Healing the relationship with father is important to your wellbeing. In my last post, I discussed how healing begins with understanding the underlying causes of mother’s emotional distance. Now let’s take a look at the family dynamic when there is/was a disconnection with father, or to the contrary, the child gets too much of father. Father was sad, you’re sad. Father struggled as a man; you struggle as a man. Father was emotionally distant; you’re emotionally distant. Father was abusive; you’re abusive. Father was an alcoholic; you engage in addictive behaviours. These patterns flow through many families.
Your transgenerational connection begins with the relationship to your mother, and then flows through her to your relationship with father. From the time of antiquity to the present, when a couple relationship was formed around raising children, father was there to offer his emotional support to mother by ensuring the family unit had the necessities of life to survive. In today’s world, family units vary greatly from this traditional picture, and fathers have taken on many diverse roles in the family unit. In many families there is no father physically present. In same gender relationships, one of the partners will often take on this traditional father role when parenting. Regardless of the family dynamic, this age old energetic pattern still holds strong. Regardless of situations that involve adoption, surrogacy, or sperm donation, each child has a biological father that genetically and epigenetically gave them life. If the flow of love and emotional support from father to mother is energetically blocked in some way or appears non-existent, the children will unconsciously and energetically emotionally react to this feeling of imbalance.
Father’s Family Role
In his support of mother, father plays a deeply important role in the wellness of his offspring. The father’s most important role in the family is support for mother. Mother carries the baby and gives birth, and if she is under emotional strain during this important developmental time for the child, the whole family unit will be impacted. If mother and father were not a strong couple before they had children, if they didn’t want children, if mother felt pressure from father to produce a specific gender, if father was absent from the family system for any reason, if the family was impacted by trauma or tragedy, if mother and father were in a rocky volatile relationship, or if mother or father were emotionally unavailable or distant due to their own family system childhood wounds, then the children may emotionally suffer in some way as they unconsciously sacrifice themselves to balance what feels out of balance within themselves and in the family system.
Out of love for the family system and loyalty to the parents, grandparents, and ancestors, the children will sacrifice themselves unconsciously by stepping in to support the emotionally needy parent. They may sacrifice themselves to help mother with her issues, and even offer to share or carry her burdens or fate. Young boys, even toddlers, become “the little man” of the household if father is emotionally or physically absent. Little girls become mommy’s helper and begin to take on too much responsibility. This is far too much of a burden for any child to attempt to carry. It’s an illusion for any child to feel they can step in to replace their father emotionally for their mother or vice versa. This same dynamic may occur if the child senses the sexual relationship between mother and father is weak. The child will unconsciously and energetically step in to balance this imbalance. The relationship with father is often compromised when there is a marital breakdown.
Marital Problems
The importance of the relationship with father is showing up in a big way today, especially with the high incidence of marital discord. The child will attempt to energetically support an emotionally struggling parent and they will merge or reject one, the other, or both of their parents. A child may also step energetically between their mother and father to act as a buffer or mediator when there are relationship issues between the parents. The child may be attempting to hold the parents relationship together or to get them back together if they have separated. This is an energetically dangerous place for the child to be. The child may become ill so the parents are drawn together to address this common issue. The child may also become ill or struggle in some way because they feel guilty and blame themselves for mother and father’s troubled relationship or they feel they failed to hold it together. The healing possibilities for the child are frequently connected to the relationship between mother and father and it’s never too late to mend an unhealthy relationship even from a distance.
If the child is made to feel guilty for loving one parent or the other, they will struggle internally to love themselves. Again, it’s about feeling that they must reject that 50% of themselves that genetically comes from the rejected parent. For example, if mother forces her son to reject his father, the boy will not be able to accept the maleness or father aspect within himself. The child will struggle in some way physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, or relationally. If mother forces her daughter to reject her father, the daughter will also reject one or both parents. She will then reject half or all of herself inside. She may develop immune system issues later in life. In rejecting herself, the daughter may not be able to take in nourishment and end up with an eating disorder. When the daughter seeks a prospective partner, she may unconsciously look for the very qualities rejected in her mother or father so that this inner wound might find healing. For the daughter, the relationship with father is important, however the relationship with her mother is essential to wellbeing.
Carry the Parents’ Burdens
The child or teen frequently takes on unwellness or suffers in some way as he or she attempts to share or carry the parents’ burdens, tries to do something better than a parent, tries to do something for the parent, atones for the guilt of the parent, tries to keep mother and father together, or tries to keep a sad or depressed parent connected to life. Being unwell may be our unconscious way of fitting into our family system. Grandmother had depression, mother has depression, and so I take on the symptoms of depression to fit with the women of my family system. As adults, we may get sick to gain the attention we feel we didn’t get from our parents by forcing our partner or others to care for us.
Healing comes in deciding to acknowledge, accept what is, and respond to the dynamics of our family system. We intentionally take responsibility for our own wellness and change old unconscious emotional reactive patterns that don’t serve us anymore. We decide to take in life fully by taking in both of our parents fully. Catch my next post for more examples of the impact on children when mother and father are struggling emotionally in some way.