Healing The “Father Wound”

Seek your own approval and validation

Show up how you want to be treated

Feel the unfelt feelings of the past

Practice emoting

Be available to your own needs and to others

Write a letter to your father then burn it

Practice affection with others

Forgive yourself

Be more consistent in how you show up

Avoid extreme behaviors

Mourn the father you never had AND celebrate the learnings

My relationship with my father from the beginning was challenging. I look back at my life and I see almost everything I did, how I did it, how I felt about myself, and how I gave and received the love that came from a place of seeking his approval and validation.

I just wanted him to love me for who I was… Or did I? What I really wanted to be taught how to love myself through the eyes of someone that I would pedestalize, deify, and sought their care and affection from.

I wanted to learn how to love myself, to see myself, and accept who I was, without shame and pain. We often look to what is familiar in order for us to relate, learn, and grow.

I couldn’t understand why one day I would be beaten, the next day ignored and the next day showed affection. It fucked with my mind, my heart hurt and I began to twist and contort my actions, thoughts, and expressions to fit in with what I thought was “right”…

That never happened, I just kept wearing masks and losing who I was… I lost my confidence and needed to compensate, it began with forgetting through alcohol and quickly transitioned to sex, objectifying women, and using sex to feel better about myself.

I was in a losing war, all the while unconsciously and unknowingly wanting to be loved by my father… But was it what I truly wanted… It wasn’t. I needed self-love and that the level of acceptance eluded me for so long…

I found it when I stopped caring what others thought of me and needed me to be. As I healed this father-wound I healed my need to be someone I was not. I hurt others in an attempt to free myself from the pain and project it onto others; as this changed my relationship to my own masculinity shifted…

Yours can too… The biggest mistake we make is thinking we are alone. We are not. In every men’s space and circle, I hold, whether it is 10 men or 200, the commonality amongst our issues is the same pain. Men, women, it doesn’t matter. We process fear the same and the fragility of our psyche experiences and processes trauma and pain the same.

We break the shackles of the past when we come together. 

One is glad to be of service.

Photo by: https://unsplash.com/@im_manishupadhyay

STEFANOS SIFANDOS

Relational Alchemist, Speaker & Author