A Better Way to Heal Your Father Wound
Noted author Gail Sheehy once wrote, "The lack of loving, respectful relationships with their fathers is one of the greatest tragedies males suffer."
How about you? Was your father emotionally close to you?
Let me share with you an emerging new power.
Fatherhood can heal. As men learn to be involved Dads, they exert important effects on the emotional well being of their children.
And, by extension, on their own emotional and mental health.
One spots this truth on Nick. He repeatedly expressed a sentiment during our sessions: "I want to be a good father to my two children. I don't want to have a relationship with my kids that I had with my own father."
Nick knows. He wants it so much between himself and his children. Rather than be seen by his kids as a remote, controlling disciplinarian, he desires them to see him as kind, trustworthy, and dependable.
"Fathering is one of men's greatest opportunities for personal transformation," says Dr. William Pollack, assistant clinical professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
I think Daddies are changing nowadays. A new-model Dad is on display inside malls. One carries his baby girl around his neck, her little hands, grasping his fingers. Masculinity redefined via reinventing fatherhood.
I've met men and women in my sessions countless times suffering from "father wound." Quite a number struggle to heal and break the cycle. Warming up to their own children doesn't come naturally for they never had a "hugging relationship" with their own fathers.
But almost all of them sense a level of need to reconnect with their children. Bridge the awkwardness with them. It's a longing to repossess their own emotional lives largely shut down for most of their adulthood.
An effective way for psychologically wounded men to feel loved and needed and healed is to be a different Dad - a work-invested father without losing the chance for closeness with one's children.
Indeed, significant studies on fatherhood affirm that being a success as a nurturing parent is actually good for a person's mental, spiritual, and physical health.
A better way to heal your father wound. Will you miss it?
How about you? Was your father emotionally close to you?
Let me share with you an emerging new power.
Fatherhood can heal. As men learn to be involved Dads, they exert important effects on the emotional well being of their children.
And, by extension, on their own emotional and mental health.
One spots this truth on Nick. He repeatedly expressed a sentiment during our sessions: "I want to be a good father to my two children. I don't want to have a relationship with my kids that I had with my own father."
Nick knows. He wants it so much between himself and his children. Rather than be seen by his kids as a remote, controlling disciplinarian, he desires them to see him as kind, trustworthy, and dependable.
"Fathering is one of men's greatest opportunities for personal transformation," says Dr. William Pollack, assistant clinical professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
I think Daddies are changing nowadays. A new-model Dad is on display inside malls. One carries his baby girl around his neck, her little hands, grasping his fingers. Masculinity redefined via reinventing fatherhood.
I've met men and women in my sessions countless times suffering from "father wound." Quite a number struggle to heal and break the cycle. Warming up to their own children doesn't come naturally for they never had a "hugging relationship" with their own fathers.
But almost all of them sense a level of need to reconnect with their children. Bridge the awkwardness with them. It's a longing to repossess their own emotional lives largely shut down for most of their adulthood.
An effective way for psychologically wounded men to feel loved and needed and healed is to be a different Dad - a work-invested father without losing the chance for closeness with one's children.
Indeed, significant studies on fatherhood affirm that being a success as a nurturing parent is actually good for a person's mental, spiritual, and physical health.
A better way to heal your father wound. Will you miss it?
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