A Note to Dads: Give Yourself Permission to Heal

Have you ever felt a deep urge to reconnect with your emotions but didn’t know where to start? Join me as I open up about a deeply personal moment involving my daughter and girlfriend that reshaped my understanding of emotional vulnerability. This episode is a heartfelt journey through the essential practice of emotional regulation, understanding, and the powerful exercises that can help you visualize and embrace your inner child, protector, and helper. By shedding the emotional burdens we’ve carried since childhood, we can foster deeper connections with our loved ones and improve our overall well-being.

To all the fathers out there, this episode is a dedication to you. From a quiet moment of reflection in my office parking lot, I was inspired to remind you of your inherent worth and the immense love and appreciation you deserve. These heartfelt notes of gratitude and encouragement are a testament to my unwavering commitment to supporting and uplifting each other. Let’s embark on this journey together, bringing some much-needed positivity and strength through the simple, yet profound act of emotional openness.

Chapters

• 0:50 Embracing Emotional Vulnerability as Dads
• 10:04 Dedication to Fathers

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:51

Hey dads. So I thought I'd try something different Open, vulnerable and kind of less publicized connection with you, my brother. I'm going to use and try to be consistent, but use this time to open up and connect in a way that makes sense to you, when you're not carrying the weight of the world throughout your day, but when you have a moment to breathe, listen, we're going to come from internally, or an internal space of my own to connect with you. So today, today is a day that I'm working on shifting. I woke up early this morning, about 6.50. My goal is to get to somewhere around 6.15., but 6.50 to start my day.

Speaker 1: 2:45

And so today I want to talk to those dads that have gone through so much in this life that they've lost connection with themselves. When I say connection with themselves, I'm thinking this emotional connection to yourself, where you feel like you can't cry, you feel like you get so angry easily. Things affect you, but they don't affect you. You know, like you tell the world like, oh, I'm good, that didn't affect me, but in reality you feel this heavy uneasiness about a situation and you might not even say anything about it. This world, the way that people connect, is on an emotional level. Way that people connect is on an emotional level and, despite all the things that you hear out in the world about you know we hard alpha, this alpha that in order for us to be strong and malleable, we have to be able to connect to our emotions. And sometimes that means sitting with your emotions and acknowledging them and experiencing them and giving yourself the permission to be sad, permission to be upset, permission to cry. We don't always have to react or act out our emotions, but you can feel them. You're in full entitlement to feeling anything about any situation. Even if it's irrational, it's still your right. But you have to give yourself the permission first to cry and permission first to be sad or permission first to not be in your best day.

Speaker 1: 4:33

And there's a book that I read called Anxiously Attached, and it kind of helped me understand not only my girlfriend but understand myself about how I attached to the women that I've been with in my life. And I think I had a moment where I had to just stop everything and cry, probably a week ago, because I was overwhelmed with the way that my daughter was acting out in school and in public and my girlfriend was, you know, making me feel like I can't do shit right. And there's an exercise that I did and basically I just had to put my hand over my heart, take a few deep breaths, close my eyes and I would have to imagine my inner child while still taking deep breaths. Just imagine your inner child, if you want to do this exercise with me, and as we imagine the inner child and how this inner child may feel about anything, the situation, how it's just feel, how our inner child feels in general, take a deep breath and let's just call them our internal helpers, our internal protectors and our internal helpers. Our internal protector comes in and say, hey, try to keep us from showing that we're crying, but think about your internal helper or your internal protector, whoever that might have been in your life in your childhood, that have protected you and that person that protected you. Just have them sit down with you, have that internal protector sit down with your inner child and think of your internal protector telling you it's okay to feel, it's okay to cry, and think of that internal helper inviting or internal protector sorry, the internal helper into the conversation and allow yourself to be and hang out with those with your inner child, your inner protector, your inner helper as you navigate through your feelings. Just like think about how you're feeling and just sit there, be peaceful with your child.

Speaker 1: 7:44

Let your child, your inner child, just experience all the things that you feel like you've held in, you've held on to. Let it go, let it out, breathe through it. You've been holding on to a lot of weight and you can't carry it all for your whole life. It's not sustainable. You can't carry every hurtful thing that's had for you as a mark on your back. You'll run out of space. Think about those things that hurt you most in your childhood and tell your child is not your inner child that it's not their fault. You were not responsible for the trauma that you've experienced. Keep taking a deep breath. You can sit there as long as you want to sit there, but do this anytime that you feel overwhelmed by emotions, and this is like a physical action to kind of guide you to do the things that you may not have been taught as a child, and that's emotional regulation.

Speaker 1: 9:16

Being overwhelmed with emotions is easy for men to do, because we aren't taught how to navigate emotions. We were asked to stop crying. We were asked if we were okay, more than we were asked are you upset, are you sad? And we all don't have the words always to communicate how we feel, but it's our job now to investigate that, especially if you have kids, your kids will connect with you better when they see that you have emotions. The women in your life will connect with you better when they see that you have emotions and you can express to them how you feel and not make them responsible for fixing how you feel.

Speaker 1: 10:04

And so today, this is my note to you, fathers, and thank you for spending some time with me. Every talk isn't going to be the same, so I'm just going to try to write a note to you every day that I can and drop this inside of the podcast space. So thank you for hanging out with me. I'm sitting outside of my office, my work office, and in the parking lot and thought of you and just know that you're loved brothers, and I dedicate my life to uplifting you and, as I feel like will be reciprocated to me as well, y'all take care.