SSP156: How The Relationship With Your Father Affects Everything

For so many men, there is an invisible force that gets in the way of them showing up with power, confidence and integrity in their life. And this invisible force is father wounds. Now these father wounds show up in so many different ways. And in this video we're going to explore some of these common patterns that often reveal themselves due to an unintegrated masculine wound. And then also how we can start to heal some of these wounds and how we can start to, as men, show up with more of ourselves, more of our fullness and embodiment in our expression. So just take note of this. If you're someone who finds himself, you know, not being able to access his true potential, or he finds you find yourself suppressing aspects of your voice or your truth, it's probably because there is an absent father or there was an absent father figure in your life and there's this gaping hole. There's this gaping wound there. For so many of us, me included, we grew up in a generation where a lot of our fathers were off working long hours. Our fathers were physically present but emotionally absent. And maybe your father, you grew up without a father figure altogether. So there's this big gap in having a healthy masculine role model in your life. And now in your later relationships as an adult, you're noticing some of these patterns and tendencies. So stay with me throughout this video because we're going to really unpack this. We're really going to explore like where is this coming from and how you can really break them to really connect deeper with yourself and most importantly, your purpose and then the women in your life as well. Some of the most common manifestations of the father wound is seeking validation from others. No people pleasing tendencies. Being the nice guy, you know, showing up and being that. That guy that wants to be everyone's friend but is really afraid of speaking up and expressing truth, you know, the inability to set boundaries in a relationship, falling into more passive roles. And for some guys who are, you know, pursuing their higher purpose, maybe it's just playing small in aspects of their life. They know they have more to give, but they just don't seem to have the courage to be able to see, step up to express their fullest potential in the world. And if that sounds like you, I'm going to illuminate some clarity on how you can start to break out of some of these patterns. Because this is something that I struggle with in my own life. And one of the core areas that I want to address that results in the father wound, that results in the imprinting that Holds so many of us back is this core belief that I'm not enough. Now, I want to share with you a bit of my background because growing up, my dad was from Scotland. He migrated to Perth, Western Australia, and he was a really hard man. He worked as a welder, coated pipe welder, and he worked away a lot. He worked offshore when I was. When I was born, he missed. He missed my birth because he's working a stint, four weeks on an oil rig. So he put in a lot of. He was working so hard to provide for our family. And as a result, you know, at times, I lack some of that fatherly figure in my life. And one of the main areas that dad and I connected was through sport, was through soccer. My dream was to play professional soccer growing up, and I was so committed to that, probably from through my dad's influence. Right. But what I soon noticed, the more I committed to showing up in the arena of sport, and my dad was really pushing me in that area. There was conditional love that I received from him. You know, he would, when I were to have a good game in soccer, he would give me praise and love. But when I didn't, yeah, he was very quick to criticize and give me a bit of, like, the cold shoulder if I. If I. If I didn't play well. And I know so many men who grew up with dads like this. It could have been maybe in your academics, could have been in sport arena, whatever arena it was. If your dad didn't have that unconditional love for himself, he was looking to, you know, seek love and approval through the performance of you as a child, Then this conditional love pattern revealed itself. What that does, what that did to me was it created this really tough internal critic, this really hard voice internally that was really quick to criticize myself. It was my dad's voice internally that I adopted that started to judge my performance, not just on the soccer field as a young teenager, but as I was. Grew up later in my life, in my early 20s, as I started to pursue my purpose and my calling in many different areas of performance, Whenever I was going to perform, there was this anxiety back there because I wanted to play well and because I had associated this belief subconsciously that if I didn't play well, I wasn't going to be worthy. I wasn't going to be worthy of dad's love. So what that does is there's this belief that's wired in, probably due to many moments growing up as a child for myself and potentially you, that when you didn't perform, you weren't worthy of receiving. Therefore you had this belief that, hey, maybe I'm not enough. What I did today wasn't good enough. And that belief then becomes this insidious virus that is in the background of your subconscious, always doubting your ability, always putting pressure on your ability to show up and do your best. So notice if you have that really tough inner critic, because this is one of the core wounds of a fatherly figure is feeling like you're never enough. And just notice how that shows up. Because for some of us, it shows up as this shame wound, this self criticism that we put in that turns into internalized, toxic shame because we think that our worthiness is based on something external. Because subconsciously we're trying to seek the resolution of the lack of love we didn't get from our fathers. So I'm going to go into in a moment on how you can start to heal that, but I want to just shine the light on that. It's one of the core wounds that the father wound up shows up as in your life. So one of the core breakthroughs I had in my own journey around that, how to break that I'm not enough wound and the pressure to always be performing was when I started to slow down and examine some of these stories and beliefs that were coming up in me that would result in my body contracting, my body going to anxiety, my going, my body going into rigidity in how I was showing up, be it in my career or my business or on the sporting field, examining that and slowing down and asking this question, hey, where is this coming from? You know, what is it that I really need here? What is it that I'm afraid of? You know, it was that fear of failure, you know, the fear of, you know, letting people down, letting my dad down, right? This subconscious program, the more I was able to sit with that and validate, accept, allow and embrace some of the fears that were back there and be present with it. And where it showed up in my body, there was a rewiring that began to happen. There was an energy of abundance and enoughness that, that started to get unlocked. And some of affirmations that you can play with around this is like, hey, nothing really matters. Nothing's that serious as it seems. The mind makes it. The affirmation is, hey, I'm unconditionally loved always by this grand intelligence that beats my heart. If you believe in a higher power, be it God or nature or spirit or the divine mother, the divine Father, tap into that energy and start to allow it to reassure you that you are secure, you are safe, you are loved no matter how you perform. And the more I started to do that via meditation and introspective contemplative practices, the more I developed a level of trust with myself, the more I developed an unconditional love for myself. It then allowed me to access this playful energy that as a child you're probably embodying effortlessly. It's what allows us to be successful as a high performing man in sports or businesses is we love to play, we love to have fun. That's why we do these things. And that's when I reflected on some of my best soccer games growing up, is when I just like, I let go of the pressure. You know, it's funny, some of my best soccer games when my dad wasn't there because I knew the pressure wasn't there to just perform and I could just have fun and let that free spirit to come out. So now as an adult, my challenge or what I try to practice with myself is tap into that playful energy, remind myself that, hey, don't take things so seriously. If you fail, who cares? You're always going to be loved. Like God's always going to pick you back up and you're going to be fine. So just enjoy it, you know, and not reaffirming or the practice of reinstalling this belief that I'm enough, I've always been enough, I always will be enough unlocks this energy of playfulness that also results in some of the best performance to come through. So use that as a bit of a practice. The mantra, the affirmation to sit with the emotional fear when it does come up and provide that reassurance and nurturance, be that fatherly figure for yourself that you didn't get so that you can free up some of this stuff stuck energy and you can access more of your performance and more of yourself. Now I want to speak to one of the other big, big indicators of a father wound is this nice guy tendency that very much shows up in so many men who struggle with this, you know, the approval seeking behavior, the conflict avoidance. And I know for me that my dad sometimes didn't have or usually didn't express his anger in healthy ways. And I really like learned to shut down and be a good boy and do what I was told. And there was a lot of, I remember my dad telling me, like, little boys should be seen but not heard. And as a child you internalize a lot of this stuff, right? You internalize the belief they say as a good boy does what he's told, he conforms to his environment, he conforms to his superiors. And as an adult then became hard for me because I started studying accounting and finance and I found myself in this domain of being an accountant that didn't align with my path at all. I really struggled to kind of take up space and own who I was and own my voice because I was afraid of what people would think of me. I was afraid of the stepping away from the norm. And this approval seeking behavior came from following a path that I thought that I should do because that's what successful people did. They wore a suit and, you know, got paid good money and did a job that allowed them to work in the city. And this suppression of myself through mainly people pleasing behaviors cut me off from the path I was meant to walk. So owning some of the myself required breaking these people pleasing patterns. A big part of the avenue to do that is conflict, is learning to embrace the fact that people are probably not going to like you when you own some of your greatness. People are probably going to get really triggered by you taking up more space, and that's okay. Learning to embrace emotional discomfort, learning to have hard conversations with the people that maybe you've been suppressing some of your truth and leaning into that edge is how you start to integrate some of these father wounds and just examine all the areas of your life right now that maybe you're holding back, holding back your truth, maybe your creativity, be it with expressing feelings towards someone that's upsetting you, be it setting a boundary in an area that where people are taking advantage of you. Or maybe it's just taking up space and saying, hey, you know what, I need these two hours in the morning to myself, to work on myself because that's connected to my purpose and allowing other things like social media and other people's demands to take that from you. So it's more about a reclaiming. So you can seek discomfort in the form of confrontation in some of the ways I just mentioned, or you can actively put yourself in an environment. Physical discomfort is also another way to confront this wound. Right? Because the fear of confrontation shows up as a shutting down, as a shutting down where people come at you verbally or emotionally and even physically. So go into an environment like Brazilian Jiu jitsu or do a Muay Thai class, or you know, even just go into an environment where you're going to be attacked, you know, and learn to step into that arena and be comfortable with people not Liking you. And one of the beauties of business is that's gonna happen inevitably when you start to run a business. People are gonna want refunds, people are gonna be unhappy with your services. On social media I found myself making content and people judge taking the piss out of me in the comments and people hating on my stuff. And I had to go through this whole process of getting really triggered and really like upset about all of this and you know, wanting to hide to be honest. And I remember this happened a few years ago where I made one post and I lost about 5,000 followers overnight because some of the things I said triggered a lot of people. And I remember just like the fight or flight response kicking in. I remember that's, that's the patterning from my past wanting to shut down during conflict. And it was a great test and opportunity for me to learn these practices of re regulating myself and learning, hey, it's okay. You're going to be okay. You're safe, you're loved. That same practice, that same love you didn't get from your dad. You get to practice giving to yourself in those moments and do this over and over again and you're going to start to build strong trust with your yourself. That's how you start to integrate some of these father wounds. So I've just covered some of the main areas where these father wounds will show up and I want to just remind you of the integration pathway, right? Self awareness being the first step. Notice and monitor where this pattern, this lack of masculine stability shows up in your life. Could be in your relationships or your business or your career, your health, whatever it may be, take take stock of it because that's, that's step number one. The second step is then start to embody these practices where you're able to get in contact with your body and be the fatherly figure and you never had. Okay, so what, what would you have needed back then in those situations when your dad wasn't there or you had a shit game on the sporting field? What did you really need in those moments? It's probably the reassurance that hey, you know what son, you had a shit game. But that's all good. You're going to be okay. You're going to come back at this next game and you're going to crush it. So just pick yourself back up and let's get back out there and don't hold on. You don't need to hold on to this, this shame anymore. You don't need to hold on to this anger anymore. All Right. So that is the. Is the second step, the reassurance that the self. The self. Masculine reassurance you get to give. And then thirdly, one of the areas I want to mention is the suppression of anger. If you grew up with a dad who didn't have control of his anger, then probably you've pushed a lot of that primal energy down. You need to find outlets to let that out, to reclaim it. Because underneath the anger is usually the sadness and the grief from the lack of love, and also the shame from all the times where you felt really humiliated or embarrassed about something happening in an environment where you judged your performance. So the anger is how you get to that. So find an outlet to go into the rage. Maybe you're angry yourself. At least for me, I remember when I don't show up in error in ways that I know I'm capable of in some areas of my life, my pattern is to internalize that anger towards myself. I judge myself. I'm like, fuck, I'm better than this. Why am I. Why am I not doing this? And I don't find a healthy outlet, the anger starts to eat me away from the inside out and really affects my performance. So permission to get angry is the key. So it could be beating down on a bed, beating down on a pillow, screaming in your car. Allow yourself to tap into that primal rage and watch how the fear starts to dissolve around that and you can get more in contact with that part of you that's needing the reassurance. Maybe it's the sadness. You can just feel and release that and realize, hey, you know, I'm good. You know I'm good. I'm like, I'm in control of my emotional expression. So anger release is another area to start to develop this masculine, fortified spirit. Now, if you want some additional help in integrating some of these concepts that I've just shared with you so you can be more full in your expression as a man. There's a free masculine somatic journaling prompts that I've created for you that you click in the description of this video and you'll be able to download those resources and start to reflect on how you can start to apply some of this knowledge in your life and break some of these father wounds. So this video resonated. Drop a comment below. I'd love to hear from you and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks so much for watching.