Do you find yourself constantly seeking approval, trying to please others, or burying yourself in work? Do you struggle to set boundaries or are you stuck in unhealthy relationship patterns? These feelings could be coming from your father wound, which can develop if your father was emotionally or physically absent.

The solution lies in understanding the generational trauma that men have carried, which has led to emotional unavailability and absence. If we can learn to embrace our vulnerability, release the need for approval, and accept ourselves as worthy, we can finally begin the healing process

If we don't, we may find ourselves seeking validation in unhealthy ways, like chasing relationships or burying ourselves in work to prove our worth. These patterns can leave us feeling empty and unfulfilled, no matter how much external success we achieve.

In this episode, Lorin provides practical solutions to help you release emotional blockages and affirm your self-acceptance. These techniques will help break the cycle of generational trauma and create healthier relationships with yourself and others.

Mentioned in this episode:

Shadow Work in Relationships & Creating Abundance
Heal the shadow in your relationships and bring forth true abundance in your life.

Today I will share with you how you can heal the pain caused by a father who was

emotionally or even physically absent.

This is for both women and men, and I will go into some of the subtle differences

in how this shows up and what the healing steps are for women and men.

I will also share from my own personal story and experience

of healing my own father wounds.

And I will use certain examples of my own healing and what I saw and experienced

in order to make points that I make throughout this episode much more

clear and much more practical for you.

Welcome to the Masculine and Feminine Dynamics podcast.

My name is Lorin Krenn and I am a relationship coach.

I help you to embody your awakened masculine and awakened feminine

in relationships and life.

Let's dive in.

Why are there so many fathers who were emotionally unavailable

or even physically absent?

Why is there so much pain around the relationship with the

father for both women and men?

This has its origin in the generational trauma of men.

I will summarize this as quickly as possible to make it as

practical as possible and clear.

In the past, and unfortunately still in parts of today's world, men had to

fight, had to kill in order to survive.

In order to provide and protect their family or their loved ones.

This naturally has led that they needed to shut down their emotions and disconnect

from their own heart in order to not be constantly in the grip of the pain,

the guilt, the intensity of having to engage in such horrendous actions.

Basically they had to shut down their vulnerability, their own

fragility, and this has been passed down from generation to generation.

It's where sayings such as "A real man knows no pain" come from.

It's worth saying such as "a real man does not cry" come from.

Because it makes perfect sense.

Back then, um, crying and going deeply into your emotions was not necessarily

beneficial because he couldn't, it could have gotten you killed.

It was not a, a survival strategy that would have worked.

But of course, in today's world, you have to cry.

You have to release the pain.

You have to go deep into the pain and release it, and tears are

a natural expression of that.

You have to feel the vulnerability, intensity of your emotions if you

want to be a fully spiritually evolved being who truly lives their truth.

Today's world is very different.

But since this has been passed out, generation, gen generation, generation,

it's only now that there is much more awareness around, wait a moment,

you have to be doing inner work.

And also the, the, the roles have changed in a very specific way because in survival

mode, the woman was not saying to the man, um, I needed to hold more space and

I need you to be more grounded, right?

This was just not a conversation.

I assumed that was, that was part of the dinner table.

It was more like, do we have some food at the table, right?

It was very different in this harsh, in, in such a harsh environment.

But now of course things have changed.

Desires have changed.

Men are no longer hunting and women can't eat if they haven't hunt, if they

haven't found something in their hunt.

Things have changed.

So now desires have changed.

The role of men have changed, even though on an archaic

level, we still want to protect.

We still have these.

Providing insects within us, they now express themselves in a different way.

And one of the ways they express themselves is, for instance, we provide

and protect for being able to hold space emotionally to really be a safe to

rock in the ocean, to be the mountain.

And now, how does that lead to the father wound?

Well, most fathers in today's world, your father most likely not have the

resources, practices, and spiritual emotional knowledge in order to

really work through this generational trauma, to be the cycle breaker.

So he was basically not able, most likely to be emotionally available,

because he, he had such difficulties and shut the part inside himself down.

Because for a man, for a father to be emotionally available, to be a

safe presence and space, to be deeply grounded, he has to embrace his own

inner feminine and be able to hold, hold his own fragility, the intensity

of his emotions and his vulnerability.

I give you an example.

For instance, when, um, one time I had a swollen or injured ankle and I was

limping and I went to the hospital with my father, and they told me that I've

got something with my ankle and I was limping and my father was hurrying me up,

going down the stairs of the hospital, and looking angry, angry at me, and

basically saying I should suck it up, it's not that bad and I should hurry up

and I should stop playing, um, like a victim or something along those lines.

Whereas I was truly in pain and I was limping.

Um, and now of course I can be blaming and all of that and say, why was he not there?

But that was simply generational trauma that has been passed down from his father

and his father's father down to him.

Because him being emotionally present with me, what would that do?

It would connect.

It would've connected him with the own part inside him, that he has shut

down, the connection to his heart, to his empathy, to his compassion,

to his ability to deeply feel.

And many of you, I'm sure, had a father who was not able to hold space, who was

not emotionally available because again, that part inside him was shut down.

It could have been shut down because of his father ,what his father did,

or of had traumatic experience, or maybe he was served in the military.

Um, that can be one of the ways.

We don't talk about emotions, we don't talk about hard stuff.

What, where, wherever it came from, him not being able to hold space for you

does not mean that he didn't love you.

It simply meant that his ability of loving was not at a level of consciousness

where he was able to hold space for you.

This doesn't eradicate the pain, but it doesn't make it personally.

As a child.

Of course, we make it about ourselves because as children we're egocentric.

We only how well most adults are as well.

But as children, we, um, make everything about ourselves.

We don't see that there are so many different worlds existing.

The world of my father, the world of this other family, the world of this other

kid, it's all about me and the world.

The sun, kind of the world spins around me.

So he's not emotionally available because I'm not good enough, because

it's me or something along those lines.

And of course, that immediately puts a child and put must put you into a

situation where, um, it didn't allow you your natural development as a

boy or as a girl, to just become fully woman, to become fully man.

Now, my father couldn't witness weakness.

He couldn't witness vulnerability, he couldn't witness deep emotions.

So for instance, um, when I caught a cold in primary school, he would

still want me and argue with my , . He still wanted me to bring me to school.

Because he said, no, it's no big deal, and I'm just acting and I'm making it up, or

it's not as bad as I'm making it to be.

These were ways of just, um, not being able to confront anything

that's not in line with this kind of generational trauma of "I'm a man,

I don't cry, I suck it all up, and I don't, I don't, I don't talk about my

pain or my challenging experience".

It was just impossible to bring anything emotional to my father.

It was just because there was no, there was no availability

for, for, for such things.

Of course I know now where that comes from.

His father was an alcoholic, came home screaming in the middle of the

night, embarrassing the whole family, the mother crying, his mother crying

and begging his father to stop.

His father abandoned my father emotionally and physically in vital, vital moments.

My father had to take, for instance, an important test in university

and his father promised to drive him, but he didn't show up.

And my father had prepared mums and mums for this test, and he didn't show

up and he was just crying, crying, crying, crying himself to his sleep.

And this is what eventually these things and the pain from his father who was

emotionally and physically completely abs absent is something that he then carried

inside him and then projected onto me naturally, because he didn't have the

tools and resources to work through that.

In an argument with him, he even said to me once, "I'm giving you so much

more than what my father gave me.

He did X, Y Z, and I'm not doing that".

This was a way of him communicating that I should be grateful that he's not like his

father, that he's not treatment like that, and that he's giving me other things.

You see, when a father is stuck in a generational trauma, when

that party is shut down, he can't see really what's going on.

He's totally in the grip of that generational trauma.

And then when my father, you, many of you'll know the story.

When I was 11 years old, he got diagnosed with colon cancer, and

the colonies about letting go.

And my father had so much repressed anger.

He even told me that he would've struck down his father with

his fists if he would've been bigger and stronger back then.

His father died early in his life due to alcoholism and wasting and

spending all the money of the family.

The reason I'm sharing this with you is because it is very important.

When he got diagnosed with cancer, he didn't tell me anything about it.

I, at some point my mother spoke to me, and my father

basically never spoke about it.

This was his way of trying to protect me.

He was trying to protect me from the challenging emotions that he experienced.

Um, he was trying to share as little as possible and to keep

me at bay and distance, even though I could see he was in pain.

The constant hospital visits, my mother being more stressed and of course as a

child picking up his emotional state.

But this was his way of trying to protect me based on his level of

consciousness and the generational trauma that he has experienced.

To speak as little as possible, to not engage, to not share about what he's

experiencing, whereas I was deeply yearning to speak to him, to have a

loving father, son relationship, the same that you as a woman or you as a

man yearn for most likely, if you're listening to this from your father,

just a loving father son relationship.

And you might ask yourself, how hard can it be?

Just take me in your arms.

Just tell me you love me and that I'm good enough and embrace me.

But this is much harder than it seems, when a father is stuck in the

generational trauma and he has shut that part down a long time inside himself.

Three years later, after a battle of colon cancer for my, that my father

experienced, I was holding his hand and his last words were "I love you".

This was the first time he told me, that he loved me.

And I'm very grateful that he did because it certainly did change things.

It made me realize that there was a deep love that he, that he held for me.

And also I heard then later on that he always expressed to others how much

he loved me, and how much he cared about me, but he didn't express it to

me, which also is very interesting.

And I hear this story from many people whose father I don't know, has a picture

of his daughter that he sees every day.

But he doesn't call her, he doesn't speak to her.

And It's truly, truly challenging, but it's it, it'll be easy

to just say he didn't care.

That it's not the truth.

He was just operating from his level of consciousness.

And in his last year of his illness, this, this was one of the strangest

experiences for me, because even though he was my father, and I saw him quite

frequently, apart from the the last few moms where I had to go into a special

hospital and they tried kind of the last effort, which didn't work, but

him and I had hardly any connection.

We hardly spoke.

We were like complete strangers to one another, and it was, it

was quite remarkable because I felt I didn't have a father.

I, there was zero connection.

It was like we could have not been more strangers.

He never opened up, he never shared vulnerably.

He was trying to his best to protect me from the intensity.

But instead what he did is he abandoned me.

And perhaps this is something that your father also in some capacity tried to do.

In his level of consciousness.

He tried to protect you, but he actually abandoned you.

But that's not his Intention.

That's not what he actually want to do.

Feel into that for a moment, because if that's true for you, that changes

certainly how you perceive this and allows much more openness for deeper healing.

Of course, his loss and all these emotional unavailability created

a strong father wound for me.

A grief emotionally, physically from his death.

Physically meaning I would feel in my body, I would have eczema and my

skin flaring up, scratching in the night, inflammation all over my body

directly after his death, because it was so, so intense, that experience.

But I'm incredibly grateful for everything that happened and, um, I

say thank you to all of it because it cracked me open and it turned me into

the person, to the man that I'm today.

And to the service that I bring to the world now, it would've wouldn't

have been possible for all these, for this long, very, very long, many,

many years, dark night of the soul.

And here is what happens when a young girl, a young boy, did not receive the

approval and love of their father because they were, that's what naturally happens.

If they're emotionally unavailable, physically absent, then they will

search for it in relationships, they will search for it in the world.

For men, this can mean chasing women, dating multiple women,

sleeping endlessly around.

For women, this can mean the same, or creating a sense of masculine armor around

them, burying themselves in work, being hyper independent, completely suppressing

their feminine, and only being in their masculine as a protective mechanism.

What happens here is that the trauma is trying to protect you.

So you're going into your mask and you're going into your rational

mind because that's a safe haven.

But of course, a place where you don't feel anything, um, and I'm

talking about unconscious masculine expression, of course, it's a place where

you're disconnected from your heart.

So the generational trauma of men, of the masculine, of course,

expresses itself in this way for this masculine armor in women as well.

And that pain still lives there until it's, resides there,

until it's released and healed.

As a woman, this can also be burying yourself in work.

Same for men.

Desperately needing fame, approval, validation.

I, I forgot the name, but this example where a woman would, uh, build this

company and basically lie to investors and lie to the board and lie to

the public, um, in order to reach incredible fame and incredible wealth.

And, uh, then ends up in, in prison, right?

And, and, um, these are example.

Other men as well.

Why do people do that?

Because there is such a desperate need for fame, such a desperate need for

approval, such a desperate need for validation, which is the silent longing

of the little girl and the little boy within, that they actually, their longing

that they wanted to receive from their father to hear the words "I love you.

I'm here for you, you are good enough, and you are worthy exactly as you are".

It can also express itself in you becoming a pleaser in your intimate

life, um, because you try to please and abandon your own needs in order to

kind of meet the needs of your father, or your mother if it's the mother

wound, and kind of pushing your needs aside to, to get any form of attention.

'cause as a child, you're just longing for attention.

And if they're emotionally unavailable, you can often then try to find

ways how you can make them at least give you some form of attention.

And perhaps that will be by, uh, by pleasing them, by not expressing your

needs, by doing things for them or trying constantly to prove yourself to

them, no longer allowing your natural development as a child and growing

fully into, being fully woman, becoming fully men, this would hinder you,

and now you're constantly trying to gain their attention of your father.

And then it just shows up in your relationships and you stay too long

in the complete wrong relationships that are not safe for your heart.

And then you experience similar dynamics where you are being emotionally abandoned

and you're trying everything possible in order to gain their attention.

It can always come from a mother wound, of course.

And as you most likely have seen and noticed, no matter what happens,

no matter who the most, could have the most amazing partner,

you can become the most successful person, build the biggest business.

This emptiness inside you just feels emptier.

This hole that needs for validation in any form, whether it's for pleasing or

whether it's for chasing in your intimate life or in your business, this hole only

gets bigger, no matter what happens.

I've spoken to people who are absolutely at the pinnacle of success.

Incredible levels of wealth and success and seemingly everything.

I work with such people day in and day out, and some of them,

when they first come to me.

They're deeply, deeply, deeply unhappy.

They're just as unhappy as they were when they were 11 years old and felt

emotionally abandoned by their father.

But that hole grew bigger and bigger because they tried to fill

it with all kinds of outside things.

And then eventually what happens is they start to realize, wait a

moment, it's only getting worse.

I'm only feeling even more empty.

And that's of course, when often then when they start working with me and when

they truly start then doing the inner work, because then what happens, you

start to learn the only way to feel it is either if your father changes 360

and comes to you and says, I love you deeply, I'm sorry, let's reconcile.

And you are wonderful exactly as you are, and for the rest of my life, I'm gonna

be here for you, I'm gonna compensate for that, I'm gonna make up for it.

But most life's not gonna work.

For many of you, your father might have died already.

My father has passed away already.

This is just not a possibility.

And if your father is a narcissist or abusive, I mean, this will

never happen, or most likely never happen unless he wants something

out of his own selfishness.

So the only way to feel it is to learn to accept yourself,

to learn, to validate yourself.

But of course, you hear that all the time.

Validate yourself, learn to accept yourself, learn to love yourself.

There is no problem in saying these things, but the challenging

thing here is how do you actually learn to validate yourself?

How do you learn to accept yourself as you are?

Because you can say to yourself "I accept myself, I'm gonna try to accept

myself", and you're still living in the same emotional state of unworthiness

and still playing out the same patterns.

So one of the ways, there are many, many ways, but one of the ways that are very

powerful here is for instance, tapping.

Most of you will know emotional freedom technique, but there are

many, many wor versions of tapping.

There is, there's energetic, energy tapping and there are many other versions.

So, and one of the mantras you can say is, even though I felt

this unworthiness, I deeply and completely accept and honor myself.

It's a very powerful mantra.

You can change this.

And then tapping the energetic points.

There's so many different versions of tapping.

It's not like this is the one that's the best, and this is the

right one, this is the wrong one.

Every single one of them is different, but this is something you can do.

You can, you can find it online.

There are many versions or, I teach deeper about the most life-changing practices

for me after years of working with so many people all over the world, working for

my own father wound, what really works, what really leads to lasting shifts.

I teach about this in my upcoming Healing the Father Wound, which

is on the 10th of December.

And if, um, you can click on the show notes to save your spot, or if

you listen to this after the 10th of December of 2023, then you can just

visit lorinkrenn.com/recordings where you'll be able to purchase the recording.

But back to the tapping.

So you can do, for instance, EFT tapping, you can say this, um, even though I

felt this unworthiness, I deeply and completely accept and honor myself.

And you will notice after five minutes of doing this or so that your energy shifts

and perhaps for the first time you start to feel acceptance, you start to feel

a sense of wholeness for who you are.

And that is so important because otherwise you will search for this

wholeness in the wrong places.

You need to have practices, whether it's tapping or any somatic healing practices

that allow you to tap into that deepest sense of wholeness within you, because

that is when you start to realize, wait a moment, it is within me and I

need to cultivate it, and only I can feel this void and hold inside myself.

Of course there are many other practices, but tapping is one

that works so effectively.

It's so safe and works so quickly as well.

But then there are other somatic healing practices.

It's important that you learn to get deep into the body.

You need to use the intelligence of your body.

Doing just talk therapy about your father wound is not going to heal the

trauma that is stored in your body.

And we know that trauma is still, is stored within your body.

And I'm not just talking about the physical body, I'm also

talking about the energetic body.

Trauma release, breath work, embodiment practices, yoga,

primal exercises, primal shaking.

These are powerful ways, some of the powerful ways that allow your.

Body to release to, so to speak, bypass or for a moment, kind of pause your

logical mind, because the logical mind is constantly trying to protect you from

the trauma and from the emotional pain.

What's happening here is that there is a part within you that is

shielding the trauma in order to help you, but by shielding it, you

cannot tap into it and release it.

And it's suppressed, of course, so, which is a necessary survival strategy,

which you needed back then, but you are no longer just needing to survive.

You are here to thrive and to feel whole.

So we need to go deep, deep into the body, deeper than the mind.

This is why spiritual teachers say transcend the mind, but it means to

more practically, you go deeper into the body, into the intelligence of your body.

This includes your energetic body, of course.

And as you do this, this is where you truly start to connect with the part

that has been shut down, through having your father being emotionally available

and that trauma and that pain, this comes to the surface and that is where

you can start to then really release it.

And that's where you really start to experience freedom.

And that's where you no longer live out the same patterns in your intimate

life, in your business, in your work, but you start to feel whole.

And if your father is still alive, then I invite you, if possible, to speak

to him, to reconcile in some capacity.

Unless he's narcissistic or he's an abuse or he's highly manipulative or

toxic, then it might not make sense.

This is only something you can decide as, I don't know the context, and

I haven't coached you around this.

But if you have the chance to speak your truth and you feel it is safe and

your intuition guides you to do it, then that can have a deep healing effect

to have the conversation with him.

And if you weren't able to do this because he has already passed, do not worry.

That is the case for so many people.

You can still heal this at an energetic level because you're

then healing it in spirit.

Your father is in spirit and you're still healing that, so he doesn't have

to be alive in order to do so, and you don't have to necessarily reconcile.

But if you can, I would highly recommend it.

It will aid in your healing.

So to conclude, your need for validation, whether it is for pleasing, chasing

your intimate life, or trying to climb the corporate ladder, having

dreams of saving the world and being finally recognized, becoming famous,

becoming so popular are all unconscious desires to hear the loving words that

your father has never spoken to you.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to succeed.

No.

Go to the highest level experience.

The highest abundance.

This is your birthright, but you need to feel into where is this coming from?

And This is something very important.

Am I building this business?

Am I doing these things because of love, because there's

service to something greater?

Or am I doing it from a place of neediness needing this to fill the void within?

Because if you are doing it to fill a void within, then you will

only find yourself with an even bigger void, you will amplify it.

Because the energy you predominantly spend the most amount of time in is

what you're going to focus on and what you're gonna cultivate more of.

On the other hand, if you're doing this in deeper service, go to the highest level.

Experience the most success.

It's your birthright.

You deserve to be as successful and as abundant and as thriving as possible.

And that reality and possibility is there for almost every

single person in this world.

The most important quiescent here is find ways to truly tap into your body.

To really go deep, to bring to the surface the deeper challenging emotions

that are within you and bypassing that protective instinct and living in

survival, which you have kind of learned and gotten, and, uh, the trauma you

have received or was created through their abandonment of your father.

And then you start to release that step by step.

And this is the path towards wholeness.

Usually.

It's not like you do one somatic healing exercise and then it's all gone.

But you engage in this, you go deep into the body, deep into the body,

deep into the body, and you start to experience more shifts and more freedom.

And then you naturally go deeper into it.

This is the kind of momentum that you create.

And as you create the momentum, you just go deeper, deeper, and deeper.

And if you don't experience that momentum, if you feel stuck constantly, then it

means you're not going deep enough.

And this is not a way of shaming and saying, oh, you're not going deep enough.

By just might be the practices and tools that you're using in the way

that you're using them, maybe there's still a part that is not allowing

you to go fully into your body.

And I will teach in depth about this in my Healing the Father Wound workshop, how

you can really, really tap deep, deep, deep into that in order to really start

to create lasting and powerful shifts.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

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