What is the Father Wound? How it can affect your relationships.
The definition of a “ father wound”, is another term for father absenteeism. When a person's father is physically absent, emotionally distant or an abusive, negative or overly critical character, it can have long-term consequences for the individual.
You may have never heard of this concept, but if you suffer from this wound it will show up in how you handle all of your relationships with men in life. It could even be affecting your relationship right now, and not in a positive way.
I wasn’t even aware of what this was until 2 years ago, when I was healing from own father wound. I wouldn’t even currently call myself completely recovered. It is a deep wound, that touches unconscious parts of us that we are not even entirely aware of. Yet, this deep wound trickles into all of our behaviors as an individual, and leaves a hollow sense of self at times. It is why I am so passionate on teaching others what this is, and how to recognize it in yourself.
We all come into the world helpless, dependent and needing acceptance, to be treated as worthy, and to be loved. The father wound is the absence of this love from your birth father. The wound can be caused by:
Neglect – I am unimportant
Absence – Divorce, separation, death
Abuse – Mental, physical, sexual, spiritual
Control – Oppressive domination
Withholding – Love, blessings and/or affirmation, deficiencies that lead to a profound lack of self-acceptance.
Of the above causes, what resonates with you? I invite you to dig deeper here. My own father wound involved everything but absence, and that led me to believe that I was not enough. Neglect can also mean that they were not emotionally attuned to your needs, and this meant your emotions didn’t matter. Neglect doesn’t only mean physical needs.
The father wound I carried with me into adulthood, led me to make some very poor decisions. One being, that I chose a partner to marry that was almost a carbon copy of my father. Narcissistic and abusive, and displayed the same behaviors as my father. Yet, I couldn’t see the problem because this is all I had ever known. It was my familiar, it was part of my conditioning to understand what love was supposed to feel like. It made me unaware to see the truth of how I was being handled.
This leads us to ask the question, how is the father wound affecting you?
Here are some characteristics:
Low mood / depression: Over time your anxiety can turn to low mood. On the other hand, you may have internalised your anger towards your father and him being absent and feel depressed as a result.
Anxiety: There could be a combination of things and events that have contributed to you experiencing anxiety. Growing up with an (emotionally) absent father may have left you with a feeling of “I am not good enough” and perhaps you have hidden feelings such as a sense of loss, anger, shame, sadness and anxiety is trying to keep those deeper emotions at bay.
Anger & rage: Perhaps you have had the worst kind of experience with your father. Perhaps he used substances, was abusive, lying and otherwise unreliable man, whose behavior deeply hurt you. You may feel like you are stuck in anger and this can manifest in many ways. You may displace your anger that doesn’t have an outlet somewhere else like experiencing road rage if it feels that it is not appropriate for you to express anger in other ways. You may also often feel anger and rage whenever there is a conflict in a relationship, and not understand why.
Too rigid boundaries: If your father has been unreliable perhaps by not showing up or even being absent from your life, you may have decided that you cannot let people (romantic partners) close to you and you have to protect yourself. The pain of dealing with the aftermath of being let down your father especially as a young child may feel worse than the loneliness rigid boundaries can cause.
Too loose boundaries: You may feel that you have to be available to everyone else all the time. Perhaps deep down you feel that to be loved by others, you cannot hold your boundary and say “no” when something does not suit you.
Having relationships with emotionally unavailable partners: Unless we are aware of it, we often seek the same dynamic in our romantic relationships as we experienced in our childhood. You may have an unconscious wish to repair the early father wound by having a relationship with a person that creates similar and familiar feelings within you as you experienced in your childhood. We often gravitate towards something that feels familiar because at least we know what are dealing with. Being in a relationship with someone consistent and reliable can feel potentially emotionally threatening. If you often choose emotionally unavailable partners, you may experience a lot of relationship anxiety. The partner is for their reasons unable to offer you the security you need and you may end up engaging in various behaviours to get their attention, such as nagging, excessive messaging, oversharing or other behaviours that may feel unsettling for your partner.
Low self-esteem & low confidence: Children are self-centred by nature. They often blame themselves for anything negative that happens in childhood and particularly if it is not clearly explained to them. Your inner critic (the internal voice) may be saying you are not worthy of good things or you are not good enough (because your father left or he only gave you attention when you did something for him). Growing up you may have felt different as a child if all your friends had two parents and you grew up without a father.
Parenting – repeating the pattern of (emotionally) absent parent: Parenting is hard and when you first become a parent you are flooded with feelings that may be linked to your own experiences of being parented or experiencing lack of parenting. You may distance yourself from your child and struggle to build an identity as a good enough parent.
If you have read this and you are feeling this makes so much sense for you, and you are wanting to understand yourself more deeply know that you can overcome this. For myself, I chose to ignore it, suppress it, “sweep it under the rug”, but the longer I did that the more miserable I became. Once I began to acknowledge that this inner wound lived within me, and I couldn’t hide from it I began the path back to a healthier relationship with myself and within my own romantic relationship. Being free of such a limiting wound, truly liberated me to enjoy all relationships more fully.
As always, thank you for being here with me,
