– Understanding our Fathers thru Individual Counseling Nashville

From: How to Love the World.  Poems of Gratitude and Hope.  Edited by James Crews.  2021.  Storey Publishing.

IF I CARRY MY FATHER

By: Chris Roberts, MACP, LPC-MHSP (Masters of Arts in Counseling and Psychology.  Licensed Professional Counselor with Mental Health Service Provider designation) Two Trees Counseling Nashville.  Relational Psychodynamic Therapy Certified Therapist Trainer and Consultant.

In a beautiful book by Bell Hooks entitled, “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love,” she paints a fair and representative depiction of fathers as mysterious, and quiet, and hard to read.   While no general description encapsulates all the nuances and outliers attributable to any stereotype, in my experience, both personal and professional, her description provides a quite reputable approximation.  And every one of us, even if we didn’t grow up with a father and mother present, was given life with both a male and female’s contribution.  Meaning, we all have a father, even if we never knew him.  And even more apropos, if there was one parent more likely to abandon the family system, we would almost all vote it would be the father.  As I am reading back my own words, I am astonished how far a poem can take us, with so few words.

The poem gives off the insinuation that the father has passed away.  And maybe so.  But, I think these questions haunt us even if our father is still living.  What do our fathers provide us?  What is the both the societal and personal stories we make up in our heads about what a father is supposed to be and what they are supposed to do for us?   If you have a moment, take a minute and ask yourself, “How do I carry my father around with me?  Where does he exist in my mind?  What do I still expect of him, even if he has been dead for 20 years?  And what did I expect of him throughout his living life?”

WHY FATHERS MATTER IN NASHVILLE INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING

Although it is blatantly cliche to acknowledge this in counseling article, for better or worse, our parents had and will always have a profound impact on our lives.  Yes, even if they have been laid in the ground over 40 years ago, or you are 95 years old.  Our parents, even if they weren’t present in our lives, shape the way we see the world, how we model our ideas of relationships, and who we want, or don’t want, to become as adults.  The idea of the absent father is just as profound as the present, caring, loving father.  Without an actual father to raise us, we are left to our own imagination about who they were and who they thought we were.  And in the case of an absent father, we are all left with some aching and gnawing reality that WE weren’t good enough for them to stay.  We can never escape that nagging intuition somewhere in the back of our minds that his leaving had something to do with me, his child.

If we are willing to work the stories in our minds about ourselves and the world, we will inevitably run into the stories we hold about our fathers, and the stories we imagine he holds about us.  This longing by the author, a longing I believe we all carry inside of us, is a hopeful longing.  She wants her father to be carried inside of her in a way that provides a bolster of goodness or strength when she needs it.  Not all of us will remember, or want to remember, our fathers so fondly.  But I believe she speaks to an eternal reality of being human that even if we don’t remember our fathers fondly, we wish we could.  We know an internal experience of disappointment that our fathers didn’t show up for us, even if we don’t have anything to compare it to, other than movies or friends.

UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF OUR FATHERS IN COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE, TN

Fathers are inherently more distant than mothers, no matter how deeply a father might care and love and give and attend.  A mother carried a child within her body for 9 months.  A mother fed her baby and attended to her child in a way that most men just won’t be able to replicate.  And even if they did, there will always be a physical, and therefore psychosomatic, connection that a mother has to a child that will never be possible for a father.  And already, we have a basic premise of Freud’s theories and metaphors for understanding how the human psyche works.  A father is someone we ache to be close to, and a mother is someone we ache to separate from.  And most of us are quite oblivious to this idea.  A father stretches us, teaches us about the outside world, tells us we can handle the new, and puts us in unfamiliar circumstances.  A father is often unaware of our limitations, and therefore is the perfect candidate to get us to try new things, since they don’t even know they are doing it!

What parts of your father do you want to carry around with you?  What parts of him do you want to show up within you, when you need help, or comfort, or steadiness?  What parts of yourself do you believe are lacking, because you did not get what you needed from him?

COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE FOR HEALTH AND WHOLENESS

If you have been exploring the idea of counseling in Nashville, or you are noticing some nagging sense of frustration or anger at your father, then Chris Roberts at Two Trees Counseling Nashville would love to work with you.  Chris has over 15 years working with individuals, adults and adolescents in helping people experience more fullness and aliveness in their life.  Chris can be reached at chris@nashvillecounselor.net or (615) 800-9260.