Excluding father can lead to problems in life |

I was going down the stairs of a commercial building after leaving a consultation, when I see a boy of about 4 years old in front of me trying to overcome the steps that seemed to challenge the size of his legs. “Slow down son”, calmly said the father, who got off right behind the boy.

I thought: “if the little one stumbles there, not even the quickest reflex would prevent a fall”. The father continued to follow the boy: “son, give your hand to the father”, but the boy preferred to go without support and, when he needed to balance, he resorted to the handrail. And the father left it like that, watching him intently.

I begin this article by narrating this brief scene to illustrate the importance of the father’s role in the development of his children. When born, the baby is in total symbiosis with the mother: she is his particular “God”, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, who provides food and everything else he needs.

Staying close to the mother in the first years of life is essential for the healthy development of a child. – the German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger calls this phase of “first affective movement”.

After completing a year and a half, or when taking the first steps, the child slowly begins to detach himself from the emotional fusion with the mother and begins his journey towards his own autonomy. At this time, it is appropriate for the father to act as an emotional separator, interrupting this merger and releasing both mother and child.

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Father is a link with the adult world

According to Hellinger, this is the second affective movement: when the child passes from the mother’s sphere to the father’s sphere. Ultimately, the father is the child’s link with the outside world, the adult world, in which he begins to establish contact with the reality around him and with life.

“Adapting to kindergarten or any new situation becomes more successful when the father is the one who accompanies the detachment”, says family psychotherapist Laura Gutman, in the book “Motherhood and the encounter with one’s own shadow” (Ed. .Best Seller).

Going back to that scene on the stairs, if in the father’s place it had been the mother accompanying that child, she would probably have carried the child on her lap, or held his hand – even in his absence.

It is a mother’s protective instinct to keep the child under her wings, away from any danger. The father, on the other hand, is the one who lets his son “play himself in the world”: experiment, play, get dirty, fall and get up.

Disorder in families arises when father is excluded from conscience and heart

Unfortunately, what happens today is that many children grow up without the father’s presence, due to the fact that the mother has separated from him and the children remain with her. “A mother has a tendency, for whatever reason, to draw her children to herself, away from their father. What does this do to the children?

It separates them from the world and therefore from life. Only through our father do we come into contact with the world”, says Bert Hellinger in his texts. Disorder in families arises when the father is excluded from living together, whether out of anger, fear, revenge or forgetfulness. This being “not looked at” creates a harmful force in the family system and, in the future, a high price is paid for this exclusion.

In the not so distant past, society delegated the role of provider to the father and everyone depended on him economically. He had to be present and solid in real life, as this was the only way to guarantee the survival of families.

However, in recent decades, with the autonomy and financial independence of women, the great obstacles that prevented them from separating from their husbands when the relationship stopped working ended. Lawyers’ offices and therapists’ offices are in demand with divorces, child support disputes, child custody and parental alienation.

It became routine for Justice to decide that the custody of the children would remain with the mother. And, in many cases after the separation, the mother ended up preventing the father from having access to the child, especially when she harbored anger and hurt towards the ex-partner, due to betrayal, abandonment or any other reason.

There are many other causes for exclusion: when someone had an abusive father, when they never met him or when he died early. There is usually a lot of hurt, judgment, rejection, claiming or forgetting on the part of the children and ex-wife.

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When this occurs, peace breaks down within families. And what are the consequences of this alienation and exclusion of parents? In some cases, the children may turn against their mother, out of loyalty to the father, and repeat, in the future, the fate of the excluded father, that is, not living with their own children.

There are many other consequences that we observe in the Family Constellation sessions: this child, as an adult, may have difficulties to maintain a satisfactory affective relationship, to find himself professionally, to keep his feet in reality (hence the cause of many cases of drug addiction ), etc.

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How is it possible to restore lost peace in families

The path to peace comes with including these fathers, these men, respecting and honoring their rightful place in the family system to which they belong, regardless of what they have done or failed to do.

After all, the act of giving one’s life is irrevocable. No one can deny this role.

It is important to say that this inclusion does not necessarily mean maintaining a relationship – because sometimes this father has already died, is not known or simply does not want to have contact with the children.

The goal is to make a place for him in your conscience and in your heart. For many people this can be quite difficult and sometimes it takes a lifetime to be able to make this internal affective movement. Hence the importance of the support of a professional in the therapeutic area in this process.

The act of including the father figure in the family cannot be a mere protocol. The change needs to happen on an emotional level and not in a rational, intellectual way. The solution, therefore, is always a humble solution.

+ Parent x child relationship: how to rescue the contact?

Exercise to heal bond with father

If you experience a similar situation, I have made available here, in audio, a systemic and phenomenological exercise that allows you to heal this bond and release the stopped flow of love – whether your parent is absent, unknown, deceased.

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