Father Wounds: Can A Man Find It Hard To Activate Himself If He Had An Abusive Father?

Although a man will have both a masculine and feminine element inside him, he may find that it is hard for him to connect to the former. Consequently, it will be hard for him to express himself and to take action.

From the outside, it will probably look as though he has the ability to do both, but this won’t be something that he can relate to. Now, this doesn’t mean that he will always sit around and do very little.

A Helping Hand

If he does do something, though, it could typically be because someone else has given him a little push. This could mean that they have literally given him a push or it could show that, by being pressured, he feels the need to do something.

Therefore, he is rarely going to be in a position where he feels the need to do something and then does it. What will feel comfortable is waiting around and not expressing his true self.

An Analogy

One way to get an idea of what it is like for him would be for someone to imagine a car that has no engine. In order for this car to go anywhere, it will need to be pushed by others or for the environment to change, for the ground to sink, for instance, and the car ends up moving by itself.

Without this engine, it won’t matter where the driver wants to go as the car won’t have the power that it needs to move. The driver represents his true self; this is where his true needs and feelings will be located.

Endless Frustration

In general, the man could find that he is seldom in touch with his true needs and feelings. Yet, even if he is in touch with these elements, he won’t have the oomph that is needed to consistently go about taking care of them.

What can be normal, then, is for him to ignore what is taking place inside them as this will be a way for him to avoid the pain of not being able to take action and to fulfil his needs. When this is not the case, however, and he is in touch with what is taking place inside his body, he can feel angry, helpless and hopeless.

A Miserable Existence

Perhaps, there was a stage when experiencing life in this way wasn’t as bad as it is now, which allowed him to simply tolerate what was going on. Going along with what other people wanted and being a “follower” as opposed to a “leader” might not have really fazed them.

But, as time has passed and the anger and frustration inside him have built up, he might no longer be able to experience life in this way. Instead of needing someone or something else to get him moving, he will want to be the one who chooses to take action.

Pressing the Button

He will want to feel the fire inside him and to allow this inner fire to propel him into action so that he can express himself freely. Needing another person to push him or to do something out of fear is no longer going to appeal to him.

He will want his energy source to be activated as this will allow him to not only look like an individual but to act like one. At this point in time, this could seem like nothing more than a pipe dream.

A Strange Scenario

The truth is that he has fire inside him but, for some reason, he doesn’t have access to this fire. He may find that he has been passive and found it hard to take action for as long as he can remember.

If he was to look back on his life, he could see that he has always needed other people to get the ball rolling, so to speak, and that it’s as if he is missing something. He could often lay into himself, believing that there is something inherently wrong with him and that he is weak and incapable.

What’s going on?

What this may illustrate is that his early years were very traumatic and this caused him to separate from his aggression/fight instinct. This may have been a time when he was physically abused by his father.

At this stage of this life, he wouldn’t have been able to run away or to fight back; disconnecting from himself was his only option. This would have estranged him from his feelings and needs and his inner fire.

A Destructive Expression

His father, through expressing his inner fire in a destructive manner, would have caused him to disconnect from his. By being harmed on a weekly, if not daily, basis, his masculinity would have been knocked out of him.

The part of him that would allow him to activate himself will have been pushed deep inside him and he is likely to carry a lot of repressed anger, murderous rage, and hate. He may also fear that if he was to embrace this side of him, his so-called “dark side”, he would end up causing harm just like his father.

Awareness

Considering all this, for him to get out of his frozen, fearful state, he will need to resolve the trauma that is inside him and to develop a new relationship with his masculinity. If he is ready to take this step, this is something that can take place with the assistance of a therapist or healer.