Heal The Father Wound, Gain Your Sanity, Stop Sabotaging
In this solo YouTube presentation, Connor Beaton explains how a "father wound"—the gap between what a boy needed from his father and what he actually received—undermines men’s sense of self‑worth and identity. He outlines the essential paternal blessings a boy seeks (being seen, understood, "got", and mattered), and describes three common father types: absent, "ghost" (emotionally unavailable), and harsh (critically controlling). Beaton then details five typical adult manifestations of an unresolved wound: chronic proving, passivity/collapse, anger/control, emotional shutdown, and distrust of male mentorship. He distills the core identity wound to the belief, "I don’t know who I am as a man because no one ever showed me I mattered." The bulk of the talk offers a three‑step healing framework framed as training, not therapy: (1) tell the real story—craft an honest, unsent letter to the father to articulate facts, needs, and impacts; (2) grieve—allow oneself to feel the loss and sadness, using men’s groups or a therapist to process emotions; (3) refather yourself—seek mentorship, build protective self‑talk, acquire skills the father failed to teach, and practice self‑compassion. Throughout, Beaton provides concrete exercises (journaling prompts, letter writing, reading aloud), references the ManTalks Alliance, and encourages community support. The talk concludes with a call to share insights and continue the work.
Chapters
So today I'm gonna be talking about how dealing with your father wound as a man is a path to a more resilient, stronger, and more robust sense of identity for yourself as a man, whether you are a father now, whether you want to be in the future, whether, you know, or whether you don't want to be, right? You just want to have a deeper level of self-confidence and worth and value in the world, because the reality is that when you as a man have a father wound, it deeply disrupts your sense of self-worth and value. In fact, every single man that I have ever worked with, I mean, probably with a few exceptions, but the vast, vast majority of men that I have worked with who have self-worth issues, not self-esteem, but inherent self-worth, have some type of real rupture With their father. And that might mean the father that walked out. It might mean the guy that was abusive, the father who was emotionally distant and disconnected, the dad that was there but didn't really know who you were, or the dad that was there and was so overbearing and verbally abusive and hypercritical that nothing was ever good enough. So for a lot of men, they have the perception that The father wound is specifically just for the guys whose dads walked out or the dads were abusive, but that's not the case. So in today's video, I'm gonna be talking to you about what the father wound actually is, the impact that it has on your sense of self and your life, and the steps that you can take to reclaim and heal that part of yourself. So let's begin with what the father wound actually is. The very simple version of this is that the father wound is the gap between what you needed as a boy from your father and what you actually got from him. And every kid needs some basic things. They need to be seen, they need to be understood, they need to be gotten, and they need to be— they need to know that they matter, right? So they need to be seen, they need to see dad, right? You needed to see dad watching you do things, hit the ball, you know, shoot the puck, climb the tree. You need to feel like, oh, somebody sees me and that's— I'm important to them. You need to feel or needed to feel like you were understood, that dad cared about you. He really took an interest in trying to understand the way you thought or saw the world, or, you know, what you enjoyed, what made you happy, when you were sad, when you felt disconnected. You needed to feel got. So when I say that, what I mean is, You needed to know that your dad actually got who you are or what you meant or how you felt. And the last piece is that you actually matter, that you mattered to him, that he wanted you. And I've called this claiming in the past, that a lot of young boys grew up with a father that they didn't feel claimed by in some way, shape, or form. So maybe dad was present, Maybe dad would communicate, maybe, you know, he'd show up to the games, but there was something missing where you just didn't feel like you mattered to your father. And that could be because he was a workaholic or he always seemed to be preoccupied with his own stuff. But a son really needs those pieces. And, and he needs 3 main things, which is he needs to be blessed. And the blessing is, I see you. And you are enough, you matter to me. He needs a kind of initiation. Here's how to be a man in the world, right? So there's very simple things there. For some guys, it's like, I wanted dad to show me how to shave, right? Like the cliché, but the very real thing. I wanted dad to teach me how to drive. I wanted dad to teach me what to do with money and how to pay taxes and save and earn and invest. I wanted dad to teach me how to use my body and be strong. And those types of things initiate a boy into manhood. He gets to see his dad doing that in the world and learn those things. And a boy needs protection. Every single boy needs protection from his father. And so you need to know as a kid, like, you know, dad's got my back, whether it's sometimes from mom or from the world or bullies or life or the monsters or the dark or whatever it is. And when one of these things is missing, If you didn't feel got or understood or seen or like you mattered, if you didn't get the, I see you and you are enough and you matter to me, or here are the things that I want to teach you that you need to know and understand in order to be a good man or in order to be good at being a man, right? Here's how you be disciplined in the world. Here's how you develop a deep sense of self, right? And so this is something that I'm really focused in on with my son right now. And I have this saying to him, which is, You're a good kid and that behavior or that action wasn't okay. And I say this to them all the time, right? When he breaks the rules, when he gets something wrong, I reinforce, you're good. You have inherent worth and value. Nothing's wrong with you. That choice, that decision, that action, that wasn't great and we probably need to work on that. And because of things like that, my son has a very deep sense of self-appreciation. So much so that the other day, and by the way, I'm not a perfect dad. I'm not perfect by any means. I still, you know, get impatient. And I still get frustrated with him and I still, you know, get agitated and want things to be different. But the other day we were, we were having a conversation in the kitchen and he said, Dad, I really love you. And I said, I love you too, buddy. And he said, you know who else I love? And I said, who? And he said, Mom. And I said, oh, okay, great. And he said, you know who I love maybe even more than you and Mom? And I said, who? And he said, myself. And I was like, damn, buddy. It's like, that's amazing. You know, because as a kid, I didn't feel like that, you know? And as a young man, I didn't feel like that. I didn't have an ingrained inherent sense of self-worth and love towards myself. And this is what we are meant to receive. This is the blessing of the father that is meant to be passed down into us. And that's not a Christian reference, right? It's not a God reference. It is a reference of, this is what psychologically is meant to be bestowed upon you as a boy, that you get this type of love and validation that you fundamentally matter from the man that brought you into this world, the man that you idolize and are trying to emulate. And when this is missing, you as a boy don't think, oh, dad has limitations, or, oh, you know what? Dad is just having a bad day and that's why he's yelling, or that's why he hit me, or that's why he's super critical. You know, dad's got his own stuff. Kids don't have that perspective. They're little bundles of egos. And so when you were a boy and your dad didn't check in on you, didn't protect you, would scream and yell, you know, would hit or be abusive or verbally abusive, you personalized that as something's wrong with you. You did something wrong and there was something wrong with you. And this normally shows up in a few different ways. So the father wound shows up in a few different ways that I'm going to lay out for you. And then we're gonna talk about how it gets passed down and what you can do with it. So the first way is the absent father. And the absent father is physically absent. Maybe he's gone through divorce, maybe he just peaced out, maybe he was never really around, maybe there was abandonment, or maybe he even passed away, right? Maybe he died at some point early on in your life. And so he's gone. And there's just kind of a vacancy there where there should have been your dad. And maybe you had a great stepfather. Yeah. Or maybe you didn't, but there's still this longing and this yearning to know the person that brought you into this world. And the absence of that can create a kind of psychological vacancy that you don't really know how to step into the maturation, the fullness of the maturation process to become a mature man. And so part of you always feels like it's stuck in the gear of childhood, like it's stuck in this boyhood. Yeah. The second one is the, what I've started to call ghost dad. And ghost dad is so common. It's the dad who was physically there, maybe sometimes, maybe not a lot, but he was emotionally unavailable. He was psychologically unavailable, physically unavailable. Maybe he never told you that he loved you. He didn't hug you. You didn't really know how he felt about much of anything. You couldn't really feel him emotionally, or he didn't really seem to know who you were. as a boy. And so it kind of felt like he was a ghost to you. And the last version is the harsh father. This is the father who is extremely critical. He's very volatile. He's very controlling. He's got his hands in everything that you do. And love kind of feels conditional based off of performance. You get praise, you get validation, but you only do it when you are performing at a standard that he deems to be worthy. And so that type of harsh father And a harsh father can really hinder a boy from feeling like he's ever enough. And it can cause you to feel like you have to perform in order to be worthy and deserving of love. And this can create an extremely harsh, toxic, almost violent inner critic, like a really abusive inner critic. The men that I've worked with who had extremely harsh fathers, It's very common that if you had that type of dad, that your inner critic is really harsh, usually abusive. And so a boy doesn't need a perfect father. There's no such thing as a perfect father. He needs a father who's there. He needs a father who sees him, who understands him, who protects him, who gets him, and who installs— and I really want this to be clear— installs a sense of you deeply matter to me, you deeply matter to me. And that's really what every boy and every child is craving. And when any of that is absent, it creates the father wound. And so what I'd like for you to start with, whether you have a pen and paper or a note on your computer, is what contributed to my father wound based on everything that I said. Like, did your dad never really see you? Did he not show up to your games? Did he not understand you? you? Um, did— was it always a big question mark whether or not you mattered to him, whether or not he chose you or claimed you, right? Every boy wants to feel claimed by his dad, like, you are my son and I'm so happy that you are. I say this to my boy all the time. I'm like, man, I am so glad that you are my son. I tell him this, I don't know, a couple times a month, you know. I make sure I'm like, dude, I'm so glad you're my son. Like, what a blessing you are in my life. And that instills— because every boy again wants to like know, like, do you— do I matter to you? Are you— are you happy with me? Are you proud of me? Do you— do you claim that I'm yours and that that is something valuable and meaningful to you? So what I'd like for you to do is just look what was absent, what was missing in your childhood, or what was present in your childhood from your father that was deeply painful? Are there things that you wanted him to understand about you? Are you— are there things that you wanted him to see about you? Were there times in your life where you genuinely needed his protection and he wasn't there, or you genuinely needed protection from him? Were there ways in which he undercut that you mattered to him? So just start to journal about some of those questions and flush out what is the origin of your father wound? What did it look like? What created it? What installed it inside of you? The next piece that I want to go into is the ramifications of this. Now, if you, if you have this type of father wound, it's going to shape your identity in a few specific ways. So when a, when a boy doesn't receive this Blessing, when he doesn't receive this, I know I matter to Dad, I know I'm enough for Dad, there are some common patterns that begin to show up. The first one is this chronic proving. So you become a man, you move from a boy to a man who exchanges Dad for the world, exchanges Dad for the economy, for a boss, for a work environment, for an audience. And you get stuck in this pattern of trying to overachieve, trying to prove, overworking, chasing approval from bosses, from mentors, from women, from the market, and nothing ever feels good enough. So you're locked in this pattern of, I have to prove that I am worthy. And because I couldn't get that from dad, I'm now going to take that pain and create an identity that is trying to get that from the world. And for some of you, you have knocked it out of the park. You've hit a grand slam on becoming somebody that has proved your worth out into the world, built successful businesses or careers, become very good at getting praise and accolades and achievements within your work and your vocation. And yet it still feels like something's missing inside of you. No matter how much you do or achieve or accomplish, there's this missing piece. Like, man, I've won all the awards, all the achievements, all the accomplishments, and it still feels like I'm not enough, like I'm not good enough. So that's one part. The other way it can show up is passivity and collapse. So you might be some— be someone that really avoids conflict, that struggles to make decisions, You have a hard time finding a sense of direction and maintaining that sense of direction, or you find yourself constantly, especially in relationships, handing everything over to your significant other. Like, they call the shots, they make the decisions, the direction of your life and the relationship is all based off of what they want. And you have a really hard time inserting your needs, your wants, your desires, your vision your standards into most places. Maybe you just keep your mouth shut at work and you just do your job. And you never talk about the things that you think could be improved or the standards that could be in place. The next thing is really about anger and control. So depending on the type of father wound that you have, you could become really harsh and you could become the sort of harsh father that you swore that you'd never be. And that might not show up with your kids because you might not have kids, but it might show up in your relationship or in your friends or with your work environment where you are just, you're an angry, sharp, sometimes demeaning, very controlling individual. And you need things to go a very specific way, otherwise you're not okay. And that's very much a— Yeah. a byproduct of what you saw. What you saw was, I need to perform this very specific way in order for my dad to be okay. And you unconsciously viewed it as this very powerful position, right? Whether you liked it or not is almost irrelevant for this part of the conversation. 'Cause a lot of men end up enacting tremendous amounts of control. They're angry, they're volatile, they're hostile, they're aggressive in the work environment, in relationships, they're hyper-controlling. And they are embodying the way that their father was, even though they said, oh, I'll never be like him. I'll never be like him. I'll never be like him. And a part of you becomes like him because you saw it as safe. You saw it as powerful. You saw it as the position of superiority. And you were always in the position of inferiority as the And when this happens, for a lot of you, the reason why you move into that space of anger and control and needing everything to be a very specific way is that you are unintentionally, especially in your intimate relationships, putting people in your life that you love in the exact same position that you were in as a boy. Because you've learned unconsciously— again, this isn't like a conscious intent. that the position of power and superiority, the position of safety, it's an illusion of safety, is to be in this hyper-controlling place. The next one is that you are emotionally shut down. So this is a lot of men that grew up with ghost dad where you couldn't feel dad. You're the avoidant, the disconnected, the kind of aloof, not really too sure how to ask for your needs or what your needs are. You're really emotionally shut down. You're always fine. Maybe you provide for your significant other and your kids, but they can never feel like they reach you. They don't really feel like they know you. And you likely feel that way too. You don't really feel like other people know who you are or know what's going on inside of you. And so you become this emotionally distant, emotionally shut down individual because that is the way that you were raised and treated. And the last piece of all this is you have a distrust of men, male friendships, and especially male mentorship and leadership. And I see this all the time where men with really deep father wounds will either— sometimes they'll bifurcate into 2 paths. They will pedestal any man that has some wisdom and they'll put him up on some big, big pedestal way above himself, especially older men, right? They'll sort of revere them because They're— maybe you're trying to get something from them that fills the fatherhood hole or wound inside of you, or you just will not open yourself up to other men. You're scared of other men. You're scared of real deep friendship and connection with other men. You are anti-authority. You are constantly pushing back and testing men who are in positions of leadership from your perspective. And you do not trust male mentorship. It is the most confronting piece for you. And I see this a lot for the men that come into the Alliance. They say, oh, I want to do the work. I'm ready to do the work. And then when a man is guiding them, it becomes deeply confronting for them to open up, to be honest, to be helped, to be supported, to be loved for, to be cared about, all of those things, to be challenged, confronted. All of it feels very, very, very confronting and overwhelming because you have learned that that male mentorship in some capacity is dangerous. It's a threat. So the core identity wound for you as a man that has a fatherhood wound is as follows. And I would encourage you to write this down. The core identity wound can almost be summarized as the following: I don't know who I am as a man because no one ever showed me that I mattered. And no one ever told me that I was enough. I don't know who I am as a man. There's parts of me I do not know and that I will not reveal because no one showed me that I mattered. And no one ever told me that I was enough. And specifically, no one is dad. Dad didn't show me that I mattered or that I was enough. So here, I'd just like for you to reflect a little bit, which of the previous identities, the way that it shows up in your current life, Really resonated with you? Was it the anger and control? Is it the passivity and collapse? Is it this chronic proving that you're just on this hamster wheel, this treadmill of trying to prove to other people and to the world that you matter and that you have some level of significance? What is your— how does your father wound actually show up in the world? All right. Now the moment that Many of you have been waiting for. What do you do with the father wound? What do you do with it? Well, I'm going to give you 3 moves, 3 ways to start to work with this specific wound. Okay? And as we say in ManTalks, this isn't therapy, this is training. So I don't want you to take this as like, oh, these are 3 nice concepts that I'm going to think about. No, this is— these are 3 things that I want you to start to implement. These are 3 things that I want you to start to execute on and take action on. And I'll probably have a little bonus for you at the end. So these are things that I don't just want you to understand. These are things I want you to do. So number 1, step number 1, tell the real story. Tell the true story. Most men, when they start to talk about their father wound and they start to talk about the pain that they've been in, They begin to tell a version of the story that is bifurcated, that's untrue, right? Oh, my dad was fine. My dad was okay. My dad did his best. And they become defensive of their father. They excuse their dad and they sort of whitewash their father of any responsibility of what they're dealing with. And on the other side is the aggressive, violent version, right? He was just a piece of crap. I hated him. Da da da da da da. And so it's either absolving dad or aggression and extreme hostility towards dad, and both keep you stuck because it's not the full picture. So healing of the father wound really starts when you begin to outline, understand, and communicate the real version. What happened? What are the facts about what happened? What's the truth about what you really needed from him? What's the truth about what you got? The good, the bad, the ugly. What's the truth about what you didn't get? And what is the truth? And this is the hard one for a lot of guys. What is the truth about how it affected you? Now, a lot of men that have a father wound, the challenge with it, the reason why they never really move through it. Is because they're never truly honest about how it affected them. They don't want to come into contact with the pain, or sometimes the anger, sometimes the grief and the sadness and the deep sorrow that they have in their hearts about how their father's absence or his critical nature or his abuse truly affected him. And this isn't about keeping you stuck in a blame cycle. Okay, this isn't about just passing blame on to dad. It's being able to say, here's the truth of what happened in its totality. And an interesting research piece on this, because I know y'all love the research, attachment research describes— attachment researchers describe this as earned security. Okay, earned security. So adults who have had difficult childhoods and have had difficult relationships with caregivers, with parents. They can still develop secure attachments. But one of the most important pieces, in fact, one of the strongest markers that you've moved towards secure attachment is that you're able to tell a coherent, honest story about your past. You're not deflecting, you're not blaming and shaming. You're able to say, Here's the fact of the matter. Here's what actually happened. Now, the part of this that's really important is to experience what you are saying, not just as a concept, again, not just as a narrative, not just as a story, but for a period of time to be able to say, you know what, my dad was abusive, right? To be able to talk in your men's group or in your coaching session or therapy session, and to be able to say, he was abusive and here's how it impacted me. And to feel the emotion of that impact, to feel the grief and the sadness of having a father who hurt you, or having a father who just didn't seem to give a shit about what you were doing with your life, who just never really took an interest in who you were, who never took the time to understand who you were, and still to this day probably doesn't have a clue who you are. So to feel the grief of that and the truth of that, again, not to deflect, not to blame and shame, not, not to be aggressive, but to just say, this is the truth of the story and how it impacted me. So a practice that I'll leave you with on this front is write a one-page letter to your father that you're not going to send to him. Okay? You're not going to send to him. But in it, I want you to be clear, direct, honest, and transparent about everything that we just talked about— what you genuinely needed, what was missing, what it was like for you to be his son. And you might even want to start with, dear Dad, I want to share with you what it was like to be your son— all the good, all the bad, all the ugly. Here's what I really needed. You missed me in this way. I really needed you to see and understand this part of me. It deeply hurt me that I never knew how you were feeling about me or in life, or that you didn't show me how to do this basic shit that I needed in order to be a man. And then, you know, I struggled for years because you didn't teach me how to stay in shape or how to have good hygiene or how to take care of my finances. You didn't show me any of this stuff. So practice by writing this 1, 2, 3-page letter that you are not going to send. You're not sending to him. And as you do it, allow yourself to really feel what it is that you're writing. Now, bonus points if you're in a men's group or if you're in the Alliance, in the MenTalks Alliance, that this exercise is something that I would strongly recommend that you bring into working with the coach, working with the therapist, working with your men's group and saying, hey, I'm doing this exercise, I'm healing this wound from my dad, and I'd like to read this off to you. And that can be a great starting point for you to do this work. The second step is to grieve. Don't just understand, okay? I remember, uh, there's a— one of my core memories is witnessing my parents' divorce. And I was about 3 and a half, 4 years old, and I came downstairs and I was in my pajamas and I could hear them yelling. And I watched my dad walk out the door and my mom collapsed and she's crying. And that was the end of their marriage. And it's so wild to me because for years I had this core memory and for years it was always a concept. You know, it was just something that had happened that I had seen and I had no emotional connection to it until one day I started to really dig in through some work with a friend and a mentor of mine. To what it was like to witness the literal death of my parents' marriage and to have my life fundamentally change and to grieve the loss of my father, who then left the house, who then was not present as much in my life. I only saw him twice a month, 4 or 5 days a month. And to feel the grief that that child then had, that me as a boy, Yeah. had to go through. So you as a, you as a man, we as men, we're great at intellectualizing. You are likely great at being able to look back and analyze the situation and have a checklist of all the things that were maybe missing or challenging or detrimental, etc. But we need to have feelings that accompany that. We need to allow ourselves to grieve. the things that were damaging, that were harmful. We need to be able to move into the genuine anger for the situations that happened. And so a lot of men, they can explain perfectly what caused the pain without actually experiencing it, feeling it, or grieving what put it there in the first place. So the second part of this is you have to be able to grieve. And understanding without grieving keeps this wound in place. It keeps it frozen and stuck in place. And grieving means feeling the loss of your father, the loss of the man that you actually needed, that you didn't get, that you didn't have. And sometimes it also means accepting that you're never going to get that from him. Right? That he just is incapable of showing up in that way, or maybe he's not in your life, or whatever it is. So, we have to allow ourselves to genuinely grieve. And you can do that in a good men's group. You can check out the ManTalks Alliance. You can go into therapy. You can do that with a good coach. But part of what you can do is maybe take the letter that you just wrote and bring it into your men's group and read it out loud. But read it from a place where you let it affect you. You consciously say, I'm going to once and for all allow this pain, this absence, this wounding to affect me. And I'm going to do the brave and courageous thing, which is let another man see the wounding that my father inflicted on me, that, that he intentionally or unintentionally placed into my heart, in my life, in my body. And so read that letter aloud, right? Let your body respond. Let your mind and your heart respond. Let your— let yourself actually feel the grief for that boy. And if you really struggle to access the grief, work with somebody who is good at helping you get into what I call your direct felt experience. Work with somebody that can help you access that. Because for a lot of young boys that have a father wound, they've been conditioned not to trust other men specifically with the truth of how they feel. So you have been conditioned, many of you watching this, and you'll know exactly what I mean, have been conditioned to not let other men see how you feel, whether it's anger or grief or sadness. You can talk about it all the time, But you never actually let them see the emotions that you feel under the surface. So work with a practitioner that can help you connect to that and bring it forward and out into the world. Now, the last piece is a bigger one that I think I'll probably do another video on, but I'm going to lay the groundwork for it here, which is refather yourself. Okay? We need to start to refather yourself. Yeah. Now you can't go back and fill in what you missed. You can't go back and change what happened, but you can begin to give that to yourself right now. So you have to go father yourself, right? I said that at a men's weekend at one point, and he was like, oh, I thought you said— like, I thought you were going to say like, go fuck yourself. You said go father yourself. And I was like, yeah, you have to go father yourself. So you have to learn to build relationships with other men where you can Receive the gift of masculine presence, of mentorship, of guidance from other men that have something, that have developed something that you've been missing or lacking or craving or wanting. And then you have to start to act in ways of giving yourself the things that you genuinely needed. So very simple things, right? When the inner critic shows up, you're able to set some boundaries with that inner critic, right? No, I'm not gonna talk to myself like that. I'm not gonna engage with myself like that. And you start to interfere with the inner critic as a parent protecting a child, okay? You start to interfere and inject yourself between the inner critic and your deeper self. And you start to protect yourself from the hostility that you normally inflict on yourself. This is one of the byproducts of having a father wound, is that many men never got that protection. And so they are perpetuating this type of self-harm by extremely aggressive, critical, harsh, demeaning, abusive inner commentary. So the way that many of you treat yourself is abhorrent, right? Which is plain and simple. The way that many of you allow yourself to talk to yourself, to treat yourself, is not only disrespectful, but it's a way in which that says, I'm not protecting myself. I can't protect myself. People don't protect me. And it perpetuates the father wound. The other piece is beginning to understand what is it that younger you genuinely wanted from dad? Was it about understanding and about being understood? Then maybe it's really about having some specific relationships with other men where you say, I really want to work on you understanding me. And this is what a great men's group and men's community can be about, is that you can start to heal that father wound within that work, within that context. So you can say, I want you to understand me. And so I'd like to share my story with you so that you understand what I've gone through. I want you to understand what I really appreciate and admire and respect. And What lights me up and what brings me life and vitality. The other thing is that you start to figure out what younger you needed to be taught from dad and wanted to explore with dad. And that might be adventure, that might be, that might be camping, that might be learning a specific skill, right? Maybe your dad was a woodworker. He just never showed you how to woodwork, or he was you know, into cars, but he, you know, every time you tried to help him, he'd just yell and was critical and harsh. And so you never really got to learn about how to fix a car. So start to identify what are the practical, tactical things that I really wanted Dad to teach me? Maybe it was emotional regulation. Maybe it was the ability to have your anger under control because he didn't. Maybe it was the ability to be sad or be affected or moved or so joyful and happy that, you know, you're moved to tears in life because you just saw this emotional vacancy within him. Maybe it's on the emotional side, maybe it's on the psychological side, or maybe it's actual skills and hobbies, right? Maybe you wanted him to teach you photography or how to shave or how to change a tire or what to do with your taxes or how to invest. So what was the boy really craving from your dad that you wanted him to teach you or model for you and start to do that now? Like, write the list out and start to father yourself in that way, because fathering yourself isn't just about the way that you treat yourself and how you deal with your emotions. That's a big part of it. The other part of it is actually beginning to teach yourself the things that you wanted your father to show you, the things that you wanted your father to embody so that you could model it. And sometimes that's going to mean— Yeah. hiring somebody else, right? Like going and taking woodworking lessons or photography lessons. Sometimes that's going to mean hiring a coach or a really adept therapist to support you in the process of integrating some of these things and interrupting some of these psychological patterns that are reinforcing the wound. So thank you, thank you, thank you for tuning into this. I gave you a good amount. I hope that you have found something very, very valuable in this. For all of you that have stayed through to the end, I hope that you took notes. Please do not forget to man it forward and share this, maybe with a man in your men's group or a buddy of yours. You know, maybe if you and your dad are doing some reconciliation work, maybe you send it to him and it can lead to a great discussion. But either way, thank you so much for tuning in. Please comment in the comment section below and let me know what you specifically took from this and what follow-up questions you'd like me to touch on. Talk to you next time.
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