J* is in a relationship and a father of two small children. He works and feels pressured at work. He feels that he is not progressing in his career as well as he would like. He often feels low too and cannot quite pinpoint why. He feels he “should have everything he wants and needs”, but deep down he feels discomfort and sadness. At times he feels rage which can be triggered by small events and he does not understand his triggers. He feels ashamed when the feelings just seem to take over.

He feels that he should have by now as an adult forgotten about his own experience of being parented and growing up with a father who would have angry outbursts. He has worked hard on trying to keep the memories of being hit by him out of his consciousness but sometimes they are triggered and would disturb him.  Lately, he has felt low a lot of the time and it has been difficult to shift the mood. He also feels ashamed of losing his temper when his children are around.

L* lives by herself. She works as a teacher and often feels overwhelmed and burned by her work. She aims for perfection and often feels anxious. In her relationships with others, she tries her hardest to make everyone else happy and struggles to set boundaries. When anyone asks for her help, she responds “yes” without hesitation. Her previous relationship ended because L could not continue with her partner who became increasingly controlling of her actions. He was supposed to be a good guy with a good job, but gradually ex-partners’ behaviour particularly when drinking became more aggressive. L has become almost frightened of getting into another relationship, leaving her sad as she would like to have a loving relationship.

As much as L has tried to move on from her early experiences of growing up with an unpredictable angry father, these memories sometimes haunt her. She has become increasingly aware that her past is not in the past but in fact, keeps sending her messages in the form of flashbacks in her daily life. It is difficult for her to feel content in her life.

Did something about these stories resonate with you? Are you wondering how your life is still impacted by growing up with an angry father?

Growing up with an angry father (figure) comes up a lot in my clinical work. I wanted to write a post about how early experiences with an angry father may still impact your life today and help you understand why that might be.

You can also read about Childhood Trauma and Childhood Emotional Neglect in these posts…

Healing Childhood Trauma with EMDR Therapy: A Path to Hope and Recovery

Healing Your Mother Wound

Childhood trauma: How did you have to adapt to survive your childhood?

8 Consequences of the father wound on well-being and relationships

Ending the emptiness and loneliness of Childhood Emotional Neglect

When you have grown up in an environment that was not emotionally and/or physically safe, you may in adulthood have both emotional reactions and behaviours that are linked to your earlier experiences. This is not an exclusive list. These signs may also be linked to other significant difficult life events.

– shutting down if anyone raises their voice and avoiding any form of perceived conflict

– self-blame

– people-pleasing

– finding it difficult to express your needs

– having sudden angry outbursts (e.g. road rage)

– being frightened of your emotional responses

– feeling ashamed for not knowing how to respond to strong emotions in an appropriate way

– depression

– shut down and dissociation from unwanted feelings, images, memories

Our brain, body, and central nervous system have been created to ensure that humans as a species survive and do not become extinct on this planet. We still have the same brain and body as our ancestors who lived in caves and had to keep safe.

To ensure our safety, our brains and bodies store information about our experiences, including information about previous negative, harmful, and difficult situations if no adequate support was in place so that we can stay safe and survive in the future.

An almond-shaped organ in our brain called Amygdala starts to fire signals to alert the rest of the body when any signs of danger (triggers only need to have a 20% overlap with a previous harmful situation). This is to prepare to take action to escape, fight back, or perhaps freeze or even end up in a state of collapse to ensure your survival. So if you are experiencing any of the symptoms above or other experiences, it is your brain and body trying to keep you safe.

However, if you now live in an environment where you are technically safe, the old programming is no longer helpful to keep you safe but it can hinder your ability to live your life whole-heartedly. What used to help you to survive in your childhood may today hinder your life.

Living with the after-effects of your childhood experiences is so painful and draining. You may not even be fully conscious of the different ways your experiences still impact you. You are looking for a change and want to feel different about your life and how you feel inside.

The memories get activated as long as they have not been (re)processed in your brain and body.

So, what can you do to heal?

Your nervous system needs to be in a more regulated state to start to feel better and less activated.

Grounding, mindfulness, and increasing emotional awareness can all help and are the basics, but the biggest change I have seen in clients who have also reprocessed their painful memories.

This is done using EMDR (Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) therapy. It is an evidence-based (so science has backed it up) therapy model that together with talking therapy in the supportive environment can help to put the old memories to the past and help to upgrade your brain & nervous system.

If you would like to know more about therapy and how it could help you, please check out my services pages and book a FREE 15min consultation here.