What Did Your Father Teach You?

Inspirational Leader

My dad was a very kind man.  He was strong.  He was solid.  He had very settled views about life.  He wasn’t afraid to stand for what he believed, even if people didn’t agree with him.  I learned much from him, and even now, some time after his passing, I reflect more and more about the ways he taught me how to live.

My father was an innovator.  He was creative.  He started new groups for teaching people.  He didn’t follow the mold.  He stepped out in ways that were unusual, or unexpected, but always with kindness in his heart.  He was not a perfect man — I’m not idolizing him — but he was genuinely, a good man with a beautiful spirit, and compassion for people.  He was willing to give so very much of himself and his time to help others.  He volunteered to help other people in a zillion different ways, and he shared everything he owned.  He travelled from place to place, from state to state, from country to country, always offering to help those in need.  He spoke with the poor, the troubled, the complicated people.  Or the fancy rich people.  He didn’t care who you were — he was willing to talk with anyone.  (But you know, I think he preferred the ragamuffins the most!)

My dad was an artist.  He had a great eye for color and design and could paint and draw easily.  He was truly creative and could build anything.  He could literally build structures — houses, churches, kitchens, driveways, any type of construction.  He could fix and repair more broken things than I could list.  He was a country boy who grew up learning how to do all kinds of everything.  Creating something new.  Fixing the broken and turning the something yucky into something awesome were his super-powers.

My dad was an excellent speaker.  And a teacher, and a writer.  He taught many, using his words, and the words he lived by.   Most of all, my dad practiced what he preached in as many ways as possible.  That’s a full-on job, but he knew that how he lived his own life would make a statement in itself.

That’s what my dad taught me. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

He showed me, by decades of his own life-example:

• To care for those around you, even those who feel unloveable.
• To accept people, even the misfits, the wonky ones, the not-as-pretty people.
• To have emotions, even tears, and to be real, even if that meant being vulnerable. 
• To help people, even if it costs you something, or to share what you have.
• To find something valuable and worthwhile in every person you meet, even that one, yes.  
• To be brave enough to venture out into new places, even those places where others won’t go.
• To be creative, even doing new things by forging new paths in new places, reaching people who are often overlooked, ignored, or not seen.
• To be genuine. Not perfect, but genuine in your caring for others. Even when it’s difficult. Reaching the hearts of people goes a very long way.
• To stand up for what you believe in, even when others don’t agree.  Stay true to your convictions.
• To have a strong spiritual life, even when the world is full of opposition and controversy.

Tough teacher, my dad.  Holy moly.  Because you know, I’ve met some rough hooligans in my lifetime as well.  I have had many challenges myself!  I don’t expect to measure up to my dad’s level of success, but what a great example he was.  

He inspired me.  Now… I’m trying to follow in his footsteps.

My dad has obviously impacted my life and how I lead the survivors who arrive here at Discussing Dissociation.  I feel his guidance and his teachings as I meandered through the years, making changes and creating new plans along the way.  Maybe if you understand more about the ways I grew up, you’ll understand more about why I do what I do.

Family history matters, right?  

We are all impacted by what we learned from our dads!

What did your father teach you?

Sadly, I’m very aware that not every father was as pure-hearted and kind as my dad.

This is a much harder question for folks who had fathers who were abusive, or violent, or involved in hidden groups or dark worlds that led to repeated incidents of child abuse.  Fathers who participate or agree with family violence, or child pornography, or sex trafficking, or any of the horrible nightmares I hear about frequently.  These aggressive fathers taught lessons, for sure.  Just not necessarily the kinds of lessons my dad taught me.  

Even so, I encourage you to think about what you learned.  Make a list like I did, up above. How can you use those teachings in a way that helps your life now?   For example, if your father did heinous things that required enormous strength from you, how can you use your strength in a positive way today?  

If your father taught you what abusive behavior looks like, (or worse, evil behavior), how can you use your knowledge about abusive behaviors to now protect yourself and others?

If your father demonstrated a million ways to be a horrible parent, when you think about that, how can you be the opposite?  What can you do differently from that?   You already know what not to do.  I challenge you to learn what you should do / could do instead.  Be the good parent you wish you had.  You know what you were missing — give that to your children.

When you think about the ways your dad was a bad example, explore ways to do the opposite.  If you didn’t like his bad behaviors, find options for yourself so you aren’t repeating those same bad behaviors.  

How can you be totally different from your dad?  What can you do with your life that separates you from the person you don’t want to be?

This is hard work, because it’s all too easy to just do what you know, but challenge yourself — on purpose.  Part of your healing work is learning very different behaviors from the bad-dad stuff you don’t want to copy and repeat.

Internal Father Introjects

If you are someone who has created an internal introject of your father, that’s a whole new level of working on your father issues.  Oh boy, it’s a big topic, but this is a massively important place for healing work.

A father introject, to be brief, is when a part of you splits off for very specific father-related reasons, separates from you within your own internal world.  Instead of believing himself to be you, or a part of you, he believes himself to be your actual outside father person.

A father introject typically believes he is your actual father, as if he is the same man who lives in the outside world, not a split-off man-part from your internal landscape. 

To add to the confusion, internally, within your internal landscape, your father introject will likely look and sound very much like your actual father, if not identical to him. Your other system members may be a million percent convinced he is the dad too. Oh, the layers of inside vs outside confusion that happens right here.

Your insiders / system people may be able to see, or hear, and interact with the father introject, and experience him as their father. On the inside. The inside world gets very real.  They might not be able to recognize the difference either, also experiencing confusion from inside dad from outside dad.   As far as younger insiders are concerned, they may be convinced they are still living with their (outside) dad because they see him so vividly in the internal world.  

It definitely gets confusing!

Father introjects typically believe they are very separate from you.  He believes he is the father himself.  He will likely be adamant that he is NOT the same person as you — he wouldn’t stoop that low as to be you! He will believe himself to be so fully and completely separate from you. He will hold much of the memories and information about father-related topics, only from the father’s point of view, not from your point of view.

However, news flash for father introjects!  The inside world and the outside world are not the same!

As insiders, father introjects are still an internal system member, and when they present in the body, this guy will still be sitting in your outside body self.  From the outside, he will not look like your father — he will look like the body you have.  He is part of your dissociative system, and he is not actually coming from the body of your dad, wherever in the world your actual body-dad is.

Your father introject may have a deeper voice, or the body mannerisms of your father, or facial expressions that sound like your father, or the language of your father. He will most certainly have thoughts, beliefs, values, and rules very similar to your father.  He is sorta like the mini-me of your dad, placed into your inside world, to in essence, be your dad’s presence in your every day life.

Father introjects won’t like it being described as such, (they would be mad at me for saying that!), but never once has a father introject ever presented to me in the actual dad-body, so you know…  he is an insider.

The challenges of having a father introject is that now your dad-mini-me lives with you everywhere you go.  He’s there, he’s watching, he’s talking, he’s imitating your father because he most likely believes himself to be your father.  He’s not. But he will think he is. And he’ll be bossy, no doubt. And he’s going to be more loyal to your dad than he is to you.  Ouch!  There’s a lot of work to do right there to dig in and separate all that, and yes, that kind of healing work is possible.  Absolutely it is possible.

All the work involved to connect with this father introject self will not be discussed in this article — that’s a big job, full of all kinds of intricacies and complexities.  It’s super important work though, so… if you don’t yet know how to do the work with your father introject, contact me and we’ll discuss that at length.

What I can say though, is that your father introject will know exactly what your father taught you.

Going right back to the point of this article, if you don’t know what your dad wanted you to learn,  your father introject will know it in spades.  Inside out, every rule to be kept, every word to be said, or not said.   SO… working with your introject part is crucial, because… well, because your introject selves are still part of YOU.  They are not actually the father, and they do not belong to him.  They belong to you.

The challenge is……  even when being created in the shadow of your father, how can your introject dad learn to be more like you?   When can he become loyal to you, and to your way of thinking?  What will it take for him to see he actually is on your team and not the dad’s team?

Working on Father Issues

I didn’t get this post written for Father’s Day, but in the dissociative trauma world, father stuff is important every single day of the year.  SO… today is the day for putting this post up.  And hopefully, it will be helpful when you’re ready to address these things.

If you need a starting place…

I invite you to take the life-lessons my dad stood for, and to use those for your life.  I hope his legacy can challenge you to stretch and grow as well.

I encourage you to find the goodness in your father introject self, especially as you help him see he is part of you.  Be sure to nurture the values and the strengths you want to keep, while separating out the trash-rules you wanna toss away or re-write.

Have you started talking with your internal father introject?  Of course, conversations with him is an essential starting point. At the beginning, find someone in your system who is best to approach this task.

I challenge you to grow, to learn, and to not let your father-related history hold you back.  You can be as beautiful and as wonderful as you want to be.  With or without him.

Who do you want to be?  

You get to have a big, solid say-so in that right now.  All these years later, you can decide for yourself.  You don’t have to do what your dad said.  Not now, not anymore.  What do you want your life to look like?  What do you want to hold as important and valuable?  You’ve got more freedom to be you than you might realize.

These are hard concepts.  I hope you are up for the challenge. Keep working at it — you can do it!

Thank you for reading, and as always, I wish you and all your insiders the very best in your healing journey.

Warmly,

Kathy

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