Connor BeatonFound of ManTalks | Empowering Men to Build Better Lives, Relationships, and Minds

You Can Rise Above Childhood Confusion

18 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt from the YouTube video "You Can Rise Above Childhood Confusion," Connor Beaton and a speaker discuss the concept of "fathering oneself," describing the animosity and shame that can accompany this internal role. Beaton explains how growing up in an unpredictable or unsafe environment—where love, affection, and safety are inconsistent—creates chronic stress and fear in a child. This chronic confusion disrupts the development of core aspects of self, including trust, a sense of safety, self‑worth, and a coherent identity. The lingering uncertainty manifests as persistent question marks about one’s own value and reliability, highlighting how early relational instability can have lasting psychological effects.

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The fathering myself is, I think, something that I knew was going to be a part of this process. And I think I just had a lot of animosity and shame around that.
It can be incredibly disruptive to our development and specifically to the development of our sense of self, to our sense of trust, and to our sense of safety, which is pretty much the foundation of who we are and how we relate to ourself. So when you grow up in an environment where you don't know what's going to happen or where the bar is or what's gonna get you love and affection, or what's safe and what's not. That type of confusion within a child's psyche is too much for a child to handle, and it puts a child into a pretty chronic state of stress and fear, and that disrupts our ability to find cohesiveness within our sense of identity. And so it never really fully comes into coherence. Can I trust myself? Do I actually have worth and value? And those things just linger. They just stay as question marks. Mm-hmm.