So What’s The Solution?

How Your Anger and Your Father are Connected – Part 4

So what is the solution?  We’ve spent three postings describing the problem–now what?  How do I find healing for a father-wound?  There are three basic steps to take if what we have written has resonated within you:

1.  Recognize that the anger you have been experiencing has been redirected by you.  Typically, when a father has been angry and abusive, the anger felt by the adult child is  redirected inward–at themselves.   Or their anger may, as we mentioned in an earlier post, “leak out” in their other relationships.  They are not fully aware of it, but other people will certainly experience their anger.

In either situation, it is important to see that the proper focus of our anger needs to be directed at our father.  Not literally!  Please don’t involve him if he is still alive.  That’s not the father we need to deal with.  It is the father that lives in our own heads.  It’s the voice we hear coming from inside us.  The father has been internalized and that’s to whom the anger needs to be directed, not the literal father of today.

2.  Next,  we grieve what’s been lost.  What did you miss by having the father you had, or by not having a father present in your life?   Make a list of what’s been lost.  For me, my list began with the fact that my father never showed any interest in anything I did, unless it was related to the church.  He never visited my school, never attended any of  my sports events, never attended a concert of the all-city band where I was the #2 Tuba player out of 12.  I never got his approval.  Thse losses were part of what I had to grieve.

Grief has two facets–1.) anger as protest, and 2.) sadness and resignation.  Men typically do the angry part of grieving, but avoid the sadness and tears.  Women typically do the sadness part well, but try to avoid the anger part.  To successfully grieve, both anger and sadness need to be experienced, and that means it will take some time to process.

3.  Finally, we eventually come to the place of forgiving.  How do you know you’ve truly forgiven?  I told someone recently who was working through this process that she would know she had truly forgiven when her expectations for her father were zero.  True forgiveness is the canceling of the debt.  When I forgave my father, I finally realized that he he didn’t owe me anything anymore–my expectations were gone.

Pat Conroy, the author of many books including The Great Santini, said in one of his books, “On the day I forgave my father, my life began.”  That’s my story as well.

I have written two books on this process that might help.  One is Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves, the other is Making Peace with Your Father.  Both are published by Regal books and available at any bookstore or online at Amazon.

Question:  Where are you in this process?