Father Wounds: Can A Man Carry A Sense Of Badness If He Had An Abusive Father?

What a man may find, that’s if he was able to step back and reflect on his life, is that he has the inclination to feel bad. When this is the case, he is likely to feel very low and worthless and he might, at times, even contemplate ending his life.  

Therefore, even if he doesn’t feel this way, it is probably not going to be long until he does. If he doesn’t succumb to how he feels, he could end up consuming something or engaging in some kind of activity to change how he feels.

The First

When it comes to the first option, this could mean that he will end up drinking alcohol or eating junk food, for instance. What this is likely to do is to allow him to feel better, if only for a short period of time.

The trouble, of course, is that while this may allow him to briefly feel better; he is likely to be undermining his health. However, due to how he feels about himself, he might not care about his health.

The Second

As for the second, he could end up masturbating or having a sexual encounter. Once again, this is likely to allow him to feel better for a little while and give him a break from the misery that he usually experiences.

Masturbating is not harmful per se but it could mean that he will be hooked on pornography and as for sexual encounters; this could lead to a number of issues. But, thanks to how he feels before he takes one of these steps, he is unlikely to think about how he will feel afterwards or what consequences will arise.

The Fall Out

After he has finished whatever it was that he was doing to feel better, it could be even harder for him to handle how he feels. The reason for this is that he will have been uplifted and then sunk right down.

At other times, though, he might just be able to disconnect from how he feels and live his life. From the outside, he may appear to live a relatively normal life, with him even having a respectable job, for instance.

One Area

There is the chance that he will have a job that involves him helping others in some shape or form and thus, allow him to receive a lot of positive feedback. Along with this, he may also make a difference by volunteering.

Nonetheless, no matter how much positive feedback impact he receives from others, it is not going to have much of an impact on him. The best it is likely to do is keep how he feels at bay for a very short period of time.

An Analogy

It will be very similar to spraying water on a window on a sunny day and expecting it to go through to the other side. Most of the water will just fall down and when it comes to the water that doesn’t, it will soon dry up.
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So, when he receives positive feedback, it will either fall off him and if it doesn’t fall off straight away, it soon will. As a result of this, it will be a constable battle for him to experience pleasurable feelings.  

On A Treadmill

This can mean that he will have spent a lot of his life working hard in the hope that it will allow him to be seen as a good person and to finally feel good. He may have contributed a lot to the planet by being this way.

But, just as with filling a bucket that has a hole in it, the good that he has received will have gone right through him. Naturally, living in this way will take a lot out of him, as he will both feel bad about himself and he will use so much energy trying to feel good.

What’s going on?

If he has been able to step back and reflect on how he experiences life, he could wonder why he feels so bad about himself. When he looks at how he lives his life, he might struggle to think of something that he has done that is so bad.

Based on how he feels, it can be as though he has killed at least one innocent person and deserve to live in hell forever. What this can show is that his brain has blocked out the information that would shed light on why he experiences life in this way.

A Closer Look

His early years may have been a time when he was deeply wounded by his own father and mother. He may have been hit by his father and often isolated if he misbehaved or didn’t please his parents.

And, as he was egocentric at this stage of his life, he would have personalised what took place. It was then not that his parents were deeply wounded and resorted to violence as a result; no, it was that he was bad, worthless and there was something inherently wrong with him.

Defenceless

He was at a stage of his life when his brain wasn’t developed enough to question what was going on and neither was he strong enough to defend himself. Unlike what happens when he receives positive feedback as an adult, then, the negativity would have gone straight in.

What he was able to do during this time was to automatically repress how he felt and go into a shut-down, collapsed, frozen and disconnected state. This wouldn’t have changed what was going on but it would have stopped him from being aware of it and allowed him to survive.

The Truth

Ultimately, how he was treated was not a reflection of his value; it was a reflection of what was going on for his parents. This means that he is not bad, worthless and there is nothing inherently wrong with him.

Still, for him to know this at the core of his being, he will probably need to work through a lot of pain. This will be the pain that was automatically repressed by his brain and is now held inside his brain and body.

Awareness

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk