Let me discuss some of the common emotional wounds for men. Life struggles often reflect outstanding unresolved parental relationship issues from childhood. There are five central systemic family entanglements that may emerge and impact you for life: separation from mother; disconnection from father; merger with mother, father, or both; rejection of mother, father, or both; or an identification with other family system members. A healing journey can help you leave all this behind and set you on a forward path that is life-giving and fulfilling. Part 1 of this post will discuss the man’s relationship entanglements with his mother.
- Separation from mother
- Merge with mother
- Reject mother
Son separates from mother.
Many emotional wounds for men find there source with a separation or bonding injury from mother. There may be obvious ones such as mother dying or leaving when the child is young, mother dying during the child’s birth, mother giving the child up to adoption, or the child spending time in an incubator following birth. The baby and mother may have been separated for health reasons and one had to be in hospital without the other. The child may have been cared for in early childhood by another family member or other caregiver for short or long time periods. Mother and father may have gone away on a vacation without the child when he was young and the child was left with other known or unknown caregivers. Mother may have returned to work when the baby was young. All of these events trigger a body-felt sense of abandonment in the child. When the young man enters adulthood, he will seek to fill that empty feeling of abandonment and find mother in all of his relationships.
Some emotional wounds for men come from separations that are more subtle. For instance, mother may have had several young children and she didn’t provide the desired attention to the child when it was wanted. The child may have reached for mother and she didn’t respond as expected. Mother was unconsciously and energetically turned to a previous child lost to miscarriage, abortion, stillbirth, or adoption. Mother may have been turned energetically toward an unresolved family trauma of the past. In all of these situations, the son carries the body-felt sense of mother’s abandonment and that may manifest as: “I’m not good enough,” “I’m worthless,” “I’m rejected,” “I’m not safe,” “I’m alone,” “I’m left out,” or “I’m not lovable.” Healing comes in understanding that this is not the truth. It was just the child’s single perception of an event and it created the child’s emotional response holding pattern for life. This pattern may have been established as early as conception. Healing comes when the adult acknowledges and accepts what is in the family system, passes the energetic entanglements he is carrying back to the rightful owners, learns to parent himself – no longer expecting anything from his parents, learns strong healthy boundaries with others, learns to recognize his own character style being triggered and learns how to minimize its impact, and learns to self soothe himself separate from his relationships with mother and father.
Son merges with mother.
One of the most common energetic emotional wounds for men is when the son is too close to his mother. If life is difficult for mother, life will be difficult for the son. Following conception, during birth, or throughout early childhood the son feels the emotional neediness of his mother. He will energetically sense whether mother is emotionally struggling in life or whether mother is emotionally well. He will sacrifice himself as an infant to support mother in whatever way she may be needy. This may be caused by relationship difficulties in her life or she may be carrying some unresolved family trauma that impacted her when she was a child. She may also be impacted by something in the environment around her like war, hunger, persecution, immigration, conflict, moving locations, security issues, trauma, powerful earth shifting events, pollutants, etc. The baby feels in his body that mother is unconsciously and energetically turned away from him. When he is born he can’t fully connect to or make contact with mother. The child feels her need and says, “You don’t have to be alone with this pain mother, I will share it with you.” In these situations, the child frequently doesn’t fully individuate from mother around the age of 3 or 4. He never develops a strong energetic boundary or sense of self of his own as he grows older, and in his merger with mother he loses both his mother and his father.
If the son has merged with mother he may have a body-felt sense of inundation. He’s overwhelmed with too much mother. He has sacrificed himself and his own needs to care for mother’s needs. He has lost his deep inner sense of authenticity. If mother held onto her son too long, with the son caring for her emotional needs of letting him mediate or help her deal with her relationship issues with her partner, then mother didn’t turn her son toward his father when he was in his early teens. This depletes the son’s life force. Each boy needs to be firmly planted in the energetic circle of his father and his long line of strong male ancestors by about the time of puberty. This gives him the energetic support he needs to stand strong as a man in life, in relationships, as a father if he has children, and in his career.
Healing comes with acknowledgement of what is in the family system, accepting what is, having the son learn strong healthy loving boundaries from mother, and having the son turn toward his father with compassion. This is achieved regardless of whether mother and/or father are alive or transitioned to the other side.
Son rejects mother.
If the son is overwhelmed by mother’s emotional neediness, mother is energetically too close, or mother clings to her son by over-parenting and not letting him create his own healthy boundaries separate from her, or she won’t let him have a relationship with his father; in unconsciously merging with mother’s emotional neediness during infancy to help share or carry her emotional burdens, the son may also energetically reject her. A son who can’t take in mother fully will likely have difficulties in all his relationships with partners. His relationship with mother is the blueprint for all his future relationships. The son will reject the 50% of mother within himself. We will choose partners who will mirror/reflect this emotional rejection of mother back to him to raise awareness or he will choose partners who might help him heal it. I have learned that for this reason family systems marry other family systems. When we reject a parent, we also tend to merge with the characteristics or qualities we have rejected in that parent. The child will struggle to develop healthy narcissistic self-love for himself. Without self-love and strong healthy boundaries, relationships with others are emotionally difficult. Just as the son rejected mother, he will also reject each of his partners.
Part 2 will discuss the man’s relationship with his father. Part 3 will discuss common systemic energetic identifications men experience with other family members.