Healing the Father Wound in Women’s Relationships with Men
We all carry emotional wounds, and one of the most damaging is the father wound. This wound often manifests in our relationships, leading to patterns of self-sabotage, distrust, and emotional upheaval. But there is a way out.
In this episode, Lorin offers practical steps to heal and overcome the father wound, by recognising dysfunctional patterns, connecting with the deeper pain that drives them, and taking ownership.
When our father wound becomes triggered, it can lead to a vicious cycle of unfulfilling relationships and self-sabotaging behaviour. We can end up pushing away the very people we want to hold closest, which then reaffirms our deepest fears and insecurities.
But this episode will help you find time and space to set yourself on the path towards healing.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Deep Polarity Program
An 8-week immersive journey to unlock the deepest intimacy through masculine & feminine dynamics.
Transcript
Today we will talk about how a father wound affects women in relationship with men, and I will give very clear and practical examples so that you can see how this is playing out in your intimate life.
Speaker:I will of course, also share with you practical healing modalities, things you can do immediately after this podcast episode, and also how to heal this within our relationship.
Speaker:Now this episode is not just for women.
Speaker:As a man listening, you will learn how the father wound impacts a woman you are in relationship with and also what.
Speaker:Is her responsibility and how can you potentially support her in this journey from an empowered place with full clarity, without any confusion or trying to be a savior and doing things for her that are not your responsibility?
Speaker:Welcome to the Masculine and Feminine Dynamics Podcast.
Speaker:My name is Lorin Krenn, and I'm a relationship coach and hypnotherapist.
Speaker:I help you to understand men and women better and to create the relationship you want.
Speaker:Let's dive in.
Speaker:Today, I won't go too deep, where a father wound comes from, why it's there, why so many father are passing on generational trauma to their daughters, and of course to their sons as well, because I wanna really keep this episode focused on starting immediately with practical ways, how this shows up.
Speaker:One quick thing I will say is most fathers will pass on trauma simply because of the generational trauma of us men.
Speaker:Most of us carry generational trauma and this then impacts the child and the child is experiencing a father wound.
Speaker:Now, you can blame your father for everything, and you might be right.
Speaker:He might really be to blame for the lack of emotional support, the lack of understanding, the lack of presence, and awareness around your needs, your desires, and what you really needed as a child.
Speaker:However you blaming him and keeping that anger alive is just keeping you stuck in that wound, because he keeps perpetuating it and also keeps the wound alive.
Speaker:So while it is justified that there is anger, that there is resentment, that there is a sense of blaming, does not mean that it's going to actually help you in your healing journey.
Speaker:While you are not the one to blame, you are the only one who can take responsibility for this, and to truly heal it.
Speaker:So let's get practical here.
Speaker:Let's go deep immediately, and these insights I'm gonna share with you right now can change your life.
Speaker:You might wanna take a pen and paper and jot this down.
Speaker:Now, the father wound expresses itself usually in the following three ways.
Speaker:There are many ways, but these are the three most common ones in women in their relationship with men.
Speaker:Number one is demanding perfection.
Speaker:So what's happening here is because of emotional abandonment and emotional neglect and the lack of safety and trust that you might have experienced, you now unconsciously want the man you are in a relationship with to compensate for the lack of safety and all the other things that you did not experience as a child growing up or in the relationship in general with your father.
Speaker:So this is very important to become aware of because what you need to know is that paternal love and the love with an intimate partner are very, very different.
Speaker:One is the fatherly love is, I always like to give the example when, when you, as a young girl throw a tantrum and your father is at least to some degree conscious and emotionally available, then he's going to love you and hold space for you no matter what.
Speaker:But as an example, if you were to completely show up in a hurtful, disrespectful way with a man, no matter what level of consciousness he has, it doesn't mean he stops loving you, but what it certainly means is that he cannot in these moments actually show up for you.
Speaker:Because we in relationships, need to let others in.
Speaker:We cannot push people away and then deep down desire them to hold space for us, to be there for us.
Speaker:And this is so often what happens with the father wounds described in a nutshell is that so many women push the man away at the same time, want him to show up.
Speaker:And this actually is a form of self-sabotage.
Speaker:Because as you push him away, he can't show up for you, because you are not letting him into your vulnerable heart.
Speaker:Now, of course that needs to be safe, but I'm talking about the stand from a place of if that is safe, you are not letting him in.
Speaker:If you're not letting him in, he can't show up for you.
Speaker:Now, what happens here, what you're playing out subconsciously here without being aware of this, is that you push him away and we're talk about specific examples in just a second.
Speaker:You push him away and he can't show up for you and then you blame him unconsciously, or you see not, perhaps not blame him.
Speaker:For some of you it might be the case, but much more the case is your reality gets affirmed.
Speaker:Men cannot be trusted.
Speaker:A man will never show up for me.
Speaker:I am never good enough.
Speaker:Whatever the limiting beliefs or internalized stories are in your subconscious, you will get that reaffirmed.
Speaker:And this is a kind of perpetual cycle that keeps playing out, and you are the only one who can take responsibility for this and break this cycle.
Speaker:So getting even more practical, demanding, perfection.
Speaker:That's one of the ways, just one of the ways.
Speaker:If that's not applicable to you, keep listening because I will share the others in a second, and I have full trust that one of those will be at least in a certain way applicable to your life, show revealing itself in your intimate life.
Speaker:Now, this demanding perfection again, is the wanting him to compensate for the lack that you experienced in the relationship with your father.
Speaker:And while a man can do many things, we can hold space for you, we can support you, we can love through all that all your limitations and vice versa of course, we cannot compensate for what you have not received in the relationship with your father.
Speaker:At least not.
Speaker:If you unconsciously expect us to do this, specifically through demanding a sense of perfection, for us to be your knight in shining armor, for us to be the man that comes into your life and saves you from all your struggles.
Speaker:Because you see, we can only disappoint you, and that disappointment will then become part of the internalized story.
Speaker:It will be affirmed that, that that man cannot give you what you want and where are the conscious men and all of this.
Speaker:But in truth, these are unconscious expectations.
Speaker:You see, and when you realize, okay, a man can do so many wonderful things for me, but if I project that pain that I experienced with my father onto him, that I'm actually pushing him away and not giving him the space to show up in the healing ways that would be deeply soothing and healing for your heart, for your soul, for your spirit.
Speaker:So getting even more practical, then I switch to the others, when it comes to demanding perfection, here what's happening is that nothing is good enough.
Speaker:The constant dynamic is no matter what it does, it's not enough.
Speaker:It's not enough.
Speaker:It's not enough, because fully accepting him as he is, and the imperfect ways in how he shows up, this doesn't mean you excuse behavior, this doesn't mean you don't have boundaries, but we need to meet each other where we are at.
Speaker:We need to extend grace to our partner and fully accepting him would be breaking the cycle of that wound showing up in your intimate life in this way, and that can be very frightening for many women to really go, okay, wow, can I accept or can I embrace how he's showing up?
Speaker:Rather than having all these unconscious expectations, and constantly affirming to him that it's not good enough, that it's not enough.
Speaker:Of course, we also have to say they're two.
Speaker:In a dynamic, it always takes two, so here usually you also attract or always attract men who have lost their spine or, or disconnected from their spine.
Speaker:Lost is a maybe too harsh because you can always connect with it again, as a man or as a being in any way, as a human being.
Speaker:Now, you wouldn't be an energetic match if you're playing this out immensely for a highly conscious and awakened man, or if you are, he would be setting a very strong boundary with you and say, Listen, baby, I love you, but I'm not perfect.
Speaker:And that has to be embraced as well.
Speaker:I cannot fulfill each and every need in this universe perfectly,
Speaker:Most often when a woman is totally identified with her father wound, she won't even attract such men.
Speaker:She will attract men who are people pleasers.
Speaker:they have disconnected from their spine, from their masculine strength, and they're perpetuating their own unworthiness.
Speaker:Now, what is the second one?
Speaker:The second one is distrusting all men being overly guarded.
Speaker:The masculine energy within you is in overdrive.
Speaker:You feel like you cannot trust any man.
Speaker:Your heart is closed and you self-sabotage.
Speaker:In relationships unconsciously by your constant distrusts of him.
Speaker:He feels that you don't trust him at all, and that pushes him away, that causes disconnect.
Speaker:Of course, trust needs to be earned.
Speaker:I fully understand that.
Speaker:But again, I'm talking about a relationship that is safe, where there is at least some level of consciousness in that relationship from both parties
Speaker:Now, here, what's happening is if you then never trust him and you're always guarding yourself and you're constantly fighting in a sense to protect yourself from any potential pain he might cause, then it's gonna make it impossible for him to show up.
Speaker:Because again, what's happening is you are not letting him into your heart.
Speaker:You are not allowing him to really, truly love you.
Speaker:Because you are pushing him away and saying, I don't trust you, and I constantly need to protect myself from you, which is gonna make him feel immensely on edge, as if no matter what he does, you simply cannot feel safe around him.
Speaker:Now, of course there might be things that are perpetuating it, of course, that he does, but in the context of this episode, I'm not referring to what he might be doing that causes you to feel unsafe, which is a total different topic.
Speaker:I'm talking about the pain, the emotional pain of a father wound, where you feel like you can never feel safe with a man.
Speaker:And then of course, if you then constantly show up in distrusting ways and overly guard yourself, then you are going to get affirmed that you cannot trust him.
Speaker:Because he won't be able to show up, again because you are, you're not allowing him to actually see you in your heart, your vulnerability, the places that any awakened man wants to truly meet, wants to love, wants to tenderly hold, or, or be supportive in the most conscious way possible.
Speaker:So this might also be overly being jealous, for instance, constantly kind of distrusting him even in this most minor of ways, giving him the sense that he's almost like incapable.
Speaker:There is zero trust, and of course that will push him completely away and keep affirming your reality that men cannot give you what you want, that men cannot be trusted and that you will never feel safe with a man.
Speaker:As you can see, this subconscious limiting belief keeps playing itself out and keeps perpetuating.
Speaker:Now, this leads us now to another one, which is actually where you don't push him away.
Speaker:Well, you do, but in a different way.
Speaker:And this is where you become overly naive due to the father wound.
Speaker:You fall, almost so to speak, for every man because of codependency, because of strong attachment.
Speaker:I'm not talking about secure and healthy attachment.
Speaker:It's because you feel entirely incapable and unworthy on your own, and it's almost like everything feels better than being on your own.
Speaker:I give you a practical example here.
Speaker:I once coached a woman.
Speaker:I worked with many women on this, but this specific example is where I coached her and she told me that her partner has left her so many times, cheated on her, treated her incredibly badly, neglected her in every possible way, and she kept going back to him.
Speaker:And I asked her, well, I coached her deeply around this.
Speaker:It's difficult to explain this in just a few seconds or in one minute.
Speaker:What all the dynamics that happened here, because the work that I do is very, very deep and it's just impossible to explain that, that easily.
Speaker:You would have to experience and see that in one of my containers, in my group coaching containers, my women's programs, for instance.
Speaker:However, the, what I can say to make this practical is I coached her around this and she said that anything feels better than being on her own because there is such a fear that, that she will basically die.
Speaker:Through the coaching, we found out that she actually thinks she's going to die if she's not with a man.
Speaker:And of course, because of that deep, deep belief that comes from deep wounding that she has experienced or very painful experiences with the father, with the masculine, first of all, when she had that insight, oh wow.
Speaker:But actually I'm not gonna die, I just made her aware You're not going to die, then alone was like, whoa, whoa, that's true, actually, I'm not going to die.
Speaker:And then when we applied the healing modalities and went into a deep practice, boom, at first her nervous system was shooting through the roof.
Speaker:She was in a state of total despair.
Speaker:And out of that state of despair, she kept falling for all these men who were not treating her right, and controlling her completely, and getting away with the most emotionally hurtful behavior you can possibly imagine.
Speaker:And in that moment, boom, her nervous system shifted, her energy shifted.
Speaker:She looked at me and she said Wow, right now, for the first time, I feel that I don't need a man.
Speaker:I'm going to be okay just being on my own for a while.
Speaker:So this, this is what kind of, this belief, this is now in the extreme where this plays itself out, but it might be playing itself out in a certain, of course, depending, it varies in degrees in your life where you are so afraid of being on your own because you think you're going to die because you think you're incapable, you're completely unworthy.
Speaker:But I'm here to tell you that this is the pain of the little girl within you.
Speaker:You are no longer that little girl, even though she needs tending, even though she needs your love.
Speaker:You are now a woman, right?
Speaker:You're an adult.
Speaker:You can take care of yourself even if it is emotionally very, very challenging.
Speaker:You see, so here, really important to be okay being on your own.
Speaker:Of course, you don't enjoy it, you don't love it when a relationship falls away, but as long as you have that fear in the sense of I cannot be alone, I cannot be alone, you won't be an energetic match.
Speaker:Nothing is black and white.
Speaker:But in most cases, you won't be an energetic match for a highly conscious man, simply because you still need that experience where you can walk away most likely and say, you know what?
Speaker:I'm choosing my oracle, my heart's truth and safety over being disrespected or treated in a really bad way.
Speaker:Now you might experience one of them very strongly, or you might experience all of them showing up in different degrees, and, and also potentially switching between them, which is completely fine, right?
Speaker:There is no right or wrong.
Speaker:And for each, even though it's the same dynamic, the how the father wound plays out and where it comes from, it expresses itself in suddenly, uh, different ways for every single person.
Speaker:So let's talk about what you can do to heal this and also in relationship.
Speaker:So when the father wound becomes triggered and activated, the key number one is to become aware that you cannot experience a relationship where a man shows up fully for you, makes you feel safe and fulfills your deepest heart's longing that you have from a relationship, if you still push him away in a thousand ways, and deep down, desiring him to still show up for you.
Speaker:That's the little girl within you, so you need to take radical responsibility when that happens.
Speaker:You can't expect him to be the knight in shining armor who still kind of, solves it all and saves you from it.
Speaker:You have to let him in.
Speaker:That is number one.
Speaker:That is key.
Speaker:That is the fundamental for any re relational healing around this.
Speaker:You need to let him in.
Speaker:Now, there are nuances to this, because in order to let him in, you need to get really vulnerable with yourself.
Speaker:Vulnerable in the sense that you are able to go deeper, connect with the deeper pain and underlying emotion that drives this self sabotage and disconnecting and hurtful behavior that shows up then in your relationship.
Speaker:Any disconnecting behavior or hurtful behavior is always masking a deeper pain or fear.
Speaker:So what I invite you to do is to connect with that underlying fear.
Speaker:How do you do this?
Speaker:Number one, and then number two, I give you two ways.
Speaker:Number one, sounds simple, is not easy to practice.
Speaker:It's easy, but not simple.
Speaker:Or it's simple, but not easy to practice.
Speaker:Um, become present with what is happening inside your body.
Speaker:So simple.
Speaker:But not easy to practice.
Speaker:In these moments where you boom, push him away, and, uh, nothing he does is good enough or becoming overly, overly codependent, please, please, please still love me, still stay connected with me, or I'm going to die, in these moments, you need to tend to the deeper fear and the deeper emotions that have been activated within you.
Speaker:It's really about becoming present.
Speaker:From that place of presence, you can let him in and you can connect with the vulnerability that is actually occurring in that moment, and that you're actually deep down trying to protect yourself from by pushing him away.
Speaker:So to get even more practical, a feminine embodiment practice can do wonders when it comes to this.
Speaker:I give you a really simple one.
Speaker:Get into a standing position.
Speaker:You put on some music that that moves you, shamanic drums or any feminine embodiment music, and you give yourself space for the next 15 to 20 minutes to really allow your body to express any pain or underlying fear that has a reason within you, right?
Speaker:When you are in that place of over guarding yourself or overly attached in that moment, in these moments, really give yourself 15, 20 minutes to allow your body to express through shaking, through movement, through sounds, through breath, allow it to move through you.
Speaker:If you want to scream, scream into a pillow.
Speaker:Really allow your body, the intelligence to express it.
Speaker:Might feel really awkward at first before, because our mind goes like, what am I doing?
Speaker:Am I doing this right?
Speaker:Am I doing this correctly?
Speaker:Are we doing this?
Speaker:Forget about this.
Speaker:Surrender.
Speaker:Allow your body to really express, and then the more you're able to connect to that and express that you're able to release and integrate and process it.
Speaker:And as you process and integrate the deeper pain, there is no need for the masking behavior of creating disconnect or being overly attached.
Speaker:One last thing, in relationship with men, take ownership when you have shown up from that place, even if it's afterwards and you didn't realize, or you were totally in the grip by it, I know it can be so difficult because it takes you like a storm, but go to him, let him know afterwards.
Speaker:Hey baby, I love you.
Speaker:I, you are amazing for me.
Speaker:You are not just enough.
Speaker:You are more than enough.
Speaker:And I, I can see the many ways you show up for me and I'm so grateful.
Speaker:And this was my father wound.
Speaker:And I take responsibility for that, and I really love you.
Speaker:Anything like that that comes from your truth, this allows us men, you are letting us in.
Speaker:This allows us to really feel you and we want to feel you.
Speaker:We want to see your vulnerable heart, at least a conscious man or a man who truly cares about you.
Speaker:Of course there is so much more to share about this topic, but there is only so much I can cover in an episode.
Speaker:I go deeper into this, of course, in my women's programs with the exact step-by-step practices, the healing modalities to really get to the core, and of course, also through immensely powerful group coaching.
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