Wounds of the Father: A True Story of Child Abuse, Betrayal, and Redemption

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If you experienced childhood emotional neglect you may repeat the pattern as you don’t know any different. Perhaps you become a practical parent and struggle with emotionally engaging with your child(ren). You may find this post useful: Parenting when you have experienced childhood emotional neglect and/or trauma . 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. A first step is to get to know your father more deeply. What was his childhood like? Was he mistreated or bullied? Was he wounded?

Related: Forgiving Someone Who Isn’t Sorry: 9-Step Guide To Free Yourself From The Past #7. Seek Support Find a supportive friend or seek the help of a mental health professional who understands the grief process can help you move forward. The first step is to identify and accept that you have a father wound. Next, you’ll want to seek professional therapy to help you work through this trauma. Your therapist may walk you through viewing things through your father’s eyes. Not all fathers deserve forgiveness, but some may. Additionally, your therapist may prepare you to confront your father so you can feel heard and explain the impact his actions had on your life. From there, you’ll learn to disengage from some of the beliefs and behaviors you adopted due to your father wound. You can then make a concerted effort to become an improved version of yourself and credit how far you’ve come. Healing Help From FHE Health If your father often arrived late or missed important events in your life, you may overcompensate by setting extremely rigid boundaries in adulthood. You may feel everything needs to be scheduled and planned, and you can’t easily forgive people for being late, canceling or wanting to reschedule. This is an attempt to regain a sense of control you didn’t have growing up with an absent father. Loose Boundaries It’s no surprise there’s a lot of literature out there on the “mother wound.” The damage a mother can have on a child when she’s emotionally or physically unavailable is undeniable. And yet, the “father wound” isn’t talked about nearly enough, considering the significant impact it can have on a person.

Anger and resentment: Frustration, anger, or resentment towards the absent or neglectful father figure for not fulfilling their role or providing support. Trust issues: Difficulty trusting others, especially male figures, due to past experiences of betrayal or emotional neglect.

Like his wife, her father is a reborn Christian. However, he is not a good man. He is an ogre with a bipolar character. A simple evening meal with his family could be at his whim, enjoyable, on others, it could turn into a charade of harsh words, of fear! His monstrous, demanding and domineering persona was without a doubt, the root of all evils. 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). Growing up you may have felt different as a child if all your friends had two parents and you grew up without a father. You may feel alone in your grief over your father. That might be true. There aren’t many support groups for father wounds. 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. You may wish to read “People pleasing can make you anxious and resentful – How to stop it” Rather than believing that your father hurt you because you were unlovable or not worthy, you begin to realize that what he did wasn’t about you, but rather a reflection of the person he is and the circumstances he has been through.

Damage Caused by a Father Wound

Effects of the father wound include low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, shame, a performance orientation, etc. Emotional numbness: A tendency to suppress or disconnect from emotions as a protective mechanism, making it challenging to connect with others emotionally.

Once you identified negative messages from your father and childhood, start to challenge them with questions such as: As a mom, I found myself heartbroken on more than one occasion, as someone who grew up with a totalitarian father in a household that screamed and slammed doors as part of their day to day existence I was scared, and as someone who has watched someone I care about push me away and lie because they were deep in their own addiction it gave me perspective. Try to know more deeply your father's adolescence. Did he feel like a failure at all? How? Might that wound, being unhealed, be part of his interactions with you? I started this book with trepidation as not only is it a genre which I have never read about, but up until now, it is also a subject frivolously ignored by me. This sounds very flippant; however, I am sure the majority of parents and young adults who will hopefully read this book, haven't had this kind of experience or have had to live such a tragedy like Elizabeth's. If we can all learn a little something from her harsh lesson, the author's words will never be in vain.Those questions aren’t meant to excuse what your father did, but they can help you externalize the blame. Her mother. I could have strangled her throughout this read, and I must point out that I would have liked to have known more about her abominable attitude towards her daughter. We find out snippets of information that shed a little light regarding her stance. Completely submissive towards her husband, she will go to great lengths to convince herself that Elizabeth is the culprit, but can be redeemed if she accepts God! Such statements express regret. But you can’t hold yourself responsible for what didn’t know or couldn’t have done as a child. You may also take this a step further and write a letter from your father to yourself where you write down everything you would have wanted to hear from him.