I believe that every parent leaves a mark on their child and oftentimes there are good marks but also marks that need healing. No parent is perfect and having to heal from relationships with your parents does not make them bad people. It is actually quite healthy because through this process of healing we really begin to see the humanity in our parents. As I've talked about throughout this episode, as children we often put our parents on pedestals and through healing we take them off that pedestal and see them as humans and equals. And before I finish this episode, I just want to mention that every healing journey is unique and I invite you to be kind with yourself and to give yourself what your heart is asking as you heal this wound. Healing those childhood wounds which could be the mother wound and the father wound is work. This isn't called the father wound because it can be healed in a day. It's a real wound that leaves lasting impact on our lives. It's complicated and deserves the time to heal just like a physical wound would. So thank you so much for joining me for this episode and as I mentioned earlier, I will have resources to assist you in healing the father wound on my website that you can find at newviewadvice.com/66. This will include meditations and journal prompts and am sending you so much love as you continue to heal. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode and as always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be moving through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.