"Any man can be a father. It takes someone special to be a dad." ~ Unknown
"One night a father overheard his son pray: Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is. Later that night, the Father prayed, Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be." ~ Unknown
Over the years, the depth of the hunger men and women feel for
father is becoming more and more evident. Even those in their sixties will tell
you of the hunger and longing they still feel. Oftentimes, the need is hidden,
like a deep river of water flowing under the surface. The hunger may be out of
sight but is never gone.
Most of these people are highly functioning members of their
communities. They are respected in their relationships. They are responsible
employees. Nevertheless, they obviously have unresolved pain associated with
their fathers. They thirst for "father water." They have been left with a void, an injury, a thirst that only a
father can quench.
You may be surprised to see the extent of your father's role in
your most cherished relationships, your vocation, your satisfaction with life,
and your experience of God.
Another good reading material for educational purposes and awareness.
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Emotional Signs of Father Hunger
Many people have a void inside them that is due to "father
hunger," and this disguised hunger has had great impact on the way they
live. Do any of these statements apply to you?
When I think about my father I become emotional-insecure, sad, or
angry.
When I'm with my father I don't act like myself; I'm either
childish or grandiose.
I consider my father wonderful, but others think I'm fooling
myself.
I feel numb toward my father.
I have trouble with competitiveness.
My motivation is poor because I feel beaten down.
I have difficulty establishing relationships.
I move too quickly into new relationships.
I'm confused about my identity-it's not as if my father ever made
me feel good about myself.
I don't feel like a real man.
I lack confidence in my femininity.
I feel unattractive.
I feel incompetent.
It is difficult for me to relax.
I have problems with my sexuality.
Being assertive is hard for me.
People seem to feel that I violate their boundaries.
I'm afraid to get too close to others.
I fear being abandoned.
Authority makes me uneasy.
My father's criticism hurt me too much. Now I have difficulty
accepting criticism.
God often feels a million miles away.
I have little interest in spirituality.
When my father does not provide the emotional support my mother
needs, my mother unknowingly tries to get me to provide that support.
My father confides in me too much.
My father and I do not talk openly and honestly about our lives.
I keep trying to please everybody-especially father-types or
mentors.
I run to things and people to nurse myself in a compulsive way.
I am rarely satisfied.
I live with a vague, diffused fearfulness.
My mother's boyfriend annoys me.
My stepfather and I do not get along very well.
I am a parent who worries I am repeating my father's and
grandfather's mistakes.
Sometimes I feel like an orphan.
The conditions listed above are often associated with incomplete
father relationships. The absence of a mature father-child connection creates a
void in the soul, a residual "father hunger."
Father hunger is the
result of receiving too little quality fathering as a child or young adult.
Some argue that even grown men and women need fathers or father surrogates and
that the absence of such role modeling and support is associated with less
fulfillment in life. In general, father hunger results from too little intimacy
between child and father.
_____________
James L. Schaller, M.D.,
M.A.R., P.C.
Clinical and
Research Psychiatry and Medicine
Adult Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Services
Subspecialty Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Hormonal & Nutraceutical Consultation
Anti-Aging & Obesity Consultation
Life
seemingly distracts us. We tend to forget or be unaware of the basic
experiences of our past that have shaped and now apparently control us and the
way we act. Sometimes or more often than not, we fail to recognize the problem
in our father relationship. We needed our fathers to be special and good, so we
stuff our bad father experiences deep down inside. Father failures hurt too
much to face. The mistakes fathers make may be subtle and hard to pinpoint, but
they still have immense impact on the lives of their children.
So
where do we start? Do you feel at a loss in your father relationship? Do you
feel that something is wrong with it? Do you feel the hunger for something that
your father relationship should satisfy but doesn't?
This is
a good reading material that might give some light to your problem regarding
your father relationship. If you can touch
the father hunger in you, you will have found a reason to step up to support a
young male who is starving for the kind of male acknowledgment that can fill
some of the emptiness. It's never going to be as powerful as what might have
gotten from his father, but it can be life saving.
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FATHER HUNGER
Each of
us longs for the Fathers Love & Acceptance.
The
absence of a mature father-child connection creates a void in the soul, a
residual “father hunger.”
Father
hunger is the result of receiving too little quality fathering as a child or
young adult. Some argue that even grown men and women need fathers or father
surrogates and that the absence of such role modeling and support is associated
with less fulfillment in life. In general, father hunger results from too
little intimacy between child and father.
In
contemporary psychoanalytic theory, the notion of “father hunger” has been
introduced by James M. Herzog to address the unconscious longing experienced by
many males and females for an involved father. According to Herzog, the father
plays the intrapsychic role as the modulator of aggressive drives and
fantasies. Children or adults who experience father hunger yearns for a figure
that can help them formulate their response to aggression and tolerate trauma.
Herzog
began by studying 18- to 28-month-old boys whose night terrors were found to be
associated with the loss of their fathers through separation or divorce. He
suggested that these boys needed their fathers to help manage their
rapprochement-stage aggressive impulses. The absence of this paternal help led
the boys to turn their aggression towards their selves and then to project it
in the form of their fears at night.
Herzog
continued linking aggression to father loss two years later, when he noted that
children of both genders had problems modulating their aggression after they
had lost their fathers through divorce. This finding led him to posit a new
developmental role for the father—the regulation of aggressive drive and
fantasy.
“The
father wound is epidemic among us,” says Gordon Dalbey. As a result, we see
unfathered men growing up armored with a counterfeit of masculinity. But until
their sons face the reality of their emotional abandonment, they may never seek
the healing they need.
The
father-wound is most often a wound of absence–emotional as well as physical. As
such, it’s harder to recognize than others.
In the
souls of men, the weapon of destruction is shame. When Dad doesn’t embrace,
encourage, guide, and protect him, a boy grows up thinking, “Dad doesn’t value
me. I must not be worth much.” He doesn’t feel like a real man, confident that
he belongs in the world, with both a destiny and the power at hand to fulfill
it. He feels tremendous shame and anger at being abandoned in his deepest need.
Distrusting
himself and other men, he’s easily suckered into a counterfeit masculinity,
from fast sex and alcohol to isolation and violence. Hence, prisons are
bulging. Yet even the average, law-abiding man today hasn’t had a father who
said, “You’re my son and I love you,” or who helped him discover his unique
talents and abilities. As a small boy in a large world of men, he’s imprisoned
by bars of shame from father-abandonment, unable to fulfill his destiny.. He’s
misfocused with his muscles, intelligence and energies destructively
instead of creatively.
He
doesn’t want to hide his wound; he wants to heal it. He wants to face and
overcome his inadequacies, so he can fulfill his calling as a man, husband,
father, worker, and citizen. He’s willing to confess, “I don’t need a beer, my
boss’ approval, a sexual encounter, a gun, a race to hate, or a million
dollars. I need a father!”
To
break the crippling generational cycle of shame and destruction, at least two
steps are necessary.
First,
a man must forgive his father for wounding him. Often this happens as the man
dares to see the awful brokenness in his dad which fueled the wounding. A boy
cries FROM his father’s wound; dad hurts you, and you cry. But a real man cries
FOR his father’s wounds, feeling his dad’s pain instead of stuffing it and
acting out inappropriately.
Secondly,
we men need to begin fathering ourselves through a community of support. The
fatherless man today can begin to trust himself and reclaim his destiny as a
man among men by getting together with other men and talking honestly about his
brokenness and strengths. The shame flees when you discover you’re not alone,
that we’re all in this together. The wolf loves the lone sheep.
There
are 7 core issues for Father Hunger: ALL LEAD TOWARD ABANDONMENT ISSUES
1.)Divorce 2.) Death 3.)
Abuse 4.) Addiction 5.) Single Mothering 6.) Traditional Fathering
7.) Adoption
Their
children enter the world like tiny sponges, ready to absorb every little
impression about themselves and their identity. They are unsure of who they
are: Am I special? they ask. Am I valuable? Am I good? Am I merely an
annoyance? Their fathers play a primary role in answering those questions.
Just
what do you mean by ‘father hunger’?
By
“father hunger” I mean the profound, but usually unconscious longing for
affirmation and limits from male authority figures. The most common words
people use to describe their relationships with their fathers are “absence,”
“sadness” and “I don’t know him.” Men have not been given the permission
or the skills to pass on who they are to their children. We often know
what makes fathers angry, but not the deep desires and dreams of their hearts,
much less their loneliness and hurt. That vacuum creates a similar
emptiness in the hearts of sons and daughters. Dad is an unnameable
mystery, which only calls forth fear, doubt and sometimes endless rebellion.
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Gordon
Dalbey is the author of Healing
the Masculine Soul and Sons of the Father: Healing the Father-Wound in Men
Today. He lives in Santa Barbara, CA, and may be reached at www.abbafather.com .
