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June, 2009

The Inner Father

The Black Hole of trauma can be a major roadblock to a man's psychospiritual path, a man's path to full manhood. The feelings of ordeal can trigger flashbacks so that a man cannot discern the Void of initiation from the Black Hole of trauma. There comes a stew of pain that a man sees no reason to taste. The problem is there is nourishment in that stew. A man has to taste both kinds of pain to get that nourishment.

A traumatized boy inside us is intermittently stuck in the past. He is stuck in the Black Hole. He is stuck in fear and anxiety and time. He needs healing or a man will unconsciously be sucked into the Black Hole of the boy's traumatic feelings. A man will then lose clarity and react to life with the emotions of a scared boy. Neither the boy inside nor the man is to blame. Both are caught in a web of unconscious fear. The boy has few resources to deal with the fear. The man has the resources without the awareness.

A flashback occurs when a man experiences the world through the perceptions of the traumatized boy. Then he reacts with the fears of the boy. This boy had precious few resources to deal with the traumatic situation at the time of the trauma. And nobody has helped him since. His flashbacks feel like he is right back into a dangerous, overwhelming situation. This would be like periodically unknwongly finding oneself in a traumatic program on the holodeck of the Enterprise. Th boy is regularly terrified. And the program never changes.

Ultimately healing comes by the fathering or reparenting from an aware man. Men need to realize that they have the inner resources to heal themselves if they look for the resources within. This is the time when a man must access the father within, the inner second father the boy desperately needs. A man can father the boy in ways the boy missed earlier. A man can start the process of healing the terrified boy. I am acting the elder when I say this to men.

One of the first things to be aware of is that we are all natural fathers, participating in the father archetype deep inside. The vast majority of men have access to this energy and wisdom if they will open themselves to the possibility and create that intention. That archetype is often triggered by the presence of a child who needs him. In this case the elder, within or without, introduces the hurting boy inside to the conscious man. Since our culture is largely ignorant of any inner life for men, this introduction is quite a revelation.

Most men will resist this introduction at first, seeing it as psychobabble or worse. You may be resisting right now. I understand that. This is new territory for men, the wilderness within. It is also the honorable warrior at work. I ask that men entertain the possibility of more to their inner life than they realize. I ask that men not ignore a boy who has often been ignored all his life. I ask men not to ignore their inner life. I attest to the reality of the boy and the father within from my own experience and the experience of many other men I have worked with.

The warrior is of two minds here. And here is the root of most resistance. The warrior needs to protect the boy from the consciousness of his wounds and the pain of his memories. And he wants to protect the man from the pain of the boy. His best bet is to keep it all in the unconscious where any pain that leaks up is seen as someone else's present aggressiveness.

The warrior then develops elaborate reasons why nobody needs to look into the unconscious. Some men resist because of feeling it unmanly to have a boyish side. Others are hardheaded 'realists' who believe only in what can be measured. Others have always endeavored to leave the pain behind by an act of will, as in the 'past is the past'. In any case the aware man needs to consciously command his warrior to step aside from his defensive posture.

This is a process I call 'stilling' the warrior. This must be done in an honorable way, with gratitude for all his work in protecting the boy from overwhelming pain. I am not being overly dramatic when I say that this pain could have led to the boy's suicide if not for the warrior's protection. The warrior chose the best course of action at the time. And that deserves our deep gratitude.

Once the introduction is complete and accepted the fathering must begin. Here the father must take the lead in getting to know this intimate stranger. He must use the same skills he would use to get to know any boy he was interested in. This boy can be any age from infant to late teenager. So one of the first questions the boy could be asked would be, 'How old are you?'

In starting to get to know the boy it is vital to realize that he is present in the moment the question is asked. This is a boy, stuck intermittently in the past, who is in need of a present father. He is like one of the lost boys in Peter Pan. He has never grown up. He has been ignored all this time. He has been living in a never land inside a man's psyche. But, as opposed to Peter's lost boys, this lost boy wants to be found. He wants to be fathered. He wants to not hurt any more. He wants the guidance he never got.

It is up to the father to start an ongoing dialogue with the boy. I usually suggest that this dialogue first start in written form. Just like in a written play, a man writes a relevant question down, and then he answers from the feeling and perception of the boy. At first this feels forced and made up, totally artificial. This is part of the resistance to contacting the inner life.

Another way to get past the resistance is to borrow a 12 step phrase. 'Fake it till you make it.' In other words act and answer 'as if' there is a boy inside anxious to be recognized and communicate, as if there is a traumatized boy inside who is lost and very afraid. Don't be surprised to start feeling lost or afraid or, if this is a teenager, very angry. This is the boy finally allowed to feel as a boy and not an unconscious man. Once the dialogue starts most men will know this is not exercise but existential.

Some ongoing questions to ask the boy could be, 'What do you need now to feel safe?'; or 'What do you need to feel better?'; or 'What do you need to understand?'. As we will see in the next essay it is most important that the boy inside is convinced that he is safe because he has a father that will protect him in any event. As I have mentioned, John Bradshaw's book Homecoming gives great counsel in how to get to know this child and start the process of healing.

The ongoing healing of the traumatized boy has to do with ongoing fatherly contact, wise response, and realistic explanations in the context of safety. Very often the boy has issues of abandonment and must be continually reassured that his new father will not leave him or turn critical and demeaning on him. And he must be continually reminded that he is safe in the present, not about to repeat the past.

This contact with the inner life as child goes a long way toward healing the traumatized child. Sometimes when one child feels safer and more confident a child of another age will show up in intense feelings. This is normal for all men. For example in war trauma it is usually the uninitiated teenager who has been traumatized. he will show up at first. However, there may also be a younger child who is deeper in the shadows who carries a good deal of those traumatized feelings.

We all have a number of child complexes that give us memory, experience, and intense feelings of pain, but also joy and magic. Many men have found that some of their strongest intuitions come from that child. Most men will find that feelings of joy and peace will come from the healing child. Our natural, innocent and healing child is really the source of much of our feeling of well being. These feelings are often the gateway to a mystical spirituality. This is why Jesus talked of us all becoming like little children.

For very serious trauma the boy will need some crucial steps beyond inner fathering. He will have to go back to the time of the trauma. He will have to relive the past to finally let it go. This needs to be done with the help of an experienced, aware other type of second father. This is a father of the outer world. As I have said, this father can be a therapist familiar with the inner life of men and the healing of the boy within. He can be a spiritual director who understands the sacredness of fathering and the black hole of trauma. He can be any man who has gone through initiation and the healing of inner wounds.

Ideally both fathers are there for guidance and support as the boy takes a journey of healing back to the time and situation of his age. The psyche is timeless and much more mysterious than we think. Any of us can move back in time any time we wish and change the effect of the past. In effect we can change the past. This remarkable ability of the psyche partnering with consciousness is a gift of being human. If we use this gift and trust it then it is never too late to have a happy childhood!

Next in this series I will talk about the role of the father of the outer world and the timeless healing that can result.

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